Guest writer: Davis Fields, Nokia Email service team

Hello Beta Labs!

Today, the Nokia Email service team is proud to announce the first updated beta release. Nokia Email service is designed for Nokia device owners to make mobile email easily discovered and intuitive. Since we launched on August 8th, we’ve received thousands of questions, suggestions and positive feedback about Nokia Email service. We’re pleased to say that we’ve taken four of the most popular feedback requests from our users and implemented them in this release.

• Localization. We’re now localized into six different languages, including full support for international characters, which has been a very popular request from our beta testers from all around the world. This release localized in English, Finnish, German, Dutch, Latin American Spanish and Iberian Spanish.
• More email addresses. Now Nokia Email lets you get mail from up to 6 email addresses, each in its own mailbox yet all in one place, and makes composing from any account seamless.
• More phones. Nokia Email service is available on more of the most popular Nokia S60 devices, including many of the latest S60 3.2 devices like the N96 and the N78.
• Better mailbox management. When you delete an email on your Nokia phone, it will be deleted from your email account. We’ve enabled this for both IMAP and POP accounts.

If your request is not on this list, that doesn’t mean we’re not working on it. For instance, the bug where messages didn’t appear in the sent folder has been fixed (messages will now appear in the sent folder after they have been sent). One area I want to highlight that we’re working on is Google-Apps hosted email. The setup is currently not working correctly for Google Apps and similarly hosted domains (where the email address domain is different than the mail server domains). We are aware of this and are working diligently to implement those accounts in future releases.

Again, keep the feedback coming in, and we hope you enjoy this new version.

- Davis Fields

Guest writer: Jukka Eklund, product manager

Embed code to this video: <embed src=”http://share.ovi.com/flash/player.aspx?media=NokiaBetaLabs.10004&amp;channelname=NokiaBetaLabs.public” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”420″ width=”512″></embed>

Hi there!

We added a nifty new feature to Mobile Codes site: creation of Business card barcodes. With these codes you can share your contact details with friends and colleagues. Just create the code at mobilecodes.nokia.com and print, post or share it in any way. We have also added a downloadable version of Nokia Barcode Reader which can decode the codes and save the information directly into device Contacts. Some of the latest Nokia devices such as Nokia E66 and Nokia E71 can also decode these codes right away.

To demonstrate this we made a short video, as seen above. There you can also find out how I used my new Business card code

Have fun with the codes!

-Jukka

PS. If you have new ideas for Mobile codes, you know what to do!

Guest writer: Kristian Luoma, product manager of Nokia Chat

Hey Everybody,

It’s been a while since our last update to Nokia Chat. That’s just because we’ve been intensely working on further development steps. During the past month, we’ve been really focused in going through your feedback and running user pilots to learn even more about what should we improve and how.. Out from all of this we’ve got a lot of great insight from you all to plan forwards. Kudos for that!

As a quick iteration based on the feedback received, we’ve got a yet another fix package to release for fixing some of the mishaps you may have encountered while using our S60 clients. Note, that both the support package and the chat app has been upgraded - both need to be installed for the upgrading to work properly.

These fixes include things like auto-reconnecting when connection is disconnected, some memory management issues and lots of other smallish errors.

Oh, almost forgot, we’ve got a small but handy tool to for you in case you’re using the new Maemo OS2008 (that means, you’ve got yourself one of those fancy Internet Tablets with the latest software). Installing the downloadable package distributed here enables you to create and configure your Nokia Account from the Chat application. It’s an enjoyable experience to chat with N810 - I promise!

That’s it for now, stay tuned for more updates later.

BR, Kristian

Guest writer: Mark Wheatley, Product Manager, Nokia Music for PC

Well, we are now at version 1.0.

I would like to thank all of you for your incredibly constructive comments over the last few months. Lots of your ideas are now in our product backlog and you will start seeing some of them appear over the next few months. Also, the bug reports posted on Beta Labs have helped us identify and fix lots of issues that are harder to find in our more ‘clinical’ system testing environments.

Those amongst you who have not previously installed the Beta application can download the first full version of Nokia Music from this link:

http://music.nokia.com/download

If you have already installed the Beta you will be receiving an automatic update to version 1.0 during the coming week.

Those of you in the United Kingdom you will soon be able to experience Nokia Music as part of the great ‘Comes With Music’ concept that launches in the next few weeks. If you buy a ‘Comes With Music’ device you will be able to download all the music you want from the Nokia Music Store for a whole year. And unlike some other subscription deals you get to keep the music after the year is over.

Thank you all again for helping us through Nokia Music’s infancy. The fully grown Nokia Music experience is finally here.

Mark Wheatley,
Product Manager,
Nokia Music

Guest writer: Julio Castillo, Senior Product Manager, Nokia Photos team

Click the images to enlarge.

We at the Nokia Photos team have been busy working on the upcoming release 1.5. Nokia Photos is a PC application that you can use to manage and transfer your personal media to and from your Nokia device. Here are some new things to try in Nokia Photos 1.5 beta:

Nokia Photos works with all your personal media
Nokia Photos 1.5 can now import pictures and videos from any S60 device, digital camera, memory stick as well as from your hard disk. If you have an Nseries phone, you can do even more with Nokia Photos: for example, you can load your device with tons of content from your PC. Nokia Photos converts videos to the right format so that they play in your device. It can also shrink pictures to the screen resolution so that they do not take up too much space on your phone. This way you can carry thousands of pictures with you all the time. Newer devices like N78 and N96 understand tags, albums and other organization in Nokia Photos and display them in the Photos application on the phone.

Location and geotagging
You can visualize your geotagged pictures on the new map view. You can also manually position any picture or video on the map to geotag it. We use technology from Nokia Maps so you can do the same things that are familiar to you in your phone like searching for cities, addresses and places of interest as well as saving your favorite places.

Nokia Photos works better with Ovi
Apart from the evident Ovi look and feel, you will find that it is much easier to setup Nokia Photos to share your media on Ovi. And, of course, Ovi can understand your geotagged pictures and videos and show them on a map if you choose so.

We look forward to read your feedback. Please let us know what you think of the new map view. Is it easy to use? How could we improve it? What other things would you change in Nokia Photos?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!!

On behalf of the Nokia Photos team,

- Julio

Guest writer: Davis Fields, Nokia Email team.

Hello,

Thanks again for all your great feedback on the first beta release of Nokia Email. We’re getting close to a new version, and all of our registered users will get an email from us announcing it as soon as it’s available. Until then, please keep the feedback coming in to email.nokia.com. In this post I’d like to quickly highlight a few discoverable features that you may or may not know about for Nokia Email!

-Davis Fields

Contextual Menu: Hold down the center button while selecting an email message to bring up a contextual menu that lets you delete, reply, reply all, forward, move, flag, and mark unread email messages!

Using the BCC field: In the compose email screen, select options, then select view, then select Show Bcc. You can then add Bcc addresses.

Selecting Multiple Messages: To select multiple messages click the # key to select a certain message. You can move these to a different folder or easily delete them all. If you want to select all the message in a folder easily, select options / more / Mark all.

Change Sort Order & Category: While you’re in one of your folders in Nokia Email, navigate to any of the date headers and hit the left navigation button and choose select to jump between folders, or the right navigation button and select to change the sort category or sort order. To collapse a day or category navigate to the date header and press the center button.

Copying Text: In order to copy text from an email in Nokia Email, select options and scroll down to Select text which will let you then copy text either using the shift key and joystick on devices with the qwerty keyboard or with the edit key on non-qwerty devices.

Search: Nokia Email can search inside all your emails from the inbox and quickly help you find the email you were looking for. Either type “s” or select Search from the Options menu.

In the folder view: navigate to any of the date headers and hit the left navigation button and select to jump between folders, or the right navigation button and select to change the sort category or sort order.

For all devices, there are a variety of number shortcuts:
*: Move the focus to the Sort Order drop-down list in the control bar
#: Mark or unmark the selected message
Space Key: Mark or unmark the selected message
1: Open the message composer to reply to a sender
2: In the folder viewer: Moves the focus to the first message in the list. In the message viewer: Moves the focus to the top of the message.
3: Screen page up
4: In the folder viewer: Display the flag list query. In the message viewer: Open the message viewer and display the previous message in the list.
5: In the folder viewer: Toggle the read/unread status of the selected message if there are no marked messages, or toggle the read/unread status of marked messages if at least one message is marked. In the message viewer: Toggle the read/unread status of the open message within the viewer.
6: Open the message viewer and display the next message in the list
7: Open the message composer to reply to a sender and all other recipients.
8: In the folder viewer: Move the focus to the last message in the list. In the message viewer: Move the focus to the bottom of the message
9: Screen page down
0: Open the composer to create a new message

For QWERTY devices like the E71, there are even more useful shortcuts:
a: Reply All
b: Go to the bottom
c: Compose a new email message
d: Delete
e: Accept a meeting invitation
f: Forward
g: Tentatively accept a meeting invitation
h: Display the online help
i: Expand or collapse the list
j: Up
k: Down
l: Flag the list
m: Move a message to a folder
n: Displays the next message in the list
o: Open an email message
p: Display the previous message in the list
q: Folder options
r: Reply to an email message
s: Search
t: Top
u: Mark a message as either read or unread depending the current status
v: Decline a meeting invitation
w: Sort options
x: Unassigned
y: Display the folder list.
z: Synchronize

For those of you who didn’t join the virtual event yesterday, here’s our man, Aapo Bovellan, presenting Ovi stuff on YouTube, starting around 2:00: (by the way, ask him to start public blogging. Trust me. If he has time, it would be totally worth it)

Also starring: Nokia Ovi Suite, Ovi.com, Files on Ovi.

Some of you might have been wondering, why beta stuff like Share on Ovi beta, Ovi.com beta, and Files on Ovi beta were never announced and debated here at Beta Labs. Frankly, there hasn’t been a clear-cut reason. Except that these Ovi initiatives have been too “big” for Beta Labs, and the respective teams have preferred their own promotion and feedback channels. Which totally makes sense.

Anyway, what do you think, should we cover Ovi beta stuff here at Beta Labs too, even if they would prefer* to use their own feedback channels, and participate themselves less on the public debate here?

I vote yes.
–
* = initially, that is. We hope to conquer the world with the new Beta Labs website, hehe…

Interesting. We are starting to see video reviews about our apps:

Nokia Email service, reviewed by Matt Miller, ZDNET Mobile Gadgeteer Blog

Nokia Chat, reviewed by Ricky Cadden, Symbian Guru

Now that we are planning/building a new website, I wonder should we try to embed this kind of 3rd party videos to Beta Labs website too? Would you find these helpful?

Greeting from the Nokia Email service team,

Thanks for helping us test Nokia Email service. We’ve received many a lot of fantastic feedback from you through email.nokia.com and through the Nokia Email client’s feedback system, and we’re working on implementing it in future releases of Nokia Email Service. Before sending in your feedback please consult this list of the most common feedback questions, with answers about bugs we know of and things we’re working on. If your question is on this list, there is no need to submit that feedback, but we welcome any other feedback you may have. Thanks for helping us test Nokia Email service!

On behalf of Nokia Email service team,
- Davis Fields

Frequently Requested Enhancements:

Multiple Mailboxes: This beta version supports only one mailbox but future beta releases will include support for multiple mailboxes.

IMAP Folders: This beta version of Nokia Email service does not support IMAP folders but we are working on this feature for future releases.

HTML Mail: The beta version of Nokia Email service does not render HTML mail but we are working on this feature for future releases.

Mailbox Management Issues:

Sent Folder: It is a known issue that messages do not appear in the Sent folder on Nokia Email. They are being sent and will appear in your Email provider’s sent folder, and we are working to fix this bug in future releases.

Message Read / Email Deletions: This beta version of Nokia Email service does not support message read status updates or POP mail deletions on your server but we are working on this feature for future releases.

International Character Support: This beta version of Nokia Email service is only localized into English and does not support international characters. Future version of Nokia Email service will be localized and support these characters.

Phones:

Connection Error: The software installs but never connects to the server – Nokia Email service checks all available access points and if doesn’t find one that supports secure Email, this error occurs.

SMS Errors: If you can’t receive the SMS after repeated attempts, try using a friend’s number and forwarding the text to your device. We have seen SMS problems with some operators, let us know who your carrier is through the feedback form.

Errors on unsupported devices: The current list of devices supported is on email.nokia.com, please do not install on devices not on this list. Future releases will include support for more Nokia devices.

Hey Beta Labs,

I admit that my opinion is biased, but I still have to say that I find it very interesting to watch contacts of my phonebook live, as my friends change their status messages with using ever more imagination to capture what they are doing at the moment. Sadly, not all of my friends carry a compatible device - yet.

Today we’re happy to introduce an update for Nokia Chat that’ll make our client work on your S60 3rd Edition devices as well (you know, the N73, the E65 and the likes of them). The software works pretty much like the version you’ve already seen released for the S60 3rd Ed FP1 products, but it’ll lack support for receiving location. It can still send the location and can be configured to broadcast your landmark presence, provided you have a Bluetooth GPS module.

So, in practice this should mean that hopefully a bit more of your friends can now take Chat in to use - and we know that it’ll make you enjoy the application even more. On that note: did you notice that we have an easy way to invite your friends to become users of the software? Just click on the “Recommend to friend” and we’ll have a link for you to share to your friends ready in the SMS editor.

Now, during the testing, we’ve found out that there are certain restrictions on the SW versions for supporting Nokia Chat in N73, N93, N80 and E61. This shouldn’t be an issue if you just update your software using the Nokia Software Updater. For an updated, detailed list, of the devices we support - please see the Nokia Chat page under Beta Labs.

Something worth highlighting is that you need to install both the Support Package and the Chat file to get the software working. You can do this by downloading the packages to your desktop and installing them via PC suite. Alternatively, you can go to http://www.chat.nokia.com/app [Update: link fixed. -Tommi] with your phone browser and do the installations there.

Br, Kristian