Nokia Beta Labs Introduces New Apps: Ovi Lifecasting, Social Messaging

At the Nokia World 2009 event in Stuttgart, Nokia Beta Labs has announced a number of new services ready for testing right now. The most interesting one is Ovi Lifecasting, an application we caught wind of yesterday but is now ready for limited early bird beta-testing.

The beta tool, which requires a Nokia N97 device, taps into Facebook to enable you to share status updates and photos with your Facebook friends and also lets you share your location through Ovi Maps (also in beta). Here’s an introduction video featuring two polished young men using the application to hook up with each other in some city:

Also new is an extension of Nokia Messaging called Social Messaging, which interestingly Nokia calls the groundwork for an impending proprietary multi-community social networking client. The company insists this is an early look, and currently only supports Facebook:

In other news, Nokia Beta Labs is discontinuing Nokia Friend View, which was an experimental research project from Nokia Research Center. We covered the app, which was basically a location-aware microblogging tool when it was introduced in November 2008.