Nokia Chat - Presence and IM with friend location features
Nokia Chat is a new, GPS-aware software and instant messaging service which is being previewed through Nokia Beta Labs. Nokia Chat is an instant messaging and presence application with added location features. Generic location information can be shared via your presence message, via matching GPS position with selected existing (Nokia Maps) favourite places or you can send an ad-hoc exact location as a chat message. Read on for more information, a brief review and screenshots.
The basic features of Nokia Chat are similar to any other IM service. There's a friend list and you can activate a chat window for anyone on this list. There's an option to send smileys and voice messages (the latter didn't work in our tests), but overall the functionality is relatively bare bones (e.g. no file sending, no group chats and so on).
Note the presence message (in brackets) shows the location for Ricky and Steve.
There is also the expected presence (status) indicator: Available (green), On the phone (blue - set automatically), Away (yellow), Do not disturb (red) and Offline (Grey). You also have the ability to set a customised presence message which could be used to describe what you are doing (e.g. down the pub).
However what makes Nokia Chat stand out are the location features it offers. One of these is the ability to use your phone's built-in GPS to send a 'location link'. This appears as a hyperlink in the chat window of your friend which will open up Nokia Maps and show them your current location. This is similar to the ability to send a location (lmx file) from within Nokia Maps, but is clearly more useful in the IM/contact list scenario.
Find out where your friend is and get your phone to give you directions. Switch off brain and let your phone do it all.
The second location feature is integrated with your presence message (appended, in brackets, to any status message). It will selectively show your location based on your proximity to chosen locations. These, configured in settings, are based on your stored Landmarks (as used in Nokia Maps and Google Maps). In practice, what this means is that your location will be shown in your presence message (e.g. Phil's Cafe) when your phone detects that you are at (or at least near) the location. You can choose which landmarks will be used in this way (e.g. home, work, pub, cinema etc.) It is a rather neat solution to some of the privacy issues that surround location information, since your location can only be seen at places you have chosen. The key advantage is that, once you have set it up, it is completely automatic.
Nokia Chat has some limited integration with Contacts. You can switch back and forth between the two using a drop down menu accessed by pressing the left direction pad (a similar feature is found in the Gizmo VoIP software). Hopefully future versions will see better integration between the two contact lists. There's also integration with the status icon bar of S60 - a small icon showing a chat bubble indicates a new IM has been received.
The application itself has some nice touches. The connection settings allow you to specify both WLAN access points and a GPRS/3G access point. The application will automatically and seamlessly switch between these. Other settings include the ability to auto-accept friend requests and login automatically at start up. There are also application functions to invite a friend to join Nokia Chat and to add profile information (e.g. an avatar/photo) from within the application.
If you are interested in this sort of application then it is well worth downloading, even in its beta state.
Nokia Chat is based on the XMPP/Jabber protocol and can federate with other such services. For example, you can add Google Talk contacts to Nokia Chat, talk to them and see their presence information. You will be able to see generic location information because it is part of your status (i.e. locations set through Landmarks) on federated services, but you cannot send precise location information (no Nokia Maps to integrate with).
Nokia Chat uses the new unified Nokia Account service (as does the recently announced Files on Ovi). You can get an account at account.nokia.com or sign up from within the chat application. Your user id will be username@ovi.com (e.g. rafe@ovi.com) - you can use this to add friends directly instead of using the search feature.
Nokia Chat is in Beta and there may be a few stability issues. Bear this in mind before deciding whether to install the application. Nokia are looking for feedback on the application and service. You can give your feedback these at the Nokia Beta Labs website.
I expect Nokia Chat could potentially become a very important platform for Nokia to deliver location and presence based services in the future. These are two of the hottest areas in mobile services. However, operators may not be entirely welcoming, given that IM has the potential to seriously impact SMS revenues and many have their own ideas about presence and location platforms (though we're getting a little too far ahead of ourselves here - this is just a beta application).
Clearly, at one level, IM is only as useful as the number of people you have in your contact list. Another isolated IM platform clearly would not get very far on its own. However by using the XMPP standard, Nokia is doing its best to get round this problem - XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an open standard for near-instantaneous exchange of message and presence information. As we noted above, this mean it can be used with Google Talk or any other XMPP based service (e.g. Gizmo, Apple iChat). Theoretically, XMPP based services can also use 'transports/gateways' to other IM networks. These have to be implemented on the service side, but they can be used to connect with users on other IM networks. I would not be surprised to see some activity from Nokia in this area in future releases. Equally you should be able to use Nokia Chat with any XMPP/Jabber enabled IM client on another computer.
Here's a video from the Beta Labs team explaining Nokia Chat:
Links
Published by Rafe Blandford at 15:31 UTC, July 10th
Categories: Software, Miscellaneous
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition
News Discussion
I'm a huge XMPP/Jabber advocate, user, and developer. I'm disappointed Nokia Chat won't run on my E61 and needs me to sign up for yet another Jabber ID, but as a first step it's a brilliant positive move away from the closed desert of Wireless Village/IMPS - does anyone really use the current IM client on an S60 phone? No, I thought not.
If Nokia can let you use it with any JID - Federation baby, it's the future, and it's here today - then this will be yet another killer app in the S60 armoury.
They still need to add this feature in Maps itself though.
But excellent to see. I look forward to a 'does it all' platform for Nokias one day. On the phone, and web based.
One login to online documents, IM (on the computer and mobile), GPS (with locations, friends shared favourites, routes, etc etc), phone backups and sync, and much much more.
Why did you just link to Phil's video, instead of embedding it here?
1) I didn't realize you could embed it
2) I didn't know how to do it
3) I didn't find it worth embedding
4) Some other reason?
We are wondering are these videos worth producing systematically for all forthcoming Beta Labs apps. We assumed that sites like yours would be interested to embed them at their own sites. Unfortunately, nobody has done so yet.
What do you think, are these videos worth producing? How could we improve them (or the sharing mechanism) so that you would be interested to embed them here?
cheers,
- tommi
[I]So is a lot of spam if your not careful.[/I]
[/quote]
Tommi - there wasn't any one over riding reason for this, but a couple of factors. I had written a reasonably comprehensive write up myself so didn't think embedding the video was completely necessary (i.e. how much value does it add to my post). Obviously it is a valuable resource which is why I included a direct link to it on Ovi (wanted to highlight there was a video).
I guess a part of my thinking was also that visiting the Beta Labs blog post was an essential and people would see and view the video there.
Finally (and a minor point) I haven't written the code that deals with Share on Ovi video embeds to make them viewable (or at least degrading gracefully) on the mobile version of the site. (The content is pulled from the database and configured appropriately for each version). I'm actually working on something (long term as I have a lot on my to do list) that would mean video would get used a lot more on the site in general - until that's finished video probably wont get used as much as it should. Shoot me an email if you want more details.
If I'm honest I may also have been a bit lazy. Although there's part of me that thinks it is better manners to directly link to a video rather than embed it. (I'm not consistent on this at all though). The upshot of your comment is that I'll shortly add the video as an embed on the post and will be using them if there are any more in the future (and try to better integrate them into the content flow).
From my perspective I think the video was good - its good to have something that can summarise the beta in a nice consumable piece of media. This is especially the case for the more complex betas. I might be tempted to make it a bit more descriptive. Of course maybe that's the community's role - to try and give people an independent perspective / summary on the stuff out of Beta Labs.
It is not aas easy to find location of a chat friend in
many chat rooms. since chat is controlled by the server.
but with this site you can find Country, City, OS, local Time. more...
It is Free to join for every one ( since it is in beta stage)
try your luck!!
[url]http://www.chatrack.frihost.net/?SignUp=Free[/url]
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