Yup. Got appointed to a dream job, as the manager of Nokia Beta Labs, effective tomorrow i.e. 1 September.

This is, by far, the most exciting opportunity I've had during my 5-year career at Nokia. I really want to use this opportunity well, and take the Beta Labs to the next level.

During the next six months or so, I hope to:

1. Get all relevant Nokia apps&services into the Beta Labs loop
2. Foster an active user community around Beta Labs, and encourage them into co-creation with Nokia (via redesign of the website, top-level blog, transparent feedback system, active two-way dialogue, etc.)
3. Foster "beta culture" inside Nokia
- removing barriers to releasing pre-commercial stuff to the Beta Labs
- getting lead-users (= top contributors of Beta Labs) more closely involved in Nokia's innovation process

Let's make this thing rock.

More later. Stay tuned.

Ps. here's a powerpoint slide to explain what Nokia Beta Labs is all about

Pps. this blog will be dedicated to Nokia Beta Labs for the next two months.

Update: comments thread closed. Nokia Beta Labs blog and all related discussions have been moved to http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog.

So here's our brand-new Internet services brand name, a well-kept secret even among us Nokia insiders. I have been pondering this for a while, and I think I like it. But as a Finn, I'm not qualified to make the call... You know, the term "ovi" means "door" in Finnish, as explained everywhere, and therefore we might get different vibes from the term than other folks.

Question to non-Finnish readers: how do you like it?
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Ps. right now, there's only a flash demo and a couple of press releases behind www.ovi.com, but forthcoming Nokia services - starting with Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage - are supposed to go under this umbrella.

Pps. Charlie is da man.

Nokia just announced:

Starting today Nokia customers in eleven countries with compatible S60 devices can download the new suite enabling access to Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts and Windows Live Spaces. Starting next year, customers who purchase compatible Nokia Series 40 handsets will also have access to these popular Windows Live services.

I think this is the link that should become alive today: http://www.nokia.com/windowslive

Now that our brand-new Feature Wishlist has been up and running for a week, the usual suspects are starting to emerge, along with a number of interesting new requests.

Let's look at this old favorite:

Related to that, Aron raised a valid question:

These messages got huge coverage by you and other blogers and the relevant response has been... None or slight.
So what will be different when the same topics rise there?
Can you encourage us a bit that it will be better there?

Well, I can't. If something ends up at the top of the wishlist, it doesn't mean it will be implemented. That would be plain dumb, for two reasons:

1. The costs might be higher than the benefits. For example, it wouldn't be wise for Nokia to start developing an invisibility cloaking device, just because it got the most votes from you.

2. Voters are biased. A typical Wishlist user loves technology, and might ask for things that an average user would hate or be afraid of.

So what can you expect by submitting and voting requests in our Feature Wishlist?

I think it's about getting your voice heard. The higher you get on the voting list, the higher your chances are to get noticed - and considered by people who matter. After that, it's their job to make the choices what to implement and what not.

What do you think, does this sound fair?
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Ps. I think the E61 update wish was a good one. By now, I believe you have made sure that the people who matter have heard your message. About is it feasible, I can't unfortunately comment.

Interesting. Nokia has started offering official podcasts, in addition to Phil's ramblings at Voice of S60.

As opposed to Voice of S60's more bottom-up approach, the first Nokia Podcast guests come straight from the top:
- Rick Simonson (Chief Financial Officer)
- Tero Ojanperä (Chief Technology Officer)
- Bob Iannucci (Head of Nokia Research Center)

If you want to subscribe, as I just did, here* is the XML feed for your podcasting client.

* = if you copy the link from the official page, you'll get an extra space character to the URL (that shouldn't be there)

Rock on. We have now two wish lists:
1. Application Wishlist - for 3rd party applications
2. Feature Wishlist - for actual S60 platform and built-in apps

I'm curiously waiting to see how the digg-style voting works. If it works well, the Feature Wishlist could end up as the most important channel for users to send feature requests to Nokia. Until now, the problem has been how to filter good suggestions from the massive pile of dorky ones.

From now on, please send your improvement wishes to the Feature Wishlist instead of my (or some other S60 blogger's) email inbox. That way, it has much better chances to end up in the actual Nokia offering.

Now, let's go and make it work.

Phil has more details.

Simon Judge wrote in Mobile Phone Development:

People often ask me why there aren’t that many successful Java ME consumer applications that aren’t games.
...
It’s interesting that the few non-game applications that do become successful perform most of their processing at the server. Examples include Opera Mini, EmailViewer by ReqWireless (which was acquired by Google) and Google’s own mobile GMail application. These applications are just a window on more open, capable and consistent processing somewhere else.

I have spotted this trend too. Can you think of any exceptions?

Via Open Gardens, I just learned about 3neXt, a brand-new mobile applications site by the UK operator 3. They are trying, over time, to build a large catalogue of links to interesting mobile applications and services. What I find the most interesting, is that they invite the users to suggest, vote, and rate the items. Now, that's not something I would expect from the other, more traditional operators... Once again, 3, I salute you!

I wonder should we at Nokia/S60 do something similar?