Kinoma Play, one of our favorite Windows Mobile multimedia players has been updated and now sports location-based features and has tied it into its built-in Twitter app. (Pretty cool for spying on your tweeting neighbors.)

In addition, tweets containing YouTube or Flickr images now open within Kinoma Play instead of launching a browser.

There are a few more bugfixes and updates in this build, too. Find 'em all on the Kinoma blog, and get the update directly in the Kinoma Play app.

We've been big fans of Kinoma Play since, well, forever. (Check our our first review here, and complete coverage here.) As far as media players go, it's among the best in breed. And so, we're helping the fine folks at Kinoma give away two copies of Kinoma Play to a pair of lucky WMExperts readers.

Full deets after the break.

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Couple of cool updates for Kinoma Play this week. First up is the addition of Google Reader. (For the uninitiated, Google Reader is an RSS reader. For the un-uninitiated, see Malatesta's oldie but goodie piece on the importance of RSS.)

For all intents and purposes, what Kinoma is giving us here is access to feeds already in Google Reader. And that's nice because there's little I hate more than having to reload (or export) feeds from one place to another. Just sign in, and everything shows up. Kinoma says its GR app is in beta, so be forewarned.

Also added is Yelp (a location-based local business search) and Flights, as the name suggests, tracks flights.

More info over at the Kinoma blog. To get the new apps, first get the latest update of Kinoma Play, then choose "Get apps" from the home screen.

Kinoma Play just got another update that fixes some nagging issues some of you were seeing previously. The Youtube function was having trouble playing the occasional video and has been fixed. There also have been a number of improvements made to the embedded Twitter app in Version 5.1.56, as well as to the App Store by Mobihand and a few of the advanced settings.

There's more info about all the fixes on the Kinoma blog. You may be prompted that the update's ready for download, or you can go to the Right softkey>Player>Check for updates to get things rolling.

On my computer, you will find nary a sign of any Apple software as iTunes stopped being a "neat" app about, I dunno, 4 years ago.

But for those of you who still load that behemoth and want to sync with your trusty Kinoma Play on WinMo (see update), looks like your dream is now a reality due to some third-party freeware by Salling Software.

According to Kinoma, which is officially supporting this method, Salling Media Sync "...automatically identifies phones running Kinoma Play and syncs all the audio formats that Kinoma Play supports." 

The app is "free" for basic use but will cost ya' $22 beans for you heavy sync'ers and those wanting faster sync times (I'd imagine that would be everyone?).  Hey, if the Pre can do it, so can WinMo.  Hmph!

Update: Looks like Kinoma has rolled out a small update from previous v5.1.46 to v5.1.48.

Mostly looks like a "cleaning up" update after the big one just recently, as this tidies up some naming conventions, UI interaction, G-sensor adjustments and just general patches.  It also seems to be a bit speedier, though I still have to wait 2-4 seconds to go back to the launcher on my Treo Pro.  Hmm.

Other changes include:

• More Home shortcuts — The last released introduced a super-convenient shortcut that lets you go Home just by holding the Center key on your 5-way. Now, you can press-and-hold the Back button as well.
• Live365 — The “More” now works correctly for stations listings and presets, and we fixed an issue where audio scrobbling didn’t work for everyone.
• Facebook Media — We updated the terminology to match the current Facebook style (i.e. “What are you thinking?”).
• Get Apps — We improved the way screen shots appear on screen to make your eyes happier.
• Improved press-and-hold feedback — Now when you press-and-hold on lists and grids to bring up the menu pod, a nifty icon appears to show when you’ve pressed long enough. Didn’t mean to do that? Just drag the screen to continue doing what you were doing.

Get the update now via

Menu --> Player --> Check for Updates!

We teased you a bit the other day with video of the latest version of Kinoma Play (albeit in Japanese), but now it's ready for the rest of us, in English.

This is a major upgrade for Kinoma Play that they're dubbing a "Social Media Browser," and new features include customizable Kinoma home pages, Facebook integration, direct access to the Mobihand app store, Twitter integration, Last.fm, a built-in RSS reader, a free gigabyte of space from Box.net, the already outstanding Yoututbe player and support for Flickr and Picasa.

Another new feature (to Kinoma at least) is support for the AVRCP Bluetooth protocol, aka the ability control playback from a Bluetooth device. Huzzah!

For those of you already rocking the full version of Kinoma Play (watch our original review here), the update should be available the next time you launch the app. (Or you can get it manually with the "Check for update" function.) If you're looking to buy, it'll run you $29.99. That's definitely not cheap for a Windows Mobile app, but, in our opinion, you get what you pay for here. (And for those of you wondering, Kinoma FreePlay will get an update, too.)

Learn more over at Kinoma.com, and the full presser's after the break.

Update: After applying the upgrade, you'll have to re-save all of your "favorites" within Kinoma Play. I could find most of mine in the Kinoma Guide, but you may want to track down some of your lesser-known links in advance. But this also gives you the opportunity to add the to the home screen and try that out. But be forewarned.

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If we had to pick one thing to be excited about in the coming year, the 1Ghz Snapdragon processors would be high on the list. And here we get a look at it hand-in-hand on a variant of the Toshiba TG01 with a future build of Kinoma Play, the uber-multimedia player of which we've been fans for a while.

What's really interesting with this new build is that it becomes a home screen within the Windows Mobile shell, with different pages you can pan through. (Yep, it's a lot like the iPhone's home screen. Can't say we blame 'em. And we like the idea of extra pages above and below.)

There's also a built-in app store, with downloaded apps sent straight to the Kinoma home screen. The already very functional podcatcher gets a refresh, and a full-on RSS reader will be added.

Yeah, this demo's done on a phone with some major processing power. (That's the version of the TGO1 that's destined for Japan's NTT docomo network.)  But we definitely like the direction that Kinoma play's going. No release date yet, so we'll be checking Kinoma's Web site.

My dream job has always been either a professional basketball player or photographer. While my skills on the court negated the latter possibility, I did work my way through college as a newspaper photographer enjoying every assignment.  While my career path shifted after college, I've always kept a hand in photography and an eye for good picture sources. 

The Big Picture is a photo blog created by Alan Taylor for The Boston Globe. According to the Globe, "The Big Picture is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery - with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting."  No arguments here.

The blog has one of the best collections of photographs I've seen in a long time. While this site more commonly accessed on a desktop/laptop, Kinoma Play is now offering it as a channel with zoom and pan capabilities that retains the high quality aspects of each photograph. The Big Picture is in the Kinoma Guide at Pictures and Podcasts>The Big Picture. The blog is updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Via Fuze Mobility

Microsoft has pushed out an update for its Live Mesh suite, including Live Mesh for Mobile (as well as the Windows and Mac desktop clients). Nothing major to talk about, but it’s worth grabbing.

The Fixes:

• Server-side performance and reliability enhancements.
• Minor usability improvements.

You’ll be informed of the update as soon as you log in to Live Mesh Mobile on your phone.

Kinoma Play: We could be accused of overdoing it on the Kinoma Play updates, and maybe we are. But that’s how impressed we are with the frequency and manner in which they’re being rolled out. And there’s some pretty good stuff this time around.

• The UI now takes advantage of the full native resolution of your phone. If you have a Touch Diamond, Pro or HD (lucky son of a gun), or the SE Xperia X1, everything’s going to look much sharper.
• The app is better at detecting when you switch from a cellular connection to WiFi.

Get the full list of updates here. As usual, Kinoma Play will automatically inform you of the update once you’re in the application.

Note to devs (rant alert!): This is how it’s done. There are still too many Windows Mobile apps from reputable (and major) software houses that don’t automatically inform of updates, no matter how small they may be. We’re not going to get into who does this well and who doesn’t. It’s pretty obvious. Blanket press releases may get noticed for the big jumps, but it’s the little things that can really grab our attention, and keep us (and our dollars) coming back. /rant

We don’t always understand it, but we do recognize that some of you Windows Mobile users also use Macs as your primary desktop computer. (And we’re fully aware that some of you waltz with Windows Mobile, mess with Macs, explore with iPhones, tango with Treos, meet Androids in dark parking lots and — once a year and under a full moon — are willing to hang out with BlackBerries. But them’s a special breed.)

Where were we? Ah, yes, upgrades.

There’s never been an official ActiveSync release for Macs, but that void has been filled for some time by The Missing Sync, which recently received its first update since the spring. Among the improvements: Support for Entourage 2008, a fix for syncing with the Touch Diamond’s TouchFlo3D, and a few other items. Check out the release notes here.

The 4.0.4 release is free if you’re upgrading from Missing Sync 4.0. It’ll cost $40 for new users. Get it all here.

Kinoma Play (full review) remains one of our favorite Windows Mobile media players and has received several updates in its relatively short life on Windows Mobile.

The latest version improves file associations, handling of DRM material, adds Spanish language support and ups SHOUTcast reliability. Also fixed is unicode for MP3s.

The full version of Kinoma Play costs $30, and there’ s a free version available as well. If you’re already using Kinoma, you should be automatically notified of the update through the application.