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

Quick note from Nokia PC Suite team:

We at Nokia PC Suite team are further developing the Nokia Communication Centre application, and it now contains lots of improvements that you suggested during the previous beta testing period. We hope that you enjoy using the application, and take a look how easy it is to manage your device calendar from your PC. Please try it, share your thoughts, and report all your findings about the application. We will listen to your feedback again, and make the improvements in future versions. Please note that this is the first version, and might be unstable still.

Key improvements:

• Calendar editor
• Contact group support
• Contact thumbnail view
• Performance improvements
• Lots of bug fixes

Download here.

(more…)

See also Mymobilesite.net Newsletter, October 2008:

• Mobile Web Server 1.4 Beta Released
• Social Connection, Facebook and Location
• Join the Conversation

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

Once again, it was time to choose the Beta Labs contributor of the month. Since Nokia Photos 1.5 was our only beta release in September, I asked Mr. Julio Castillo, the product manager of Nokia Photos, to choose the winner.

And, ta-da-da-daa, the winner is Eismaus!!!

The choice was made based on several helpful comments by Eismaus, including bug reports, insightful suggestions, and answers to questions posed by other users (and for spreading the word as a bonus).

As a prize, chosen irresponsibly by yours truly, you will get a remote-controlled miniature troop-transport helicopter, TandemZ-1:

Video: found this one from YouTube, what a soundtrack!! There is another one at Gizmodo, with less luck and more crashes…

Good luck with that!! Hehe.

For those interested, registration to Nokia Pilots is now open here.

In February, Tommi started looking for a MSc thesis worker to study Beta Labs. Tommi continued the search at Helsinki University of Technology, but eventually hired me, Ilkka, from a couple hundred kilometers up north for the job. And I’ve considered myself extremely fortunate.

Now, the thesis is finished and I will be graduating next week. Since the thesis is public, I am able to share it with you. But first, let me tell you how extremely thankful I am for your input! The questionnaire survey a few months back was a fundamental part of my thesis and a huge amount of Beta Labs users took part in it. So, again, thank you so much! It wouldn’t have been the same without this marvelous user community.

So for anyone of you who would like to read it, here it is. This is a final product, not a beta so I’m afraid improvement suggestions can not be acted on. But feedback is always welcome.

Cheers!

We have to do some real tough decisions regarding the new website and we want you to help. So if you are interested in participating, join our chat session on Thursday September 25th, 5pm EEST (Eastern European Summer Time). Correct me if I’m wrong with these, but for a couple locations around the world this would mean the following times:

• 7am San Francisco
• 9am 10am New York
• 7:30pm Delhi
• 12am (midnight!) Sydney

Again, we’ll have the chat on IRC. If you are familiar with IRC, then this should suffice for instructions:

IRC network: EFNet
server (e.g.): efnet.xs4all.nl
channel: #nokiabetalabs

To join the session, here are the instructions for those who don’t know about IRC

1. Go to http://www.mibbit.com/
2. Select Efnet.net from the server list
3. Write #nokiabetalabs as the channel
4. Pick a nickname for yourself (this has to be unique, so try to come up with something more original than “John”)
5. Click connect.

The channel is currently protected with a password and will be opened at the beginning of the session.

See you there!