I'd just like to announce that I've embarked on 2 new projects - S60 Developer, which hosts widgets and applications I've developed for the S60 v5.0 platform - for all those switchers who moved to the new Nokia 5800XM (or those thinking of getting one!), and A Background Daily (which is not up yet) - providing high quality wallpapers for most popular desktop and mobile resolutions.

It's been great writing this blog and I hope you'll enjoy my new projects!

Due to personal reasons, I will not be available for the next few days - so there will be no blog posts until next week. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Looking back at the blog, it's been quite an achievement building it up from virtually no visitors/day to getting an army of 400 odd subscribers (according to Feedburner). However I found it extremely hard to commit to the regular updates for the blog, and especially in view of the current situation where I will be attending university in a foreign place, and so I regret to inform all subscribers that the blog will be suspended indefinitely. It's been a great and valuable experience since I've started, and I apologise to all readers that I have affected.

Grrr I do envy those UK residents; the latest N-Gage announcement from Nokia promises to offer 120,000 copies of the N-Gage game FIFA 08 to UK residents who own the new N-Gage compatible smart phones (N95, N82, N81, etc).

To further promote their N-Gage next generation mobile gaming service, Nokia is giving away 120,000 FIFA 08 licenses to any UK resident in possession of a compatible Nokia device (N95, N95 8gb, N81, N81 8gb, N82), until the end of August 2008.

Lucky devils. And this happens to be a marketing strategy by Nokia too...

Nokia released today a series of CCTV-style films documenting the amusingly absorbing effect of mobile FIFA 08.

Shot undercover on London’s tube network, each of these videos captures the bemused reactions of passengers witnessing a man so engrossed in his game that he does anything in order to avoid any disruption to his match. The aim of these short films is to drive viewers to www.n-gage.com/fifa08, a CCTV-bank-style site where you can watch any of these six videos at your leisure. From here you can download N-Gage, buy a Nokia N95 8gb or, if you already have the N-Gage application on your mobile, go straight to download your free FIFA 08 license.

Enough about that. If you're a UK resident just visit N-Gage (www.n-gage.com/fifa08) and redeem your free game before it's all out!

Yep, you read right. Nokia is offering a brand new pilot scheme for interested users who wish to participate in product development - basically put, it means that if you want to try all of Nokia's latest beta software and stuff like that, you've got to sign up to be a participant, as it won't be released for public downloading.

The difference to Beta Labs is quite clear cut. Beta Labs can share applications, content and services for trial usage to thousands and hundreds of thousands of users in an open platform. Nokia Pilots program is in contrast allowing Nokia’s different development teams, who’s work is still classified and in many cases not made public, to share their ideas with Nokia Pilots. Having said that, there is a need to restrict the access to this type of material and content. Thus, we require in some cases non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s) with Nokia Pilots.

What makes it worse is that even if I join, I probably won't be allowed to talk about it on the blog. A real shame - I know many readers are very curious about the latest apps and developments on their smart phones and N82s to see how they can make the most out of their device.

But then there's also this...

We are giving a few selected participants the chance to participate in real product development. What we mean by few is that we match our Nokia Pilot candidates interests to the different projects we are working on. In cases where the interests and Pilots user profiles match we will invite you to dedicated arenas where we are able to share information we would otherwise not be able to do. As a Nokia Pilot, you will become an advisor to our development teams from around the world. Nokia Pilots program offers an opportunity to be involved in the design, development and/or testing phases of concepts, products and/or services

Sounds like a brilliant way to get rid of the extra time on your hands. And it's a big chance to actually contribute to Nokia and the Symbian platform too...

Official recruitment starts in September of this year - just keep an eye on this page.

Oh yes, and Nokia: please don't give up Beta Labs and just focus on the pilot scheme - Beta Labs is winning over a lot of potential users as well as making us consumers feel that you're actively developing and supporting for our smart phones.

For those using Nokia Chat, here's some good news - it's been updated to a new version, with some big bug fixes as well as power consumption problems.

Naturally quite a bit of small errors have been eliminated after the releasing of the previous version. Problems resolved list contains fixes to some voice message related malfunctions and should resolve some connectivity related problems. Especially the battery lifetime should be improved from past in situations when the app is set to “Automatic” connection mode and you are in between WLAN and Cellular network often. In the comments, there was a note that someone got error when entering the Phonebook - this shouldn’t happen anymore.

Depending on demand, there's probably going to be support for offline messaging as well in future versions. Now all we need is some cross-platform lovin' with Google Talk/MSN/AIM/ICQ users, and this app will be complete...