Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Nokia City Lens doesn’t have anything to do with Skynet or John Connor: it is a great location based augmented reality service, which is expanding our portfolio of Nokia exclusive apps for Windows Phone. If you have a Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800 or Nokia Lumia 900, you can download it now from Nokia Beta Labs where you can leave your feedback and contribute to improve the app while we are polishing and refining its feature set.

What I like the most in this app is that you can keep you head up when you’re using it. Instead of looking for a place on a map and look down on your smartphone, with Nokia City Lens you are actually looking at the world around you through your smartphone.

Digital maps are indeed very useful and we all use them every day. They help us finding the places we are looking for and they are giving us directions to get there. This is why we have developed Nokia Maps. But sometimes you need a new way to orientate yourself and recognize the places in your immediate vicinity. This is where Nokia City Lens is helpful.

So what exactly can you do with Nokia City Lens (beta) for your Nokia Lumia?

• You can instantly see what’s around you: landmarks, restaurants, hotels, shops and public transport stations visually right on your phone
• Select your interests in many different categories: Nokia City Lens will filter the points of interests and present your choices
• All the details at a glance: simply tap to read reviews, descriptions and destination information
• One tap to call or navigate to the location
• Share a place with friends via email and SMS or via the built-in sharing feature of Windows Phone

Grab your copy of Nokia City Lens now, from the Nokia Beta Labs. And if you haven’t installed it yet, make sure to check out the video at the top to see how you’ll benefit from this in a real-life environment.

As we have explained before, the new Nokia Maps Suite brings you the latest version of Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and the new Nokia Public Transport applications. It also comes with key application shortcuts developed specifically for Nokia Belle so that you can instantly access useful information such as guides, and your current location.

Here is a quick look at the goodies that Nokia Maps Suite brings you:

Nokia Maps: Now with just a long press on your map, you can access walk, drive and public transit routing, which will guide you to your destination. If you like your maps to be uniquely yours, you can turn on “photos” in the Maps app to see all your geo-tagged pictures from your phone’s gallery placed on your map in the places they were taken. Next time you want to tell someone about a trip you had, just open the map and take them where you want and show them what you saw!

You are at a new neighborhood and want to have lunch? The Places widget will help you to find out what’s around you, or tell you more about your current location, right from your home screen. It will share the reviews from respected guides and reviewers like Lonely Plant, via Michelin, Time Out, Qype and more. You can save the place for another visit, and share the details with your friends as well. And if you are planning to use Nokia Maps in a different country, remember to download the country maps via WiFi so that you can continue enjoying Nokia Maps without worrying about data costs.

Nokia Drive: Even everyday things like getting around by car are improved thanks to a larger, easier-to-view map. A narrower dashboard means a larger map view in landscape mode. So it’s easier to navigate when you’re behind the wheel. The route planner is back by popular demand, letting you create custom routes and start points along with the ability to save favorite routes and sync them between your phone and computer.

For our UK users, new Voice Search lets you get directions simply by speaking, so you can now navigate hands-free! Tap on the microphone icon next to the search box and speak your destination. Voice Search will be available for more countries and languages soon.

We also continue to provide you offline navigation – all you need to do is to download the maps for the country or region via WiFi to enjoy Drive without worrying about data costs.

Public Transport: With the new Nokia Public Transport app, all you need to do is to type out your destination, and you are set to go! The app shows the nearest public transport departures to your destination, so you can choose the one that is the most convenient for you – the app will guide you there. The navigation is literally door-to-door, so you will truly feel like a local even if it is a city that you are visiting for the first time! The app will tell you how to walk up to the right stop, which bus, tram, underground or train to take, which stop you have to get down and will lead you right to your destination. Line information lets you know how many stops you’ll pass along the way. You can even save frequent commutes to your favorites and check departure times for any stop on your route. Currently, we have real-time routing for Berlin; timetable routing for 88 cities across the world, and estimated routing for 420+ cities worldwide.

These are some of the great features that we have as part of the new Nokia Maps Suite. Download the new Nokia Maps Suite directly on your Belle smartphone or via Nokia Store, and let us know what you think of it!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Planning a route from A to B or searching for a place is probably the main reason why you open maps.nokia.com. When you find a place you’re looking for, rather than just seeing the address you’re also presented with much more, giving you a richer experience. Professional reviews, people ratings, pictures, perhaps even a photo-realistic 3D view are all available at nokia.maps.com.

Recognize the best areas of the city with heat maps

We have expanded the heat maps coverage to over 340 cities around the globe. Finding the best areas for shopping, going out, food and entertainment has never been easier. For example, if you are planning to visit San Francisco and want to know where the best shopping experience is, just go to maps.nokia.com and click on Features > Explore Places must be selected > Shopping. By using the zoom controls you can either see the wider heat map or you can take a closer look at those shops by zooming in.

Plan your public transport route

When you have selected the place you want to visit you’ll probably want to plan your route on how to get there. And in a city your best way to get there is on foot or with public transportation. This is why we recently released Nokia Transport for your Nokia Lumia, and now we’ve also extended public transportation options on maps.nokia.com. You can now select your favourite means of transportations (you can exclude regional trains or buses, for example) as well as the time of departure or arrival.

Learn more about a place with City Pages

When ever you travel, you probably take guidance from local travel guides. These are a good way to get to know the place, from a local perspective and usually offer facts with lots of glossy photos. We have followed the same approach for our City Pages and taken it to the next level with the power of maps.nokia.com. When you visit one of our city pages, you get:

1. A beautiful picture from the great Flickr community that best represents the city at that given time of the day and under the current weather conditions.
2. A selection of the best places in town (as you can see my favourite ice cream shop in San Francisco is included too).
3. Interesting city facts that help you understand how much you are roughly going to spend there and that come along with a super cute design.
4. Weather forecasts for the next 3 days.
5. Plus, we teamed up with Lonely Planet to provide professional reviews of what to do and where to go.

3D city tours

In five cities (San Francisco, London, Berlin, New York, Las Vegas) you also get one more bonus: a 3D tour powered by Nokia Maps 3D. This is what it looks like in San Francisco:

These 3D tours are just the beginning; in fact, you can also plan a route by car in any of the 25 cities with 3D views and get a helicopter view of the whole route. Take for example this one I created in San Francisco http://nok.it/MrSoN and click on ‘take a 3D flight along the route’.

3D goggles views in Nokia Maps 3D

More 3D news! In fact we have taken Nokia Maps 3D into the third dimension. Now you can experience Nokia Maps 3D in 3D mode. That’s right, the buildings will now jump out the screen at you as you browse your favourite city. You’ll need to a pair of red and cyan to make this work. With the webgl beta version of Nokia Maps 3D you don’t have to install any plugin, provided your browser supports webgl technology (e.g. the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome), and once you’ve found the place you’re looking for, hit the 3D goggles icon in the corner to see the city leap out of your screen.

Stick on your 3D glasses and click the images above for the enlarged “in-your-face” version.

One more thing. Yes, if you have a smartphone with Nokia Belle you can now download the latest version of Nokia Maps Suite and enjoy all the new features we introduced in the beta. You can read the Nokia Maps Blog for all the info.

As we explained earlier, Nokia has a particular interest in supporting the Where Conference through our gold sponsorship, because we aim to be the “Where” company. While today’s internet is well organized around the “What” and the “Who” via search engines and social networks, we are striving to provide answers to the “Where.”

We recognize that there is an appetite for location-relevant information, which proves to us that the concept of hyper-local has never been more essential to people today. At the same time, people are buying, owning and using multiple mobile devices. And these devices are getting smarter – firstly, because they are increasingly connected to the cloud and secondly because they are sensor-rich.

From NFC for payment in stores and on transport, to more advanced sensors that interpret if you’re running as opposed to taking a bus, all the way to sensors that connect with devices like wrist band heart rate monitors. These sensor-rich devices provide us with a whole range of data that helps us better understand people’s behavior in order to identify patterns and trends.

Key to being able to provide this insight is the Nokia’s Where Platform, a learning engine fueled by two types of data: reference data and activity data.

Reference data is an index of the world around us and it enables routine location functions like search, routing and navigation. While activity data uses sensors to understand how people interact with their devices and apps.

Together, these two types of data power our Where Platform and enable us to create digital, predictive models from places and objects in the physical world and consumer’s activities.

This Where Platform offers compelling, market-leading functionality to customers via a set of APIs to help them quickly and easily create their own app experiences with location-based functionality.

Built on the world’s most accurate mapping and navigation assets (in over 190 countries, with over 50 languages), our location platform serves 24 million route requests daily, 147 million map tiles daily and over 1 billion search queries annually.

Because the Where Platform supports a wide set of operating systems and programming languages (including HTML5 for maximum reach), many customers including Yelp, Yahoo! and, more recently, Groupon are already using it to power their location-based apps and experiences.

If you are interested in understanding more about our vision for the location business and you are visiting the Where Conference, you can attend Gary Gale’s (Director of Places, Nokia Location&Commerce) session on Tuesday, April 3^rd at 1:40pm in Yerba Buena Salon 10-11.

But there’s more! Nokia has its own booth (#208) at the Where Conference to show all our location based apps, from Nokia Maps to Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport. We’ll also be showcasing Nokia Pulse, which is currently in beta, our web offering at http://maps.nokia.com and the mobile web companion for iOS and Android devices at http://m.maps.nokia.com. You can meet experts who will be happy to answer all your questions.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

But what is the location business actually all about? How are the big players, app developers and consumers participating? What’s all the fuss about licensing, price models and crowdsourcing?

We, at Nokia, have a strong opinion about location. Here’s why.

Location is at the core of how Nokia is going to make a difference to people as they move around in the real world. Nokia is indeed aiming to solve numerous problems:

• Being lost and needing to find the way
• Travelling somewhere for the first time and needing to know the route
• Knowing which bus to catch on a daily commute
• Being able to avoid a traffic delay
• Understanding the buildings around us
• Making plans with friends and family for new adventures

That’s why Nokia is building a location platform to create a digital, predictive model from places and objects in the physical world, including people’s activities. What we call ‘Where Platform’ offers compelling, market-leading functionality to app developers via a set of APIs (available at http://developer.nokia.com/maps) to help them quickly and easily create their own app experiences with location-based functionality.

At the same time, Nokia is building its own apps and services based on the platform, not only helping consumers to effectively navigate their worlds, but to discover new adventures along the way – every day.

“Our Where Platform enables partners, app developers and consumers to have a rich and meaningful experience around location,”

Says Christof Hellmis, Vice President Map Platform, explaining the advancements in Nokia’s location business.

In the following video you can see the whole interview in which Christof describes what a mapping platform actually is and how our Where Platform is available on all the screens that matter.

Last but not least, Christof explains that Nokia is mixing professionally-built and validated maps with user contribution and feedback that we collect through different tools like Map Creator.

What’s more, we were also able to get a sneak peek into the future of maps and map platforms. Watch the video to learn all about it and if you have any additional questions, please use the comment section below.

A baked potato café may seem a bit strange, but it’s actually a lot of fun. I shared it with some of my friends with Nokia Maps, and we had a really good time. I’ve even added it as a favourite on my smartphone — it’s going to become one of our regular haunts, now — and I might not have found the joint if it wasn’t for my curiosity and the helpful nearby places feature. 

How does this work?  For starters, nearby places pulls information from a long list of impressive guides and reviewers like Lonely Planet, TimeOut, Trip Advisor, the AA, WCities and many more. We also look at the reviews, ratings, photos and activity of places that you, our community, add and look at on maps.nokia.com. With all this great content, plus your contributions via maps.nokia.com, combined with a little bit of magic, we can surprise you with a new great places.

We are constantly working on getting more places and making our service better for you and we always love to hear what you think about it.

If you’ve found a great new café for the perfect latte, a new hidden cocktail bar or a special place to share with your loved ones by using nearby places, let us know in the comments.

Head over to maps.nokia.com and click on the “Directions” link to open the route planner, then select the Public Transport directions option. As you can see in the image above, now you can enter your preferred date and time of arrival or departure, and you’ll see suggested public transport directions for the times that suit you. This means that if you are visiting Berlin, or one of the 88 cities around the world where we’re able to offer timetable public transport directions, you can plan out your transit routes in advance, and can even print the directions to take them with you or share them online with your travel companions.  What if you don’t know how to get to the station? Not to worry – you will be provided door-to-door walking directions, with turn-by-turn maneuver list, to get you to the station.

In Berlin we have something even better: you can even get live, real-time timetable information. This means that we know exactly where each train and bus is and if it’s late or on time. You’ll never be surprised by a strike, road works, track maintenance or any other delay. You always get the up-to-date, real-time information so you can better plan and live your everyday adventures. What if it’s a sunny day, and you just want to travel by trams, buses and ferries only? You can select or deselect your public transport options and find the route that’s best for your day.

Have you tried out public transport directions on your maps.nokia.com? Give it a try and let us know what you think!

To get them, look no further than the Windows Phone Marketplace on your Nokia Lumia over the next few hours: you’ll be automatically notified when the updates are available for download.

We mentioned some of the new features included in these releases about two weeks ago but if you want to know more and discover what else is there, just keep reading.

Nokia Drive

You’re driving on an unknown road and you suddenly wonder whether you’re still respecting the speed limits. Or the road ahead is almost empty and you instinctively speed up a bit. Do any of these examples sound familiar? The new Nokia Drive can help you in those circumstances.

You can drive more safely because speed limits and relevant notifications are clearly visible in the app dashboard. Warnings are fully customizable with audio alerts and specific triggers.

Additionally, we introduced your most requested feature in this update: a complete offline experience. When you open Nokia Drive, under Settings > Manage maps you can download country maps for offline access. You can now rely on Nokia Drive in areas with poor network coverage or cut your data costs when you’re visiting foreign countries.

Nokia Maps

If you like to create a list of all the places you want to visit in a city, you’ll enjoy using the new feature of Nokia Maps that allows you to add places to favourites. And because you are most likely to share your new findings with friends, we made it easier to share place details and how to get there via SMS, email or social networks.

But this isn’t everything. On Nokia Maps you can also see the traffic situation in USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Belgium, Russia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, UK, France, Spain, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, India and UAE. Just use the live traffic view, which is available next to the map, satellite and public transport views.

By the way, when you plan a journey with trains and buses, you can now tap on each waypoint shown on the map to get immediately more information.

However, if you use public transport to commute or when visiting a foreign city, we suggest you to download the newest Nokia Transport app.

Nokia Transport

Available in more than 510 cities in 46 countries, Nokia Transport has received a lot of attention since we first introduced it at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The app provides an overview of how to get, within city limits, from A to B using public transportation. Walk directions are displayed to help you get to the next stop and from the last stop to your destination. In 86 cities we also include timetable information.

You don’t need to download specific apps for each city you visit, you have everything in one place. Conveniently enough, you can also pin a favourite destination to start and always know how to get there from anywhere in the city.

Just download Nokia Transport for your Nokia Lumia from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Note: if you participated to the beta phase of Nokia Transport we would like to thank you for your precious contribution, which is helping us shape the app for future releases. However, the app you now have on your Nokia Lumia (clearly marked as beta release) won’t get automatically updated to the version available on Marketplace. Please uninstall it before downloading Nokia Transport from Marketplace.

Traffic is one of my favorite features on maps.nokia.com as it makes my life much easier. For instance, last week there it was again that feeling when the number from my kid’s school appears on my phone while I was in a meeting.  My mind races: Is one of the kids sick? Is it something worse? Usually it’s nothing too bad. But whatever the kids need, you always want to come to the rescue as quickly as possible. For me, maps.nokia.com plays a big role in easing my mind. Before I even hang up with the school nurse, I’m on maps.nokia.com, checking the traffic between my office and the school here in Berlin. Nokia Maps gives me real-time updates every five minutes, so I can scan the highways and roads nearby to find the quickest route—and swoop in to save the day! Because what could be worse than caring for a sick child during the middle of a hectic work day? Sitting in a traffic jam on the way to or from the school sure would be.

Nokia Maps is also great when I just want to find my way around in cities I’ve never been before, on holiday with my family or on a business trip. maps.nokia.com helps me figure out where to go in each new city, and the best way to get there – whether by foot, car, or public transport. I can plan my unfamiliar route in advance, checking the next train time or the traffic on a local motorway. And when I have time off to explore new places, Nokia Maps helps me maneuver unchartered territory when unpaved roads or ferries are more my speed. And as Nokia Drive is available in Nokia Maps Suite for Nokia Belle, I can take my route and my favorite places with me.

If  you live in one of the countries where traffic is available, check the traffic first in maps.nokia.com or from your Nokia smartphone before you head out so you can spend less time commuting. If you have been already using this feature, tell us how it has helped you out in combating traffic!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

As we anticipated on Monday, we are introducing a full offline experience on Nokia Drive, favourite places and route sharing on Nokia Maps and, even more exciting, we are offering Nokia Transport on Nokia Lumia too.

Nokia Transport

With Nokia Transport you get the most convenient directions to underground, trams, suburban trains and buses services. You will find it particularly useful if you are a commuter or traveller or you just want to plan your urban journey in a timely and environmentally-conscious way.

A logical extension to Nokia’s free navigation and routing solution, this first beta release of Nokia Transport for Nokia Lumia supports over 270 cities or urban areas (86 of which with timetable information) in 45 countries.

A public transport route can be planned between two addresses or points of interest in the same covered urban area. To make your life easier, we are also offering you walking directions from the start of your journey to the first public transport stop and from the last stop to your final destination.

Very conveniently, you can also pin a favourite destination to your home screen to quick access the next departures from anywhere in the city. From your office, or from that new bar where you are going to meet your friends during the weekend.

Because we want you to test Nokia Transport for Nokia Lumia and give us your feedback and your first reviews, we are offering it as a beta release, which you can download from Nokia Beta Labs. If you want to give it a try, please remember that you can’t find Nokia Transport on Windows Phone Marketplace just yet, you have to download it from Nokia Beta Labs.

Nokia Drive

Your response to Nokia Drive for Nokia Lumia has been overwhelming positive, but most of you also know that we can do even better. In particular, we are working hard to extend all the great features you know from our other platforms.

With this first update, we are including, among others, the feature most of you were asking for: a full offline experience.

Not only can you download country maps on your Nokia Lumia, but now you can also plan your route completely offline and get rerouted without having to be online. This means that Nokia Drive cuts your data costs, especially when in roaming and it means that you can rely on Nokia Drive also in those areas where network coverage is poor or absent. A great deal.

The full offline experience, however, is not the only news about this Nokia Drive update. We redesigned the navigation dashboard to give you even more information, such as speed limit warning (where available) and the possibility to show either the estimated time of arrival, the time to destination or the distance to destination. Last but not least, you can more easily access all the destinations you have recently entered in Nokia Drive.

If you don’t have Nokia Drive on your Nokia Lumia yet, you can download it from the Nokia collection section of Windows Phone Marketplace. All these new features will be then included in the upcoming and automatic update that is going to be delivered to your Nokia Lumia in the next weeks.

Nokia Maps

To explore a city, its best places to eat, go out and have fun, you know you can rely on Nokia Maps. If Nokia Drive has been designed for commuters and drivers, Nokia Maps is here to help you when you want to feel like a local in urban areas and get to your destination on foot.

With the upcoming update you can for instance save places among your favourites. Even cooler, you can share over SMS, email or social networks, those places and the route to get there, including the approximate time of arrival. This is so useful when you are planning to meet your friends somewhere. It doesn’t even matter which smartphone your friends have: they will all see the information you want to share with them.

If you don’t have Nokia Maps yet on your Nokia Lumia, you can download it from the Nokia collection section of Windows Phone Marketplace. All these features will be then included in the upcoming and automatic update that is going to be delivered to your Nokia Lumia in the next weeks.

image credit: whatsername?