I would say that the Nokia Betalabs Site had been updated, but I don't think this does justice to the hard work put in by the development team.

On first glance you will see that all of the imagery and icons have been changed and the homepage has been re-laid out, but it's more than that. Much More. You can now search for applications based on your Symbian version and you can choose to "follow" apps whic will then be listed on the homepage once logged-in. These changes and many more come together to make the site feel more personal and user centric.

Once logged in you will also see a new tab "My Feed" where you are presented with the latest forum activity with respect to your followed apps.

There are some issues which need ironing out, but the look and feel of the site is excellent.

If you want more detail on the changes head to Site Update.

See you over there.

Having not posted for a little while, I've got a little catching up to do, so here goes.

The guys at Nokia have been pretty busy over the past couple of months. The result being the following:

Nokia Image Exchange

The first offering is the most wonderful Nokia Image Exchange, releasing on 04-JAN-2010. Although this is an experimental project rather than BETA Application it has been with us for a long time now with a Symbian S60v3 client in existence for over a year, having first released 16-DEC-2008. Many users wish this could replace the default gallery app within Nokia Symbian devices, and I agree. This application enables users to view their images within a very pretty GUI whilst adding the ability to automatically upload their images to the Image Exchange Website to share with other registered users. It's kind of a mix of Nokia Photo Browser and Nokia Share Online within a very pretty package. The main lmitation for many is that it only uploads to the Image Exchange Website, but I like it and always have.

Nokia Gig Finder

The second is Nokia Gig Finder, which uses you recently played list in Nokia Music Player to create a suggestions list for Gigs and reports these via a small Homescreen widget so you always know about those must see Gigs coming in your local area. It also enables users to purchase tickets to the Gigs from their mobiles.

Nokia Image Space

Next there is Nokia Image Space. Initially they released Nokia Image Space, which enables compass direction data adding to your Image metadata and the uploading of these images to your Flickr account and then enabling the viewing of these images on the Image Space Website in a nice Global aware GUI.

OVI Contacts

The final offering, in no particular order, was an update to OVI Contacts. The nicely integrated Nokia/OVI Jabber/XMPP chat client. Although the present version is theoretically limited to conversations with other Jabber/XMPP clients you can get it to speak with MSN etc as long as you use something like Psi IM to set up transports. Nice little app though.

Any of you out there who have been using Accuweather with your N97 and have upgraded to the latest version (only released in the past few days) may have noticed a major issue in the UK.

A small investigation uncovered that Locational data is no longer available across the UK, other than London. Other countries are still fine, but Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester and Stoke-on-Trent now return a "Script Error" when the user tries to obtain weather information and no data is provided.

"We are aware that the widget is not allowing certain locations to be entered and are working on a correction in the near future. While we work on updating the application, you can still access all of the AccuWeather.com content right in your mobile browser! Simply launch your mobile browser, type in www.accuweather.com and enter a location. Access extended 15-day forecasts, animated radar/satellite, detailed current conditions, hourly forecasts, and more!"

Hopefully the near future is not too far away, as when working this is a very satisfying application/widget to use. Do love the Current Location option which uses the phones GPS location to provide a weather report and prediction for your current location.

[UPDATE] I have been informed that this issue is not limited to the UK and has been witnessed in the USA also.

Swiss Manager Pro (SMP)provides provides S60 smartphone users with a combination of File Manager, Task Manager and System Information in one package. This new port from Cell Phone Soft from their longstanding UIQ3 offering for Sony Ericcson devices is competing with the likes of FExplorer Pro, Active File, X-plore and Y-Browser as well as Best Taskman, Handy Taskman and JBak Taskman for the task management side.

Cell Phone Soft list the following functions:

• Task manager, system information, file navigator in one application.
• Full control over running and installed programs.
• Advanced memory cleanup functions to maximize free memory, both manually and automatically.
• Useful system information (device characteristics, system uptime, status reports, and much more).
• File manager providing fast and convenient operations (copy, move, delete, rename, etc.).
• Status icon displaying time, free memory, CPU usage, battery level, and drive usage.
• Floating menu for instant access to all major services.
• Fully customizable Favorite list for convenient application launch.
• Recent list providing automated access to the most frequently used programs.
• Key-press shortcuts for all major functions.
• Many options for full customization and convenient use.

Now to my opinions on the new application for Symbian.

To be honest, as a previous user of the UIQ3 version of Swiss Manager Pro on an old Sony Ericcson M600i I had high hopes for this new offering. Unluckily I was left wanting. Now don't get me wrong. The application does what they state, but there are a few apps that can do this already, and better in most cases. The only advantage Swiss Manager Pro has over it's existing competition is it's indicators that appear on all screens, but these do need a graphical update in my opinion. It's disapointing that these have remained unchanged when in my opinion the old Sony Ericcson GUI was never as appealing as the Nokia GUI of the time and the nokia GUI has improved, not a lot, but has improved all the same in the last 3-4 years. The problem is the Swiss Manager Pro specific areas of the GUI do not reflect these GUI differences.

From a File Manager point of view Swiss Manager Pro is nothing new and the Task Manager functionality is surpassed by the like of Best Taskman, Handy Taskman and JBak Taskman. A number of these applications can reclaim memory in some form, but in this area Swiss Manager provides more comprehensive options, which acts in its favour.

To sumarise, I'll be staying with Best Taskman for my task management and memory reclamation needs and a mixture of FExplorer Pro and Active File for my file management, system information and screen capture needs.