On Thursday June 5, the on-going An Evening with S60 party arrives in downtown Boston. It’s a chance to meet and greet S60 fans both inside and outside Nokia. There will also be drinks, food, activities and prizes. I’ll be there. Please join us – but make sure to sign up in advance at this link An Evening with S60 in Boston.

Ready to try some new applications on your Nokia E-series phone? Check out Nokia Business Software Catalog. At the site, you can search by keyword, browse categories, or step through an alphabetical list. You’ll find cool tools and utilities, standalone business applications, or full-scale mobile business solutions.

Find something you like? You can buy it and download it right away.

Let Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite digitize your travel itinerary. The Travel Info icon on the desktop is your embarkation point for all your travel related information. Just enter the basics of your next business trip in the Calendar of your Web portal of your Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite server. Use the Trip tab to enter your flight info and the Appointment Plus tab for your hotel, meetings, and any restaurant reservations you have.

Here’s where the magic happens. Travel Info does more than just repeat back what you’ve put in – through the Nokia Intellisync server, the Travel Info feature goes and finds your destination’s local weather; driving directions between all your appointments, restaurant reservations, and your hotel; and flight info details, all based on the itinerary that you entered. Then, with just a click you’ll always have all the updated information about your trip

Anyone who uses it wonders how they ever lived without it. In fact, some start using it for appointments around town instead of waiting for a business trip.

Now your turn – what mobile apps do you use for travel information (directions, weather, flight) while on the road? Please post a comment here.

Looking for your big break into mobile business? Check out Mobile Rules!, a Nokia sponsored competition. There are two separate tracks to the contest – one for mobile-based business plans and another for mobile applications. If you have either an idea for a mobile-centric venture or have created a cool new mobile application there is still time to apply.

For business plans, the deadline for submission is November 16, 2007 and for mobile applications the deadline is January 28, 2008. Prizes include free Nokia phones, the chance to pitch to mobile industry venture capitalists, and promotion on Nokia application catalogs.

On mobilerules.org you’ll find sample business plans, full details, and a competition schedule. Questions? Submit them at info@mobilerules.org.

Have you tuned your phone’s active idle screen? With a couple of minutes of easy configuration, you can save several key clicks on your phone everyday. Instead of opening menus to navigate to your favorite application, you can jump directly there using the softkeys or the active idle shortcut bar.

For those of you that aren’t yet fully fluent in S60-speak, “Active Idle” is the name given the “home” or “standby” screen from which you would typically start dialing a phone number. “Softkeys” are the customizable left and right menu keys at the bottom of the Active Idle screen. You don’t need to go along with the default choices; you can make them your own. But, the most important to remember is the productivity boost you get from customizing this launching point.

Clicks add up to seconds, seconds add up to minutes, minutes add … well, you get the idea. Just know this – the time I save using my turbocharged active idle screen let’s me enjoy a relaxing cocktail at the end of the day while you’re probably still working.

Here’s how you can join the productivity party.

• On your S60 phone’s main menu, choose Tools
• Choose Settings
• Select Phone (on E-series phones, or select General | Personalization on N-series phones)
• Select Standby Mode
• Select Active Idle and switch it to ON if it is not already ON.
• Then scroll down and select Active Standby Apps (you may have to re-enter Settings if you just switched Active Idle to ON as switching this setting dumps you back out to Active Idle).
• You’ll see a list of Shortcut 1 through Shortcut 6 which corresponds to the icons you’ll see across the Active Idle bar at the top of the standby screen. Select a Shortcut you want to modify.
• You’ll see a radio button list of applications on your phone, both standard and newly installed applications. Choose one you use frequently so that you’ll no longer need to scroll through your menu to launch it.
• Repeat for each of the Shortcuts on the Active Idle bar.
• Finally, while you’re here, adjust the left and right softkeys. Select Left Selection Key (on E-series on N-series you first select Shortcuts then Left Selection Key). You’ll see the same radio button list as you did for the Active Idle bar. For the most time-savings you should set the left and right softkeys to your most frequently used applications because you’ll be able to launch them with a single click.

I’m most aware of my active idle screen settings when I travel. On the road, I seem most pressed for time and feel the need to quickly check the details of the next appointment, reach a contact, check the weather, or some other urgent task. If I find I’m clicking too much, I tune my active idle screen.

Now your turn – have you adjusted the apps on your active idle screen? What applications have you configured for the softkeys or active idle bar of your phone?