Nokia has unveiled a new mobile and online game using its WidSets application. PocketGamer reports that WidSets Pets is both a mobile game and a Facebook application.

But that's not the interesting part of this latest virtual pet game. No, the interesting part is where users upload pictures of themselves so they become the virtual pets. Once the user has turned himself into a pet, he can care for the virtual critter alone or share his well-being with friends via mobile or on a PC through the Facebook version of the game.

Mobile friends need a Nokia phone with the WidSets app downloaded, something that's not needed to play the game on Facebook.

Nokia sponsored Pangea Day 2008, a one-day global event celebrating film and humanity on Saturday, MediaPost reports, and apparently it's also an all-out Nokia mobile media fest: "Through a mobile filmmaking contest, online advertising and experiential marketing, Nokia promoted the event by tying it to the Nokia N95 cellular phone, Nokia's Ovi Internet service that supports an online destination for consumers to store content, Nokia's Music Store, N-gage games and Nokia Maps."

Nokia's media initiatives seem to be more about Europe and Asia than they are about the U.S. Here, they sell an array of high-end devices and low-end feature phones, but their market share is small by comparison. At any rate, the event showed off the indie moviemaking capabilities (with over 2,000 indie entries) of the company's devices and their Ovi online media platform.

Nokia and T-Mobile have reached an agreement that calls for T-Mobile to sell Nokia handsets designed specifically to give their European customers easy access to Nokia's Ovi portal and T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk mobile Internet service.

Additionally, the new partners will also work to deliver better mobile social networking services and develop widgets for the Web'n'Walk service, MocoNews reports.

Offering unlimited music downloads to phone buyers will make money for Nokia as well as record labels, the handset maker said in a new Reuters report, and dismissed talk that the move would come at the expense of profits.

"We expect to make money both from our traditional device sales, as well as from the 'Comes With Music' service," said Liz Schimel, head of Nokia's music business, in the article. "I can assure you that we are looking out for everyone's interests in creating these new business models, including our own."

Heck, we'll be thrilled if it does work; unlike every other mobile music service, Nokia lets you keep music you downloaded during the first (free) twelve months. "Reports on different Internet media have suggested the world's biggest handset maker was paying $35 to Universal alone for each sold handset; and some reports suggest Nokia would be paying an extra fee for each downloaded song after the first 35 songs, potentially eroding its close to 40 percent gross margins in cellphone operations," the report said.

The record labels are also fans, since they'll applaud anything that takes attention away from Apple and its iTunes Store. Some analysts agree, too: "Comes with Music is one of the most exiting things out there in the digital music," said Mark Mulligan, research director at Jupiter Research, in the article. "Apple is facing market perception of iTunes looking like yesterday's service. Basically, iTunes looks pretty much the same it looked 4 or 5 years ago," he said. That's especially true if Nokia follows through on rumors that it will offer video with the service one day as well.

Nokia is finally ready to go live with Mosh, the user-generated content service it launched into beta last summer. Well, maybe not quite ready since, according to Fierce Mobile Content, the official Mosh launch is scheduled for June.

The handset maker opened the Mosh beta soon after acquiring mobile media sharing platform Twango and touts it as a service that will "bridge the gap between mobile and PC social networking."

Since hitting beta in August, Mosh has reportedly seen 12 million-15 million unique visitors and an average 100,000 visitors per day.

Ars Technica reports that Nokia's bundled Comes With Music service may be more expensive than anyone realized.

The report said that under the plan, anyone buying a Nokia handset would get access to UMG's Total Music plan, with the "Comes With Music" price worked into the cost of the cell phone or smart phone, which we've all known about since Nokia announced it last year. But what turned out to be a surprise is that a "well-informed" industry executive told The Hollywood Reporter UMG would get a $35 cut from each Nokia phone sold. Meanwhile, Paid Content reports that a source "familiar with the situation" pegged the tag at $33.50, the article said.

The report went on to detail some notable limitations of the Comes With Music program, such as a high-but-unspecified cap on the "unlimited" part, the DRM-encumbered tracks, the "upgrade price" charged for burning CDs, and the subscription fees that kick in after the first year. For its part, Nokia has since denied the $35 charge report.

Perhaps stating the obvious, Nokia said on Friday its push to promote mobile television broadcasting has not succeeded as the world's top cellphone maker had hoped, Reuters reports.

"It's a bit in a turmoil," Niklas Savander, head of Nokia's Internet services, told a conference in Helsinki.

The article said that Nokia has been for years promoting television broadcasts to cellphones and its digital video broadcasting handheld (DVB-H) technology won EU support earlier this year, but only a few operators in Europe have opened any TV broadcasting services.

"We have seen that there are multiple segments who are not interested in the broadcasting, but rather in downloads. Roll out is slower than also we anticipated a couple of years ago," Savander said. This is all in contrast to streamed, 3G mobile TV such as the MobiTV-powered Sprint TV service, which works on current handsets but is subject to buffering, pixelated video, and dropped frames.

Now that it has officially launched its N-Gage mobile gaming site, Nokia is inviting game fiends to partake in the worldwide Mobile Games Innovation Challenge. Developers are asked to submit concepts for mobile games that would rely on the advanced features of N-Gage-compatible devices and Nokia's Series 40 or S60 devices.

The three most innovative game concepts will get Nokia Publishing pre-production contracts along with some cash to help with the game development. First place gets 40,000 euros ($63,000), second gets 20,000 euros ($31,500) and third place gets 10,000 euros ($15,800).

Nokia's accepting submissions through August 20. Winners will be announced during the Nokia Games Summit in Rome at the end of October. For details, click here.

Nokia is hard at work on an iPhone rival code named Tube. The new handset, the Finnish giant's first with a touch-screen, reportedly has a similar design as the Apple device, AfterDawn reports. Of course, so do the rest of the Phone alternatives.

No word yet on when the Tube will be on the market or how much it will cost.

Engadget Mobile reports that Nokia's much-anticipated N-Gage mobile games application is now available for download, but Nokia isn't making the official launch announcement until Monday.

The handset maker put the early word out on its blog to give the "N-Gage faithful" advance access to all the new games.

For now, though, only folks with a Nokia N81, N82 or N95 (either standard or 8GB), can take full advantage of the new N-Gage service, Engadget says. Support for additional devices is, of course, coming soon.