A new version of the Store QML client for Symbian phones has been released today for beta testing.

Version 3.22.053 includes some critical bug fixes found since the previous one (3.22.044) and it aligns with the latest Nokia Store back-end.

Please try it out and let us know what you think of it.

Find what you need with a tap.

In addition to fast, intuitive tools for finding your way, the new Maps makes accessing information and features faster than ever. Press and hold on a destination to choose how you want to get there—including public transport. And enjoy one-tap access to Places and Weather right from your Home screen.

Personalize the way you get around.

Nokia Maps now also makes your maps more personal than ever. Turn on Photos to see your snapshots of the places you’ve been placed along your map. Create customized routes for sightseeing or to avoid traffic. You can even save your favorite routes to access them later.

Navigate safer behind the wheel.

With new voice search capability, you can speak your destination for safer and easier searching while driving. New and improved landscape views in Weather and Drive make seeing what you need easier. And Weather now automatically shows you the weather for where you are, and can even show you what’s ahead.

Turn your map into a photo-blog.

Now you can choose to see your photos from places you’ve been placed right on your map. Using the geo-tagging information in photos taken on your phone, Maps will automatically place them in the locations they were taken where you can relive good times or even share them with friends.

Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 is now available for Symbian phones with Nokia Belle.  Please try it out and let us know what you think of it.  We look forward to hearing from you!

The Nokia Maps Team

With Nokia Belle downloads starting this week, more people will have access to the great camera features we offered as a preview in the Camera Update for Nokia N8, namely 30fps video recording and continuous autofocus in video close-up mode (where supported)*.

On top of that, the camera UI in Belle has been further improved compared to the earlier application update.  For example, the placement of the on-screen shutter button was changed for better ergonomics in landscape and portrait orientation, and the main controls were moved to the bottom of the viewfinder for a cleaner look.

If you update to Nokia Belle, we recommend not installing the earlier camera update on top of it.  For that reason, we have now concluded the availability of the camera update application here at Nokia Beta Labs.

We are grateful for your feedback to the camera update.  Your valuable input has been put towards future application planning.

* Update for clarification: Only the camera hardware in the Nokia N8 supports continuous autofocus.  Other Symbian phones that get the Nokia Belle update will get 30fps video recording and the improved camera UI.

Thank you mth0th!  In honor of this, we'd like to send you a few things as a token of our appreciation (check your email).

- John, community manager @ betalabs.nokia.com

This release includes fixes for bugs found since the previous one and is now based on Qt 4.7.4 and Qt quick components 1.1

Feature-wise, this release offers the next generation of in-app purchase based on QML.  This feature is available through applications that support in-app purchase.

Please try it out and let us know what you think.

S60 5th Edition, S^3, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle (v1.7.5)

• Performance improvements and bug fixes.
• Updated Soundtracker APIs.

S40 (v2.2)

• Performance improvements and bug fixes.
• Name your station.
• New German localization.
• Updated Soundtracker APIs.

Be sure to grab the update and give your feedback on the forum.

- John

Congratulations on being selected as the contributor of the month for December 2011!  In honor of this we'd like to send you a few things (fleece and touchscreen gloves other goodies) as a token of appreciation (check your email).

- John, Community Facilitator @ Nokia Beta Labs

We've created forum categories for each of the versions available for Nokia phones to keep things tidy.  The team at Soundtracker will do their best to stay on top of your feedback and take it into accont when developing new versions.

Enjoy!

- John, community manager

Nokia Configuration Tool is a Windows PC application which you can use to manage the settings of Symbian phones through a USB cable or Bluetooth.  It is primarily designed for system administrators who configure phone profiles within an organization.

With it you can configure various settings like WLAN, email, Internet access points, and VPN on a single phone or several phones at the same time. Files, contact cards, and applications can also be transferred from the phone to the PC and vice versa.

The Interactive Rich Reading experience is the product of a collaboration between Sesame Workshop and Nokia Research Center. Elmo asks questions about each page to encourage more discussion between children and parents around the topics of book.  Research has shown that the more kids talk about a book during the reading experience, the better their vocabulary development.  We encourage parents to use this application to read more with their children.

We thank all of our BetaLabs users for helping us polish this application for final release.  Nokia will continue to work with Sesame Workshop to broaden the selection of titles and supported languages, as well as to release this experience on Windows Phone 7.

Download the latest Nokia Link beta version (sign-in required)

The first public version of Nokia Link was released a few months ago. Since then, we’ve got plenty of feedback from our users, and acted upon the most popular improvement suggestions.

Nokia Link now runs on a computer with Windows XP or Windows Vista (in addition to Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion), which is one of the most requested improvements to the program. Being able to copy mobile content to and from smart playlists in iTunes and Windows Media Player is another useful addition. And because people were looking for an easy way to remove content, such as music, from the memory of their Nokia N9 phone, we wanted to make sure that this would be an easy thing to do with Nokia Link. Plus, we’ve done a lot of polishing and fixed a bunch of errors that had been found in the previous version.

Many of you have also asked if it would be possible to sync your contacts and calendar with Nokia Link. This is not part of our plans, because Nokia N9 has made it simple and effortless to sync over the air. Here's how.

We look forward hearing from you how the new features work, what’s not working – and what new stuff you would like to see as part of Nokia Link. So dig in, try it out and join the discussion at our feedback forum. if you find bugs, please read the instructions for bug reporting.

- The Nokia Link team

This version is just a few tweaks away from being a final product, but that’s exactly why we’d like you to give it a go. You can help us make sure that Nokia Suite meets the needs of our users, so we’re inviting you to try the application out and let us know how it could work even better.

With the help of Nokia Suite, you'll be able to update your Symbian^3 or Symbian Anna phone (Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, and Nokia Oro) to the Nokia Belle software when it becomes available.  Nokia Belle brings your phone improvements such as simpler navigation, so you can quickly get where you want to go. You'll also get six home screens that are easy to personalise with widgets of your choice. To make sure that updating your phone takes place as smoothly as possible, the software update experience has been carefully polished.

You can now keep your information in sync between your phone, Mozilla Firefox 8, and Mozilla Thunderbird 8. In the Home view of Nokia Suite, there's an ever-growing collection of Nokia Store apps, games, themes, and entertainment at your fingertips. In Nokia Suite 3.3 it's also easier to find the messages you're looking for, since the messages you have sent and received are now organised in groups of their own.

You have more possibilities when it comes to sending us feedback. As before, you can do this by opening the Help menu and choosing Send feedback. The news is, however, that you can send us screenshots and log files through this channel. The attachments you send may turn out to be crucial in finding the cause of a problem, or when you want to share your suggestions to improve Nokia Suite. If you run into a problem with Nokia Suite, please read the instructions for reporting the problem. Note that before you start testing the Beta version, you should choose to Start collecting logs in the Options for Nokia Suite. The collection of logs has also been worked on, and Nokia Suite now collects the most relevant logs to give us a better picture on what goes on "under the hood" of the program.

What's more, the latest version of Nokia Suite comes with improvements to the support of proxy servers and the program is now even more reliable because of a number of important error corrections.

Once you’ve tried out the new version, do let us know what you think about it. If you’d like to share your ideas for improvement or describe what makes you happy, tell us what’s on your mind.

- Anu Koskinen, Nokia Suite team

Now you can enjoy Nokia Pulse on your Nokia N9 using the app instead of mobile browser.  The new app brings the same great design and functionality already available on Symbian and Windows Phone devices.

Please try it now and send us your feedback!

Best Regards,
Nokia Pulse Team

Once again our friends at Soundtracker have a new release available for beta testing on Symbian, S60, and Series40 phones.  This release of Soundtracker Radio includes the following:

S60 5th Edition S^3, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle (v1.7.4)

• Performance improvements and bug fixes.
• Fix: Application Settings was not saving user's changes.

S40 (v2.1.2)

• Performance improvements and bug fixes.
• App's size reduced from 1.3Mb to about 600Kb.
• Fix: When next song was played, mute and volume level were not respected.

Mom was right back then when she made us eat our veggies. Now she’s backed by scientists. The American Centre for Disease Control (CDC) has a whole page dedicated to the idea.

Fruit and vegetables have long been recognised to help our health, and for lots of reasons. They have both physical and mental benefits:  They fill you up with fewer calories, so you might end up eating less of more energy-rich foods. This way they can help your weight management goals. They give you loads of excellent nutrients, such as vitamins, flavonoids, fibre and antioxidants. Not only they help your body recover, but also cope with continuous stress and help fight off minor illnesses such as the seasonal flu. As a bonus, they also taste good!

On the mental side, eating more fruit and veg can help you stay strong in your resolutions of healthier living. Keeping promises to yourself makes you feel better about yourself and strengthens the healthy habits that you’ve managed to create with Wellness Diary. Also, after indulging in the holiday eating, something fresh and juicy will feel very good indeed. Moreover, feeling better about yourself can lift your spirits even more.

Oh yeah, and it might keep mom off your back.

- Eeva

Photo by karimian on Flickr

Symbian – new version 0.91.21

• Login – fewer Nokia Account login prompts
• Notifications – more reliable push notifications
• Keyboard – various bug fixes including stuck CAP lock, frozen cursor, delete key stops functioning, and we also added split-screen feature
• Interoperability – compatible with latest versions of various Qt components, especially important because upcoming versions of Nokia Store (3.2.044 or greater) use a new version of a dependency that is not compatible with the previous Pulse version 0.91.6

Windows Phone – new version 0.9.1.19

• Improved application performance, stability and user experience by adding the photo upload progress bar. It is especially useful in slow connectivity cases.
• Bug fixes related to locale preferences for various regions that caused posting failures.

Web – updated pulse.nokia.com

• Quicker respond time for posting items/comments
• Participant list loads quicker
• Fixed various bugs, especially for Mobi UI to provide a better user experience

Go to http://betalabs.nokia.com/apps/nokia-pulse/download_and_installation to download the latest clients.

We are also very close to releasing a Pulse app for the Nokia N9.  The internal Alpha has been going for several weeks now and we just have a few more bug fixes to make before going public.

We are aware that it is important that Pulse becomes available on other popular mobile platforms like iOS and Android.  It is too early to give any specifics, but these are in the pipeline.

Thank you for all the feedback that made these improvements possible.  Please keep it coming!

Best Regards,
Nokia Pulse Team

Pulse v0.91.21

• Login – fewer Nokia Account login prompts
• Notifications – more reliable push notifications
• Keyboard – various bug fixes including stuck CAP lock, frozen cursor, delete key stops functioning, and we also added split-screen feature
• Interoperability – compatible with latest versions of various Qt components, especially important because the latest Store client available this week uses a new version of a dependency that is not compatible with the previous Pulse v0.91(6)

Live View

• No longer included in Map Suite
• Still available as standalone app

Public Transport

• No changes

Places

• No changes

Please download the latest version of Nokia Maps Suite and try it out. 

Thank you for your feedback thus far, and please keep it coming.

Best Regards,
Nokia Maps Suite Team

If you have a Nokia N9, we hope you will download this version and provide us with your feedback.

- The Nokia Live View team

In honor of being selected as the contributor of the month for November 2011, we'd like to send you a few seasonal treats from Finland as a token of appreciation (check your email).

- John, Community Facilitator @ Nokia Beta Labs

We are happy to share release 1.7.3 of Soundtracker Radio for S60 5th edition and S^3, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle devices and release 2.1.1 for Series 40 devices.

Soundtracker 1.7.3 and 2.1.1 fixes a number of issues signaled to us but the Nokia Beta Labs community. Now we only have one version of Soundtracker for S^3, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle as well as one version for S60 devices covering both Java Runtime 1.4 and 2.1.

We also included the following fixes and feature enhancements:

S60 5th Edition S^3, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle (v1.7.3)

• Text in player are not visible for S^3 devices
• Facebook friends invite page locks up the phone
• Twitter friends invite page locks up the phone
• Sign Up bug
• Create Station fix to start music player faster

Series40 (2.1.1)

•  performance improvements and bug fixes

We recommend removing any previous build of Soundtracker before installing this new build.

- Daniele