I don’t know why but I’m in a “Tell it as it should be” mood, so I’m going to voice my opinion once again.  And as usual it’s directed at Nokia, don’t take it personally Nokia, I really like you and want you to succeed and blow away the competition.  Now that that’s out of the way here it is.

The Nokia Ovi Store doesn’t always have the most current version of apps so when I download them I’m starting off not being up to date.  For example I downloaded Fring from the Ovi Store after a firmware update of my E71 and started to run the app.  I realized the app wasn’t up to date so I went to m.fring.com and got the newest version.  I also downloaded emoze from the Ovi Store and as soon as I got it set up it automatically checks for new versions and low and behold there was a new one.

Now I’m a bit of what you would call an extremist when it comes to cell phones but I do expect the part of the company that directly interfaces with the consumer on a day in day out basis (the Ovi App Store) should have the absolute newest builds within 24 hours after they are published on the companies own site.  It should be part of the agreement of putting your app in the app store that it is updated as the software is updated and in a timely fashion.  Otherwise just make the app store a link farm and send me to m.fring.com and m.emoze.com to download the app knowing it will be the freshest from the developers.

To be clear, I’m not laying the blame on the companies but on the Ovi Store itself.  This needs to be part of the deal to be allowed to have your app in the Ovi Store.  But the companies producing these apps could do a better job as well.

Ok, I’m done giving my constructive criticism for today.  Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

Hello Nokia, are you there?  Are you listening?

Ok now that I have your attention I have something to tell you.  Come close so I can tell you in your ear.  A little closer.  IT’S TIME.  It’s time to start pushing apps like never before.  It’s time to step up your game like never before.  It’s time to start competing on the main stage again.  The masses are starting to forget who you are and your name is being trampled in the dirt.

Nokia are you listening?  Are you there?  I’ve just been given an N97 mini to play with and well it seems like you’re at the very beginning of the right track.  But you’re still floundering a bit like a fish out of water.  It seems like things are moving along but not fast enough.

Nokia are you listening?  Are you there?  I have a suggestion for you.  Come close so I can tell you in your ear.  A little closer.  HIRE DEVELOPERS TO DEVELOP APPLICATIONS.  Yes you heard me.  Hire a developer to create an app for DropBox, a developer to create an app for Evernote, an app for Fandango, an app for Kayak, and app for Layar, an app for OpenTable, an app for TripIt, Urbanspoon, GoogleVoice, ZumoDrive and all the other big apps that don’t yet have a Symbian version.

You’re lucky enough to have apps like Truphone, JoikuSpot, Gravity, Nimbuzz, Fring, and emoze.  Give these developers a ton more support.

Better yet, better yet, create  web apps and show the world that platform specific apps are silly!  Ok ok I won’t get out of hand, just work on making apps for Symbian and lots of them.  I’m sick and tired of not having apps for the device I choose to use.  Yes I still prefer Symbian over any other platform.  But this could change if things don’t get better and I’m sure many other people feel the same way I do.

I suggest contacting as many good developers as you can and putting them on retainer to start developing as many hi profile apps as possible.  I’m talking about the apps that will get the big download numbers and keep people interested in Symbian.  It’s just not enough to wait and hope developers create their apps for Symbian as well as all the other platforms they’re already developing for.  It’s just not going to happen guys, Symbian has lost some of it’s luster in the public eye, this is a way to get some of that shine back.

So Nokia it’s your job to get these apps built, at way necessary.  Good luck and if you need some help, I know a few developers.

So I used the E75 for a while then went back to my trusty E71 and back and forth and back and forth for weeks now.  I love the format of my E71 but like the menu and speed of the E75.  Plus the E75 has US 3G and my E71 doesn’t.

I keep telling myself be patient the E72 is coming.  SO WHERE IS IT NOKIA?  We haven’t heard a peep in what feels like months about the E72.  I’m actually getting tempted to buy an iPhone to tide me over until the E72 arrives.

I was told that it should be out around CTIA in San Diego next week.  Well next week is almost here.

Import thing is I’ve been told that emoze and Truphone will both work on the E72.  I would imagine that Nimbuzz and JoikuSpot will also because they work on the E75.  So I’m set in terms of my must have apps.

Now I was told that there would not be a North American version but I was then reminded that probably meant that it wouldn’t be picked up by a provider like AT&T or T-Mobile but that Nokia would still launch it.  My only question is how long will we have to wait for the NAM version?  Nokia has a nasty habit (except for 2 handsets recently) of launching NAM versions weeks or even months after the European variant is made available.  So let’s hope they launch at the same time.

A few reasons I’m so excited about this handset is that it will have the same physical format as the E71.  It will have the upgraded firmware including Feature Pack 2 and have the juiced up processor/RAM.  Lastly because of the 5mp camera and 3.5mm headphone jack.

I’m tapping my fingers on my desk as I wait………

So as all of my readers know I’m a hard core Nokia E71 fanboy.  I’ve been infatuated with the E71 since I first heard about it roughly 2 years ago.  Now I’m impatiently waiting for the much anticipated E72 but I decided to whip out the E75 I was graciously lent for review and have been using it for 4 days now.  Hot shit, this phone is great.  I forgot how much I liked it.  It’s not perfect but I’m really digging it.  I forgot how much I liked it when I first used it.

S60 3rd edition feature pack 2 is really a nice upgrade to the E71’s feature pack 1.  There are so many little things I like more about it, but what the E75 is missing is memory/RAM.  The E75 seems to stall out sometimes and needs a reboot but that’s really my only single complaint about the software.  Of course it could be a little faster and of course it could have more of this or smarter that, but in general it’s all around solid software.

As far as the hardware goes it’s a candy bar style with a side slide QWERTY keyboard that’s 90% great and 10% ehh because of the lack of tactile feedback on the QWERTY portion.  I find it to be very useful and descent to type on.  You do need 2 hands to type on it because of the width of the keyboard which is good or bad depending on your preference.  Personally it is not my taste but I know quite a few people that are gaga over this style and particularly the E75.

Software wise the E75 does support the 4 apps I can’t live without and of course many many more apps but in particular
emoze – a push email and content client (my companies client)
Truphone – mobile VOIP offering me cheap international calls around the world and to my home country when I’m traveling
JoikuSpot – an app that turns my phone into a wifi hotspot by rebroadcasting the 3G it pulls in
Nimbuzz – an instant messaging (IM) client that supports GChat, Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo and ICQ

All in all the E75 is a solid piece of kit that doubles and triples as multiple devices.  Regular phone, VOIP, email, IM and wifi hotspot one by one or all at once.  This phone won’t disappoint and won’t let you down.  I have high regard for it but it’s not perfect because of the minimal RAM.  Most people would never miss it but I like to run everything all at once so if you’re a power user hold out a little longer for the E72 or something else otherwise I say pick one up and enjoy.

It’s no secret what I do.  I’m working online doing brand reputation management for emoze.  I came across a blog post today by Erik Qualman and want to share it with you.  It’s on his blog socialnomics.com.  I want you to see some very interesting statistics from this post.  I just watched the presentation and can’t stop thinking about all those people using social media.  I posted the stats below his presentation.

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
18. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
22. Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
27. Only 14% trust advertisements
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
32. According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser

I’m working with social media and I still to this day am shocked sometimes when I think about the enormity of it and how it is/will affect us all.  Erik I will be reading your blog regularly now based purely on this one post.  Thank you.

I am a pretty heavy email user and Mondays seem to be all about clearing out and responding to 2 days worth of email, that is until I started using mobile email. Now I am able to read my email over the weekend (if I’m inclined) and have it marked as read back in my inbox. My choice of mobile email providers is emoze (a client).  I find it very well integrated into my phone and it is very lite on my battery life.  Before using emoze I could read the mail but it would all still be marked as unread in my inbox.  I was using an unnamed service before and for some reason it just wouldn’t mark my messages read.

If you read my blog very often I’m a big fan of anything that saves me time and emoze is definitely a big time saver for me every Monday morning. For that matter I’m able to check my email before I even get to my computer every morning, which is nice because I can see if I need to rush into the office to deal with something big or just make my way in and get to work.

emoze is a real time saver for me and a tool I use all day every day.  It seems like I reach for my phone first before going to the mail on my computer because my phone alerts me first and it’s just all around easier sometimes.  I give emoze a big thumbs up.

If you want to try emoze you can download it directly to your phone at emoze.com from your mobile browser.

If you have any questions you can reach emoze on Twitter at @emozepushemail or email me at Jeb@emoze.com.

So I’m very excited about the E72.  It’s going to rock, blah blah blah, I can talk about it for hours.  I think it will change a few things for many people.  It looks like your average QWERTY keyboard phone, it will have good email (I use emoze), it will hopefully include Ovi Contacts (but I’ll still download my current favorite IM app called Palringo), the voice quality and speaker phone will be Nokia esqu… great, and it will be an all around solid phone.

Now what I think may change things for people is the 5mp camera built in.  It is not N97 quality but I think people will start to leave their point and shoot cameras at home and start relying more on their phone.  We’re already seeing this but the E72 is the first business class Nokia that will have a 5mp shooter.  It will give people the option to leave their pocket camera at home.  Or in my case leave the N97 or N79 at home.

Do you leave your P&S at home or do you lug around a small camera and a camera phone?  If you do or plan on owning a 5mp camera phone do you think you would leave a pocket camera at home more?  Let me know what you think.

So as many of my readers know emoze is a client of mine and I tend to write about them a great deal.  We are going to be launching an emoze blog very soon so there will be a great deal less posting about emoze on here.  This post is all about emoze but it’s definitely for this blog.

I have been using emoze for a while now on my beloved Nokia E71 but I was also using Nokia Messaging at the very same time.  I am a bit of a mobile email enthusiast and pretty addicted to being connected all the time.  I generally checked different email addresses with each of the different apps but a few weeks ago Nokia Messaging went down.  It is a good email app but just not super reliable.  I got tiered of not being able to count on it to always be getting my email.  So what do I do, I decide to go solely with emoze.  I could not be happier.  I have been using just emoze to collect my mail for a few weeks now and it has been wonderful.  I have the icon on my home screen letting me know all is well with emoze and I’m reliably getting all my messages now.

emoze is just rocking and rolling and I’m very excited about what’s coming out soon.  I’ll share a little secret, it has to do with emoze push email on the iPhone.  I know many of you are waiting patiently and I only ask that you continue.  I know it’s not easy but we want to get this right for you.

Blackberry is in trouble, I mean deep trouble.  The trend lately has been for anyone and everyone to go out and pick up a smart phone when it’s time for a new phone.  People are no longer just getting ultra basic phones and only making calls and sending sms on them.  The masses want more from their device, they expect a phone to check the weather, access Twitter, surf the net, get driving directions and I think most common, offer email access.  Email has been a staple for Blackberry since it’s inception and for the most part they have done a great job with it.  Of course some people have a few niggles here and there but bar none Blackberry was the mobile email standard.

Up until a few years ago mobile email was kept in the echelons of the corporate executive and the upper class.  Recently it has gone mainstream (do to Rims excellent marketing) and Rim has been able to milk that and in some peoples minds create a demand for mobile email for all.  Well Rim may have kicked themselves in the shorts.  They created a void with people who want mobile email but can’t afford or don’t want/need a Blackberry device.  People who want email on their phone now have more options then ever and don’t need to stick to a Blackberry.  This means Rim may be seeing a mass exodus to other popular devices like the iPhone, Palm Pre and Nokias vast number of smart phones.  Let’s not forget the dozens of smart phones that go unnamed but can handle downloading apps.  Blackberry is in serious trouble because now most phones can do email and in my circles everyone buying a new phone is getting a non Blackberry smart phone.  They are going for the iPhone,Nokia N97/E71/E75/6650/Surge, or Palm Pre.

Up until recently Rim has had a hold on the market and they’ve done such good product placement and advertising job even kids were getting Berries in mass.  It was the hip cool device to have.  Now times are shifting and people want more from their devices like better music player, camera, and video players.

emoze along with a few other email apps are filling the instant email void.  To the best of my knowledge emoze is the only option that will work on multiple platforms, including smart & dumb phones, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, and push your email.  If you’re interested emoze (a client of mine) has a paid (about $13/yr) option and a free version.  Check it out at www.emoze.com.

Rim you need to get back to work and not stand on your laurels or you will get cut off at the knees.  You have something very good going but you need to rethink how you’re getting the word out and work on the younger hip crowd again.  Rim are you listening? Ping me and we can talk.

I use messaging a great deal, from sms to email to instant messaging to Twitter to video chat to voice mail (unfortunately), I spend a lot of time communicating.  I was thinking recently when will we see messaging apps evolve again?  I’m hoping Google Wave will help but I don’t think it will take it as far as I’m thinking.  I would really like to see what Googles Gmail does.  Gmail right now just puts your email and IM (it’s an option you have to turn on) in one overall inbox.  Also Google Voice shows you all your voicemail and sms in one inbox.  So when do we get ONE inbox for everything???

I use emoze (a client of mine) and Nokia Messaging for email, Ovi Contacts and Nimbuzz & Fring for IM, the built in text message (sms) app and Dabr for Twitter on my mobile phones and would really like to see an overall inbox that we can see all incoming and outgoing communications.  I would like to see my email, sms, voicemail, IM, and @/direct messages (I use Topify) in one place.  This could be similar to what Nokia has in it’s messaging folder already where it includes email and sms.  I’m sick of going to all different in-boxes.  When can I just have one.  Things should be color coded, easily filtered and have sub folders so it looks more traditional the way some would like to see it.  I for one would really like to have one of these messaging apps include it all.  It may need to be something more like emoze that is heavily embedded in my phones messaging folder so it can access sms and voice messages too.

I’m envisioning something with tiny logos and colors for each different means of communication but a standard view with different lines for each message showing who it’s from and a time/day stamp.  Maybe when I highlight the message the first few words of the message would appear.  I would also like the address book from the phone to include all the contact info from each contact platform but we’ll save that for another blog post.

So basically when will it all come together in one place but include awesome filtering for divided views too.   I hope we get this very soon and on both the desktop and mobile platforms.  It would really be great if it was all done with something like IMAP so it was all in sync to.  I may be asking to much but come on it’s 2009 and if we can’t have flying cars this decade can’t we at least have one inbox?

By: Jeb Brilliant
Jeb is a technology enthusiast and mobile communications junkie.  He works in the industry as a writer, consultant and event producer.  Follow Jeb on Twitter @JebBrilliant