Nokia unveiled the beta of a new location-based micro-blogging tool today called Friend View. Although it bears some conceptual similarly to Plazes, it’s actually a project of Nokia Research, and isn’t based on the Plazes platform.

There are two parts to Friend View, a mobile client that runs on S60 devices (like my Nokia N95) that pulls location data from cell id or GPS and allows status updates from the road (via wifi or GSM data connection) and a website that is like a stripped-down Twitter, albeit with a slippy map that georeferences the “tweets” (“fveets”) of you and your friends.

With a little bit of reverse engineering I was able to add Friend View support to PresenceRouter, and I’ve just released version 2.97 with this baked in. To start off with I’ve concentrated authentication and status updating, so this initial support doesn’t actually involve updating the Friend View location from the Plazes location, just the status message.

Feedback welcome. If you want to befriend my on Friend View, I am ruk.