Nokia has announced its first Windows Phone 7 devices at the giant’s Nokia World event in London. The long-awaited LUMIA 800 and 710 were revealed amid fanfare about their software capabilities. Besides including all the standard Windows Phone Mango tools, the LUMIA 800 integrates bespoke Nokia services such as turn-by-turn voice navigation, a music service and an ESPN sports hub.

I think it’s fair to say that with Nokia now packing Windows Phone 7 into its new devices, Microsoft’s mobile operating system has become a strong alternative to the iPhone and the top-end Android devices.

If you’re choosing a phone now, you should definitely give some consideration to Windows Phone 7 - it has a number of advantages over iOS and Android. Here’s a quick run-down of some of the reasons to switch to Windows Phone 7:

The iPad’s reputation as a serious music making tool is growing fast. Several accomplished artists including Gorillaz and Bjork have already produced albums using the Apple tablet, and its prestige within the music world is on the rise.

When the iPad was first launched, many digital music makers were a little disappointed by the product, bemoaning its lack of input/output ports and closed storage capabilities, among other things. While many of these problems still exist, it’s becoming ever -more viable to create great sounding music on the iPad, and especially the iPad 2.

The influx of great software, and to a lesser extent, hardware, has made it possible for musical innovators to get some awesome sounds out of the iPad. If you’re a musician on a budget it could be the best way to make an album without breaking the bank (Gorillaz spent just over $100 on the 21 apps the band used on its album).

If you want to be creating storming tracks in the way these guys have, here’s a run-down of the most accomplished iPad music creation apps available. I’ve included a YouTube video for each one so you can get an idea of the kind of sounds you could be creating.

iElectribe

If you’re looking for old school beats for your dance music tracks, iElectribe is a highly capable tool for the job. Based around Korg’s Electribe series of rhythm synthesizers, the application offers various pre-set patterns and templates. These can be tinkered with to create some quite elaborate beats.

For those who need a bit more control, iElectribe boasts 64 user banks that have just a single trigger on the downbeat of each measure. There are eight basic sounds to play around with and knobs for altering pitch and waveforms. Price: $19.99

Today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, there was a lot of buzz about new features for Android tablets and phones alike. Perhaps one of the biggest announcements was about the launch of Music Beta by Google.

Music Beta by Google allows you to upload your personal music collection to cloud-based storage, where it can be streamed to your computer, Android phone or tablet. This is reminiscent of MP3Tunes, which also offers storage in the cloud and is compatible with both iPhone and Android devices.

Syncing occurs automatically with Music Beta by Google, so every time you add new music or create a playlist, all of your devices will be updated simultaneously. There's even a feature called Instant Mix that will create a playlist for you based on songs that go well together. This is similar to the Genius feature in iTunes, except Instant Mix sorts music you already have, as opposed to suggesting new music you'd need to purchase. Even cooler, all of your recently played songs are automatically stored, allowing you to listen to music even when you're offline.

Currently, Music Beta by Google is available by invitation only to users in the U.S. and works on both PCs and Macs.  If you have a Gmail account, you can request a beta invite here.

After the release of Instagram, the popular photo-based social network for iPhone, many other new apps have been presented as “the Instagram for” whatever other thing they did. This is the case of SoundTracking, a new app that has been described as Instagram for music.

SoundTracking is in fact a social network (yes, another one) that lets you share the music you’re listening to at any given moment. The program is integrated with the iPod app on your device, and automatically imports the song you’re currently playing. You can then add a personal comment or a picture if you want, publish it to your SoundTracking timeline and share it on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Any song you share will appear on your activity feed, where your followers can leave comments, like them or love them.

Zimly and TuneWiki are two of the top Android music players on Softonic. I've reviewed them both, and I gave them an identical - and very respectable - 8 out of 10. If you're trying to choose between them, though, I guess it doesn't make your job that easy! In an attempt to make it a little simpler to choose, I'm going to run through both of them, briefly concentrating on what each does best.

To some, the idea of connecting a Windows Phone to a Mac seems a little wrong somehow.  One eloquent colleague recently described me syncing a Windows Phone 7 device to an iMac as “like a monkey mating with a camel”. Microsoft isn’t overly keen on its products mixing with Macs either, and has yet to release its excellent Zune Windows Phone 7 management software on the Apple platform.

In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a beautiful mobile phone hooking up with a beautiful desktop computer and sharing themselves with each other–regardless of their different parentage. If you too, want to connect a Windows Phone 7 device to a Mac then fear not: it can be done!

All you need to do is download and install a piece of software called Windows Phone 7 Connector (developed by Microsoft itself, incidentally). This simple, free utility allows you to sync music, photos, videos and podcasts from your existing iTunes and iPhoto libraries to your Windows Phone 7.

When you plug your Windows Phone 7 handset into your Mac, you’ll be invited to set up and personalize your phone. Here you can change the name of the device, download the latest OS updates and change some of the default settings.

MTV has unveiled an interesting looking new online music discovery service called Music Meter. The service trawls social media web sites for emerging bands and musicians.

Music Meter tracks social media sites, looking at increasing numbers of comments written about individual artists to see who is growing in popularity. Users can checked out music videos and 30-second song samples of artists on the Music Meter site. A Rhapsody tie-in allows people to subscribe to listen to unlimited, unrestricted tracks. Android and iOS versions of Music Meter are on their way in January.

Once upon a time, MTV was a great champion for upcoming artists, before its programming schedule got crammed full of reality shows and celebrity spin-offs. So it’s refreshing to see the corporation investing in a new service like this.

A bug has appeared for some after updating their iPhone to iOS 4.2 - iPod libraries disappear! Considering how much music you might be storing on your phone, that could be a major pain. However, it doesn't affect all iPhones and, better still, people on the Apple forums have already come up with a fix.

If you open the iPod on your iPhone and it claims there is no content:

- Connect it to a computer with iTunes

- Play a song from the iPhone in iTunes

- Eject and restart the iPhone

- Open your iPod library again, and you will see a message about updating the library, after which your media will be back!

I didn't do this on my personal Mac, but an office PC. You may feel safer using the computer you sync your iPhone with! It's a very weird bug and, coming so soon after the daylight saving alarm bug, it's been an unusual experience for Apple users, who aren't used to this unreliability at all!

Spotify is really popular in Europe, offering a huge library of music to listen to on demand from computers and smart phones. I've said before that I'm not a huge fan, and MP3tunes addresses on of my complaints: that Spotify doesn't have everything I want to listen to.

I have everything I want to listen to, though, and MP3tunes allows me to upload my music to their service, and then stream it from any browser, or my iPhone (there's even an Android app, if you have one of those). The browser service best, but the iPhone app seems to be unstable. This may be due to iOS4, so hopefully they'll fix it soon.

The uploading app is available for Windows and Mac, and works fine although to be honest it's not the most polished program I've ever seen.

MP3tunes is an interesting service, but I'm still not a big streaming fan. I will stream things, but I don't see it as the ultimate solution. I'll keep storing things locally, as it saves energy and bandwidth on my phone. For me, the best things about the web and music are the sharing possibilities. Spotify's playlists are an excellent example, and SoundCloud, which allows you to upload music and share it, is a great place to discover new music.

Attention Nokia gamers: head over to Digital Chocolate's page on the Ovi Store and you can get five of the developer's top games free of charge. Like many titles from this publisher, these games are pretty off-the wall but they're great fun to play.

The line-up of free games in the promotion, for Symbian S60 3rd 5th Edition devices, includes the wacky Crazy Penguin Party, where your mission is to get your penguin to the finish line by flying in jetpacks, bouncing him off sleeping polar bears, free falling and collecting stars to win extra points.

The massively popular Tower Bloxx: New York is also included in the promotion. Here you need to drop blocks to make a towering apartment building without it toppling over. The game includes five Manhattan districts in an all-new Board Game mode. Other game modes include Time Attack and Challenge.

Rollercoaster Revolution is now available for free, too. The game lets you build your own rollercoaster rides. You can add all kinds of hair-raising elements, such as jumps, loops, drops, water splashes and cave tunnels, to create white-knuckle experiences for your passengers. There are 99 different tracks and a multiplayer mode, so it'll be a long time before you get bored.

If you like Tower Defense-style games then make sure you download Dictator Defense for free. This strategy game sees you try to defend your homeland from and invasion of evil dictators, across 40 levels. There are nine different kinds of enemy to ward off, but thankfully you've got a bumper arsenal of fun weapons at your disposal.

The final free game in the promotion is Nightclub Fever. This one charges you with the task of building your own disco empire.  You get to set up and manage clubs in a range of party cities, including London, LA and Tokyo. The game gives you control over everything from the layout of the club to the kind of music that's played there.

I suggest you snap these games up as quickly as you can because they're only free for a limited time!

Today's Symbian smartphones are more like digital swiss army knives. They arm you with tools for listening to music, browsing the web, watching videos, and managing your files. However, as you've probably noticed to your frustration before, not all Symbian phones support all formats. This means you can have all manner of problems opening multimedia, accessing web content, or viewing files you've transferred from your computer. Help is at hand though, and there are a few crucial add-ons you should download and install in order to improve your smartphone experience. Here's a quick run-through of what you need.

Video

If you have downloaded movies in DivX format then you might be wondering how to watch them on your phone. The answer is simple: install DivX Player Mobile. The program lets you watch DivX, AVI or MPEG movies in the player window or in full-screen mode. Control elements such as Play, Pause, Stop, Fast Forward and Rewind, as well as the volume can be controlled easily via buttons.

Another very popular video add-on is SmartMovie. It's getting a bit long in the tooth now, and the interface looks very dated. However, it's perfect for cropping and shrinking movie files to be stored and played on your phone. It also helps you install codecs onto your device that let you play video files you wouldn't otherwise be able to.

Nokia Video Converter is also a massively popular app, and is designed to take care of all your video conversion needs. The app is designed to convert movies from popular files formats and DVDs in just a few clicks, preserving picture and sound quality as best it can. The application's interface is very clearly labeled with large buttons for adding video, adding DVD, playing, and converting.

Being the forward-thinking technophiles we are, the OnSoftware team is constantly musing over what the future holds for the world of software and technology. Every coffee break or brainstorming meeting seems to end up with us debating the prospect of flying cars, how long before chips are planted in our heads, and whether Apple will ever release its fabled tablet device. Instead of us arguing amongst ourselves over the plausibility of a time-traveling MP3 player or if it's right for a human to marry a robot, we decided to each vent our perceptions of the future in a series of posts.

(Photo by asifpk)

As OnSoftware's resident visionary genius mobile devices editor, I get to go first. I'm going to explain my theories about the future of mobile phone technology. Then, over the coming days, the rest of the team will be prophesying about their own specialist tech subject, revealing their crackpot ideas about what the World will look like in 2015.

The changing mobile environment

I guess it makes sense to start by considering what mobile software will be like in 2015. And I think 'convergence' is the key word here (as it always has been). At present there are a plethora of mobile operating systems to choose from and handset manufacturers must pick and choose which to include on their devices. For the software developer, it's now a grand task to produce apps that run on every OS, and consumers too are baffled by which to opt for. I think mobiles will go the same way as desktop computers, and that platforms will converge, so handsets will come with one of only two or three operating systems. My guess is one will be an Apple OS (i.e. a descendant of the current iPhone platform), one will be open source (my bet is that Google will eventually snap up the Symbian cooperation and Android will rule supreme), and the other will be a more business-oriented platform from BlackBerry, Microsoft, or even Palm, depending on who can squeeze out/buy out the others first.

In my book, watching TV on a mobile phone is one of the most futuristic things you can do today. Although the technology is really still in its infancy, it is possible to enjoy decent quality television on your phone without having to invest lots of money in new equipment or services. In fact, many of the mobile TV broadcasting apps and services out there are free of charge, and are available on a wide range of devices.

Joost for iPhone - Joost was one of the first free Web TV services to hit the Internet and now you can enjoy the delights of the portal from your iPhone. The free iPhone client is very easy to operate and programs can be watched in either horizontal or vertical aspect. There are almost 50,000 videos currently available to watch through Joost and the picture quality is generally excellent.

Good for: music videos, celebrity gossip shows, sports magazine-style programs

MobiTV - Although MobiTV isn't free it's certainly not worth discounting as an option due to the quality of the content on offer. Available for Windows Mobile, Palm and BlackBerry devices, the service starts from $9.95 per month but for that you get access to shows from the most popular US networks, including Fox, NBC and CBS.

Good for: US series, comedy, documentaries

Pocket Live TV - If you're using a Windows Mobile device (Pocket PC or Smartphone) then you may want to check out Pocket Live TV. As its name suggests, this one lets you watch live television from your PDA or phone. It boasts access to an impressive array of more than 100 channels from 10 different countries around Europe and North America. This includes the likes of CNN, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Sky News and NBC. It's not free, but only costs $14.95 for high quality access to all this.

Good for: major European and US channels, live sport, music channels

vTap - If you've grown tired of conventional television and watch most of your shows in the form of online video clips then get a load of vTap. This app, available for Windows Mobile, iPhone, BlackBerry and Java devices, lets you easily tap into all the videos on the web from your phone. That means you can use it to browse videos from the likes of YouTube, DailyMotion, Metacafe, MySpace, etc.

Good for: squirrels on skateboards, babies pulling funny faces, Star Wars Kid - anything you'd find on YouTube, basically.

FreeBe TV - Although it doesn't offer access to any of the big channels, FreeBe TV, like Joost, does provide genuinely 'free' mobile television (apart from your data charges, of course). The service offers up its own selection of news, sports, and movie clip channels, and is available for users in the UK, USA and Brazil. It's compatible with a number of different handsets (including the iPhone) so check on the FreeBe TV site to see if yours is compatible.

Good for: news, extreme sports, short films

FL Studio is a versatile app that allows you to edit and create music with loops. Formerly called Fruity Loops Studio, FL Studio has matured its app and released mobile versions for iOS and plans an Android release in the future. Now you can make music on the go.

Here’s a round-up of the best mobile apps we tested on Softonic this week. Check them out now!

UEFA Euro 2012 official app

Europe’s biggest soccer tournament doesn’t kick off until June, but already the official app of the championships is available. The application brings you all the latest news in the build-up to Euro 2012, as well as team profiles, stats and schedule details. You’ll be able to follow matches live during the tournament itself. Note that the Euro 2012 app is only available in Europe at the moment.

iOS, Android, BlackBerry