Every once in a while, you meet someone new online. At some point, the person wants to meet face-to-face. How do you know you’ve met the person you think you’re meeting?

I came up with a rather clever way to show the person exactly what I look like today so they know they’ve found me. This method include the web browser in S60, the camera found in many S60 devices, and Nokia’s Share on Ovi service.

I used the Nokia N95 8GB for this, but theoretically, any S60 device with a camera should do. Either have a friend take a picture of you or set the phone somewhere it can sit and the camera lens can face you, or use a phone-capable tripod. The Nokia Nseries phones have a timer in the camera application, allowing you to delay taking a picture for several seconds. Useful if you’re trying to take a picture, yet actually be in it.

Once the picture is taken and you’re happy with it, the next step is to get it uploaded to Share on Ovi. Nokia Nseries devices either include Share Online 3.0 directly or you can download it. The camera application will allow you to upload straight to Share on Ovi from the camera application. If you don’t have a compatible device, you can always upload the file through email, which many devices today support, even non-S60 ones!

Now that the picture is online, how do you get it to the person? Share on Ovi’s mobile web site allows you to share photos with anyone direct from your mobile phone web browser. Simply navigate to your photo in the Share on Ovi website on your mobile phone. You’ll see at the bottom of the picture a “Share this with” textbox where you can enter a mobile phone number, email address, or Share on Ovi user ID.

Congratulations, the person you are meeting knows what you look like right now and has a way of seeing that information on his mobile phone, even! Did it work? Sure did

How have you used your S60 device to connect with people in the real world? Leave your thoughts and comments below.

Whenever I think about Roaming, I can’t help but think of the great song by The B-52s: Roam. Unfortunately, what happened to one of my Nokia colleagues when he roamed–in a foreign country–was not so great. It’s great that he could do it–GSM does allow this very easily–but of course there’s the roaming bill you get afterwords.

The good news is, if you plan ahead, you can get prepaid data service fairly cheap in many European countries. It’s even a reality in the U.S. as well, thanks to the recent introduction of unlimited data on prepaid by AT&T.

Unfortunately, these great deals aren’t there in every country. You have to become an expert in navigating the mobile carriers in the countries you frequent. Not to mention managing all those prepaid SIMs and associated accounts to ensure you don’t lose your balances.

There are a new breed of carriers coming out–specifically mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs)–that are trying to address this problem by creating a global SIM. The SIMs themselves effectively roam everywhere, i.e. they do not have a “home” country, necessarily. Their prices are likely a bit cheaper than what your local operator will charge for roaming abroad, but are a bit higher than if you bought a local SIM and topped it off. On the other hand, it’s only one prepaid account to have to manage and if you do a lot of traveling, it’s a worthwhile alternative.

The other cool thing about these global SIMs is that you can often get local numbers in many different countries–at the same time. For example, I could buy one of these global SIMs and get both a U.S. and U.K. number. This would allow people in either country to call me for the price of a in-country call–no matter where I happen to be in the world.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any of these global SIM operators that provide data services–yet. However, two of the companies I’ve talked to are working on adding data service. I don’t expect the prices to be as good as a local SIM, particularly if the local SIM offers unlimited data, but it will likely be a far cry cheaper than what your operator would charge for roaming data.

We recently had a meeting with everyone working on the S60 blogs in the Americas. As the meeting was early in the morning–during a time where I need to make sure my son gets ready for school–it meant being outside my home office. Fortunately, I have a work laptop and, of course, my mobile phone–a Nokia N95. The laptop was to view the presentation given remotely, the phone was to listen and participate.

This got me thinking. Is it possible to do all of this with a mobile device? Could it be possible for me to view a remote presentation and be on a conference call? Here are some of the challenges today:

1. Screen Size: I was having difficulty viewing the slides on a 1024×768 screen on my laptop. How would slides look on a smaller screen?
2. Dual Mode Connectivity: Certainly, 3G handsets with a 3G network support being connected with data and voice at the same time. The same can be said for WiFi-enabled handsets as well.
3. Battery Life: Being connected to voice and data simultaneously can be quite a drain on the battery.
4. Enterprise Connectivity: Since this presentation was being shared inside the firewall, the handset would need to be able to connect into the corporate network in order to view the presentation. Nokia has a solution for this problem, fortunately, but I do not have it installed on this handset.
5. Cross-Platform Screen Sharing With S60 Support: Do any of the common methods for sharing screens and presentations include S60 support?

Is it even possible to do this today, even if the experience is sub-optimal? Do you want this kind of functionality? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

I was listening to Episode 127 of Mobile Tech Roundup on my Nokia N95 today and they were discussing a device that has some interesting applications. The device in question essentially provides a full-sized screen and keyboard for your mobile phone. Suddenly, your entire computing environment can reside on your mobile phone. When you need the big screen and keyboard, just hook it to your phone.

Over the years, I’ve heard one of the “dreams” of network computing is that you can sit down and work at one location and easily pick up right where you left off at a different computer without skipping a beat. This can be accomplished with tools like VNC or Windows Remote Desktop.

If you can carry the “brains” of your computing environment in your pocket, why would you mess around with things like VNC or Remote Desktop? Plug your phone into your large screen and keyboard, do your work, unplug your mobile phone, take it somewhere else. Plug it into a different screen and keyboard, and you have your full environment right there. And, of course, you can also interact with it from the mobile handset itself!

For the most part, I already do a fair amount of computing from my S60 device. Lack of a full-sized screen and keyboard are certainly factors that limit my ability to do more. There’s a lot of issues to work out with this idea, but it has quite a lot of appeal to me.

What do the rest of you think?

When I first started playing with Share Online 3.0 last week, I picked up on something that I felt was important–something I didn’t see emphasized all that much. Quoting myself:

Now instead of simply uploading photos, you now have the ability to participate in the social aspects surrounding those photos. It, in a sense, extends the “social” aspects of Share on Ovi and Flickr directly to your mobile handset in a way that I find compelling.

Whether you realize it or not, there is a kind of “social network” around Flickr and Share on Ovi (previously Twango). People see cool media on these services and comment on them. You could always do that from a mobile before, but now you have a much nicer way to do it with Share Online 3.0. It’s more integrated. The feeds can automatically update. You get notification of new pictures and comments on the standby screen.

Now you might say that “easy access to comments” is not a big deal. My question is: how is this any different from Jaiku or Twitter, really? If people are posting pictures throughout the day, getting periodic updates, and sending comments back and forth, isn’t this similar to the microbloging services?

I get the sense that much, much more is coming with Share Online and Shae on Ovi. I don’t have any inside knowledge here, so this is just my guess. What do you think?