Launch day of new applications tends to be hell for developers. Try as they might, bugs tend to come out of the woodworks when an application’s user base rockets from five tired developers to a few hundred thousand users. As any dev can tell you, the debugging stage really only starts once you have 10,000 yelling about stuff being broken.

YouTube Mobile’s launch was no different - this application that worked flawlessly in the days leading up to its launch started suffering from a few nasty issues once it went live. Fortunately, resolutions for these issues have made their way out - it should be smooth sailing from here.

Issue #1: “Buffer Timeout” error displayed during playback.
Resolution: We just got the word from one of the guys behind the scenes letting us know that this issue should now be a thing of the past. We checked a number of videos on 3 separate devices with no buffering errors whatsoever. Let us know if your experience differs.

Issue #2: YouTube app gets stuck at “Device Sync..” stage
Resolution: This seems to be caused by a corrupt video file lurking around in your internal video storage. Go to Menu > 3. Snap > 4. Video Album > Default (Internal). Look for any videos represented with an exclamation point or that refuse to play, and delete them.

Hopefully this starts clearing the way for anyone still having trouble with the application, because it really is a damned good one.

With all the hub-bub and giddy excitement surrounding the YouTube Mobile release, nearly everyone forgot to note the release of the new Helio Player (Including us. Whoops.) Replacing the now defunct Helio Media Mover, Helio Player brings a fresh interface and a very iTunes like feel (minus some of the bloatiness. And, unfortunately, the mac support.)

Helio Player will work with the Fin, Ocean, Drift, and Heat, but some features are Ocean exclusive. You can easily move pics to and from your Ocean, move videos, music, and convert music and videos to the correct format for your device. You can also redownload to your PC any music you’ve previously purchased via your device. It also brings a surprising change: you can now purchase songs for .99 cents instead of 1.99 through Helio Player, making Helio’s digital media distribution that much more competitive. No word on if this discounted price is only for Helio Player purchases, or if it’s planned to be rolled out onto the mobile store.

We haven’t gotten a chance to play with it yet, but we’ll let you know once we’ve torn it apart. Tell us what you think in the comments!

For the download, and a device-by-device feature chart, check it out here.

How often do you find yourself wanting to Rickroll someone while you’re out and about, only to find out there’s nary a computer in sight? Up until recently, you’d be out of luck. On-the-go YouTube offerings were pretty much crap. Apple’s YouTube application came along - tons of videos, a great start! But what about all the rest of the stuff YouTube had to offer?

Well, Good news: Helio’s YouTube Mobile application launched this morning. It features the absolutely massive video catalog you’d expect from a YouTube application, along with the ability to record and upload videos on the go and all of the community features (commenting, rating, user subscriptions, etc). Better news: The application is outstanding. Best news: It’s free. Grab it today from the Applications section on your device.

Check out our full review.

(Update: 3rd party downloads are officially back up. Not all sites - just the ones who have made the necessary fixes. Look for “Uses Proxy 2″ at the top of any downloads site to determine whether they’ve applied the fixes.)

As most visitors to this site will know by now, all downloads that don’t come directly from the Helio store have been down for almost a week. To knock out the rumor that has filled my inbox for the last 3 days: No, Helio had nothing to do with downloads going down. (In addition: Walt Disney was not frozen, and I am not secretly Batman.)

For the sake of brevity, I’ll ignore the boring nitty-gritty. If you really want the details of why schtuff works/doesn’t work, such information is usually available in the homebrew section of the forums.

The short version: Something required for the whole process to work decided to go offline , and we were unsure if there were any alternatives.

After a few days of digging, we’ve unearthed what appears to be a working alternative. We’re trying to get in touch with any content providers we have contact with so as to fill them in on the changes needed to get their offerings up again. Downloads will come back up the changes are rolled out to each site.

We’ll update you as soon as things become available.

(P.S: Whoooooooooooooooooooooo!)

Image courtesy of Garmin

Ya heard right! Helio finally rolled out the $9.99 per month subscription to the marvelous Garmin Mobile. I used it on my super-serious-and-official Heliocity trip down to the living quarters of Greg, and I only got lost a few times. I swear! I am awful at directions, even when the Garmin lady (We will call her Mary) is yelling at me to get off at the intersection that was to my right.

All in all, Garmin Mobile is super-handy. If you don’t have enough gravy for a full blown GPS, it’s an awesome substitute. It features automatic route recalculations (Took a wrong turn? Mary will find another route!) quick restaurant/business finding, cheapest gas stations, closest ATM, traffic, weather, vocal turn-by-turn directions, and I’m sure you can blow up the world with it too.

So go rejoice with your mother, father, aunts and uncles, even your future children and space aliens! Download it from the Helio store, under the Apps section. Or dial 427646 and hit the Helio Flame key to jump right to it. Also, Mary loves you.

Thanks to nas061000 on the forums for telling us!

Opera Mini 4 has jumped out of beta mode, and it’s wrapped and ready to go for the Ocean.

Downloads are down at the moment, but should be back up really soon. Don’t worry, everyone is getting “Download Interrupted”. A fix should roll out across the popular download sites in the next few days. Check here for more info.

To grab it, just point your Ocean browser over to Peetre001’s site: http://www.peetre001.com/helio.html. (Note: You must hit “View in HTML” at the bottom for the download link to work. If you don’t, all you will see is a bunch of text.)

After you hit View in HTML, look for “Opera Mini 4 Final with QWERTY”. Should be around the 15th item on the list. Click that, and you should be good to go.

That’s right! It seems like a RSS feed feature was unveiled recently for Helio UP, according to mouthy at HoFo (Thanks!)

While it doesn’t give you direct access to the Helio UP website, it does allow you to view your photos in just a few simple steps. Remember, any media in your Helio UP albums that is marked as ‘Private’ will not show up in the feeds.

1. Open your phone in numeric pad mode, dial 87 and hit the Helio flame key.
2. Helio UP should be displayed in the web browser
3. If you don’t already have an album set up, make one.
4. Go to the ‘Share’ tab
5. Click ‘E-Mail URLs’
6. Enter your E-Mail
7. Check your mailbox, and look for an URL that looks something like http://photos.helio.com/feed/*/****/****.xml
8. Put it into your web browser or favorite RSS feed reader and enjoy!

You can even give your feed URL to one of your friends or another Helion with H.O.T. and make sure they don’t miss any of your photos or videos!

A few weeks back, Heliocity brought Opera Mini to Helio devices, with a ton of help from gmonk63.

Well, he’s done it again - this time with QWERTY and Auto Landscape support. As an extra treat, he’s thrown in an IRC client, too! This was a lot of work for him, and we’re incredibly impressed that he pulled it off. Be sure to stop on by helio3g.com and donate to show your love!

To get either, go to the addresses below on your Ocean. Hit “View in Html” (Seriously - it won’t work if you don’t.) and click the link.

(Getting an error? Try one of the other links)

Disclaimer: Both programs are properties of their respective owners. As with all custom applications, mishaps during download/operation may require a hard reset of your device. Back up your schtuff! No modifications were made to the program’s functionality - only how it identifies itself to the device. All compiled code is still in its original form. Install at your own risk. If things don’t work, you may have to hard reset your device. This is in no way supported by Helio, Opera, or the WLIrc team. If you have trouble getting it to work, Tech support can’t do squat.

To download:

(Updated 1/09/07) Though we we’re quite proud of the fact that Heliocity was the first to offer custom downloads like Opera Mini, we’ve found that its better for all if the users of the community offer things themselves. Updates are recognized faster, bugs are squashed more quickly, and things tend to just go smoothly. Don’t worry - You can still get Opera Mini and a ton of other stuff. Check out the Homebrew section of our forums for links to a number of download sites.

Thanks gmonk, JustinB, and everyone else who made this possible.