Back at Nokia World 2007 in December, Nokia anounced that they had acquired a company called Avvenu. Avvenu is an application that runs on your PC (Windows only, for now) and allows you to access your files from any internet-connected device.
I’ve been using SoonR for this purpose for several years, but decided to give Avvenu a run, as I’d not heard of them before. Both systems require your host PC to be powered on and connected to the internet, and also allow you to easily share your files with others directly and securely.
I’ve been giving Avvenu a test run on my Windows laptop and different S60v3 handsets, so that you don’t have to. Avvenu is for accessing and sharing files from any internet-connected device. It differs from Orb in that you have access to the files to download, share, or view them. It’s not designed for streaming your media like Orb is.
Avvenu is a lightweight little app that doesn’t use much CPU power or RAM, which is good. Once you’ve got it running on your home PC, you can access it from any other PC by simply going to avvenu.com and signing in. You can also direct your mobile browser to mobile.avvenu.com to gain access there. You’re then presented with a list of your shared folders and files. You can then navigate easily through them to any file, and either share it or download it to your handset. The mobile site is easy to navigate, though the icons are a bit large and slow the process a bit, they do make it easy to navigate. A distinctive benefit that Avvenu has over SoonR is the ability to properly download .sisx applications and themes.
Avvenu also has a music streaming feature, though it currently only works with iTunes, and I use Winamp, so I wasn’t able to try it out. Avvenu also offers a premium feature called “Anytime Files.” These are files that are automatically synced whenever your computer is connected, and are available even if your home computer is disconnected or powered off. SoonR has a similar feature, though it’s free and capped at 100MB. With Avvenu, Anytime Files is $10 per month, but gives you 10GB, which is actually very usable.
Personally, I have to confess I’m sticking with SoonR, despite the incorrect MIME types that render .sisx files unavailable. The interface is more mobile-friendly, and other options such as Outlook, Skype, and Desktop Search are available. However, I’m interested to see how Nokia uses Avvenu in future product offerings such as Ovi.
