All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Communities: the Social Messaging beta, initially reaches out to Facebook
Published by Ewan Spence, Steve Litchfield at 9:37 UTC, September 3rd 2009
More betas in from Nokia World, with Communities, billed as a 'Social Messaging' beta. The idea is that this can handle all your friends and updates for all social networks - an über client. This early version is quite limited though and only compatible with Facebook and the N97. I've explored it with screenshots below and there's also an official video to enjoy.
Just as in the Lifecasting widget, this is a very early release, and while support for up to 20 social networks has been mentioned, the client currently only talks with Facebook. This isn't a bad thing, after all Facebook is one of the largest communities out there and the demographic is certainly skewed to people likely to buy a smartphone for staying in touch - but it's important to open up this service as soon as possible to other clients and sites. And to other devices, of course.
On the left, note the N97 homescreen widget - this doesn't do much more than act as a launcher for the full Web Runtime widget, shown on the right. It works at roughly the same speed as the official Facebook widget, i.e. it's not quick. RAM use is around 2MB for the homescreen mini-panel and getting on for 8MB for the full thing, so it's heavy on resources.
Showing the Inbox view - it's not currently clear how the interface will change when more than one community is supported. On the right, showing the stub message that appears when you try to bring up the Events or Requests tabs - this is, as advertised, clearly an early working version.
Posting a new status message is simple - presumably with multiple communities, this will go out to each. There's optional geotagging of your status (very cool) and a handy Quick Text system (not implemented yet) which will allow quick pasting in of common phrases (e.g. "Attending a meeting today:")
More info and downloads at Nokia Beta labs.
News Discussion
Where has the love for S60v3 gone?
im also gettin worried the n series is gonna lose s60v3 phones altogether!!
hope this sorta thing does make a port to v3 soon...
You mention in the title of this post that the SM beta "reaches out to Facebook Chat" however, having used the app and read your post, I cannot see anything that relates to the use of the Facebook Chat feature, something that Facebook 3.0 on iPhone can currently do.
Do you know something we don't?? ;)
However, it's a shame as the N97 Facebook offerings have now fallen behind the app on iPhone and the ability to chat would be a big boon.
Wait & see, I guess :)
so say you're sitting at home eating cake, it posts your Latitude & Longitude, Address and a link to it on a map.
and on Facebook I have about 900 people who aren't my friends at all really so I don't want them peeping through my bushes or stealing my cake
I promptly deleted it
maybe if it just posted photos without stealing and projecting your location, then it might be nice.
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