That Nokia event I liveblogged Thursday morning? The cryptic invitation made it look like it might involve some major new product, which it didn’t. But it did bring some good news: The company is bringing free GPS navigation–for drivers, pedestrians, and takers of public transportation–to users of its Symbian-based smartphones. The navigation offering covers 74 countries, and lets you download the necessary maps onto your phone so you don’t need a live Internet connection to route your trip–a particularly useful feature if you’re roaming in another country where you don’t have all-you-can-eat data.

The Symbian user interface still has some odd, outdated artifacts–you must scroll through lists with Windows-like scrollbars, not by merely swiping the list itself–but the OVI Maps application looks full-featured and fun. Pedestrians get some particularly nice features, such as shortcuts that drivers can’t take, and there are 3D models of landmarks.

The no-cost navigation is an obvious rejoinder to Google’s version of Google Maps for Android–as seen on the Droid and Nexus One–which also includes navigation with spoken turn-by-turn directions for free. Let’s hope everybody else in the smartphone biz feels like they need to match the Nokia and Google freebies…

Quick reminder: I’ll be liveblogging the Nokia press event that’s being held in San Francisco on Thursday morning at 9am–and which apparently has something to do with the company’s OVI services platform. Join us at www.technologizer.com/nokia, and I’ll tell you what we learn as quickly as we learn it…

I just got invited to another San Francisco press event. This one’s being held by Nokia this Thursday at 9am, and as with Apple’s event next week the invite aims to be cryptic but tantalizing:

I don’t know whether Nokia’s unveiling a specific product–it could just be previewing its announcements for Mobile World Congress, the Barcelona phone megashow a month from now. And the fact that the event’s being held six days before Apple’s bash in the same city may or may not be a coincidence. Let’s find out together–I’m attending this event, too, and will provide live coverage here.

[UPDATE: Nokia UK is sending out invites to an event, too--and theirs specify that it's about Nokia's Ovi service platform. Logical assumption: Nokia is announcing the same news in multiple venues. Engadget speculates that it involves a new version of the Ovi application store.]

““We’re very, very comfortable with where we are competitively…we like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our [intellectual property]…and if they do, we’ll go after them.”

–Apple COO Tim Cook, January

Early this year, there was much speculation on the Web about the possibility of Apple suing Palm over the Pre’s use of an iPhone-like multi-touch interface. So far, the two companies have stayed out of court. But Apple has now responded to last month’s Nokia lawsuit over networking patents by countersuing the Finnish giant. It denies that it’s infringed Nokia’s patents–but says that Nokia has violated a passel of Apple user-interface patents. Intentionally. And unashamedly.

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When I pick up a phone based on Nokia’s Symbian operating system, I get a little teary. (I exaggerate, but only a smidge.) Symbian is the modern-day descendant of Psion’s wonderful EPOC PDA OS from the 1990s, but it doesn’t show a decade’s worth of improvement. Actually, it’s backslid in some ways: It’s not as usable as EPOC was, and current Nokia Symbian devices sure don’t feel as snappy as my trusty Psion Series 5 did.

But here’s reason for at least guarded optimism: Engadget has grabbed some images from a Nokia presentation that previews a 2010 version of Symbian. It has an all-new user interface. And it looks…pretty good. The presentation only shows still images, so there’s only so much you can tell about the future of Symbian from it. But consider my appetite whetted.

The first rule of classic console emulation is that you don’t talk about classic console emulation, but that’s exactly what Nokia did to promote its new N900 smartphone, and now the interest of Nintendo’s legal team is piqued.

According to The Independent, Nokia posted a video clip of the N900 running Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, among other classics, using emulators. The official video and accompanying Nokia Conversations blog post have since been removed, but I’ve found what appears to be the same video here, for now. It mentions how some emulators let you tweak the N900′s controls for the best set-up, while others even take advantage of the phone’s touch and tilt capabilities.

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When Nokia failed to generate enough buzz with its gaming phone offerings under the N-Gage name, it switched gears in 2008 to offer the platform instead as a gaming service. It now appears that strategy was a failure as well: N-Gage is set to be phased out in 2010.

Games would be able to be purchased through September of next year. The community site attached to the N-Gage platform would stay online through 2010, Nokia said. A complete exit from gaming is not happening however: the manufacturer said its Ovi service would still offer a selection of games.

I don’t quite understand Nokia’s thinking, but the company has made it official that its Booklet 3G, its first true netbook PC (or any type of full PC for that matter) will come to the states through AT&T and Best Buy on October 22. Entering into the increasingly crowded netbook space could be risky for Nokia.

First off, the device will run a pricey $599 unsubsidized. To me thats pretty astronomical for a netbook. Let’s take a look at those specs, and for fairness let’s for now forget about the 3G data capability.

It runs a Intel Atom 1.6GHz chip — the same used in the market leading Acer Aspire Ones — and includes Wi-Fi, a 120GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and a 10.1″ display. My Acer has all of that, and was $259 without any subsidy.

The only thing I could find that my netbook doesn’t have is Bluetooth, and an accelerometer (oh and Windows 7 out the box: mine runs XP). So essentially, are we paying here $300 for 3G, which we’ll also be required to sign up for a $60 per month data plan for two years? That’s pretty steep.

While no doubt this entrant has a lot to do with Nokia’s recent cozying up to Microsoft, however I’m a little confused as to “why now.” With Acer and others able to give us netbooks under $300, how many people are going to be able to justify paying that plus an extra $2,000 or so over the life of the contract just for data?

Right now I just don’t think there’s a market for it.

With its “Comes With Music” music service getting a not-so-hot reception in the countries where it has already been launched, Nokia has decided to delay the launch of the product here in the US until at least 2010. Previously it had indicated it was on track for a launch sometime this year.

While the service seems to be doing decently in the developing markets it’s been introduced in, it’s underperformed everywhere else.

Obviously, the elephant in the room–iTunes–has a lot to do with Nokia’s woes. There’s also a good chance that many potential smartphone buyers just don’t associate Nokia with music.

It’s kind of a shame considering that Nokia’s strategy to attract customers is somewhat different. Essentially, for about 12-18 months after purchasing the handset you can download as much music as you want at no extra charge (thus the offering’s name).

A delay is really not that bad when you think about it. It’s important that Nokia sells the service effectively, especially considering the downloaded music is copy protected. Also, it needs a carrier to subsidize the cost of the device, since it’s pricey when purchased in unlocked form.

Nokia, which has made some PC-like devices in its day, is finally making…a PC. The company has announced the Booklet 3G, a device that it’s calling a mini-laptop. I’m calling it a netbook, but a pretty fancy one: It’s got an aluminum case, built-in 3G (with swappable SIM card) and GPS, and HDMI output. Nokia claims twelve hours of battery life–even if you apply the usual discount and assume it’ll be more like eight hours in the real world, it would be impressive. It features Nokia’s Ovi services for synchronization with the company’s phones. It weighs 2.75 pounds and is “slightly more than two centimeters thin,” which would make it a bit under .8″. Oh, and the Booklet runs Windows–and Windows 7 at that.

Judging from the photos, the Booklet’s industrial design gives us a good idea of what an Apple netbook might look like if it was a MacBook Pro, only smaller:

Here’s Nokia’s promotional video:

I’m a sucker for the concept of deluxe netbooks, so I’m glad that the Booklet is joining HP’s Mini 5101 at the high end of the market. Nokia hasn’t announced a price, but if all the stuff it’s talking about comes standard, I wouldn’t be shocked if the system cost in the neighborhood of $800 or even a bit more, assuming it’s not subsidized by a wireless carrier. (Which, for netbooks, is a pretty darn exclusive neighborhood.) It also hasn’t said anything about availability yet–and it’s not a given that this beast will be widely available in the U.S., given the company’s relatively low profile in the states. It says it’ll have more to say about the Booklet at its Nokia World conference on September 2nd.

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Microsoft Office for Nokia phones.

Knol is looking pretty sad.

Hands on with Zune HD.

Hey, what is Facebook Light?

Unknown Apple product diner shoot.

How to end music piracy.

Nokia dumping Symbian for Linux?

iPhone keyboard vs. Android keyboard.

Certain pundits have opined that Nokia may be doomed, because its Symbian operating system and Ovi Store application store provide a far poorer user experience than Apple’s iPhone. I’m not one of the doom-and-gloomers. Nokia is betting that Web applications will catch on in the long run, and it could be right.

The long history of Nokia’s Symbian OS and the diversity of devices that Nokia sells have left it in catch-up mode, Web applications provide the company with a second chance to get ahead of the curve. Steve Jobs may have been right when he initially said that developers should write Web apps for the iPhone –he may just have been premature.

Nokia has laid the groundwork for a new crop of Web applications that will run on over two dozen of its Symbian S60 devices with a set of plugins called Nokia Web Runtime Extensions (WRT). It’s a pragmatic strategy, and probably the company’s only solution. Apple, by contrast, has had the luxury of dealing with one mobile platform.

The WRT plug-ins allow application developers to create standards-based Web applications with commonly-used development tools without requiring any specialized knowledge of Nokia technologies.

Nokia’s ultimate goal is to make it possible for end users to create their own widgets, said Craig Cumberland, director of Web tools and technologies at Nokia. The company is partnering with content providers to make that happen. In the meantime, it is betting that its flexibility will lure application makers.

WRT was built using the open source WebKit browser layout engine, which Apple and Google use as the engine for their Web browsers. WRT joins Qt, an open source GUI toolkit, as the two  core technology platforms that Nokia will use across all of its devices. The company has also localized WRT into eight languages, including Chinese (tradition and simplified), English, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. “The international market is our bread and butter,” said Cumberland.

It’s becoming a meme, but those technologies give developers greater openness–and since these apps run on the Web in the browser, there’s no App Store-like approval process to complicate matters. Web applications also cut down on application delivery time, and offer faster return on investment for developers, Cumberland added.

That means (at least in theory) there should be a variety of Web applications for end users to pick from within a short period of time. The applications will also blur the lines between the Web and device itself, which many iPhone applications already do.

To give the appearance of native functionality, WRT can integrate with device data and core services like address books. More advanced devices support more advanced applications that can access the touchscreen functionality of the 5800 XpresMmusic and N97, in addition to Nokia’s “home screen” user interface.

Nokia has laid out a clear vision, but its execution relies upon the ability of carrier to deliver fast, reliable data services. The applications will also be simple widgets, not deep, rich pieces of software–at least at first. Web applications won’t level the playing field overnight, but the long-term strategy makes sense to me.

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan has posted a review of Nokia’s iPhone-like N97, with the provocative headline “Nokia N97 Review: Nokia is Doomed.” At first blush, it sounds like he can’t really mean that he thinks Nokia could be headed for extinction. Comic exaggeration, right? But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that the headline’s a perfectly reasonable one. I’m not predicting Nokia’s death myself, but neither do I take it as a given that the company has a long future in the smartphone business.

Matt’s conclusion on the N97 is that it’s a respectable piece of hardware but that its Symbian S60 Fifth Edition operating system and Ovi Store application repository don’t have what it takes to compete with their counterparts on the iPhone. Judging from the time I’ve spent with an N97, he’s right. Cell phones in 2009 are really software/service combos that happen to have hardware wrapped around them, but Nokia is still racing to catch with the modern era–as represented not only by the iPhone but also Google’s Android and Palm’s Pre phone and WebOS software.

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Nokia, Sony Ericsson unlocked phones.

Google News loses comments feature.

Facebook tweaks its privacy tools.

@microsoft has officially started tweeting.

Zer01′s unlimited voice/data service.

Another obscenely expensive Motorola phone.

Bankrupt Psystar still releasing machines.

Cheap thin laptops: cracking cases.

Apple ackowledges iPhone overheating issue?

Borders UK launches an e-book.

Europe is doing it right: A group of major cell phone manufacturers that control 90 percent of the market–including Nokia and Sony Ericsson–have backed a European Union standard for phone chargers that would mean that buying a new phone wouldn’t require you to throw out the old charger.

Reuters reports that the standard only applies to data-enabled phones, which are expected to account for half of all phone sales in 2010. European consumers will be able to buy standardized phones that use a micro-USB socket starting next year.

The big question: When is this coming to the United States? Apple has sort of hit on a standard for chargers, given that the iPhone and iPod use the same Dock Connector. But the compatibility ends once you leave the Apple family of mobile devices. (And isn’t universal even with Apple gadgets: Recent iPhones and iPods don’t work with older car chargers.)

Why can’t others agree to use the same charger technology? Money is obviously part of it. The cell phone companies and stores have to love socking customers with a new $35 car charger every time they buy a new phone. But wouldn’t the goodwill of coming up with an environmentally friendly system go a lot further with customers?

Imagine not having to dig through a drawer full of cords, trying to find the right one that fits your phone. Or when a out of town guest visits and forgets their own charger, you’d easily be able to share. Hopefully the EU movement will spread quickly on this side of the pond.

Intel and Nokia join forces.

A netbook with AMD inside.

MySpace seems to be shrinking.

Do netbooks confuse notebook buyers?

Flash for phones (except iPhones)

Zoho now works with SharePoint.

Get ready for Google Voice.

New ThinkPads get really skinny.