GLOBAL – We’ve talked about the capabilities and some applications for NFC before. But developers continually surprise us with their ingenuity and innovative ideas, taking our phones’ capabilities to a whole new level. So following the launch of Nokia’s first batch of NFC-enabled phones, we’re delighted to release the power of this new technology to the developer community with a new update to the Qt SDK.

Using the latest Qt SDK update, developers can now create and test apps for Symbian smartphones and the Nokia N9 in the same environment. The SDK also allows developers to simulate NFC tags in a virtual environment and create events around them.

Already there are a number of live NFC apps available in the Ovi Store, including Poken and Nokia Tag Writer. The former lets you read NFC tags in the real world and collect information using your phone. It also lets you create an NFC business card so you can pass on all your information and social media links in a simple tap. Nokia Tag Writer lets you work on the other side of the technology, writing to physical NFC tags with the information you choose.

Budding developers might also be keen to play around with a couple of the experimental apps on the Nokia Developer Projects site. Here you can download not only the apps, but also their source code, so you can see how the technology is implemented and bend it to your will.

We’ll be interested to see which existing apps are reinvented with “magic tap” functionality. But perhaps especially interesting will be the new apps that take it in entirely different directions.

More details at http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/NFC/ But which apps would you like to see in a brand new, taptastic form?