With all the really great PR that Microsoft have been getting for Windows 7, its now surprise that Apple have taken off the gloves with their latest ad campaign.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACRhhjKs3Uo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Yup, it’s official… the Fins have had enough of Apple, Dell and all the other companies that have been beating up their market share in the last few years in the mobility technology space and Nokia has officially announced that the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook just weeks before the Annual Nokia World 2009.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIHWM4liM2g[/youtube]

Technical specs will be announced on the 2nd or 3rd of September 2009 at the Nokia World, but to get us Nokia nuts salivating, they have released the teaser video in the mean time and a press release highlighting a few nifty features, like:

12 hour battery life – The device also weighs 1.25kgs and is 10″ big, so this is no tiny achievement, it is an engineering milestone. You can imagine just how  freaking awesome this is, considering that Apple brags about their 7 hr battery life!

A-GPS – highlighting the relevance and importance of Location Based Services within the Nokia and Ovi portfolio and the viability of true mobility.

Full Ovi integration – highlighting that Nokia is putting its money behind Cloud Computing and hoping that it could stimulate its users to get them more aggressively to use the Cloud.

HDMI - A hint that Nokia sees this device being used with external peripherals quite a bit and lean toward the idea this could either be a media device and/or a device that is often plugged into projectors or monitors in the boardroom.

I don’t care when this device launches, my loyalty to Nokia has yet to be challenged and I WILL get one of these.

The Nokia 5800 Express Music was Nokia’s first major consumer targeted phone to sport a full touchscreen. Sporting Symbians latest OS S60 Version 5, which is the same as the Nokia N97, the phone has become a retail dream and selling like hot cakes globally with it’s “Comes With Music” campaign, which saw handsets shipped with a few music tracks on them.

They have reworked the device and replaced the “Comes With Music” edition with a “Navigation” edition. Basically packaging a lifetime voice navigation license with the Nokia Maps and changing wallpapers and themes, the Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition is set to hit stores in the 3rd quarter of this year at about $410.

If you haven’t updated the firmware in the last 3 of your Nokia N97, I highly recommend that you do. Simply plug it into your PC via the USB cable and use PC Suite Update to do the job. It’s a fairly big file, +120MB, but its very worth it.

Here is a list of items that have been updated:

- Fix for browser cache consuming more than specified in C drive
- Battery indictor showing wrong status (2-3bars) when charging completes
- Firmware over the air (FOTA) setting correction
- User interaction to device while FOTA may cause need for user to power on/off
- Fix for calendar entry lost
- Fix for mail that may get duplicated
- Fix to resolve GPRS access point selection even if WLAN access point is available
- Fix to not to ask user to do new profile while there is already one available
- Fix to display messaging application correctly when theme effect is set to ON
- Fix for Ovi store client may not properly installed if user has a client already installed earlier version
- Ovi store application is now updated

I’ve also noticed that the browser opens much faster now and application swopping has had a performance upgrade.

I have been using the Nokia N97 for a few months now and while I believe that the hardware spec is unbeaten yet by the other mobile giants, Nokia has always lagged behind in terms of cool app development. You can jump up and down all you want telling me about the Java revolution and millions of Jar file apps on the web, but here I will tell you that you simply don’t get better than the iPhone in this department. (For those who know me, you will understand that me admitting that the iPhone is better in ANY regard is no easy thing, I LOVE Nokia and will be a die-hard fan for life!)

Anyway, as a result of being one of the first 97 people globally to be touting a Nokia N97, I had the unfortunate experience of having to wait for all the good apps, but none-the-less, I have enjoyed my experience so far and I’m itching for more awesome apps to launch, so that I can use my phone to its full capacity.

This is a list of some of the Nokia N97 applications that I have used so far:

Nokia Messaging: A great application that consolidates up to 10 email accounts into a single manageable interface. Easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to use, runs in the background & intuitively designed!

Nimbuzz: An IM aggregating client that supports Skype, Facebook & Twitter in addition to the old faithful IM’s like Windows Live, GTalk, etc. Its a really great app that doesn’t kill the phones resources and is very intuitive to use. Of all the IM aggregators for mobile that are available, this is the one that I recommend whole-heartedly.

Gravity: My outright favourite! A Twitter application that is potentially the best out there for ANY device. It’s simple to use, simple to get up & running and a dream to keep running in the background without killing your battery. The usability is well thought out and everything on it makes sense. Newer versions also support Facebook. It is a paid for app, but give the trial a shot and I am sure that you will be able to justify the 10 Euro to buy it.

Worldmate: My weather update application that keeps me informed. The app is a bit tricky to set up the way you want it, but once its done, you will never need to adjust the settings again. Giving you voice directed prompts of the weather the day before and an update in the morning, the application also has a host of other features like foreign exchange rates, flight delay monitors, etc, etc, that I don’t use and doubt that I ever will.

Mail for Exchange: I loved this application on my Nokia E71. It was the greatest feature on that phone and it worked like a dream. I have to be honest here and say that I havn’t been able to get the damn thing to work on my N97. It doesn’t sync, or maintain connections to run without me having to restart the phone, while standing on 1 leg with my right arm on my left ear, and my tongue pointing south, singing the Barney song. A major disappointment for me!

AP News: I think that it stands for Associated Press. It is a news app with regular updates. It allows you to rate articles, share them via email, SMS or Twitter. The UI could use a few tweaks in terms of usability, but it does a good job of keeping things simple. (It doesn’t seem to available in Ovi anymore )

Drawing: A Windows “Paint” type application that is VERY handy when you are trying to explain something without a notepad and need to a solution design, scribble down a picture to explain your point, etc. It allows you to save the images, which is really great, though I would have liked it if the option to forward the image directly from the application was made available.(It comes pre-installed!

I have installed a few more, but don’t use them, so I can’t comment on them fairly.

If you have any applications that you recommend that I try out, please feel free to let me know, I will give it a shot and update this post accordingly.

Google has launched a new service for trend monitoring geeks who find this info important. Bloggers are the most likely user of this service, called Google Insights for Search.

With Google Insights for Search, you can investigate popular searches, compare the popularity of different searches and get a general insight into the zeitgeist.

As of today, Insights also offers a couple of new services. You can now see forecasts of future search trends for certain queries, based on an extrapolation of historical trends and search patterns. In addition, you can now visualize the way interest in given terms has changed over time, using the animated map feature. These maps show an animated depiction of how search interest changes over time in different locations.

Whether you are an advertiser looking to expand keyword lists, an economist analyzing economic trends, or even if you are just looking to settle a popularity contest, Google Insights for Search can help provide the answers. With insights you can:

• See projected future interest in a given term – using the forecasting feature, you can see a forecast of future searches for many different queries.
• See an animated map - watch the way global interest in a particular subject has changed over time.
• Embed comparison charts on your website - you can now easily embed any of the graphs produced by Insights for Search in your website.
• Search trends over time - See how user interest rises and falls around a particular subject. Type in more than one keyword, separated by a comma, to compare keyword popularity.
• Regional interest – See which countries, cities and regions are most interested in a certain topic; click on a part of the heat-map to see more about search volume in a specific region.
• Top and rising related searches – find out what queries related to your own are most popular, and which ones are gaining in popularity.
• Refine your insights searches by category – see top searches in a category–rising searches in ‘Celebrities’, for example, or popular searches in ‘Vehicle Brands’. Specify by date, region or subject to get more detailed results. You can also find the general trends in a category by not entering any search term at all, giving you a broad view of trends in that category.

“Insights for Search offers a glimpse into the spirit of the times,” said Yossi Matias, Director of the Google Israel R&D Center, where Trends and Insights for Search are developed. “What the world is searching for offers an insight into what’s interesting to people around the world. An understanding of broad as well as particular trends can be useful for advertisers, marketers, economists and everyday people interested in knowing more about their world.”

To check out Google Insights for Search, go to www.google.com/insights/search