See your friends anywhere

ESPOO, Finland – When the N95 was originally announced back in day (seems like a lifetime ago, it was actually only two years ago) the team were showing off some of the cool location-based functionality we’d be seeing from GPS. One thing that stood out for me was the ability to see friends nearby, and that they’d show up as little dots on your map.

What sounded like the work of the Knight Rider creative team at the time was actually perilously close to being reality. Now it’s very real.

Step forward Nokia Friend View. Billed as a Nokia Research Centre project and being rolled out through Beta Labs the app enables you to see where friends are, relative to you, on a map. If GPS isn’t available, it’ll use the phone network to approximate a location. Cool, huh?

I’ve been having a quick play and can honestly say it looks super slick and possibly one of the nicest Nokia apps I’ve seen yet. In fact, I think it might be my new favourite ever app! You can add friends manually, and friends can add you (you’ll need an Ovi account) and when you look at the map, you’ll see the last place your friends were. You can also set up meeting places to share with friends and even send status updates. The whole lot is available online too.

Check out the video below for the full lowdown from Stefan.

Hell, we (with the current exception of charlie) might all share our accounts here so you can keep tabs on us – I’m jamesbc – feel free to invite me. Let us know what you think.

Related posts:

• Nokia lost some friends when we changed our VoIP offering (but there might be good news)

Tags | Nokia Friend View, Nokia Research Center, NRC