Max Waterman just wrote a comment about our Ad-powered Download! client beta trial that ended in December 2007:

I’d still like to know what the results of this trial were. The silence is deafening and, frankly, not encouraging.

Apologies Max for the delay. Here’s the wrap-up email that the development team had asked me to share:

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Advertising-Powered Download! client beta trial. In the end, 312 people took the time to complete the online survey and provide us with great guidance to develop this concept further. More than 3 quarters of all participants told us they’d be happy to download advertising-sponsored applications, and the concept overall received a ‘Good’ rating. It was a contentious topic with some participants, however, and it shows that the ability to opt-out of receiving advertisements is important. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most popular type of ads were those that related to the content that was being browsed in Download!, although a relatively big group of respondents didn’t mind what kind of ads were displayed as long as they still received the benefit of more free application downloads. The trial was completed at the end of December and one lucky participant in the UK was awarded the Nokia E65 prize. Thanks again to everyone who took part.

In addition, here are my personal recommendations from the study:

• Relevancy. Two reasons: (1) better user experience, and (2) more money via higher click-through rates.
• Privacy and sense of privacy. Don’t be creepy.
• Don’t inconvenience people. Usability & user experience first.
• Search advertising or permission advertising over interruption advertising.

Beloved beta users, we just launched an interesting new Java application (or actually, application platform) called MUPE under Nokia Beta Labs.

For users:

MUPE is an emerging mobile playground to have fun with your friends. Just install the MUPE client to your phone, and start enjoying the growing collection of MUPE games and services.

For developers:

Multi-User Publishing Environment (MUPE) is an open source application platform for mobile multi-user context-aware applications. MUPE allows anyone to easily create their own mobile services, games and applications - only server side programming is required. Learn more from http://www.mupe.net.

Download here.

MUPE is an open source project and it has been public for quite some time already, as Gorkem Ercan pointed out in Java for S60 blog last September. Now, however, it has matured into an official Nokia Beta Labs release, and we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Note: this is not (yet) a mainstream application development platform, like the ones promoted by Forum Nokia, and therefore the developer support is limited.

Hereby, I announce the beta pilot (and feedback competition) of ad-powered Download! Client to be officially over.

The Download! team will now arrange a draw, and contact personally the lucky winner of the shiny new Nokia E65. If you wasn’t the one, better luck next time. Heh.

After Christmas holidays, we will share the key takeaways from your feedback, and I hope we’ll have an interesting debate about it…

Here’s some good thinking by Simon Judge about Nokia Content Discoverer, and about our advertising-powered Download! Client under beta.

I agree, there must be ways to use Catalogs/Download! more effectively.

Your thoughts? (of course, UK people might want to submit their thoughts here instead, to win a Nokia E65)

We just got the (first beta version of) Advertising powered Download! client for S60 ready. So now, my UK friends, please give us feedback, and win a Nokia E65!!

Compatibility: Available in United Kingdom only. Nokia 5700, 6110, 6120, 6121, 6290, E51, N76, N81, N95.

Download here.

I’m sure you have tried the built-in Download! Client (or “Catalogs”) on your phone. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s the Nokia application that enables you to buy apps and content directly from your phone. Right now, we are experimenting with an advertising-supported business model, and thinking about how to include advertising to the Download! Client. In the best case, everyone would win: more discounted/free applications for you, a good targeted-advertising channel for the advertisers, and more money for the developers and our beloved shareholders.

Please help us figure out the right concept!!

We just launched the first beta version of advertising-powered Download! client under Beta Labs. The focus of this initial pilot is the UK, and the advertising links will not work yet in other countries. To encourage you to send feedback, we arranged a little competition: UK people are eligible for a prize draw to win a beautiful new Nokia E65. Yay!!! Of course, non-UK people are welcome to send their comments too - we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Compatibility:
- Download! Java application: available now for Nokia 6300, 5610, 5310, 7900, 6500 Classic, 6500 Slide.
- Download! for S60 3rd Edition: coming very soon.

Download here. Go and play around with it, and give your feedback and enter the competition

Deadline for the competition = 20 December 2007.

MOSH Client is now available for download at Nokia Beta Labs:

MOSH is a service by Nokia, providing a user-driven distribution channel for applications and other content for mobile devices. It enables you to create, upload and share your applications, games, audio, images, and video instantaneously. Or you can be a spectator, and just enjoy what other people have shared.

The service is available at: mosh.nokia.com.

The MOSH client, available for download below, serves as a shortcut to all the basic functions in MOSH, such as searching and browsing content, uploading content, and checking your stats.

Right now, the MOSH team is planning how to make the client application richer, and how to provide the best user experience for you. Try it and tell us what you think!

Download here.

For those of you who wonder, the MOSH team had already launched the same client application under MOSH website. However, we wanted to release it under Beta Labs too, for two reasons:

1) to make Beta Labs application catalogue comprehensive
2) to collect your feedback

Go for it, tiger.
—
Update: as you wished, here are the barcode-links pointing directly to the download files:

The WidSets upgrade yesterday from beta to real service seems to have gone well. Congratulations!!

I guess it’s time for to set up a “graduates” section somewhere under Beta Labs…

If you haven’t tried WidSets yet, you should. And even if you did try it sometime in the past, you should try it again now. The service has evolved fast, and the widget library - including the “Explore” widget discovery system - starts to look really good.