If you are a user of Ovi Mail, Nokia has announced that the service is now powered by Yahoo!, and the process of migrating Mail users to the new experience has started.

With Yahoo! now powering Ovi Mail and Chat, users get a faster and more powerful Mail experience with new features that make your email experience better. In addition, Chat users will be able to experience Chat on the web for the first time! Also, Ovi Mail or Chat users can now use their Nokia or Ovi account to log in to other Yahoo! services like Yahoo! News or Finance.

Mail powered by Yahoo! is already running, and you can immediately start using the updated web experience at http://mail.ovi.com. Although you can use all of the new functionality immediately, you might notice that you don’t see all of your emails or contacts right away. Nokia however assures you that all of your data is safe. The reason you won’t see it yet is due to the fact that the migration may take up to a couple of weeks to be completed.

You’ll be able to send and receive emails and enjoy the new experience completely, but it may take several days to see all of your old emails, contact lists, or account settings. You’ll receive an email from Nokia once your data has been fully migrated to Yahoo!.

If you haven’t yet accepted the Terms of Service it’s not too late. Just go to http://mail.ovi.com and accept. You have 90 days following the beginning of the migration on April 6th, 2011, to pull your email and contact data into the new experience. Following those 90 days, you can still join, although without the benefit of your previous data.

Source

On the 5th of November, I updated my Facebook status with the following:

In contrast to me, my wife is very cyber-disconnected. For example, she has over 60 pending FB friend requests. How can I win her over to the “dark side” of ultra-connected people?

You see, she would go for weeks (and sometimes even months) without access to her Facebook account or Yahoo mailbox.

I got some interesting responses to that status, with a good friend even jabbing me for using up the quota of connectivity that she should have used. Here are some of the responses:

• Ah! sir, I don’t think you can win this battle. Even fasting and prayers won’t solve this. Maybe you should try gisting tech things with her. I’m not even trusting this would work sha
• How can she when you have taken over her own quota of connectivity. You need to slow down a bit so she has some more opportunity.
• Yomi, whenever u get the answer let me know so I can use same formula on my wife Lol

Well, I do think that the solution I opted for hit the nail right on the head. The following day was her birthday, so I simply gave her a new phone as a birthday present. Since then, she has been active online with Facebook, her Yahoo mail account, and web browsing. She even visits Mobility Nigeria. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

Now, I know that you are all interested in knowing what phone that must be. A device that has successfully turned an internet-disconnected middle-age mother of two and corporate manager into a semi mobile nerd within two weeks must be of interest to anyone who is into phones.

Is it a Symbian device or a Blackberry? Windows Mobile or Android? Or perhaps even an iPhone? Please hold on to your horses and take a chill pill first.

I thought you would also be interested in the factors that I had to contend with in choosing a device for her. Here they are –

1. Simplicity – the device must not be so complex as to overwhelm her. This is someone who has done little more than voice, SMS and taking pictures with her past phones.
2. Battery life – she very often fails to remember to charge her phones, so it must not be a device that would die by 2pm. Her previous phones went at least two hectic days on a charge.
3. Hardware QWERTY – from experience, she’s pretty much lost with touchscreens. All that swiping and tapping takes her nowhere – or to the wrong menus. If I was getting her this device because of email and Facebook, text entry must be sweet and easy
4. Appearance – well, it must look the part. A trendy-looking, classy-looking device
5. Cost – yes; it must not cost an arm and a leg. This device was supposed to be an experiment to see whether given the right tool, she would adapt. If this worked out fine, I would be very willing to splash out on a more expensive device for her

So, those were pretty much the factors that I juggled in mind in approaching this very difficult problem. Plus, it was almost embarassing that the wife of a mobile web nut like I am goes for months without logging into Facebook or checking her Yahoo mail (for all those of you who had requested her FB friendship, sent a message or mailed her and didn’t get a response until recently, now you know why). Eventually, I did make a choice. And so far, that choice seems to be working. Perhaps its still the euphoria? Is this a crush that my wife has for her new toy or is this the start of the making of an epic?

Oh, yes; the phone?

A Standing Ovation Please
My madam’s new connected lifestyle was made possible by getting her a simple, non-smartphone device – The Nokia C3 running the proprietory S40 operating system. That’s it? yes; that’s it.

Don’t tear your hair out (at least not yet). The solution works. Or is working. Or appears to be working.

Now, you know what to get your wife (or, God forbid, husband) if you’d like to gently prod her into hopefully becoming a hopeless mobile internet addict like yourself.

Well, well, welll. What do you know? Turns out there’s a Yahoo phone? I ran into an article on Wap Review that carried news of the device. From the article:

Yahoo VP of Product Management Irv Henderson revealed the existence of a “Yahoo phone” which is now available now in Indonesia. The Alcatel branded Yahoo One Touch Net is a mid-range feature phone with a QWERTY form factor resembling a BlackBerry. It has a sub $100 unsubsidized price and is made by Hong Kong’s TCT Mobile Limited , a join venture between Alcatel-Lucent and TCL Communication of China. The Yahoo Phone uses the Opera Mini Browser and runs Java ME games and apps. It has a 2MP camera, Bluetooth, 2.5G (Edge) connectivity and an optical track pad. There are apps or links for Yahoo Mail, Messenger, Contacts, Calendar, the Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search with Voice, Yahoo Social Pulse and Flickr.

Read the complete article over at Wap Review – Mobile 2.0 Business Day – The Yahoo Phone and Innovation From Africa and Asia

More information about the Yahoo Phone is available on the Alcatel Mobile phones website.

I am wondering if we will ever see this in Nigeria. Alcatel phones are no longer in circulation here as they used to be years back.

I am not sure why, but articles on Zain Mobile Internet are extremely popular on Mobility Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the top two items in terms of page views on this site are about Zain Mobile Internet.

Perhaps, part of the reason for their popularity can be attributed to the elusiveness of full internet service on prepaid lines. For quite a while, Zain Nigeria’s official policy is that only WAP is available to prepaid subscribers. This means POP3/IMAP mail cannot be used, and instant messaging apps won’t work, among others. See: From Celtel to Zain; GPRS further restricted, published in August last year.

Earlier this year, I demonstrated that with minimal tweaking, email (POP/IMAP) indeed works on the Zain network (Zain Data works on Phones for Web and Email). But IM apps didn’t.

Last Saturday, however, I receeived an SMS from Zain stating in part:

New from Zain! Internet Browsing, MMS & downloads now possible on your handset!

That sounded to me like Zain had done a rethink of their rather backward policy of limiting prepaid lines to WAP access only. I had some spare time yesterday and dashed over to the nearest Zain outlet, where I requested for full internet provisioning.

I was told that the system was problematic, but the guy I spoke with took down my details anyway. I got home around 5p.m. today and a few minutes later, I received an SMS configuration on my device. I saved it, took a peek and saw full internet settings.

In a few minutes, I was chatting on Yahoo Messenger via Slick, checking my mails, and doing all sorts of stuff. No tweaks. Just straight out-of-the-box.

There’s still neither EDGE nor 3G at my location. Yes; its gross. This is Lagos, where every other 3G-enabled network has almost seamless coverage.

So, it is official. Full internet is now available for prepaid subscribers on the Zain network. By the way, I got another SMS announcing that Blackberry service is also now available for prepaid subscribers.

Hop over to a Zain centre and specify that you want full internet service activated on your line. Then you can forget about using proxies in order to be able to browse on your PC. Alternatively, send SMS in the format, “internet sonyericsson P910i”, to 232 to get activated. If it doesn’t work, keep trying.

For those who may find the Zain internet configuration settings useful, here they are:

APN: internet.ng.zain.com
Username: internet
Password: internet
IP/Proxy: None

Well done, Zain. You are late, but hey, we’ll still throw a welcome party! And while we are at it, please extend EDGE and 3G coverage some more please.

Update: Official Zain Internet Provisioning: An Update

Here is my list of applications that are absolutely important that I install on any s60 device I purchase. The rather interesting thing about my list is that it features apps that are absolutely free.

Here is my list in no particular order of their importance to me, along with my commentary on each application.

1. Shozu: Shozu is an application that allows you to upload pictures and videos to some of the most popular social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr. The majority of my pictures on Facebook were uploaded directly from my phone using Shozu.

2. Slick: Slick is an instant messaging (IM) application that allows you stay in touch with friends and families via very well known IM services like Yahoo, Gtalk etc.

I’d like to say that it was Yomi who recently introduced me to Slick, and it has become my preferred IM application amongst the others I have used.

3. Opera Mini: Opera Mini has proved to be an indispensable browser application for me. Its compression technology, fit to screen feature, and the good page-loading speed are part of the many reasons I consider Opera Mini a must-have app on my phones.

4. Bible Reader: As the name suggests, this application allows me read the Bible on my phone. The beauty of Bible Reader (from OliveTree) is that I can have more than one translation of the Bible installed. This is another application that’s indispensable for me as I don’t even have a hard copy bible anymore.

5. Active File: This is a file manager I use as an alternative to the built-in one. Actually, I use about three of them, but this is on top of the list because it has a feature that lets users keep the back light of their phones on for as long as the battery lasts. This is a useful feature for when you need to do a considerable amount of reading on your phone.

6. Screenshot: This application takes screenshots of whatever is on your phone’s display. All the screenshots in our reviews are produced using this application.

There you have it, applications that make s60 phones worth owning for me. In case you’re wondering where to get these apps, I suggest you do a Google search of each of them. They are readily available on a number of websites.

Do you have any must-have mobile apps?