All About N-Gage - Next Generation Ready

Annoyed with Ovi Store's search engine? Try our unofficial Ovi Store search instead...

Published by Tzer2 at 12:08 UTC, August 13th 2009

Ovi Store's search function seems to be rather quirky and sometimes unreliable, so as a bit of an experiment we've set up an unofficial Ovi Store search system which uses Google's index instead of Nokia's. It's not perfect but it does some things better than the official search, and you may find it useful. You can use the search service below, let us know what you think!

Categories: Miscellaneous, Links of Interest, Games
Platforms: N-Gage

News Discussion

nomorgow
Works great!!

Please integrate it to the homepage or something so we can have an easy link to use it whenever we need. :)
bbj
Tried the search and it seems pretty broken, yes it brings up some valid links but also brings up quite a number of invalid links.

E.g. Attempted to search for one of our products, the primary listing hinted content was ours, clicked through to get 'Asian Babes' or something - not the original searched for + not our product.....

So maybe 30% for that effort !:D
Tzer2
Bbj, could you say exactly what search term you had a problem with?


Quote:
yes it brings up some valid links but also brings up quite a number of invalid links.
By invalid do you mean they say "not available"? If so that's probably because you haven't set the phone to be a model compatible with the item you're looking for. There's nothing we can do about this, Nokia has a system on the Ovi Store site which stops you seeing an item if it isn't compatible with the currently selected phone, and rather annoyingly the site chooses a specific model on your behalf even if you haven't picked one yet.

The way round this problem is to choose a phone model which you know the item is available for. There's a phone selection thing on the front page of Ovi Store's PC site, choose a phone compatible with your app from there before trying the search engine.

If you access Ovi Store from a phone, or if you log in to Ovi on your PC, it will choose your phone automatically.
davidmaxwaterma
I thought I'd try to search for 'check flights' that Ewan reviewed a little while ago - Ovi's search didn't turn up anything, but this didn't either.

Is it still there?

Max.
Tzer2
Davidmaxwaterma, Check Flights is here:

http://store.ovi.com/content/6C39614...40050A87327928

If you can't see it, go to the front page of Ovi Store and set it to a device that is compatible with the app (for example the N97).

You're right that it isn't in either index. It's possible that the app is so new that it hasn't been spidered by Nokia or Google yet.

It's odd that Nokia don't have it though, you'd think their Ovi Store search engine would instantly cover the entire contents of Ovi Store, but that kind of quirkiness is another reason why the unofficial search was set up.
davidmaxwaterma
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzer2 View Post
Davidmaxwaterma, Check Flights is here:

http://store.ovi.com/content/6C39614...40050A87327928

If you can't see it, go to the front page of Ovi Store and set it to a device that is compatible with the app (for example the N97).

You're right that it isn't in either index. It's possible that the app is so new that it hasn't been spidered by Nokia or Google yet.

It's odd that Nokia don't have it though, you'd think their Ovi Store search engine would instantly cover the entire contents of Ovi Store, but that kind of quirkiness is another reason why the unofficial search was set up.
You're right. It was there at the above link, then I set my phone to e90 and it said it was no longer available.

When I set it to N97, then I can find it again...even the search works.

I then tried N95 8GB, but it disappears for that. I wish they would put what versions of S60 it is compatible with, rather than making it disappear. Heck, it might make me want to buy a new phone that *will* run it.

Max.
davidmaxwaterma
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidmaxwaterma View Post
You're right. It was there at the above link, then I set my phone to e90 and it said it was no longer available.

When I set it to N97, then I can find it again...even the search works.

I then tried N95 8GB, but it disappears for that. I wish they would put what versions of S60 it is compatible with, rather than making it disappear. Heck, it might make me want to buy a new phone that *will* run it.

Max.
I couldn't find a web site for Cell City either...I was trying to find out what phones it would work on....
Tzer2
Quote:
I wish they would put what versions of S60 it is compatible with
I suspect they're not bothering with the technical names of platforms because most people don't understand them, and even if they do there are often inconsistencies (for example some apps work across all S60 3rd and 5th Edition, some only work on 3rd, and others require 3rd FP1 or FP2).

Ideally what Nokia should do is prompt a new visitor to enter their phone if the model cookie isn't present, and if they don't want to enter a phone the site should show all the software for all the phones.

The current situation where it chooses a particular model automatically without asking the visitor (e.g. at the moment it defaults to E71) is just silly and confusing.


Quote:
I couldn't find a web site for Cell City either..
It took a bit of searching, but I think this is them, there's a contact link at the bottom if you let it load fully:

http://www.dc2go.net/

It redirected to a Helsinki city guide automatically when I visited the site, maybe it redirects based on the country where you're accessing it from.
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