Mobile Tweaks

Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 40 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

Swype and Nokia have been hard at work to deliver a limited beta release to Nokia S60 5th edition device owners.  Your feedback will be valuable to us in the coming weeks, and we are especially interested in how well Swype interfaces with the many types of applications you use every day. While you’re at it, feel free to take a crack at the world record, which was recently broken (again!) with Swype.

Swype is currently supported on the Nokia N97, N97mini, X6, 5800, and 5230. Over the coming months Swype will be expanding to a wider range of devices as part of ongoing development so stay tuned.

Check out the official Swype for Symbian page for download information as well as Swypeinc.com for news, tips and instructional videos.

Happy Swyping!
-Peter @ Swype Inc

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

We knew that announcing the closure of Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta would not be easy news to break…and your comments from the past week made it clear.

This is the unfortunate nature of the work we do in Beta Labs. Sometimes the products we create do not make it to commercial release. It’s the nature of the test environment.

While we are in no way “getting out” of the mobile social networking business by focusing on the N8 and some great functionality that is coming, we do understand that you may have an N97, or a 5800, or other Nokia device. Our only answer is to refer you to the Facebook client and invite you to continue to follow our evolution in this space.

Please understand that the reason we cannot continue free services such as the previous Social Networks client is because our strategy needs to adapt to the changing landscape. We need to concentrate our engineering efforts on the high-quality core services that our consumers want. Sometimes we cannot maintain momentum on some services, even when they are hugely popular, out of the need to maximize our own resources and deliver something even better further down the line. Ramping down the previous Nokia Messaging for Social client isn’t a reflection of our dissatisfaction with the service, it’s a learning experience that helps us focus on future critical offerings.

Changing the way people connect and innovating with mobile social experiences are what we do. We invite you to continue to be a part of it, and your comments and insight will continue to make it better.

Nokia Messaging Team

Download Ovi Store Facebook client:
http://apps.store.ovi.com/r/Nokia_social1
http://apps.store.ovi.com/r/Nokia_social

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Written by Kari Pulli, Nokia Fellow and the head of the Visual Computing and Ubiquitous Imaging research team at NRC Palo Alto.

Cameras are unfortunately not as adaptable as the human eye, and in situations where there is either too much or too little light, it’s not easy, or often not even possible to capture images that would give the viewer a similar experience as the person that saw the situation with her own eyes. However, by taking several images with different image settings and then combining the input images into a single new image it is possible to capture better images.

Nokia Research Center Palo Alto has developed two new applications to address these problems. A new camera control architecture and API created jointly by Nokia and Stanford University (http://fcam.garage.maemo.org) is a key enabler for these applications.

The HDR Capture application is meant for situations with too much light, especially when the background is bright (e.g., sky) and the foreground has less light (e.g., a person). Using normal camera to capture a single image would typically lead to a black silhouette of the person with a nice sky in the background. HDR Capture measures the brightness of the scene, captures 1-3 images as the user presses the capture button, and combines them into a single image that should show details of both the bright and dark areas.

Another problematic situation is when there just isn’t enough light. If you take an image with short exposure time, the result is a noisy image. However, if you extend the exposure time, the output is often blurry. With Lowlight Assistant the camera captures two images, one short (probably noisy) and one long (probably blurry), and automatically combines the images to a new image that hopefully has the sharpness of the short exposure and the better colors of the long exposure. The user can evaluate a small area of the image to see whether the quality is sufficient. If it is, the combined image is processed in the background, otherwise the user can try again.

These applications are experimental betas and we are currently evaluating how to take them further. So if you’re interested, download the apps and let us know what you think.

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

The time has come that we conclude our trial period here at Beta Labs for the new Nokia.com BETA site. We want to thank those of you that spent time actively talking with us & testing the site. We received some great comments and observations and have used all feedback in our on-going developments.

It was quite a challenge to analyze the comments but it is clear that we definitely have some challenges ahead of us. ‘Simplicity’ was the main descriptive word dominating a lot of the feedback given – clean, crisp design & lots of space. It seems that we are definitely on track in this space but we still have many hurdles to leap over moving forward. There were quite many comments about the user experience, lack of user engagement & lack of content. Some of you struggled to navigate smoothly on the site due to technical reasons & some outlined that it wasn’t clear where to go & what our purpose was. Many of you commented on lack of content & engagement & the Nokia “blue” colour scheme brought mixed feelings – some like & some dislike & thought it was a little cold or conservative.

In a nutshell, most agreed that the clean crisp design was definitely a step in the right direction but that there was a lack of content richness and engagement! We are definitely aware of the lack of content & one of our big action items in the coming months is to focus on creating content that is engaging, deep & interactive. When we launch the full Ireland site there will still be room to grow but we hope you will feel a little different towards the content then. We can certainly promise that there will be a lot more engaging and interactive content both for products, services and for our solutions overall. Content is an on-going process & so is site search… Both of these are being developed & will be optimized on an ongoing basis…

In closing this Beta Labs forum, we can definitely promise that all your comments have been taken on board & we really hope that you’ll continue to pop in & support us moving forward. While we love positive feedback, we can only learn from negative feedback as well.

So stay tuned & thanks again for spending this time with us in this important stage of our development!

Many Thanks,

Nokia.com Team

P.S. the beta site is still live @ http://beta.nokia.ie and you can continue sharing your feedback through an easy to use survey integrated into the homepage & product pages. Look forward to seeing you there…

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

We’re now closing the Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta. In practice this means that the feedback forums at Nokia Beta Labs won’t be actively monitored and Nokia Messaging for Social Networks will be taken out of the list of active beta trials.

However, we are working hard on the commercial release of an integrated experience on Symbian^3 devices beginning with Nokia N8, which will mark a milestone for Nokia messaging with new features and functionality. Nokia Beta Labs will continue to play an important role in its evolution with new social beta releases to come, and we invite you to watch this space for more.

Some of the key capabilities are:

• Social Contacts: Your contacts and social networks are now linked in your phonebook
• View your latest social activities from Facebook and Twitter all in one place
• Share your current location or points of interest with your favorite social networks

Please note with the discontinuation of the beta program you will no longer have access to the Nokia Messaging for Social Networks service in its current form, and there are no further plans to develop this particular client. If you are interested, alternative versions of the Facebook client are available in Ovi Store: http://store.ovi.com/content/7907

Thanks to all of you who used the service and gave us your valuable feedback. Your comments are essential to helping us bring you a better social networking experience. We value your continued support and keep your comments coming!

- The Nokia Messaging team

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Ever since we launched Nokia Bots in March it’s been interesting to follow the feedback that’s been coming in regarding these smart widgets.  Much of the early feedback was about the overall concept and suggestions for new bots (like the Contacts bot that was added in June) while later feedback focuses more on the operation of the individual bots.

A quick scan of the forums suggests that much of the feedback on the individual bots centers around two or three bots (I won’t say which), while the others have received far less feedback.  That got us wondering: Are you submitting feedback to make the bots you like even better, or are you directing feedback to the ones you don’t care for to bring them up to the same level as the others?

Let’s find out together with the following poll:

We’ll reveal the results a bit later.

- John, Community Facilitator @ Nokia Beta Labs

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Written by Leena Oiva, Nokia Green Explorer

The time has come to conclude the Nokia Beta Labs trial of Nokia Green Explorer. We want to thank those that spent time testing the service and provided comments! All feedback is extremely valuable and we have been using it when concepting the next release, which we plan to make available during the autumn.

Until then you can continue to use the Nokia Green Explorer service at www.ovi.com/greenexplorer.

If you’re new to Green Explorer, you can use our directory of green destinations to plan your travel abroad and discover eco-friendly locations on your own doorstep.  You can also read our articles for inspiring tips and advice on living green and travelling clean.

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Let’s all tip our hats to thewinchester, who has been selected our Contributor of the Month for July 2010.  We appreciate his commitment to user experience and user interface issues, his attention to detail in his forum contributions, and his constructive attitude when participating in our trials. 

Congratulations and thank you, thewinchester!  We’ve got a fleece to send along to you as a token of appreciation.

- John, Community Facilitator @ Nokia Beta Labs

PS – Remember that all of you can influence who gets selected each month by rating each others’ posts as “helpful”.

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Written by Sameer Goel, Product Manager for Nokia Mobile Communities

Our sincere thanks for the support the beta community has provided us. We really value the feedback you provided us and we are making the appropriate changes to further improve Nokia Mobile Communities for users in India.

We are releasing a new version for you all to try with the following changes included:

• Simplified registration flow
• Share streams as well as specific posts
• View posts for a specific stream
• Receive search results directly on the stream wall
• User settings to control charge notifications, location sharing and message history added
• Some bug fixes

To try it you will need to completely uninstall the previous version and install the new one afresh as underlying data structures have changed. This may cause you to lose old chat messages and stream posts, but the app will synchronize your conversation groups and subscribed / created streams so that any new activity on either is not impacted.

Unfortunately addition of features to Streams has negatively impacted performance which we are actively working on to fix; but we hope that your experience will not be severely impacted.

Please check out the full list of features and supported devices and download this updated Beta app now.  India users with GPRS can also message nmc to 55555 to receive the download link directly to your phone.

We look forward to your feedback in the forums!

Thank you in advance!

On behalf of Nokia Mobile Communities team,
Sameer Goel, Product Manager

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog

Written by Anand Prabhu-Desai, Nokia Listings team

For many people in emerging markets accessing information to secure a job or locate goods and services in their local area is a difficult task.  Nokia Listings (now in beta) has been developed for the purpose of making this process of connecting buyers and sellers (or employers and job seekers) as simple as possible.

It is a well-known fact that the majority (60%+) of the hiring and consumer-to-consumer transactions, like apartment rentals, in emerging markets currently occur via word-of-mouth or through middlemen who charge a hefty commission for their services. Our goal is to bring the benefits of a digital marketplace to users of basic mobile phones (Series 40) without GPRS connections.  The application therefore is fully functional on both SMS and GPRS.

Nokia Listings is designed for three major categories of listings:

1.    Buy & Sell – Find or post items for sale
2.    Jobs – Find or post a job
3.    Local Services – Access or advertise services such as auto repairs, driver services, plumbers, etc.

Additionally, there’s no explicit registration needed, listings are geo-coded so that the user is able to find the services nearest to his/her place, and users have the ability to call or SMS the other party through the application and forward listings via SMS to their friends.

During this beta trial, the service is only available to users in India.  We are currently testing a limited content set and will be expanding across India in the near future. While the app will work on all Nokia devices that support Java, we’ve optimized the application for Series 40 phones.

Please check out the full list of features and supported devices and download the application.  We look forward to your feedback in the forums!

Source: Nokia Beta Labs blog