S60 Open to new features

One thing I managed to get lucky enough to play with over the past several weeks is the private beta of the latest Jaiku client for S60 3rd Edition devices. At this writing, the prviate beta client is at 0.61.1 RC2 (RC meaning “release candidate.”).

For those who don’t know, Jaiku is kind of a cross between Twitter and an RSS aggregator. You can communicate status updates. You can import all the various RSS feeds that represent your online activity. It also incorporates the state on your mobile phone profile along with your physical location–determined by the mobile phone network.

When I first started playing with the Jaiku S60 client, I was not impressed. Much of the richness that Jaiku provides is quite simply not available in the current public client. You can see your friend’s last updates, and update your own status, but that’s about it.

The current closed beta client–it’s tied to handset IMEI, so I can’t share–gives you access to the more or less “lifestream” of your friends. You can respond to comments–and all responses are easily viewable as such.

While Jaiku is active, as you move from place to place, your location is automatically updated. The location information is something you code in, but the information is shared among all Jaiku users. The trick is making the location information useful to everyone.

Now we have an application that allows you to interact with others, but also takes into account your location, your “status” (as determined by your phone profile), and all the other “electronic droppings” you might leave around the net. Just the kind of app that’s right for The Convergence Zone.
The Jaiku folks have not stated when they plan on releasing their Jaiku S60 client to a wider audience, but the information they’ve communicated to us beta testers suggests it will be any day now. When it’s released, I’ll be sure to let you know here. In the meantime, feel free to leave your comments.

Update: Jaiku says that their 0.80 build (released to beta testers on 8 August 2007) will be sent off to be signed for general availability.