Quick note for those interested in the Master’s Thesis traineeship post at Beta Labs.

I’ll be tomorrow 13 Feb at IT Recruitment Afternoon, looking for a good candidate, from 12pm to 2pm. Come have a chat!
- Venue: Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki Finland.
- Building: Department of Industrial Engineering and management - lobby (Address: Otaniemenkatu 17). Building is number 37 on this map.
- Stand: number 1.
- I look like this:

The position is not yet open in Nokia Careers website, hope to get it done soon.

Ps. one of our beloved Beta Labs readers sent me an email today, casually mentioning “You’re Indonesian if I’m not mistaken”. Made me wonder whether I look or act like an Indonesian…

Something strange happened at noon yesterday, and I started receiving angry calls that Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta web page didn’t work, even though everybody was raving about it in Barcelona, in the press, and in the blog world. Uh.

We got the website quickly back to business, but as it happens, some cache-thing made the problem persistent for many of you.

So, if you still don’t see the pages, you should either:
1. Clean up your Browser cache memory, or
2. Enter a “?” or “/” after the URL (for example: www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps?)

Sorry folks for the hassle.

Guest blogger: Martin Ramsin from Nokia Maps team

I am proud to announce the Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta!

“Drive” is what we call the new and beautiful car navigation feature. It looks great and is easy to use while driving: change “views” by clicking left or right, select functions from a “grid” menu. The Drive interface is transparent black and the turning arrows dynamically show the exact angle of the turn. Check out driving time and average speed for your journey and plan multiple stopover routes.

I’m very excited about a new feature that we call “Walk”. It lets you find your way in the city when you are on foot. It is easy to use and discreet (no voice instructions). Small “breadcrumbs” are shown where you have been walking so you easily see what direction to take. “Walk” is included in the navigation license for car navigation but can also be purchased separately. If you have already purchased car navigation with older Maps version, you will now get “Walk” free of charge!

The beta offers satellite maps in 200 cities worldwide. Satellite maps can be turned on when browsing the map and also in “Walk”. The satellite maps are downloaded over the air and are saved automatically. Next time you start Maps the satellite maps will be there, no need to download them again.

The search is much, much improved. It is now as simple as typing part of street names or a place in a search box. Search results are listed by category (addresses, cities, restaurants etc.)

Places are personal. You are now able to save places as favorites, create collections (folders for places) and even save your routes.

What else? Better 3D mode and overall faster, better, and more beautiful

Upgrading to Maps 2.0 Beta is easy. You can continue using your old maps and licenses. It is also possible to upgrade your map data using the new Map Loader (also provided from beta labs). You need to run the Maps beta once first in the phone before connecting to PC.

Grab Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta while it is hot and let us know what you think about it!

Note that since this is a beta, some less important functions may be ‘limited’. We are still working on the traffic feature for car navigation. We’ll keep you posted when that gets available too.

Tip 1: Shortcut keys in the map

• Use * and # keys to zoom in and out in the map
• Use to 0 key to go to “My position”
• Use the 1 key to change map modes (2D, 3D, Satellite, Hybrid)

Tip 2: Shortcut keys in Drive mode

• The “grid” (options menu) layout imitates the keyboard. Items in the grid are also accessible directly through the keyboard.
• The same shortcuts are also available in Walk

I really enjoyed the latest article titled Innovating on the Edge of Big Waves by John Hagel. In the article, Mr.Hagel describes eloquently what business executives can learn from big wave surfers. Thought you might like it too.

To summarize the bottom line:

“So, what can business executives learn from the experiences of these intrepid surfers?

First, if you want to push your performance levels, find the relevant edge. …
Second, attract motivated groups of people to these edges to work together around challenging performance issues. …
Third, recognize that the people who are likely to be attracted to the edge are big risk-takers. …
Fourth, recognize that the edge fosters not just risk-taking, but very different cultures that are also “edgy”. …
Fifth, find ways to appropriate insights from adjacent disciplines and even more remote areas of activity. …
Sixth, bring users and developers of technology closely together at the edge. …
Finally, executives could profit from understanding the loose practice network that evolved around big wave surfing. …”

Read the whole story. Very relevant stuff for us beta folks.

In news today, Twango, the service/company Nokia bought last summer, has been upgraded into Share on Ovi beta. In practice, this means an Ovi look&feel, user experience improvements, and infra upgrades to allow millions of users. Jim Laurel, one of the head honchos, tells the inside story here (congrats, Twango Share on Ovi team!!).

Now, you might be wondering why this beta service is not listed here at Nokia Beta Labs. The thing is, Share on Ovi is already integrated as part of Ovi concept and I guess it wouldn’t add much value to anyone, if we would list it here at Beta Labs too. Right?

Anyway, go try it and tell Twango Share on Ovi team what you think!

The Nokia PC Phone team just created a survey for you:

Please participate in our survey and you have a really good chance to be in a big role when improving this service even better. This will only take about 10-15 minutes of your precious time.

Among all the participants we will draw five (5) gift cards to amazon.com web store (EUR 50 or USD 75 based on your country of residence)

Survey is valid from Feb 5th to Feb 18th 2008.

Download Nokia PC Phone

Enter Nokia PC Phone survey (please do)

Ps. do you like Amazon gift cards as an incentive? We are currently thinking what could be best incentives for you to give us feedback. Due to legal reasons, however, the monetary value needs to be nominal.

Guest blogger: Antony Pranata from Nokia Location Tagger team

Thanks to everyone who has participated in the first beta version of Nokia Location Tagger. We have received a lot of feedback from you. I am going to summarize it here.

Here is the list of most common problems:

• It does not work on non-Nseries devices, such as 6110, 6120, E51, etc. The current version has not been tested on all devices. We’ll be working to make it work on as many devices as possible.
• The Settings page is not shown properly on some devices and firmware versions.
• GPS lock takes forever. Although Location Tagger supports A-GPS; some users report that GPS lock takes longer than using Nokia Maps.

We have also received many suggestions for future releases, including:

• Support for cell-tower triangulation or WiFi positioning.
• Manual tagging, which allows the user to tag pictures that have been taken previously.
• Auto-start when Camera application is started. The current version supports auto-start when the phone starts up.
• Integration with other Nokia applications, such as Nokia Maps and Sports Tracker.
• Privacy tagging, which allows the user to tag with city center for example, instead of exact address. Many people don’t want to publish their addresses on the Internet.
• Added accelerometer data to allow 3D orientation.
• Added satellite status or GPS quality on the user interface.

Also, there have been some concerns about power consumption. Will Location Tagger drain the battery very fast? There is actually timeout value that can be set from the Settings page (by default, 5 minutes). When there is no camera activities after 5 minutes (default value), the GPS module will be turned off automatically. This way, the battery should not drain that fast.

Once again, thanks everyone! We’ll evaluate your feedback and come back to you soon.

PS: We realize that the current version is not perfect yet. It is not the final product. It is just the beginning.

As Nokia PC Phone was the hottest Beta Labs application during January, I decided to ask the development team to nominate the contributor of the month. And they did.

Nokia Beta Labs Contributor of the Month, January 2008: Azizur Rahman.

Hurrah!!

Justification: identifying a bug in PC Phone software and suggesting a fix.

Prize: Nokia USB Charger CA-100 (Azizur hinted that he has always wanted one). Also, I promise to add Azizur to the “elite contributor” list, if we get that practice up and running at some point.

Congrats Azizur!! I hope we’ll hear more from your in future Beta Labs initiatives…