S40 support, bug fixes to improve client performance, and minor feature enhancements:

• Facebook – Upload photos to selected album
• Facebook – Timestamp improvement
• Twitter – Direct message
• Twitter – Post with Location
• Twitter – View  profile of people you are following and posted tweets
• Twitter – View own profile and posted tweets
• Twitter – Mark as Favorite

Learn more and download: Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta

Written by Tommi Vilkamo, Manager of Nokia Beta Labs

Once again, it is time to nominate the Beta Labs Contributor of the Month. This time, we sorted the list of registered Beta Labs users - more than 140000 already - in terms of how many of their comments had been marked as "helpful" by the community and "starred" by the Nokia staff. Among the leaderboard list (we won't show this in public because this is not a competition), there were mostly usual suspects. Thanks for sticking around, truly appreciated! But also, there were some new friends, including our new winner, luisfelipeperez:

Congrats!! While some of our Nokia colleagues found your tone of voice a bit hostile, you do write good stuff. As your prize, you'll get a Eva Solo Tea Brewer Gift Set, engraved with Nokia logo and all. Hope you like it!

 - tommi

P.s. there is a known issue with Luis's profile page, to be fixed

P.p.s. this tradition has lasted for more than 2 years by now. Let's have a quick poll:

We are pleased to present to you a new experimental application called Nokia Diagnostics. Our intention is to create a solution for helping millions of Nokia users diagnose, troubleshoot, and configure their devices with ease on their own. We believe that exposing this idea to the Beta Labs community and sharing this application prototype would help us realise just that.

With Nokia Diagnostics, you can diagnose, troubleshoot and configure your device using five different tests:

• Network Coverage test. You can get all the network related information and detect offline status & SIM card presence.
• Internet Connectivity test. Perform a real-time Internet connectivity test and identify the setting with which you can have a seamless internet access.
• Battery Charger test. Check if your device charges properly with the charger connected.
• Loudspeaker, Earpiece test. Check your loudspeaker & earpiece functionality.

Please download the application (requires login), try it out on your device, and post your feedback at Beta Labs. In particular, we are interested in hearing about other diagnostic tests you would expect to see in such an application.

Happy diagnosing...

- Ravi

We are pleased to publish Nokia Custom Dictionary on Beta Labs to share with the community and gather feedback. We designed this experimental application to address the wish that many S60 users have had: to be able to edit the list of words used by the phone for text prediction and transfer it between phones. 

Nokia Custom Dictionary does exactly that, and we’ve also given you the chance to import words from a text file.  This means you can quickly “teach” your phone commonly used words or even create specific word lists to be shared among a like-minded community, for example in the medical domain.

As with any beta launch, the application is not yet perfect. There are some known incompatibilities with some of the older S60 3rd edition devices. There might also be the odd functional or usability issue. We hope that with our enthusiastic Beta Labs community, we can uncover these teething problems together.

Please download the application (requires login) and share your feedback with us. We are eager to know if you find this application useful and how we can improve it further. Thanks in advance.

- Sethu

Written by Samuli Ylinen from Nokia Ovi Suite team

Hi and thanks for continuing support for Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1 Beta testing. We’ve processed lots of feedback coming from you, categorized those to different areas, studied and fixed many errors, added many new ideas into backlog. Now we’re ready to give you updated Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1 Beta release, where many of reported error reports are fixed. Many of your suggestions are under evaluation by our team for future Nokia Ovi Suite releases.

• Fixed for Thunderbird 3.0 support, now you can choose Thunderbird 3.0 for contacts sync in Nokia Ovi Suite
• Fixes for multiple crash errors detected during Beta testing, for example related to maps view and calendar sync
• Improvements in overall Nokia Ovi Suite stability
• Many fixes to sync reliability
• Fixes issues related to ovi.com contacts sync (automatic sync option for contacts didn’t work properly)
• Improved checking for new software updates and other fixes to software updater features
• Fixes to video support, improvements into video support stability
• Fix for SIS application installation (double clicking SIS now works properly and starts installation procedure into device)
• Many fixes to Nokia Ovi Suite UI localizations (languages)

Download updated Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1 Beta. Then proceed to test the updated Beta and try out issues which you have previously reported as errors. Hopefully you can write to discussion entries comments, did your error report get fixed. If error is still happening, we recommend you to report error through feedback form again.

Remember also to report feedback using Nokia Ovi Suite, we appreciate all feedback coming for us. You need to grow Nokia Ovi Suite UI bit larger, so that you can see feedback question widget inside Nokia Ovi Suite. We show these feedback question widgets regularly.

Cheers, Nokia Ovi Suite team

We previously launched a pre-Beta touch version of Nokia Image Exchange. This unfortunately had some issues that needed immediate attention. Today we have released fixes that should make the application more stable. Also included is some UI polish.

Likewise, the non-touch version is receiving update as well, also to address found issues.

Nokia Image Exchange is an experimental imaging service to make browsing and sharing images fun and easy. It aims to provide a seamless integration of a mobile image gallery application and a corresponding web-service. Nokia Image Exchange explores the possibilities of the mobile phone when it is enabled with always-on data connection and utilizes existing contact information as a basis for social networking.

Nokia Image Exchange for S60 touch is available for downloading at imageexchange.nokia.com. The touch version has been tested on Nokia 5530, 5800 Xpress Music, N97 and X6. Nokia Image Exchange is also available for other devices (S60 non-touch, S40) via Ovi Store. These versions are more mature and as of now offer more features.

On behalf of Nokia Image Exchange team,
Janne Kaasalainen

You can download Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1 Beta (sign in to access) and check the overview as well as “known issues” and FAQ for more information.

As you can see from screenshot, we’ve included way to send feedback directly from Nokia Ovi Suite for us. We will be asking questions and surveys through Nokia Ovi Suite from time to time, so we’re hoping to hear feedback from you often. So don't be suprised, if you see these questions coming out.

We’ve worked with many different things for Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1, but I try to summarize here biggest new items:

• support for syncing contacts with ovi.com, so now you can easily keep your contacts safe in ovi.com
• support for syncing videos from device to Nokia Ovi Suite, video playback and transferring videos from Nokia Ovi Suite to device
• updating device applications and distributing new device applications  (same feature as in devices “Software update” application)
• Windows 7 support
• support for syncing contacts with Mozilla Thunderbird
• new languages (Hindi, American English and Ukrainian)
• extended device support
• performance improvements
• improving overall product quality and stability, for example in sync

Lots of new features are obviously based on feedback for previous Nokia Ovi Suite release. I know that there’s huge list of new features, which you’re interested and  we’ve huge amount things ongoing and try to release new stuff for you guys every two-three months.  For those that have asked about Nokia Ovi Suite for Mac, I can say that we're working on it and Nokia Beta Labs folks will be the first ones to try it.

Cheers,
Samuli and rest of Nokia Ovi Suite team

Stay tuned with some improvements to the user experience coming in our next release. In the meantime, please download the Nokia Point & Find version today and let us know what you think by posting your comments on our forum.

Thank you,

-Sophie-Charlotte Moatti and the P&F team

Download Nokia Point & Find at pointandfind.nokia.com.

Firstly we sincerely thank you all for your contributions over the last few months. This has been really valuable to us in improving the product. Once again, we apologies for the quiet periods on the discussion forums and we will improve this in future releases.

Now to the news...on behalf of the Maps and Lifecasting teams, we are excited to announce that both Ovi Maps for mobile and Ovi Lifecasting have graduated from Nokia Beta Labs! Both of these applications were launched separately at Nokia World last year in Stuttgart, Germany and we are now delighted to say that you can now Share Location (a feature introduced as part of Ovi Lifecasting) directly from Ovi Maps for mobile. It's really easy to use and so much fun! In addition, this new release supports a number of other Nokia smartphones!

And now for some really big news….

Navigation on your Nokia. For Free. Forever. By Ovi Maps.

Yes, you heard it right – a new version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation is now available for compatible Nokia smartphones! This is big news, enabling Nokia smartphone users to navigate wherever they are in the world, as easily as if they were sending a text or taking a photo. It’s going to explode the use of mobile navigation around the world and change the concept of navigation as we know it.

Why have a mobile phone and a separate personal navigation device that only works in one region or country and stays in the car? Put the two together, make it free and global, and you have a truly useful tool that can get you around almost any city in the world on foot or by car.

The official press release can be found from: http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1375569

We hope that Ovi Maps continues to make a difference to your daily life and we look forward to working with you all on the next release.

Please go ahead and download the latest release of Ovi Maps from nokia.com/maps

Other Ovi Maps video are available from Nokia Conversations

Many thanks and enjoy!

Kee & Pino

Ovi Maps & Ovi Lifecasting

Following applications - NEW

Clicking that will give you easier access to the application from the main page and from your profile page.  The number of followers an app has also influences the "recent favorites" shown on the main page and the "popularity" column of the Applications catalog.  So following an application signifies that you feel it's worth your attention.

My Feed - NEW

My Feed (available when logged in) is a page that combines the latest activity from applications you follow as well as responses to posts you've made. 

Earlier we talked about two feeds: one for applications, one for responses to your threads.  Our plan is still to offer those, but that will take a bit more time to implement.  Sorry that we couldn't include that in today's update.

Feedback categorization - CHANGED

You'll note that the forum for each application is more tightly integrated to the application pages rather than being separate.  On top of that, the feedback is more clearly separated according to categories: discussion, suggestions, bug reports, and reviews.  We also have the ability to subcategorize bug reports and suggestions to make things easier for you and the development teams by adding a little structure.

Feedback ratings - NEW

Each post now has the option to rate it Helpful or Unhelpful.  This is a first step towards trying to weigh the value of feedback to help you and the development teams sort through the forum contributions.

Gradually as we learn, we will start to use this information to e.g. highlight the most valuable answers, collapse unhelpful comments and so on. The idea is not to encourage competition, but to use this information of helpfullness to serve you and the development team better.

Editors' picks - NEW

The need of highlighting valuable feedback is very strong, but we feel the contributor of the month tradition has not served this need well enough. Thus, we are looking for other ways of highlighting good feedback and are hoping the Editor's picks will serve that need. In essence, we will give our development teams easy means of giving you credit - with a push of a button - and the most recent "picks" will be shown on the front page for everybody to see. It's basically a very lightweight way of saying thanks.

Filter by device - NOT YET

We still have our sights set on offering the option to filter our application catalog by the device(s) and desktop operating systems you use.  That needs a bit more work to implement in a convenient way.  In the meantime, you can filter the Applications catalog by platform.

Login to download - NEW

We at Beta Labs have a strong need to start measuring user experience systematically. The teams have so far asked you application specific surveys and will continue to do so, as the value of those responses are extremely high. Complementing that, we will start measuring user experience in a more structured way with common questions. After the launch of each beta, we will randomly invite some of the users who have tried the beta to fill a very short user experience survey. You can of course opt-in or out of this by editing your profile settings. Unfortunately, to be able to do this systematically while getting an accurate representation of the users, we will ask users to login before downloading betas.

Like with all the beta and experimental apps we host here, we expect some further development will be needed.  We invite you to look around, try things out, and let us know how we can serve you better.  Our forum is open for your feedback.

Thanks!

During this time the site will be unavailable or visible in a read-only status.  No new forum posts or blog comments will be allowed while the update is in progress.

We'll notify you again here when the maintenance break has ended and all content and functionality is restored.

We will be accessible via the @nokiabetalabs Twitter channel and email address if you have questions during the outage.

See you on the other side!

 

Hello Beta Labs!
 
We have now added Windows 7 support for Nokia Software Updater and would like to offer you guys a preview version before we put it out for the rest of the world. In the same release we also included the cool “What’s New” service for much more languages than previously and we improved the USB connection to be more robust.

*

This release candidate is almost ready to go live for all users and we only intend to keep it in Beta Labs for a few weeks.  Thus we don’t expect big problems, but if there are any critical improvements needed those will be included in the actual release. Smaller items will be fixed in the coming releases. Also, we would like to use this channel to gather other interesting improvement ideas. Nokia Software Updater is all about user experience in getting the latest software in a robust and convenient manner.
 
We would like to hear especially if you have any problems with the USB connection and which kind of PC hardware you used.
 
Try it out and let us know how you like it!
 
Mikko
Nokia Software Updater

* Screenshot updated 14.01.10

To take it for a spin, you'll need to get the latest software update (1.2009.44-1). Touch the blinking icon in the status area of your Nokia N900 to begin the download.

Read more in the Ovi Blog >>

Hi all

I am pleased to present our Gig Finder application for you to try. Our target was to connect users to live music events and think we have created a remarkable new experience. I hope you like it as much I do.

Gig Finder lets you search for concerts / live music entertainment, purchase tickets directly from your mobile, and get relevant recommendations based on your music tastes and location (Location relevance currently available for USA, Canada, UK & Ireland).

Key features:

• Easy Search. Quickly find where to find the best concerts & other music events near you. Search by artist, genre, city, venue, specific date, date range or a combination of any.
• Buy Tickets. Direct links connect your mobile to various ticket vendors to conveniently find the best seats & prices.
• Smart Recommendations. Get recommendations for live events and venues based on your music tastes (profile & on device music library) and location.
• Get Directions. See where the event is and how to get there with a direct link from Maps. * Start the Buzz. Share information about the gig to Facebook, SMS, or Email.
• Download Music. Events link directly to the artist pages in Nokia Music Store / Ovi Music (when available in your country) so you can preview or download music before or after seeing your favourite artists live.

We will continue to improve and develop the Gig Finder experience in other ways, such as working with our server to make the recommendations ever more relevant to your tastes.  Also note that the recommendations will improve and become more focused the more you use Gig Recommender and add favourite artists to your profile.  Your feedback is in very welcome to help us make this an app you will want to continue to use to get you closer to the music and artists you love.

Enjoy,

Risto, Gig Finder Product Manager

His posts are always informative and insightful while always being positive. When he points out a problem in our client he is never overly critical about it and has even gone out of his way to help solve other user's problems. There have been a few times where I needed more feedback from him in order to help solve a problem or get to the bottom of a bug. In these cases he has always been exceedingly helpful in answering my follow-up questions and helping me get to the bottom of the particular issue.

In recognition of this, we'd like to send you a classic Finnish design block lamp.  Thanks, sheridan01, for your contribution and congratulations!

Due to popular demand, we're releasing an early beta version of the Nokia Image Exchange mobile client for S60 touch devices. At the moment, this version has limited functionality and is still in need of UI polishing, but we wanted to get it in your hands for early testing.  As usual, let us know about bugs, suggestions, and reviews in the forum.

In this early beta we are also including an option to upload images to Facebook. Feature is found from Send options, but only available if image has been uploaded and published as Facebook requires access to it. We hope to improve the usability of this feature later on as well as to include it to non-touch version. For now, this only works for you own images.

Above you can see a quick tour of the new UI. As mentioned, some features are not supported via the touch client. Most notably these include grid views via main menu, time based views and zooming in general. There is also no accelerometer support in this version of the touch UI client.

Nokia Image Exchange for S60 touch is available for downloading at imageexchange.nokia.com. The touch version has been tested on Nokia 5530, 5800 Xpress Music, N97 and X6.

Nokia Image Exchange is also available for other devices (S60 non-touch, S40) via Ovi Store. These versions are more mature and as of now offer more features.

On behalf of Nokia Image Exchange team,

Janne Kaasalainen

Hey all,

We felt that it was imperative to give still one more update for the Ovi Contacts during this year. Since our last update some issues were raised up in the Beta Labs forums that we were able to make fix. We thought you might enjoy an update, so here's one more for this year: a new and better release of Ovi Contacts for S60 3rd Edition FP2 and S60 5th Edition products.

To name a few from the long list of solved issues, here's a few worth mentioning:

• Send file was working only from chat view, not from the friend list before, but now it works
• Issues with Cyrilic and Scandinavian letters were fixed (you may have seen these as broken letters in the friend list)
• E-mail field in 'My profile' didn't accept "-" character is fixed, as reported by deekay304 in the forum
• Corrupted pics in personal and friends profile are fixed, as reported by lebb53 in the forum

Also something that was highly requested by many Spanish speaking friends of ours was that we'd put the download up to Beta Labs in a way that it contains all languages supported. Now it should.

In addition, we had time to do one more feature from the list you provided in return for your feature suggestion. Simple feature for combining all your sent messages in to a "single bubble" instead of many "subsequent bubbles" was suggested by alsiladka in the forum. Basically, it makes better use of the screen real-estate while you exchange a lot of messages. I think it looks much better. Here's how it appears:

You've all been very active in the Beta Labs Forum - commenting on things, suggesting new features and reporting bugs during this year. We are all very grateful for your input and hope to get the same support also during next year!

Thanks again!

Br, Kristian

P.s. note that the mobile download services (i.e. http://contacts.ovi.com/dist/app) will not contain these new releases and fixes mentioned - you'll only be able to download the package from http://betalabs.nokia.com/apps/ovi-contacts for now.