About a year ago, our barcode reader surfaced in Nokia N93 user manual, and I promoted it in a blog post
2D barcodes will rule the earth. Very interesting discussion followed (52 comments).

Six months later, as we were about to put the barcode reader available as a .sis package for N73 and N80, I explained the whole concept - and the need for open standards - in a post with a bombastic title 2D Barcode Manifesto. Extremely interesting discussion followed (so far, 75 comments from industry insiders and other insightful people)

To summarize, Nokia has now demonstrated:
a) Mobile Codes: a nice mobile code generator (in beta)
b) a number of compatible barcode reader applications
c) our love for open standards etc.

What do you think we should do next?

Disclaimer: I'm not working directly with Nokia/S60 barcode stuff anymore. But I'm quite sure the other guys follow this discussion closely...

If you have any questions about S60 Widgets and Web Run-Time, please drop a comment. Ganesh kindly promised to reply to all your concerns.

Initial list of questions and concerns:

1. Are S60 Widgets and WidSets the same thing? If not, what are the differences? (from Symbian Guru)

2. Will this be available in the current installed base of S60 3rd edition devices? (from everywhere)

3. This feels scary. Are you clueless people opening security holes? (from the Register)

4. Are the widgets S60 specific? Or can they be ported across platforms?

5. How can I find cool and useful widgets from the clutter of useless ones? What is the cost of my time in locating said widget? (from Ring Nokia)

6. I don't use desktop widgets, they don't give me much extra benefit. Why would mobile widgets be any better? (from Ring Nokia etc.)

7. ...

8. ...

9. ...

10. ...

+1: What happened to the release of latest S60 Browser for download? (from Darla Mack)

Once again, Michael Mace makes a great point:

The way mobile web apps need to work is that they download the full app and a copy of your data to your device, so you can work independently. Then in the background, they should sync the data whenever you're connected.

Why on earth?

Two reasons:
1. Spotty coverage of high-speed data networks (the original reason identified by Michael)
2. Costs: getting free bandwidth from WiFi oases (the reason identified by Charlie Schick)

Now, go and design me an RSS reader that works like this. And make it so that it works across my S60 device, home computer, and work computer (which has access to Nokia internal RSS feeds), so that I don't have to see the same items multiple times.

Today is a good day, as we turn on the lights at Nokia Beta Labs. Go check it out!

The site says:

Nokia is continuously working on new ideas and innovations and improving our current applications and services. Please try them out and give us your feedback on how we can further improve them. Your feedback goes directly to the development teams that are working on the applications.

You know, this just might work.

However, the whole thing is still in beta (pun intended), and initially, there are only a couple of showcase applications/services available:
- Mobile Codes: user generated 2D barcodes
- Wellness diary
- Sports Tracker
- link to Widsets
- Mobile Gizmo (coming soon)

In the coming weeks and months, I hope that we'll be able to give you all kinds of wonderful apps and services (with some rough edges) through this channel. And in the long run, I would imagine this site as the main portal to find all the latest stuff from Nokia.

In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What do you think about the whole initiative? How could we make this a massive success for everyone? What do you think about the initial website? What should we add/remove/change?

I've been a strong advocate of Nokia Beta Labs inside Nokia, and therefore I'm fortunate to have a direct hotline to the chieftains behind this initiative. So, as always, I'll promise to pass on your most constructive suggestions directly to them.

The blog world seems to be a little upset by the (allegedly) poor battery life of the current über-phones Apple iPhone and Nokia N95. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out:

The Apple Blog: Dvorak: iPhone battery dead after 40 minutes
Mobhappy: How To Shoot Your World-Beating Mobile Phone In The Foot

I don't want to get into this debate again, as we have already had great discussions about battery life in this blog. And as we concluded, there won't be easy answers in the future because:
- all the wonderful stuff in mobile devices improves exponentially
- battery technology improves more slowly (linearly)

Anyway, something odd struck me yesterday: the battery life dilemma might, paradoxically, be a good thing too. In a way.

Let me explain.

Charlie Schick wrote last December about something we all have experienced:

Like at all 'Net conferences, the folks at Le Web 3 were calling out for flat rate wireless data. Sounds great, but I don't think most operators are prepared for flat rate data from all their customers. I think for the most part, their networks are not designed to have a ton of folks sucking bandwidth from a single cell.

Jyri Engesrtöm referred to 'flat-rate hell' (or something like that) - what happened to AOL when everyone started 'getting' online life and dialing up in droves.

As a counterpoint, Orange was the provider of wifi services for the 1000 delegates at Le Web 3. The network was really flaky (I was one of the few actually posting photos - off my N73 via GPRS). I think it was the number of base stations and all the folks trying to get on that was the problem.

Ready for that in the real world?

The parable demonstrates how free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through over-exploitation. This occurs because the benefits of exploitation accrue to individuals, each of which is motivated to maximize his or her own use of the resource, while the costs of exploitation are distributed between all those to whom the resource is available (which may be a wider class of individuals than those who are exploiting it).

For such problems, there are typically no easy answers. As the flat-fee plans come mainstream, the horror scenario would be that some ultra-heavy users could clog the whole network. After all, it wouldn't hurt you in any way if you to keep your data connections always on.

Now, as the battery life is likely to remain a major challenge in connected mobile devices, it sets up natural limits on how much individual people want to use the network. People will learn to use the network sparingly, despite having a flat-fee plan. And everybody wins, in a sense.

Heh. Always look on the bright side of life. Ta-dam-di-dam-di-dam.

(Ps. people struggling with battery life problems: apologies if this sounded like I was downplaying your distress. No intentions to do that. I think battery life is one of the most important things to take good care of nowadays.)

The head honcho of our S60 phonebook future development asked me to summarize your feedback here, here and here to the question "How would you revamp the phonebook? ...or would you?"

Here's what I replied:

From: Vilkamo Tommi
Sent: 2. huhtikuuta 2007 12:32
To: head honcho of S60 phonebook future development
Subject: RE: Public feedback on "How would you revamp the phonebook?"

Top-10 suggestions:
- Utilizing the screen estate better, and showing more info
- Integration with other apps (Maps, Logs, IM, Local search, Calendar, ...)
- Smarter search (search with T9, partial name, number, …)
- Easily accessed Top-lists (the contacts you call/SMS the most)
- Improve speed (especially when 1000+ contacts)
- Online/service backend (e.g. searchable contacts database, backup/restore, ...)
- Presence (in Jaiku style + availability in IM networks)
- Better synch with PC/Outlook/Mac
- Setting default numbers for phonecalls and SMS
- Sharing info between contacts (e.g. physical address, landline number, ...)

+1: Benchmark Jaiku, iPhone, DreamConnect, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm Treo, OS X, LaunchBar...

There are dozens of good suggestions that didn't fit into that top-10 list. For a complete story, please read through all the ~70 comments. I think it's worth it.

Thanks everybody!

Remember when we had a big debate about should Nokia set up application testing labs, and how the conclusion was that remote testing looks very promising?

Now, Forum Nokia has just launched a service called Remote Device Access, which offers developers over-the-Internet access to several Symbian/S60 devices, and allows remote application testing on actual target devices.

Daniel Rocha tells me it works really well. Go check it out.