I am the sort of person who has a nostalgic connection for text messages, and you never know which ones are going to make you feel nostalgic in, say, three years or thirty years, when we've all got gigapixel cameras imbedded in our foreheads and don't need computers anymore except to feed and sleep (but that's another blog post, I feel). So every once in a while I realize I've got 870 text messages in my inbox and maybe it would be nice for my phone if I cleared out at least the monosyllabic ones, and deleting about 200 messages one at a time is a serious pain in the neck.

So there's a nice little function, which is pretty familiar to many phone users, called Mark/Unmark. Essentially anything you choose to mark will show a little checkmark beside it, and if you mark a bunch of things at once, it's much easier to delete them or transfer them or whatever it is you're going to do with them. Marking and unmarking works with text messages and anything that's in your gallery (pics, ringing tones, tracks, video, presentations, etc). It also works on browser bookmarks and contacts. Contacts can be selected into groups, tracks sorted into playlists, and pics can be sent, transferred, printed, organized into albums, uploaded online, used in a muvee, deleted, or made into a slide show as a single batch.

What you can do with a bunch of marked items depends on what the thing is. So play around with it—you might find a trick or two that saves you time or even inspires you to do something with a set of images.

By now most of us are pretty familiar with the concept of group lists or mailing lists with email, and it only makes sense that this should also work on your phone.

In S60 phones, this is pretty easy. If you select any of your contacts, you'll see the option "Add to group" pop up in the menu. Or, from the contacts list, just hit the navigator key to the right to access your groups. This makes sending out mass SMS messages a lot easier if there's a bunch of people you frequently send messages to at the same time - whether that's for work, your baseball team, or "I love you" messages to all of your red-hot lovers (that'll probably get you in to trouble soon enough, though). Another nice feature is that you can use your contact groups to start up a Push to Talk call, if that's something you have from your operator.

Also, you can assign ringing tones to your groups, so you know whether an incoming call is from your center fielder or from a hot date. If you're dating your hot center fielder, I'm not sure which ring tone you'll get, but I invite you to try it out. :)

Some people have so many contacts that they sometimes get this Laura mixed up from that Laura or, even worse, forget who people are entirely. One solution that some people use with S60 phones is to organize their contacts into groups, so you get a bit of extra help in sorting which person is which. Just create a group for business projects, or your baseball team. Or, of course, your red-hot lovers. Might want to use a code word for that one.

"Good memory, but short" is something they say here in Helsinki, and I have a feeling it applies mostly to Great People You Met At A Party Last Weekend & You'll Never Ever Remember Their Names, Ever. This sort of thing happens to me a lot, it seems—I have a theory about my meeting a lot of people and my brain basically doing social memory triage and deleting tonnes of names and faces really shortly after hearing and seeing them in order to maximize the chances that I'll remember where I locked my bike, or what my own name is, etc.

But anyway there's something in S60 that really comes in handy when you meet a lot of people: assigning pictures to your contacts. What you do is snap a shot of the person, and when you get their name and number, set that picture to be their thumbnail. When they call you (or when you call them, or just look at their entry in the contacts) you'll see a little avatar-sized photo of them. This works great when about a week ago you were at a party where there were a lot of new people, or a conference where you met a bunch of new potential business contacts.

There are two ways to do it: when editing the contact details, choose "Add thumbnail" and you'll open the phone's gallery, where you can select the photo to use. Or, if you're browsing your pictures, you can select a photo, choose Use image > Assign to contacts.

I remember when I first got a phone that featured a calendar and all that jazz, I really didn't think I could be bothered to put in the time to start using it. I don't know if I just got bored on the train one day or if I got insomnia, but somehow I accidentally started to play around with the phone's calendar, and I have to say I'm a bit of a devotee. My schedule, I would bet a hot dinner, features a complexity set to rival, say, the Secretary General of the United Nations, so I really need to be able to access my calendar whenever changes to plans come up. If I get really, really honest: I have a calendar on my phone, I use Microsoft Outlook at work, but I also have a Moleskine dayplanner (to match my Moleskine obsession) that goes everywhere with me, and a wipe-off-use-again-get-that-nice-ink-all-over-your-fingers wall calendar at home. Looking at just my friends and family, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has an elaborate system worked out, but whether you're looking for redundancy in your timekeeping system, or a way to actually simplify your calendar habits, consider using your phone.

The way I've found that works best with my phone's calendar is to make sure I synchronize with my PC calendar at work. If you don't use a calendar application for your work or to organize your life in general, then you can just rely on the S60 calendar and you're pretty much set.

The biggest advantage of the phone calendar is that you can get a reminder (set a reminder alarm for any time, any day) and you're sure to get it when you need it. A book doesn't do that for you, and a computer only gives you reminders when you're sitting in front of it.

If you have recurring appointments, you don't have to key them in every time. Just type it in once and set it to repeat daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or even yearly. This is great for birthdays—you get reminded to send someone birthday wishes and bingo, your phone's already in your hand. (I have a feeling this feature might even have something to do with why my brother actually remembered to call me on my birthday this year. It's either that or Facebook, surely, but I'm not complaining.)

One more tip regarding calendar reminders: the newer S60 versions, such as that in the Nokia N95, allow you to set multiple alarm clock times, but with older versions you only get one (plus the snooze button, of course). If I had a flight to catch or something else important that required a seriously early start, I'd use the calendar to set a backup alarm a few minutes later.

I've noticed lately that I've been using my cameraphone as a kind of notebook, especially when I'm in a hurry. Running from work to rehearsal to the swimming hall is a lot easier when you know the public transport schedules (if you're carless like me), especially for the specific stops you tend to use. So I end up snapping a picture with my phone, because I know I'll always have my phone with me and can just look at the picture later. Here's an example from the 1A tram line in Helsinki—the text comes out clear as a bell, even the fine print. This was taken with a Nokia E50, which has a 1.3-megapixel camera.

But I've also found that taking pictures of flyers is useful—concerts, announcements for yoga classes, pretty much anything I see posted around town. I've even taken pictures of clothing while shopping (including the price tag) so when I go back to the first shop of the day to get the shirt I really wanted all along, it hasn't been made cheaper in my wishful thinking memory. Maybe if I take pictures of my keys often enough, I'll remember where those are, too.