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Making your way around some of the more popular technology blogs on the Internet, you’ll find there is no shortage of coverage when it comes to different apps available for the Apple iPhone. The BlackBerry crew gets their fair share of attention too, so where does that leave all the Nokia owners in the audience? The Symbian OS may not be as sexy or “out there” as some of its competitors, but that doesn’t mean that Nokia smartphones should be left out in the cold either.

As a proud owner of a Nokia E71, I have scoured the web to find some of the best productivity and communication apps available for Nokia smartphones. If you’re looking to stay connected and make the most of your Finnish handset, you’ll want to look at these mobile applications.

1. JoikuSpot Light

If you happen to be downtown in a major metropolitan area, you probably won’t have too much trouble finding an available Wi-Fi hotspot. From bookstores to coffee shops, these access points can be quite plentiful. However, that’s not always the case, especially if you venture to other parts of the city or out the city altogether.

What if you could use your phone as a makeshift Internet access point? Using JoikuSpot Light, you can. In essence, this application takes your Nokia’s cellular connection and rebroadcasts it as a Wi-Fi hotspot. This way, any device with Wi-Fi can go online.

There are shortcomings to JoikuSpot Light, of course. You cannot define the name of the SSID access point, nor can you secure it with a password. To do that, you’ll need to purchase JoikuSpot Premium. A single license is 9.00 EUR (about $12) and a 10-license bundle is 49.00 EUR (about $66).

2. Opera Mini Web Browser

Nokia S60 smartphones typically get pre-loaded with the Symbian mobile web browser and, by and large, it gets the job done. However, there will be times when it struggles to render certain web pages. You want to have a good alternative close at hand. This is not unlike how you should have multiple browsers on your home computer, just in case.

One of the best alternatives for Nokias is the Opera Mini web browser. This gives you a similar interface as its desktop counterpart, offering a start page with quick access to shortcuts and search engines.

A major difference between the Symbian browser and Opera Mini is that the latter tends to render web pages the same way as they appear on a regular computer rather than trying to force them into a mobile environment. This can draw more data (and longer loading times), but sometimes it’s worth it.

3. Gravity Twitter Client

In case you haven’t noticed, Twitter is the hottest thing since sliced bread. To keep pace with your BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone buddies, you’ll want to have a good Twitter client on your Nokia smartphone too. One of the best is Gravity.

With this Twitter client, you can manage multiple accounts and have multiple “columns” dedicated to each account. You can track your replies and direct messages separately from the main stream, as well as set up custom groups to better filter the onslaught of tweets. (You can follow me too, should you so desire.)

The time-limited trial version is free, but you’ll need to pay $9.95 for the full version.

4. Slick IM Messenger Client

Staying connected with the world at large goes well beyond voice calls, texts, and e-mail messages. Rather than download individual clients for each of the different instant messenger protocols, you can keep them all in one place with Slick by Lonely Cat Games.

This unified IM client supports no fewer than seven different protocols: ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook chat. Your contact lists are automatically populated and there are audible alerts for new messages, even if you have Slick running in the background. And yes, you can set your status for each IM protocol too.

5. Mail for Exchange

Using the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, Mail for Exchange isn’t exactly the most exciting of applications available for Nokia smartphones. However, it is a necessary component to one of the more important functions you’ll want.

You can combine Mail for Exchange with Google Sync, allowing for the full synchronization of your calendar and contact lists. Your Google Calendar entries are synchronized with your phone’s calendar and the same is done with your contact lists, including phone numbers, addresses, and other information.

Google Sync only allows for synchronization with your main Google Calendar, however. To sync more of your calendars, you can try NuevaSync. The free service allows for synchronization over multiple devices and up to 11 calendars.

Many More Apps for Nokias to Consider

These five apps offer just a glimpse of what is possible with a Nokia smartphone. To further address your productivity and communication needs, you can try out the apps for Gmail, Google Maps, Active Notes, Qik, Facebook, Screenshot, AP News, and so much more.

You can now turn to your iPhone and BlackBerry friends and say, “Anything you can do, I can do better.”

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Google Labs

Google has greatly expanded beyond its core search engine to offer a wide range of free online services. Easily one of the most popular of these is Gmail, the ubiquitous web-based email client that comes with loads of storage and the ability to handle multiple email accounts.

As powerful as Gmail may be on its own, the “crazy experimental stuff” being doctored up through Gmail Labs can greatly expand on this functionality and help to improve your productivity. This applies not only to the work setting, but also when it comes to handling personal content as well.

Gmail Labs, according to the official documentation, is a “testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime.” As such, they may still have bugs. Then again, Gmail was in “beta” for five years and it was mostly problem-free.

To access the features being offered through Gmail Labs, click on the “Settings” link near the top-right corner of Gmail. “Labs” is one of the tabs available in the settings menu.

1. Gmail Offline (Google Gears)

Some people prefer desktop-based email clients over web-based ones, because the former allows access to the messages even when not connected to the Internet. Gmail Offline, which works through the popular Google Gears paradigm, overcomes this very concern.

Each time that you connect to Gmail on chosen computer, the Offline feature will synchronize the messages and attachments onto your computer’s hard drive. In this way, the familiar features of Gmail (and your messages) can be accessed when you aren’t connected to the web.

2. Message Translation

It would be nice if all of your business associates were fluent in your native tongue, but that isn’t always the case. Similarly, you may have a pen pal who prefers to write in a language other than English. What can you do?

With Message Translation, all messages received in other languages are automatically put through the Google Translate algorithm. This way, those cryptic messages you receive from international contacts can be more easily understood.

3. Superstars

Gmail already comes with the ability to “star” a message, but Superstars takes this functionality to a new level. Instead of a single yellow star, messages can be tagged with up to twelve different kinds of stars. This Gmail Labs feature can be customized under the General Settings menu, selecting which stars will be used.

Also, it is possible to use the built-in search tool to find all messages using each particular superstar. For example, entering the search term “has:red-star” will find all messages with the red star.

4. Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

Why click around with a mouse when you can do the same things so much faster with keyboard shortcuts? Gmail already has a series of default shortcuts, but many more can be personalized through the activation of the Custom Keyboard Shortcuts feature.

A new Settings tab is created to remap the keys for various actions within the Gmail interface, including composing a new email, searching for messages, and so on.

5. Google Calendar Gadget

Just as many people have come to rely on Gmail to handle their email, many have also moved their appointment books over to Google Calendar. This useful gadget integrates the two, giving a thumbnail view of the Google Calendar from right within the Gmail interface.

Sitting in the sidebar underneath the Chat box, the Google Calendar Gadget will display about the next three calendar entries. There is also an option to see a mini calendar for the current month and to add new entries without leaving Gmail.

6. Forgotten Attachment Detector

Have you ever had the experience where you sent out an email message but forget to include an attachment? Never again! The Google Forgotten Attachment Detector pops up with a prompt when you mention attaching a file in your message but forget to do so. This simple reminder can save you from a lot of embarrassment!

7. Undo Send

Speaking of saving yourself from a lot of embarrassment, we’ve all had the experience of sending out an email when we really didn’t mean to send it. By activating the Undo Send feature, you can stop those messages from being sent. After hitting the send button, you have a window of a few seconds to hit undo.

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(Photo: abishome / iStockphoto)

The very first message on the Internet was “Lo.” The second was a list of 10,000 lawyer jokes. The first was an attempt to “Login” to a system that would help mankind be more productive than ever before. The second was the opposite, and consisted of jokes that would be booed off the stage at a Christmas cracker convention MC’ed by Carlos Mencia. You know that because you got it, too: it’s circled the Earth enough times to reverse the planet’s rotation, had more forwards than the entire NBA, and even now no-one has ever actually read the whole thing.

It’s rumored that the cure to cancer is hidden somewhere around the four-thousandth joke, but since you lose an IQ point for every line you read no-one’s ever gotten that far. The average victim zeroes out before a hundred, becoming an empty husk bereft of any intelligence or ability to contribute usefully to society — which is why they hit “forward” and sent the list to you instead.

There’s no proper response to an immense email forward, as it’s not yet possible to send a punch to the throat as an attachment, but there are strategies which can save you time. Each email excrescences destroys your concentration with the Inbox OCD of “gotta check new mail!,” so circumventing this social spam boosts your productivity. (As you’re well aware, batch processing your email is the most productive way to manage your inbox, but some lines of work and circumstances simply preclude this approach.)

1. Custom filters

We’re not talking about standard spam filters — your email already has those, and they’re the only reason you can ever get any real mail at all (3/4 of ALL email traffic is pure spam). You need craftier filters to block the more damaging spammers, a.k.a. “co-workers,” who think the best way to get the invoices out in time is to forward funny pictures. You can’t just block their address (or you’ll miss anything important they might accidentally send between Sudokii), but every stupid “Look at the cute cats!” they send proves why they shouldn’t be a colleague, they should be a subordinate. To a fry cook.

Gmail - Custom Filter

Services like Gmail now offer easy custom filter creation — just click on “Create a filter” (to the right of the search box at the top of the screen). You can set up your own rules and test each search before applying it. It’s a really good way to grab garbage because you can add rules for the “To” field as well as the “From.” Not every message from Manny in Accounting is spam, but you can bet he isn’t sending work files to his mother and “sillygurrrl@botnet.nl <mailto:sillygurrrl@botnet.nl> ” as well — just set the “To:” filter to include any obviously non-work addresses they inflict their garbage on and you’ll be free forever.

Gmail - Custom Filter

And these filters aren’t risky “all-or-nothing” nukes. While it’s tempting to set every message to “Mark as spam,” “Delete,” and “Kneecap sender with a rusty pipe,” you can instead park them all in a temporary holding folder. At the third step of “Create a filter” you can choose “Apply the label.” Create a label for suspected time-wasters. You should also check the box “Mark as read” — that way, every time Manny sees another cute kitten jpg, your concentration won’t be shattered by all those OCD-inducing “New Mail” notifications.

2. Secondary email address

To project a friendly fool-fooling face, ask any junk-posters to dump their garbage on a secondary email. (Protip: Don’t use those exact words). Explain that you just can’t be seen enjoying their incredibly informative dictionary of blond jokes at work, but if they send it to your other email you’ll be able to read it in your own time. Try not to be offended when they believe you really have nothing better to do.

A second address is just good productivity advice — half the Internet demands an email to use, and none of that’s anything you want turning up in your official inbox. “Yes, boss, as you can see over my shoulder, I’ll finish the February report the very second I finish this urgent NFL Update!”

3. Politely ask them to stop

The first thing to remember about social spammers is that whatever they are — friend or relative or spouse — they are also a filthy spammer — and you’re certainly not the only target on their trash delivery route. Having to remove your email isn’t a massive offense for them; it’s one less address on a contact list that’s four pages long and they won’t even notice the next time they spew YouTube links forth on all and sundry. Nine times out of ten a polite request* will get you out, and you’ll never again have to curse, hit “Delete,” and try to remember what you were doing.

(*Note that in this case “request” will mean repeating it four or five times as these people spend 20 times the effort on mindless output than they ever would actually “reading” things. They certainly don’t actually read all the rubbish they’re sending you, or they wouldn’t have time to do it.)

This has the double-advantage of getting you out of discussing “funny clips” in public places. Because if sending your friends clips of every kitten you see is sad, opening a conversation with a real live person with “So, did you see that video I sent you today?” is sad enough to kill all the Care Bears and plunge the Earth into permanent shadow.

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