With some criticism on the store launch, all in all the Nokia Ovi store delivers the promise of a central hub for purchasing applications and building a developer community base. What I found more intriguing was the transparency and quickness of reaction from the Nokia Conversations blog that did admit to some server hiccups. See, corporate blogs work!

[photo taken from Nokia Ovi Store screenshot]

Post from: Cellphone9

Sad news. This June ‘09, S60 is shutting down their word of mouth campaign, the Ambassador Program.

It’s been hardly a year since the Ambassador site launched – and what a journey it has been! Over 21 thousand Ambassadors signed up, we ran 9 campaigns, and heard from you all via nearly 6000 personal accounts you’ve submitted. Such colorful reports they have been too! We can’t thank you enough for all that passion, effort and enthusiasm you have bestowed upon us. Rest assured that every one of those reports have been personally read and responded to by one of us here on the Ambassador team. The insights gained from them have been valuable and they will continue to be used as valuable input in our ongoing product and service development efforts. [more here]

A few weeks back, S60 reported of ambassadors who were proven to have crafted false or plagiarized stories from other community members. Although I’m sure that this isn’t the primary reason for closing down such a good program, the effort needed to maintain such a campaign might be too draining. Which brings me to ask — once 21,000 people start talking about your product, what are the next steps?

[Screencaps c/o S60 Blogs]

Post from: Cellphone9

It’s attention back to the S60 developers who are currently running an online video contest! It’s been all about the apps lately as the group wants you to show off your best S60 Tips or do a show and tell of your favorite S60 app (mine is still PaNoMan). It’s crazy creativity that will be the judge – as well as the YouTube community who will rate your videos! The contest closes on the 20th of May leaving us with 12 days for submissions.

There are some guidelines for the contest and you can read the official page by clicking on this link.

PRIZES

Grand Prize: The latest S60 device + Handango gift voucher

Second Prize: Bluetooth Headset + Handango gift voucher

Random Prize: An S60 device will be given via a random draw from all submissions

The grand prize for both categories is one of the latest S60 devices and a Handango gift voucher, second prize is a Bluetooth headset and Handango gift voucher, and third prize is a Handango gift voucher. In addition, an S60 device will be drawn amongst all the submitted videos.

The winners will be announced on the 29th of May in the community group page.

Post from: Cellphone9

I’m in Singapore! Although the Nokia Go Play event ended several hours ago (we took a post event trip to Equinox, a bar located at the highest peak of Singapore), there are a lot more things happening tomorrow. In the meantime let me give an overview of what took place today as Nokia launched several new products and services.

FOUR NEW PHONES
Although the news has been out in the blogosphere for quite some time, Nokia officially announces the coming of four new phones for the fourth quarter of 2007. This would include the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, the Nokia N81 and the new Nokia N95 Black Edition.

The Nokia 5310 is the newest affordable music phone that brings forth the ultra slim line to Nokia’s stable of products. The Nokia 5610 is also a music phone that features an integrated hardware slider button for ease of use in browsing through playlists, the media player, the gallery and the main phone menu.

The N81 is the new top of the line music phone that features a new user interface (more on this in a succeeding post) and a walloping 8GB of memory.

The black edition N95 is a well thought of improvement to the previous model. It now houses 8GB of memory, has a bigger 2.8 inch screen, better battery life and TV out.

NEW SERVICES
Nokia has launched their new service called Ovi which is basically a portal by which consumers can experience the full circle of multimedia, Web 2.0 and gaming all in one portal. These specific services include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage service. Ovi also aims to integrate with popular Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, online video services like YouTube and other popular online community services like Digg.

NEW USER INTERFACE
Nokia has revamped their user interface for their new line of Nseries phones. Though the current line of phones still make use of the familiar S60 or S40 menus, Nokia has identified key areas by which consumers are most inclined to categorize their mobile life. The new UI is accessible via a dedicated button allowing you to browse through wireless connectivity and Internet features, music, video and pictures, gaming, and phone functions.

Post from: Cellphone9

Unlike other harmless proof of concept mobile phone viruses, this S60 trojan works by sending out SMS to premium numbers in your phone book. Premium numbers are rented numbers that can cost up to $1.00 per message. The virus is unattractively named Trojan-SMS.Symb.OS.Viver.

[source with image]

Post from: Cellphone9

What is ControlFreak?
ControlFreak enables you to control Winamp and the rest of your computer with your Bluetooth Series 60 phone. It has all of the music and video controls like play, pause, stop, next, previous, fast forward, rewind and volume.

ControlFreak 2 is now even better at controlling music and video thanks to full Winamp Media Library support. If you’ve never used it, you don’t know what you are missing. Forget about messing around picking you music files with a file browser. With ControlFreak 2 you search for tracks by name or browse by artists or albums. ControlFreak even helps keep your music better organised by automatically collecting compilation albums so they are easier to find.

Download it now here!

Post from: Cellphone9

Here are some of the highlights:

Web browser is free. Opera browser costs 19 Euros.

Opera can cache images. Web browser can’t (darn!)

Web browser comes with an RSS reader while Opera doesn’t.

Opera browser has the option to display html or plain text easily.

You can read the full comparison here.

Post from: Cellphone9