Well it's been a bit of a roller coaster today with Nokia's big announcement, but the end result is that the N97 will receive an OVI Maps update with FREE, yes FREE Premium Services on 28th January 2010. This is a week after the rest of the Nokia S60v5 range of devices, but they a having to iron out some minor issues with the N97 version prior to it's release.

Through the morning there were a few contradictory messages as to if the N97 would get the FREE Services and the final statement was yes.

What does this mean, I here you ask. Well let me explain.

You will now, not only get the Map data for free, but you will also get free use of the Voice Navigation and City Guides. I'm not clear on if the Speed Limit, Safety Camera and Traffic data will also be free or not, but we'll find out next week. The new version also incorporates OVI Life Casting in the form of "Share Location" which enables users to share their location on Facebook with one click from Ovi Maps, posting where they are and what's on their mind. This decision from Nokia makes Nokia devices stand out above others with there fully integrated and FREE Sat Nav without the need to download Map data Over-The-Air. You can find out more at OVI Maps Features.

Big thumbs up for Nokia on this one.

Something's going on at Nokia

OVI Announcement due on 21st January

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.