Noknok

Ever found out that you’d missed one of your mates by a handful of minutes or metres? Or perhaps you just need a better way to keep track of your posse at a festival?

Nokia’s experimental Friend View app is a geo-tagged social network that plots your pals on a map right in front of your eyes, together with Twitter-style micro-blogs. So what are you waiting for, get stalking!

Start by signing up at Friend View online, choosing a username and uploading an avatar image, then invite friends and start posting. The mobile experience (available for all S60 3rd edition phones) adds another dimension, with Friend View refreshing your location constantly and alerting you to new posts from your network.

And that’s about it. There is the option to stop sharing your location when you go somewhere embarrassing like your local Conservative Party HQ. The blogs are a fun alternative to texts, with the map display keeping conversations with different people neatly threaded.

The good news is that Friend View works incredibly well. The maps are clear and simple and it’s easy to locate your friends – it even tells you whether their posted location is ‘fresh’ or ‘old’. The bad news is that it keeps data and GPS connections open, which could hammer your data tariff and battery life alike. And obviously, everyone you know needs to have a S60 handset, ideally with GPS (although you can update your location manually).

The world needs another social network (EmbryoBook? CheesemongerPlanet? LockedUp?) like it needs another retailer going bust. But this one is from Nokia, integrates nicely with your phone’s GPS and the chance of stumbling across your parents is minimal – find a few Nokia-toting mates to give it a go and you won’t be disappointed.

Key details

Size: 444Kb

Price: Free

Download here: Nokia Beta Labs