Internet Tablet Talk exclusive (at least for a few minutes)*

Nokia and Popular Science magazine announced a challenge to users of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet to come up with their own improvements to the device, with
two winners to be showcased in the May and June issues of the magazine.

Winners will also each receive a free N800 tablet.

Given the wide range of software that has already appeared, it seems the contest is oriented at the right group of people. Specifically, Nokia and PopSci say they’re looking for innovative applications, scripts, services or hardware additions. A widget that monitors auctions, an application that controls your home security system, and software enabling the N800 to be utilized as a city guide are among the suggested types of applications.

Applications can be server- or network-based and can be utilized through the browser, email, chat or other inbuilt applications.

It reminds me of the contest I read about some months back for cleverest Maemo hacks at Guadec. Some of the winners then were NFlick (browse your Flickr collection from your tablet), KanjiLearner and Dasher (input via steering, rather than tapping).

As the requirements stress “exciting, new innovations,” presumably exciting existing innovations like VidConvert or FBReader do not qualify.

Deadline for the innovation that would be included in the May issue is February 27; for the June issue, March 29. Nokia reserves the right to include winning ideas in future OS or tablet releases.

Here are some applications I’d like to see, but won’t be developing myself:

• An app that runs on a server that would capture my end of an internet call, except I don’t really want to capture a call, I want to video whatever it is I’m looking at and have the video stored on that server instead of my local SD card
• A mash-up that would take GPS co-ordinates as I’m walking around Paris, say, or Rome and show me websites for the, um, sites I’m touring
• An app that would read a web-page aloud to me while I’m driving
• Heck, an app that would take the book I’m reading in FBReader and read it aloud

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* I attended the party announcing this challenge at the New York Nokia store on 57th Street, and I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to post on this topic since I left even before they held the drawing to win one of three N800’s. And otherwise the press release won’t go out electronically till tomorrow morning. So you heard it here first. Probably.