James from Nokia Conversations announced yesterday, the start of a brand new project, named Design by Community, and is all about the Nokia Conversations Community sharing their ideas, suggestions, and insights into what they believe what an upcoming Nokia device should look like, what features it should have, and what size screen, and how many buttons it should have.

Following high feedback received on this article yesterday, the range in variables have now been broardened, to accommodate even more user options, and preferences in design choices.

JBC, aka James, has been in touch with Nokia’s senior industrial designer, Mikko Aarras, who gave him some insights into the requirements needed in a concept device, in particular in this first part of Design by Community, the device UI.

Beyond the screen, there are a number of elements which need to be considered on the front of a device. Typically, at the top of you’ll find the front camera, ear piece and some other behind the scenes tech. Somewhere around the edge of the screen, most commonly at the bottom, space is needed for the display driver – the piece of tech wizardry which brings the display to life, turning it into a world of interaction. Much of this stuff we, as users, don’t actually get to see but they’re important factors to consider when it comes to planning a device.

If you wish to get involved, and help design your future Nokia device, then head over to Nokia Conversations, The Official Nokia Blog now, and start getting those ideas, and suggestions heard.!  If you wish to get straight to it, and start working on that design, then click here, where you will find all the help you need to getting started in the design community.

Yesterday morning I came across news of Microsoft's Silverlight Beta being available for Symbian^1 devices, S60 5th Edition, giving developers the required tools to create applications for Symbian^1, bringing Microsoft desktop applications to your mobile device.

Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web on desktop computers, is also available for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices such as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 Mini.

Silverlight includes a runtime that is optimized to display content on memory-constrained devices. Silverlight support for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices includes:

• The ability to view Silverlight applications in the mobile browser.
• Tools to build Silverlight applications that target devices.

You can create Silverlight-based applications for devices by using Expression Blend 2 (free trial version), Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with SP1, or Visual Studio 2008 SP1 with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Application deployment on IIS is supported in this release.

Now before rushing out and trying to install anything on your S60 5th Edition Nokia device, its highly recommended that you first take a look at the following Guides, "Getting Started with Silverlight for Symbian", and "Silverlight for Symbian Platform Reference".

Our friend, Farhan, over on Sense Applied blog experienced something a little different recently whilst he was at his local Shopping Mall. While he was out and about, he spotted a young man in a Nokia T Shirt, who approached him, and asked if he would like to fill out a form.  Then all was revealed.  A fully customized Nokia 5230 Bus, full of Nokia goodness..

The Buses Plot was not exactly in an ideal location according to Farhan, who goes on to suggest it would of been much better if it was highlighted more, with maybe a banner, pointing the way to the experience Bus.

Inside the bus was full of Nokia goodness, with recaro style seating, and racing car games themed.  Farhan goes on to tell us more about this over on his blog, Sense Applied, where you will also find a video that he shot while enjoying the Nokia experience Bus..  Enjoy.!

Yesterday, Ovi player 2.1 has been released, and according to the Ovi Blog, its strongly recommended that if you already use Ovi Player, that you update to this latest version due to it containing many bug fixes, and performance tweaks.

Unlike the last release of Nokia Ovi Player, this version comes as an optional update to you. But, it's absolutely recommended you all should upgrade to this latest version. Simply select ‘Check for updates…’ from the Help menu in Ovi Player. This will automatically download, install and launch the new software for you.

For this release, focus was to improve overall quality, performance and user experience. Based on users feedback, we have now resolved many critical defects, including the crash on start-up. Here's what the Ovi Blog say about this latest version..

So, what exactly is better?

• We have re-worked music downloads functionality to make it more reliable. You can now pause and restart downloads from the Nokia and Ovi Music stores. Ovi Player will automatically retry any failed downloads and will also preserve uncompleted downloads on application restart.
• With the latest Nokia Ovi Player you now can automatically import your music library from iTunes and all the manual playlists that you created in iTunes (however, iTunes DRM files and smart playlists will not be imported).
• We have also provided a new ‘Play’ control above column headers in detailed view. Simply click this button and all the containing tracks will be added to the Player Queue and played sequentially.
• There are new tooltips for tracks in the Playlists and Player Queue. These tooltips are visible when hovering over a track and will show you Artist, Album and Artwork for the track.
• We’ve made it easier to select the Music Store for your region (note that you will need a credit card for that region to purchase any tracks) and change the Proxy settings. Just hit F4 key and all this pops up in the Options dialogue window.
• The new version is more robust and memory efficient when compared to the previous version.
• Finally, we have also made it possible to hide the start-up screen, so you can carry on using other applications without being interfered by the Nokia Ovi Player.

Many of you may of already noticed Mobbler, the ever so popular last.fm Music Scrobbler now being available in the Ovi Store. 

I know that our very good friend Clinton Jeff, of ZOMGitsCJ noticed it, and wrote about it on his blog, and now we have the story behind how Mobbler made it to the Ovi Store, and is quite a success story. Below is a qute from Rod Burns from Symbian Horizon.

I wanted to highlight a real success story for the Symbian Horizon program. The Mobbler application (‘Mobbler – A Last.fm Radio Player and Scrobbler for Symbian’), is open source, free and developed by a community of volunteers. The application is already popular as an unsigned download but access to Symbian Signed and publishing in Ovi is a barrier because of their non-commercial status.

This limits the reach that they have. We tested and signed Mobbler through the Horizon program and published it on the Ovi store this week.

In the first 48 hours of being published the application has been downloaded almost 1500 times from all over the world including 116 in India, and downloads in unexpected countries like Tajikistan and Azerbaijan.

This is a great achievement and really shows why the Horizon publishing program is so worthwhile. We have not only made the guys at Mobbler happy but we now have a fantastic Last.fm player for Symbian which we can shout about in the same way Apple do about their third party applications. But even better, this one was created through the collaboration of our community.

The work does not stop here though and we hope to be able to provide a route to market for Mobbler in China through our relationship with China Mobile.

You can find Mobbler, in Ovi Store here, or simply fire up Ovi Store on your Nokia handset, and either search for Mobbler, or checkout new items. Although the application is free, you will need a last.fm account, which is also free depending where you are in the world, so please checkout the last.fm terms here.

This long awaited activity manager combines contacts, calendar and todos in a user friendly interface, giving you a more satisfying way to manage your life's activities.  DreamLife is visual, intuitive and clever, designed for users of Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung or LG smartphones running Symbian S60.

Whether you are a small business owner, a professional or a parent, you will find DreamLife's features effective for organising and managing your busy schedule and network of contacts or that of your family's.  DreamLife's key benefits include:

• Easy to distinguish individual activities, conflicts, and free time slots from the innovative planner view
• Instant overview of your activities including details of appointments, todos, reminders, and anniversaries as well as event categories, status and attendees at a glance
• Organise your contacts and activities in a meaningful way using hierarchical categories
• Plan in the context of your day's activities while you enter new entries via the unique 2-pane activity editor
• Instant search of your contacts using global find, key match, sort or a combination
• View and use all your contact's information and notes on one screen, thanks to business card layout
• Powerful links between calendar and contacts let you attach and then jump to a contact from a calendar entry; you can also create new activities for contacts directly from the contacts list

More details, including download information can be found over at the DreamLife website here.

Thanks to Teo of Symbian Freak for the heads up.

Videos are still slowly flowing from both Ewan, and Rafe, (MIR & AAS) from their recent visit to Mobile World Congress which was held in Barcelona, Spain recently.  In this latest release, Rafe talks to The Symbian Foundation's Lee Williams whilst walking around the event. If you prefer to read the transcript of the talk between Rafe, and Lee, then head over to Rafe's coverage over on All About Symbian here.