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Nokia Beta Labs
Valentine's gift: Friend View updated - now with alerts... and more!
Fri, 2009-02-13 18:23Written by: Brenda, Nokia Friend View team
Hi again!
Before getting to the fun part, we really want to thank you all who have tried Friend View and have given us feedback: Thanks! Kiitos! Gracias! etc. :)
It has been very encouraging to see the growing number of Friend Viewers and to hear what is it that you like and also what you don't like, what you would like to have and why do you use it or not. And we are doing our best to please you as much as we can!
And now the news:
If you are a regular Friend Viewer you most likely have already updated. If not, just start the application to get the update and check it out! And if you still don't have Friend View in your phone, then just go to friendview.nokia.com from your S60 browser and download it.
So as we were saying: Friend View comes with alerts... and more!
Now you don't need to be opening Friend View over and over to check for updates, if you hide Friend View it will keep updating locations and posts in the background and it will let you know if there is something new going on. So far we alert you when there are new posts or comments, but we are still working on in order to add a bit more fun to it ;) You can turn the alerts off whenever you want in the settings (options-more-settings).
When you leave Friend View running in the background it of course needs network connection and that uses some battery, so there are three refresh modes that you can select from the main menu:
- The Off mode is of course the best in saving, so when you are for example running out of battery you can set this mode and just relax ;)
- The Normal mode will refresh regularly.
- And the Active mode will refresh very fast. This one is nice to use when you are for example meeting a friend. As it uses quite some battery it automatically turns back to Normal mode after 30 minutes so you don't need to worry about too much use. Of course you can still turn Friend View off with the red key instead of hiding.
We are also improving the Friending little by little. The friend list looks nicer now as you can do the search and all the managing from the same view.
There are also a few improvements in the web version coming very very soon. For example, you will be able to add friends of friends from comments as in the mobile version; you will also be able to check links your friends add to their posts. We are trying to make the feature set working in both mobile and Web version so this last one will also come soon to your phone.
As you might already know, Beta Labs launched a forum where you can add feedback and start discussions. There is a link from friendview.nokia.com (desktop browser version) in the top next to feedback. We are following it up as we do in the other ways we receive feedback.
We hope you enjoy this small improvements and that you keep up the feedback so we can improve on what you like the most!
If you haven't yet, try the practical shortcuts to open what's up, friends, etc:
Friendly hugs from the Friend View team for tomorrow's Friend's day!
- Brenda
Exactly Tony, now it definately needs an integration to other services. My opinion is that there's no point of improving the application itself when there's no userbase (only my guess) :) Integration to eg. Facebook would help marketing the software for other users.
For the facebook itself, at first it could only display your own position on the map with the latest status update, which is also pushed to FB status. Then again I don't know how hard is it to get Ovi Maps beta to be displayed on Facebook :)
The alert feature is great! Keep up the good work :)
FriendView still doesn't work on 3 UK Network???? Think I'll just need to stick with Google Latitude till someone owns up and admits a problem (3UK or Nokia)
Just one question: at this point in the update of FriendView, it seems on a direct course for the same kind of functionality planned for Nokia Maps 3 (in terms of Ovi people, location sharing). Should we expect to see the two come together at somepoint soon, or is FV more of the "concept design" of what will eventually happen in Nokia Maps (might be a bit too detailed for you to answer that, but I wanted to ask as it was on the mind)?
Friend View is very good.Thanks for detail sharing.
I like friend view but have no friends that are as techy as me so it isn't very useful.
It needs to be integrated with twitter or face book so an update here updates FB/twitter and vice versa
@Gerrymoth
i'm on 3 as well what issues you getting? I can't post messages, is that the same for you?
I've gotten it to work a few times (luck probably) :) But i don't use it much. no friends:( lol!!
I like friend view.