It's been a busy morning for Nokia Beta Labs. They've brought a few updates to some of the applications they've already had, and introduced us to the new Nokia Communication Center which I have quickly fell in love with.

Nokia Communication Center
First off I'll start with Nokia Communication Center. If you've already tried out the Nokia Beta Labs program called PC Phone than you might find this redundant. Even I first questioned why they would do this. Well I've never really liked PC Phone I couldn't get it to work properly and the need for a web browser was kind of a downfall. What Nokia Communicator will eventually be is a add on to Nokia PC Suite. Managing contacts and messages has never been easier. Sure I showed you guys a few weeks ago how PC Suite currently allows you to view and reply to text messages, but that was miniature compared to this new program. What I like about Communication Center is it has all your texts and MMS messages folders including the outbox and sent messages. You can reply to, forward and send new messages all from this program.You also have a place to manage your contacts which comes in handy.

Key features:

• Create and send messages easily
• Receive, view, forward, and reply to messages as they arrive
• Compose multimedia messages effortlessly with easy access to the images on both PC and device
• Manage messages, and sort and group them to quickly find what you are looking for
• Display all your messages in a timeline
• Manage all the contacts stored on your device
• Add new contacts with ease
• Create contact cards complete with thumbnail images

Right now the program is a separate install from PC Suite. It's not yet integrated. I actually think this is a great solution for managing my phone at work. I don't think it's necessary to install the full PC Suite at work, but Nokia Communicator is all I need. It's only a 7mb installation so it won't take up very much memory. Now at work I hardly even need to touch my phone, since most people know to text me rather than call me during work hours. If you have a bluetooth adapter or blue tooth built into your computer it just makes life that much easier. Keep in mind this program is in testing mode right now and you might find a few quarks. If you do head over to Nokia Beta Labs and let them know your issue so they can fix it in the next version. This is the whole point of Beta Labs. Click here to try out Nokia Communication Center. Update: Looks like you need to have PC Suite installed as well, the latest version in fact. So my idea about having only this program installed on my work computer is useless unless I want to install the full pc suite.

Location Tagger
Location Tagger Beta has been updated for the last time. Reason being is it will be integrated into most new Nseries phones that have yet to be released. The Nokia N82 has location tagging built in since the latest firmware update, but other than that all other Nokia smartphones need this separate application. If you haven't tried it yet, Location Tagger allows you to automatically add the GPS location of each photo you take to the file so that you can add it to a map on Flickr or Google. Here is an example of me using Location Tagger for my day at Disneyland.

New in this release:

• Persistent log. Now when you exit the application, your list of images in your logs tab will not disappear. When you delete an image from the Gallery of File Manager, the item will also be removed from the logs tag.
• File renaming. There is additional option in the Settings menu to rename tagged file. The file name will be added _NLT as suffix. For example, if the original file name is image001.jpg, it will be renamed to image001_NLT.jpg. This feature will allow you to easily differentiate between tagged and non-tagged files.
• Get location from cache. As you may know from our last posting that Location Tagger tags pictures with the last known position in the last 1 hour. If there is no last known position, it will put pictures in the queue until time-out. We added a new feature that allows you to get location from GPS device’s cache.
• Optimization and some bug fixes. This new version should run relatively faster than the previous one.

Click here to download or learn about Location Tagger.

A Few More Updates From Beta Labs
Nokia Channels has been rebranded and reloaded. It is now called Nokia Headlines. I've never been too interested in this application but hey you can click here to check it out. Why not its free.

Nokia Text Messenger, a lighter version of the new Communication Center has been updated. It's only for Vista though, so if you have Vista it might be worth a try.

Do you find any of these beta applications useful? Do you like what Nokia is doing with Beta Labs? I think it's great they have this program allowing users to check out new applications before they are considered stable and final. It gives us a way to add feedback for the developers.

Today I got the honor of testing out a new application coming to S60 handsets called Smart Settings by MobiFun Software. This application was actually a big hit for s40 users, but is just barely making it's way to S60. This application is still in beta and should be released in March.

What does Smart Settings for S60 do? Basically it provides three major functions.

1. Auto Lock options. You can tell the phone to auto lock only in certain profiles. Set the auto lock period, set the phone to lock on any screen or just the standby screen, and set the auto lock exceptions for certain applications.

For example, I have a profile called Car. I keep my phone on a mount that sites in the middle console, facing me. Volume is all the way up, and the lock is set to off. This way I can easily access the functions of my phone like calling, maps, or reading a text (when I'm sitting at a read light of course). I also usually set my auto lock application exceptions only for the Music Player. Handy for when the phone is sitting at my desk when I'm at work and jamming the tunes. No need to fiddle with a lock when it's just chilling there on the desk.

2. Easy Unlock. Here you can change your lock combo buttons. Instead of the standard lock combos, you can change it to whatever is more comfortable for you. You can change the locks and unlocks to separate combos which is pretty cool.

3. Start Menu. You can make your left or right softkeys into a start menu, sorta like the start menu in windows. Push the softkey you choose for this application, and a small window pops up with up to ten shortcuts that you select to any applications installed on the phone. Each application is numbered, so if you have "settings" as your fourth shortcut, then you just have to push five on your keypad instead of scrolling all the way down to it. This I guess would be handy only for candybars since you don't have a slider to worry about. You can easily change the order of your applications as well.

I'm happy to report that I haven't found any bugs while using this application, but I'll keep you updated if I do. This will for sure become one of the must have applications installed on your N95 or any S60 3rd Edition phone.

How many of you are looking forward to this?

Samir, who is the creator of the popular RotateMe application, is up to something. On his site there is a coming soon image with an application called ShutUp. What can this be? My thoughts are it's an attempt at making an application that can silence your phone during calls or when the alarm goes off, just by shaking or flipping upside down the phone. This idea first came out when Nokia released a preview commercial of their upcoming touchsreen smartphone. Ever since then people have been dying to try something like that out. Of course this would be making use of the accelerometer in the Nokia N95 and N82. This idea would be for the WOW factor, showing this off to friends would be awesome. Especially the one that thinks he's cool because he has an Iphone. Only time will tell what the ShutUp application by Samir really is. We can only sit tight and wait.

Samir has already created the RotateMe application, which I'll talk more about in a few days. What it does is automatically rotate the screen on the Nokia 95 when you rotate the phone in your hand using the accelerometer. It's still in beta right now, but you can go to his site and make a donation to try it out. It should be finished and released by the end of the month. For other Nokia handsets that don't have the accelerometer, like the Nokia N73, you can use RotateMe to rotate your screen using a shortcut. I find it very handy especially for web browsing.

Video of RotateMe on Nokia N95:

RotateMe on N95
Uploaded by soueldi

The same developer is also creating an application called Nokmote. Moving your phone up, down, left or right, allows you do control certain aspects of your phone. Functions such as navigating the menu and controlling your music player. See the sample video of Nokmote below:

Video of Nokmote on Nokia N95:

Nokmote
Uploaded by soueldi

Like I said, I'll be posting a in a few days a review of the RotateMe application for the Nokia N95. If you check out his site, make sure you remember that his applications must be signed by you. If you check out Howard Forums, there are a few people who might be willing to sign it for you.

Thanks to the poster sunilvarma at HowardForums for alerting us on ShutUp by Samir.

Nokia just released the new Internet Radio Application. I've only had this on my Nokia N95 for two days and it's fast becoming my most used application. Especially since it has one of my favorite progressive talk radio stations already loaded. This is a huge upgrade over the last Internet Radio Application released by Nokia, which contained lots of bugs and wasn't really user friendly.

When you first open the application, you get for sections you can click on. Last Played Station, Favorites, Station Directory, and Search. Right now I've only found a few radio stations that I actually like in the Station Directory, so I saved them under my Favorites section so I can access them quickly.

When you go to the Stations Directory, you get four more options. You can Browse By Genre, Browse By Language, Browse By Country, or by Top Stations. When you browse by genre, you get about 24 different genres to choose from. For browsing by language or country, you also get a ton of results. I never really pay attention to the top stations.

Once you find a radio station you like, you just select it and it starts buffering. I'm currently on ATT's Edge Network, and the stations load in about 5-10 seconds. Once the station isn't loaded, I haven't any any skipping or re=buffering, unless I'm browsing a large website. Another great thing, my Taskman is showing that it only takes up about 2mb of RAM. Not too bad.

In the settings, you have the Default Access Point, GPRS Connection Bitrate (I keep it at standard), 3g Connection Bitrate, & WIFI Connection Bitrate. You can also add stations manually if you have the exact web address of the radio feed.

Overall, the graphics are very clean and the application is stable. They use the same black theme that is found on the N95 8gb. Not much buffering or clipping at all, and the sound comes in loud and clear. Definitely a solid effort by the programmers over at Nokia.

Right now only the Nokia N95, N82, & N91 are official supported. However I've heard reports from around the web of people having success in using the Nokia Internet Radio application with the Nokia N73 and a few other Eseries phones, using the N91 version of the application. I haven't personally tried it on my N73 yet, but I plan on trying it in a few days.

Oh and one more thing... this program is still in beta, so it will only get better. I will be adding screenshots throughout the day, and hopefully some video tomorrow.

For now, head over and get your copy of Nokia Internet Radio for the Nokia N95, N82, & N91.

A week ago, I made a post about the Nokia NSeries PC Suite Beta that you can try out as an alternative to the normal Nokia PC Suite software. I wasn't happy with it, simply because it takes up way too much space and memory on my computer. It was slow, and caused everything to lock up. It was pretty much unusable.

Well, one of the great things about Nokia, is they are a very open company. They listen to the complaints from the customers, and usually fix them accordingly. Right now you can head over to the Nokia Beta Labs Blog and take a survey about the NSeries PC Suite and let them know how you feel. Pretty cool of them to do this.

So head over and make your voice heard.

This is the fastest a program has ever been installed from my computer. Today, I decided to try out the Nokia NSeries PC Suite that you can find at Nokia Beta Labs. Now mind you, I know it's still in beta, so I can't really trash it all that much. But I'll go ahead and list the pros and cons, keeping it simple.

Pros: None that I know of, since the software is so slow.

Cons: The software is slow. It took forever to install. Then it takes forever to start. Once you have it started, it takes forever to decide what you want to do. I click on the photo manager, and that takes another minute. My computer ended up freezing up, so I just uninstalled it.

The normal version of Nokia PC Suite works fine for me, so I'll just keep using that for now. Hopefully the Nokia developers can make a program that doesn't use up so much memory. Remember, consumers like things the are simple and that work, not things that are flashy, but suck.

Go check it out at Nokia Beta Labs. They have a beta version of NSeries PC Suite. I haven't updated to this version yet, but I will when I get home from work tonight. I'll review it and compare it to the standard Nokia PC Suite.

Also, if you own a Nokia Internet Tablet, Beta Labs has introduced a Video Converter Tool. With Nokia Internet Tablet Video Converter, you can easily convert your videos – the ones you shot yourself and the ones you downloaded from the Internet (legally of course) – into an optimized format for your Nokia Internet Tablet. All you need to do is drag and drop your videos into the application, which automatically converts them into a size and resolution that are just perfect for your Internet Tablet.

I think this an awesome program that Nokia runs. They are always hard at work trying to make your life easier and more productive with their phones and applications. You can read their blog about what they're trying to do with each application, and they allow users to comment and add there own ideas and responses.

Here is a list of some of the applications you can try at Nokia Beta Labs.

Nokia Audio Books: Nokia Audiobooks is a beta concept that enables you to enjoy audiobooks while on the go. It includes a highly efficient audio compression technology optimized for voice (AMR-WB), a player application for S60 (Nokia Audiobook Player), and an audio converter tool for PC (Nokia Audiobook Manager).

Device Status: Nokia Device Status is a self-diagnosis tool that allows you to collect detailed system information both from your PC and your S60 device. Your current device configuration and phone settings are presented in a detailed summary, which you can use to determine the exact cause, if you run into problems.

Conversation: Conversation is a messaging application that allows you to follow your conversations, organized by individual contact. In addition, the application provides an easy way to reply to messages, and continue the conversations.

Gizmo: Install the Gizmo client on your device to start using instant messaging (IM), presence and Internet calls. After installing the application you are able to create an account or use the existing Gizmo username and password.

Mobile Server: Mobile Web Server is a phone application to which you can connect over the Internet with your web browser. This allows you to easily manage and use phone functions with a PC, no external software needed.

Wellness Diary: Wellness Diary makes it easy to take an active role in the daily and/or long-term management of your health. You can monitor and track a range of everyday well-being parameters, including weight, eating habits, exercise, blood pressure and others.

Click here to check out Nokia Beta Labs