It’s no secret that Nokia usually does a half-assed job of providing cool downloadable content for its customers. There’s usually one cool game, a few trial apps, and then the mysterious “Download!” application, which never seems to get updated. If you’re willing to search, you can find their other free games (the ones pre-loaded on other phone models) and install them on yours, but Nokia doesn’t make it easy to find them. And the various bookmarks scattered throughout the site—those ones for themes, games, sounds, etc.—never provide much content, either. So I am happy to see MOSH, their new community website for trading content types back and forth, and I highly recommend it.

What is it?
MOSH is a community website, sponsored by Nokia, where members can upload and download images, sounds, video, applications, documents, and games. The name comes from “mobilize” and “share,” although I’m sure the mosh-pit reference is intentional.

What can you find at MOSH?
Basically, the same apps and games you can find all over the web, but here’s why MOSH rocks:

• Many of the most popular phone applications are on there, so you don’t have to go all over the web to find stuff for your phone.
• There are tons of games available right now. I suspect not all (or even most) of the games are authorized to be made available for download, so this may dry up in the coming weeks or months. (One game I found last night was already gone by this morning.) YMMV, but I have found some terrific stuff in the past 24 hours.
• Photos, sounds, and videos. Most of what I saw was user-generated content, and I wasn’t too interested in it. But it’s there, if you really want it. I did see a few ringtones, so if you’re into that, you might find it worth checking out. (I tend to make my own ringtones so this doesn’t appeal to me.)
• Documents. So far, what I’ve found are public domain manuscripts: novels, books of poetry, drama, and short fiction.
• Themes. Again, I haven’t seen a lot of these yet, but there are fewer than 10,000 members at this point. The number of custom themes may increase as the community grows.

How do you participate?
Create a free account, then visit the website on your computer or your phone’s web browser. You can download .sis and java apps to your desktop or directly onto your phone for installation. Nokia also offers a special custom application for its phones, but it’s not necessary to access MOSH. In fact, it’s actually just a single screen with hotlinks that open up your web browser, so you can save yourself an extra step by simply bookmarking the site in your browser and visiting it directly.

[Update: MOSH is no longer in beta, and anyone can sign up without a pass. Go for it!] MOSH is currently in a “closed” beta phase, but s60.com sent out a sign-up password earlier this week. Just visit mosh.nokia.com and enter the following: ALLACCESS