Check out reviews of recent releases and previews of what's next for N-Gage, courtesy of the N-Gage blog.

The Sims 2: Pets

This week brought the release of The Sims 2: Pets to N-Gage gamers. Go to the Showroom and select Update Now to get the game. Or you can download from its official N-Gage page. You can also read a review of the game by Emo185, by way of the N-Gage blog.

Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol

Adventure game fans will enjoy following the exploits of the one and only Dirk Dagger. You can find video and screenshots at its official N-Gage page or try it out via the Flash version online.

The Dark Knight

The N-Gage version of this summer's most anticipated blockbuster comes out in July. For a preview, check out this sneak peek of the mobile game. While it's not the official N-Gage version, it gives you an idea of what you can expect next month.

What are your favorite N-Gage games so far? Share them in the comments.

What do you think of Nokia Beta Labs? Take the survey for your chance to win a Nokia Maps walk and drive license.

In the interest of improving the Beta Labs experience, a short survey has been developed. Three respondents will win a Nokia Maps walk and drive license. Why not take a few minutes to fill out the survey?

You can find all the details at the Nokia Beta Labs blog.

MobileCamp returns to San Francisco for another exciting event. Find out how to sign up and participate.

MobileCampSF2 will bring together mobile enthusiasts, explorers and professionals to share their visions for the future direction of mobility. Come with your own presentation to share, or just bring a curious mind and the desire to get involved!

When:

Saturday, June 14, 9:30AM - 5PM PT

Where:

Swedish American Hall
2174 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94114

How to sign up:

It's easy. Just send an email to mobilecampsf@gmail.com. And for more details, check out the MobileCampSF2 wiki.

Find out about AEN, the first comprehensive emergency communication system in the U.S., from CTO Chris Bennett.

If you wanted to know the weather in any city in the United States, you could go to The Weather Channel or weather.gov. But if you wanted to know about emergencies in those cities, where would you go? Surprisingly enough, there is no organized, secure system in place where emergency information issued by U.S. government agencies (other than the National Weather Service) is stored and accessible by the public.

America's Emergency Network (AEN) is trying to fill the gap by becoming the conduit that U.S. government officials will use to get their messages to the public via the Internet, TV and mobile devices. Like The WildLab, which I wrote about last week, AEN recently received recognition and licensing opportunities after placing in the semifinals of the Navteq Global LBS Challenge. I spoke with Chris Bennett, who manages AEN's technology initiatives, to find out more about the project.

Can you describe how the mobile phones will be employed for AEN?

If there's an emergency in your town - something localized like a tanker truck accident or something widespread like a hurricane - your officials can instantly send a live video news conference or text bulletin to your community and local TV stations via AEN.

When an official posts an emergency bulletin, this information is sent to the AEN Central Database, where at that point it's just a matter of distribution to get the message out. Our messages are encoded in a format called CAP, or Common Alerting Protocol, which looks a lot like an XML feed. CAP includes fields such as Severity, Recommended Response, Effective Time, and other meta data that makes sense to represent in an emergency communication.

Multiple devices, mainly our website and mobile phones, can then look at the CAP messages as they are sent out and format them for display to the user. The real beauty with mobile "location aware" devices is that we now know two things: one, where the location of the emergency is; and two, where the person holding the phone is. With this information, we're able to alert users of emergencies literally happening in their immediate area. This is a huge improvement over traditional systems that rely on you to enter a home zip code - which isn't all that helpful as soon as you begin to travel.

Is there a personal story behind your interest in dissemination of emergency alerts?

My interest in emergency alerts goes back to 2005 when I moved from Philadelphia to Florida with my greatest supporter and girlfriend Janet in the year of Hurricane Katrina (and many others). Having no idea how to prepare for a hurricane - I'm used to shoveling snow - I looked online and found little to no resources. That was the moment where co-founder Peter Loui and I founded OneStorm Hurricane Preparedness, a free website to help families create disaster plans. Through my work with OneStorm, I met CBS News' Bryan Norcross and former National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield who were just forming AEN. As of this month, I am now the CTO of AEN and launching a brand new version of OneStorm on June 1st.

What are the future plans for the AEN project?

There are three things that everyone wants to know (whether they know it or not) and two ways to get it on a mobile device. You want to know when there's an emergency (1) near your location at that moment, (2) near your home and (3) near family or loved ones. Our plans are to identify developers, device manufacturers and carriers that are ready to work with AEN's database of emergency messages to quickly answer those questions for you.

I see there being essentially two ways that AEN will integrate with your mobile device. First, the device always needs to listen for critical alerts near you in concert with location technologies in your phone. We see a future where device manufactures and carriers only want to sell phones that can receive emergency alerts - and where consumers wouldn't buy a phone without that feature. Second, there is a market for more advanced applications where AEN may sell software that incorporates real time traffic, weather and other tools that help persons navigate emergency situations.

With what devices does the AEN application currently work?

The application was optimized for the Nokia N95 but will run on any device that operates on the WHERE platform. It's our intention to develop for devices that incorporate devices' FM chips with RDS (Radio Data System) to receive messages even when cell networks are overwhelmed. With our partner AlertFM, we'll make sure that you can receive an emergency alert even if you can't get a call or an SMS through. It's pretty amazing technology to keep on the lookout for.

Is there anything else you'd like to talk about regarding the project or your work in mobile development?

What I love most about mobile development is that it's something new and fresh to get excited about. I think many of us have reached a point where web development can get a little stale (even after all the Web 2.0 hype). Just look at how eager people are to dive into the iPhone SDK or tap into the GPS power of the N95. It's fostering a whole new level of creativity that was long overdue. I foresee significant investment in this space and much innovation ahead. If I can be a part of that with AEN while making a big impact to those impacted by disasters – what could be better?

Part 2 of the series takes your new mobile site a step further. Learn how to customize your theme, allow access to device content, post to your mobile blog and more.

In Part 1 of this series, we registered your mobile site and got Mobile Web Server running on your device. Now it's time to take advantage of its many features.

Follow the Wizard!

Our mobile server is installed and running, but we haven't told it what to "serve" to web users. The easiest way to do that is to to use the web interface via the mobile web server itself.

Here's how you do it:

1. Make sure your server is set to Running.

2. Open up a browser on your PC and go to http//username.mymobilesite.net. My username is mobi, so my URL is http://mobi.mymobilesite.net. (If my site is offline, check out http://demo.mymobilesite.net.)

3. Log in to your site with the username and password from your registration.

4. The first thing you'll find is the Settings Wizard; click Yes to get started.

Welcome/Home Page

As any other site, your mobile site has a "Welcome" page. Give it a Title and add some Content, then click Next.

Language

With this setting you select the language for the site. Select it and click Next.

Theme

This controls the look of the site. You have a few options, so play around with the themes until you find one that matches your taste. You can always change the theme at a later time by going to the My Settings tab on the top right section of your site. When you're done, click Finish.

Home

After you click Finish in the last step, you're taken to the Welcome/Home section of your site. You'll notice that the title and content you created during the Settings Wizard are now in effect.

Mobile site features

While in the Home section of your site, you notice that the navigation sidebar also has a number of other options for you to select. Each one of those items in the sidebar is a feature available to you via your mobile site. Let's examine what these are.

Blog - like any other blog out there, you can now have a blog that's right in your pocket.

Camera - you can take a picture with your phone via your site or visitors can send you a request to take a picture.

Gallery - with this feature you or people you select can see items in your Gallery. There are a number of configurations to make it easy to create albums and access permissions.

Guestbook - let your visitors leave you a message.

Contact me - talk about instant communication, with this feature a visitor can send you an instant message or sms directly from your site. This message is almost guaranteed to reach you because the site is running off your phone.

Presence - when you use an instant message client on a PC, it shows your status, right? Mobile web server takes the concept a bit further and expands it with information that comes right out of your phone. Presence has three areas: availability information, device state and location. Availability information can show your device profile, your calendar availability and even your call state - available or on the phone. Device state includes things like battery, your data connection and time. Location gives your device coordinates.

Web chat - this a chat feature that visitors can use to communicate with you. You can reply back and messages show up on the site, just like any other chat system.

Calendar - this is a web interface to the calendar running on your phone. You can create meetings, memos, to-dos, etc. right from the browser. You can also give authorized users access to your site making it perfect for planning.

Messaging - consider this a web interface to the Messaging application that runs on your device. You have access to your inbox, drafts and even the capability to send text messages and even search - all this from your site.

Phone log - just like the Messaging feature, this is a web replica of the Log application on your device. You can see missed, received and dialed calls from this section.

Contacts - with this feature you can see all your contacts in alphabetical order. A search option is also available.

Let's blog!

Blogging is one of the most enticing features in Mobile Web Server. How about we set it up?

Access rights

Before we write our first post, we should go over the access rights. With access rights you can determine who can read your blog and who can comment on your blog. These permissions can make your blog private or public depending on your settings. For my site I give "Anonymous access" to "Read" as well as to "Read and Comment" to "Unauthorized users". That means that anyone can come to my mobile site and read my blog posts and also comment on posts that I've made.

First post

With the permissions out the way, we can now write our first post. Like any other web blog editor, you need a title for the post and then the content. I'll make my title be "Hello World!" and my content be "My first post, coming right out of my pocket! LOL." The content section accepts text as well as formatted HTML. For our first post, regular text would do.

Categories

You can have your posts filed under categories. Multiple categories are allowed and you can create them by separating them with a comma. For this post I'll create a category called Stuff. Create a category if you want or need one, then select Save.

Saved

Congratulations! You've written your first post. Your friends can read it by going to your mobile site, then going to the Blog section of your sidebar. Notice that once saved you have the option to select a category for your post. By default there's an All section, but if you have created a more specific category, you can select it. You also have the option of editing the post later on or adding an image if you like. There's even an RSS feed for those who want to keep track of your whereabouts.

What's next?

We've covered all the features that are available in your mobile site in great detail. We've even written our first post using the Blog feature. Have fun with it! Explore some of the other features and share them with others.

In the next installment, we'll use the server for personal use directly from our computers via widgets and learn how Mobile Web Server can be used with Facebook. Until then, let me know if you find Mobile Web Server useful and how you're using it.

Learn how to run your own mobile site from your Nseries device and more with Mobile Web Server.

The Mobile Web Server team at Nokia has created a web server application that runs on your mobile device, which means the information that is "served" back to site users is data that resides in your device itself, like your photos or text messages. Not only that, Mobile Web Server can be configured to make your device perform certain actions based on a request.

What can I do with it?

Mobile Web Server enables you to do just about everything you'd expect from a web server:

- Create your own mobile web pages
- Create blogs on your web pages using a mobile device or a computer (via a web browser)
- Chat with web users who visit your mobile site
- Share media through your mobile device
- Share your mobile device calendar
- Share your presence information

In other words, web users will be able to access your mobile content on the internet through your mobile site. For an example of this, visit http://demo.mymobilesite.net

How do I get started?

There are four steps we'll go through to set up Mobile Web Server: register for an account, download and install the application, configure the application and start the server.

Register for an account

To register your Mobile Web Server account, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Mobile Web Server Portal at http://mymobilesite.net

2. Click Register, fill in the registration form, accept the service terms and click Submit registration.

Note: Pick your user name carefully. The user name becomes the first part of your mobile site name (as in http://sitename.mymobilesite.net) and you cannot change the user name and site name after the registration.

3. You will receive a registration confirmation email message to your email address after you fill out the form. Click the link in the message or copy it to your web browser to activate the registration.

Download and install the application

The application software is distributed as a SIS file. To download the file, you can use your mobile browser, or you can download the software to your computer and then sideload it to your phone via Bluetooth or the USB cable that came with your device. If you use your mobile browser, the installation starts automatically, so let's do it that way.

Open your mobile browser and enter the following web address:

http://download.mymobilesite.net

You'll receive a few prompts before finishing the installation.

1. Select Yes at the "Install Web Server?" prompt.

2. Select where to install the application, device memory or memory card.

3. When the phone displays notifications regarding the installation, select Continue.

4. Accept the end user software agreement by selecting OK. You will see a progress bar indicating the installation status.

Configure the application

When the installation is complete, the installer closes automatically and the Web Server starts for the first time. To help you complete the installation, the application runs a wizard where you must define a few settings:

Login name - Enter the user name that you picked during the registration.

Password - Enter the password that you defined during the registration.

Server Access Policy - Decide if you want to allow public access to your mobile site. To allow public access to your mobile site, select Options > Select.

To customize the appearance of your mobile web site - Select Options > Select > Open front page.

Internet Access Point (IAP) setting - Your phone must be connected to the internet in order to work. In this setting you select the connection that the phone will use. For those of you with 3G unlimited plans, use that connection. If you don't have a 3G plan, but have a wi-fi enabled phone, select a wi-fi access point - it's faster and cheaper.

Start the server

You can start your mobile web server either by connecting to the internet, or by using it locally without connecting to the Mobile Web Server Gateway. If you connect to the internet, web users can browse to your mobile site; if you start the web server locally, web users will not have access to your mobile site. Web users cannot access any content on your site before you have granted access rights to them.

To start the server, select Menu > My own > Web Server > Options > Start server and from the following:

1. If you are connecting to the internet, select an internet access point.

2. If you are connecting locally, to establish a network connection, select Yes and an internet access point.

3. If you have changed the default connection type setting to Always ask, select the connection type (Internet or Local). To establish a network connection, select "Yes" and an internet access point.

(Note: Keeping the web server running - and allowing web users to access it - causes data traffic to your mobile device through your service provider's network. Contact your service provider for information about data transmission charges or use your phone's wi-fi connection.)

When the Web Server is started, the connection information text is changed to "Running" or "Running locally" depending on the selected connection type. If you start the Web Server locally and you want to access your home page, select Options > View in browser or enter the address http://127.0.0.1 in your device browser. If the server wasn't started locally, you can view your site from any computer's browser by going to http://username.mymobilesite.net (insert your own user name, of course).

To stop the server, go to Options > Stop server. The server is stopped and whatever network connection you used to run the server will be disconnected.

What's next?

We've covered a lot in this installment! Your mobile web server is installed and running on your phone. In the next installment we'll finish the configuration and explore the Mobile Web Server gateway. I'll even show you a few exciting things you can do with your new mobile site.

See you in Part 2!

Get the story behind The WildLab from its creators, who used the N95 as part of their award-winning interactive project for birdwatchers and citizen scientists.

The WildLab is a mobile-based platform that enables citizen scientists to report, share and track their observations from the field. A smart implementation of mobile technology to survey the environment, the project recently took the 1st runner-up prize at the 2008 Navteq LBS challenge.

I spoke with creators Jared Lamenzo, Mohit SantRam and Kuan Huang (who form the company Mediated Spaces) to find out more about the project.

Can you describe how The WildLab works? What's the interaction for the person using it?

The WildLab uses the location-based capabilities of mobile devices to empower citizen scientists' explorations of the natural world. Citizen science is best represented by birdwatching, or "birding." The WildLab replaces traditional pen-and-paper bird counts, which are generally tallied by a sponsoring institution, and allows a birder to make real-time updates to their own database of sightings.

With The WildLab, birders enter the common name of a bird and the number of birds sighted; the date, time, latitude and longitude are saved as well. Besides sponsored bird counts, many birders have "birding life lists," and The WildLab can keep track of that data too.

The WildLab web site is designed to be a place where birders can educate each other, share stories and media and generally enjoy the fellowship for which the birding community is known.

Congratulations on being selected as the 1st runner-up at the Navteq LBS challenge. Now that the project has received recognition and some licensing opportunities, where do you plan to take it?

The verification of the idea at the NAVTEQ Challenge was very important to us, and we got some fantastic feedback from the mobile community. We are now working hard on expanding The WildLab's technical capabilities (like a location-based species look-ahead feature to ease typing, and access to a bird song database) and partnering with leading institutions that can use the data in environmental studies.

Birds are leading indicators of the health of an ecosystem, and the more eyes looking for and collecting data, the better. It makes a difference not only in the accuracy of the scientific study, but also in the understanding of the environment by the citizen scientist. We are also looking into using The WildLab as a platform for eco-tourism applications and other types of wildlife besides birds.

Has Mediated Spaces worked on previous mobile projects that informed this project?

It started with an astronomy project called The Skymap that maps the heavens for a user's current location and time on the globe. Incidentally, The Skymap just recently won 1st place in the Spring 2008 WHERE Developer Contest. Birdwatching came to the forefront after we did some beginner-level birdwatching in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and noted how people kept track of their sightings. There had to be a better way.

As technologists, we focus on getting people away from sitting in front of screens, and that's how we ended up in the mobile space. Technology serves us and enables rich experiences. It is deeply rewarding to see a "rare bird" in the field, or a silent constellation on a clear night. Hopefully, having a convenient way to guide oneself through nature and the universe will spur more people to go outside themselves.

You used an N95 to develop and test The WildLab. How did you take advantage of it for your project?

GPS. The ability to know your location opens up many possibilities. The birder is able to see what others have seen in that same location - this helps beginning birders learn what birds are common to an area, and alerts more experienced birders to something rare. It also allows us to add a map showing the location of birding "HotSpots", places people choose to go birding, on a map.

We built The WildLab for the WHERE platform, which uses a Java-like scripting language. Eventually, we would like to write a version specific to Nseries using WRT. The N95 performed well in the field; not only did we take advantage of its GPS capabilities, but it took some decent photographs too. It is amazing how far these devices have come - previously, some birders used a separate GPS device with a time-stamp, logged sightings on a separate PDA with bird list software and then synced them later to figure out the locations of their sightings. To be able to do all this on a mobile phone, a device that is just a couple decades old, is just terrific.

Is The WildLab available for download for the general public?

Currently, the application is available in a private beta on uLocate's where platform; we plan to formally launch in the near future. People who are interested in participating can contact us to try it out.

I saw on your web site that you brought The WildLab to the World Series of Birding. Anything interesting happen there?

Our 19-year-old teammate at the World Series of Birding was a little disappointed in the number of migrants that appeared; that was due to sub-optimal weather conditions. And 5AM was also a bit too early to deal with such a high density of mosquitoes. However, in the span of approximately four hours, we had identified almost 80 species of birds. By the end of the day, we had spotted nearly 100. We had a great time, and learned a lot. The large number of participants in the competition and the patience, dedication and sense of adventure of the birders were inspirational.

Here's how to play streaming music from last.fm on your N78, N82, N95, N810 or other Nseries device.

I've become a bit addicted to last.fm recently. I like that it collects and publishes a history of every song I listen to; when aggregated, this opens up many exciting possibilities.

Last.fm exposes a list of music "neighbors" - people that have music tastes similar to mine. I've found lots of interesting people with this feature. Sometimes, when meeting someone new, I'll check their last.fm profile to see what their tastes are like and how they compare to my recent habits.

Listening history not only helps you find people in common, but it also helps you discover new music. The idea is that you'll slowly venture beyond your music tastes and history and will explore similar artists and songs from your neighbors. You can do this by using something called last.fm radio. It'll use your history to automatically recommend and play songs from your neighbors (the neighborhood) or based on certain tags and friends that you pick.

There are a few last.fm clients, but I generally prefer using the Flash player on last.fm's website to listen to last.fm radio. Sometimes - especially when there's stuff to do around the apartment - I would set up my computer in the living room and have it stream radio. But then I started disliking the idea of having my computer crowding up already valuable space next to my TV and speakers. So I started looking for a way to get a small device like my phone to play last.fm radio instead.

I found two methods to do this: one method that works on the Nseries tablet (N800, N810) and one that works with S60 3rd edition handsets like the N78, N82 and N95.

For the internet tablets, you can use a last.fm client called Vagalume. Here's how:

1. To install the client, navigate to the Maemo Vagalume using your device and then tap the Click to install arrow on the page.

2. Once installed, start up Vagalume and enter your last.fm account details. Then press the play button. The radio will automatically start playing music from your neighborhood.

3. The player not only shows details about the currently playing song, but it also gives you feedback controls (love, ban, etc) that you can use to improve last.fm recommendations.

The other new client is called blastfm. It is a Symbian application that's built to run on S60 3rd edition devices. The experience is not as seamless as with the Vagalume client, but it's useful nevertheless. It works alongside Nokia's own Internet Radio Player and allows you to control your last.fm radio. To run this application:

1. Download and install the SIS file onto your handset. This package will actually install three separate applications: blastfm, Internet Radio Player and Python. All three applications are required in order to use the blastfm client. You must also be sure to install the entire package on your memory card - it will not work when installed in internal memory. (When installing the package using the link, you'll be asked whether you want to save it to your memory card).

2. Once you've installed the package, run blastfm.

3. You'll be asked to Enter your last.fm account details.

4. Now, you need to choose the radio type. Select Options, then tune, then pick your choice. I usually choose Neighborhood Radio.

5. Press the blue Menu icon to go to the main menu view.

6. Launch the Internet Radio Player application from the Applications folder.

7. Choose Options, then Stations, then last.fm.

8. The application will ask you to choose a connection type. If possible, choose a Wi-Fi connection as this will making streaming radio faster. If Wi-Fi is not available, you can still use the radio using a connection like MediaNet (for AT&T). I chose MediaNet and the 3G was fast enough for a few of my tests.

9. You can switch back to the blastfm application if you want; blastfm will now display some details (title, artist) about the currently playing song. It will also give you some feedback controls (love, ban, etc).

I think the N810 approach is great for the living room because it's a slim design that can stand upright and can show you what's playing. The N78/N82/N95 method is better when you are on the move and want to use headphones instead. (And the N78 offers the added bonus of being able to stream last.fm wirelessly.)

I prefer the Vagalume client and use it currently in my living room. It's a great looking application and I like the overall simple design. The blastfm application is still rather new (it's only been out for a couple of months) but shows great promise, especially because it's something that you can listen to while mobile and without Wi-Fi.

I also like the integration with the Radio Player application - why rewrite everything from scratch when you don't have to?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Good news for North American N95 users: both the N95 and the N95 8GB received v20 firmware updates this weekend. Get the details.

The N95-3 update, originally announced for June, arrived earlier than expected. The v20.2.011 firmware brings long-awaited Flash video support to North American users, which enables viewing of YouTube videos and other FLV video sites. It also features faster booting and camera load times, as well as support for the new N-Gage platform. Check out what The Boy Genius Report and Engadget Mobile had to say about it.

The N95-4 update brings the 8GB version, which already got Flash video support in its last update, up to v20 standards with the same speed improvements as the N95-3. Read more about the v20.2.005 firmware update on The Boy Genius Report and Engadget Mobile.

As always, Nokia Software Updater provides access to the new firmware. Remember to back up the contents of your phone memory (contact, apps, etc.) before installing the new firmware, as updating will erase your phone memory.

What do you think of the new firmware?

Soon you'll be able to save and share content between Nokia Maps on your mobile device and Ovi online. Check out the early buzz about Maps on Ovi.

Nokia announced the upcoming release at this year's Where 2.0 Conference, where the grassroots and leading-edge developers who build location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms and hardware. Michael Halbherr - from Nokia's Location Based Services group - announced that Maps and Navigation will be an important part of Ovi Internet services offering. Maps on Ovi will allow you to save map locations and routes and then synchronize them with your phone.

How will this come in handy? Some quotes from the press release:

Web-to-device benefits: "Before traveling to another city, a user could pick out places to visit and the routes to those sites from his hotel. Once saved on Ovi, that information would be copied onto his phone automatically at the next synchronization."

Device-to-web benefits: "The user could walk or drive around the city and save his route on the phone, then upload that to his Ovi map. Sights along the way that he marked as interesting could be uploaded to the Web map, which eventually could provide a wealth of information about those places from a variety of sources."

Maps on Ovi will also allow its users to share their tips and routes with friends. For example, "a company could put together a set of suggestions for employees visiting its headquarters city."

When will it become available? The plan is to release it in September, either as a beta or as a full release. It will also be hardware independent, which means that you'll be able to use it with Nokia and non-Nokia devices.

Read the full press release for more about Maps on Ovi and check out the new Nokia Maps.