The Nokia beta labs has just coughed up two new betas for us to enjoy. The first is an email service, named in Nokia’s time honored tradition of boring names for betas as, Nokia Email service.
The service lets you connect to “Google Gmail or many of the thousands of personal email accounts offered by other ISPs” and is apparently a cinch to use too. At the moment neither Hotmail or corporate email are supported, though this could well be subject to change with future updates to the service.
As per usual, all of the typical operator charges apply and while the beta of Nokia Email is free, there will be subscription charges introduced at the end of the beta trial.
The second beta application on offer is Nokia Chat. It’s basically an instant messaging service but with a few added extras. For example you can send voice messages with it and it’s all tied to some clever GPS wizardry that lets you share your location via Nokia Maps with your Nokia Chat friends and contacts.
It certainly sounds pretty forward thinking and the application is available to download in free beta form now.
Nokia’s revolving doors Beta Labs has been very busy this past week with updates for Nokia PC Phone, Nseries PC Suite and Mobile Web Server all going live.
Not only that but the Internet Tablet Video Converter has been updated gaining Vista support, an E61 version of Sports Tracker has been launched and the once withdrawn Conversation is back and presumably tweaked to the max.
As usual all of the apps are free to try so seeing as it’s Friday and you are probably clock watching already now might be a good time to go try some of them out.
(Via Nokia Beta Labs)
Seeing as we are more than a little keen on mobile VoIP applications it is a little strange that we haven’t devoted any space to Gizmo before, but now that the application has had an update (albeit a minor one) now seems as good a time as any to get on board.
The S60 based VoIP client (which is available for free download from the Nokia Beta Labs website now) offers free internet calling and instant messaging via wifi, 3G and 2G networks. The recent update adds a few new and clever tricks to the service.
Most notably, the ability to be logged in on your PC and on you handset at the same time so that when you receive a call, both your PC and mobile ring simultaneously. Additionally, Gizmo now marks people in your contact list who are unavailable or on another call by changing their status icon blue.
Gizmo is currently interoperable with AIM, Yahoo, Windows Live (MSN), MySpaceIM, and support for Jabber and iChat is promised soon. Lovely stuff and encouraging to see that it is available via the Nokia Beta Labs website. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.
(Via Darla Mack)
Having a PC based VoIP client is all well and good but what if the people you want to contact aren’t available or don’t have an account with the same service that you use? Nokia Beta Labs seems to have an answer to that and is calling it, Nokia PC Phone (we know what your thinking, imaginative right?).
Essentially the application is an extension for your PC based internet browser allowing you to see recieved texts as pop-ups and even answer incoming calls. It also sounds quite handy for typing out SMS messages from a desktop keyboard and has a feature that allows you to save phone numbers that you come accross on web pages (for example a phone number in an email signature) directly to your handset.
It all sounds like clever stuff and as always is freely available in its beta form. The application is currently compatible with Firefox (with Internet Explorer support soon to follow) and is available now.
(Via Nokia Beta Labs)
Threaded text messaging is, simply put, a way of displaying SMS messages so that they appear as conversations do in an instant messaging app. Messages between you and the person you’re chatting with are tracked in a single window, rather than mingled with all your other messages. It’s been a feature of the Palm platform for years, has made it into iPhone, and now available (in official form) for your Nokia.
Nokia’s Beta Labs team has just released a beta of its upcoming Conversation, which brings threaded texting to S60 handsets (Nseries and similar phones). There are a few things which strike us as immediately needing fixing, such as there being no visual difference between your and the other person’s messages. But overall, this is a great — if rather overdue — step from Nokia.
To download the Conversation beta, head over to the Nokia Beta Labs pages.
Following an overwhelming negative reaction from the mobile blogging community (including Stefan from IntoMobile’s scathing and memorable ‘kill it with fire and fly the ashes to the moon’ headline), Nokia’s Beta Labs team has decided to remove the version 2.0 beta of the Nseries PC Suite.
Among the many problems noted with the software — apart from the obvious question of ‘why do I actually need this because I can drag ‘n’ drop most things I want to onto the phone’ — the major issues seemed to be the enormous file size (over 300MB) and that it ran dog-slow. Three-legged dog-slow.
Software like this should tie-in with Nokia’s other concepts and services (as we were saying about its MOSH social & sharing site), offering an easy way to organise and share your content. That aside, it should be slick, fast to boot, simple to use, and easier than drag ‘n’ dropping files through an Explorer window. Until that happens… It’s pointless.
A link has appeared in the RSS feed for Nokia’s Beta Labs service, saying that version 2.0 of the Nseries-specific PC Suite synching & back-up app is on the way. Clicking the link, however, leads to a dead page… But we can only think that it’s on the way.
Version 1.5 is still available for download from Nokia’s Nseries site, and although it was supposedly offered for the N76 and N77, users of other handsets found it worked for them. We’re assuming that version 2.0 will dramatically broaden official support to a lot more Nseries multimedia computers phones. Keep an eye on this link to see whether/ when v2.0 turns up.
Update: Nokia’s Tommi Vilkamo has posted this note on his blog: ‘Just as we had published it, I got a call from the R&D team, and they recommended postponing the launch until later this week, when they get a better version ready.’
