A new version of Nikon's free browsing and raw conversion program is available. View NX 2 adds basic movie editing and still extraction functions as well as a few new still editing features (resize, straighten, file conversions). Tighter integration into Picturetown, Nikon's online storage option, was also included, but they've taken out emailing, which overall means the product is less "social" than before (note to Nikon: Facebook, Flickr, Hotmail, Gmail, and about a zillion other things are more important than Picturetown; proprietary is old-think). Printing got some much needed love. Not mentioned by the press release or most sites, Nikon Transfer 2 is also included in the View NX 2 package (and installed in the Nikon View NX 2 folder instead of a separate Transfer folder). Likewise, Nikon Message Center 2 is also loaded and used by View NX 2.
Many of the changes Nikon has made appear to be arbitrary and an attempt to copy some of Lightroom's style. For example, we're now given a dark neutral gray background and have accordion slide panels on the left and right side. The left side is, yep, folders and navigation. The right side is develop and metadata. Very Lightroom-esqe but without anywhere near the polish. We do get more functions in the "develop module" (e.g. chromatic aberration control), but Nikon still needs a UI expert: just stacking a bunch of sliders under headers shows just how far from Lightroom View NX 2 actually is.
Many of View NX's annoyances still exist, and new ones have appeared (if you select transfer from within View NX 2 you get the new version without your old preferences intact). I'm amused that the defaults for XMP/IPTC presets include a suggested 2009 Copyright date (and an incorrect Copyright notice form, at that). A "Customize Toolbar" option that really only allows you to remove things from the toolbar isn't very interesting. On the plus side, View NX 2 does seem as if performance in some areas has improved, despite the fact that this is still a 32-bit application on both Macintosh and Windows (note to Nikon: 64-bit has been ubiquitious for some time now, didn't you get the memo?).
Unlike many previous software announcements, the software is available everywhere simultaneously. But this appears to be because the entire release is being hosted out of Japan (the nikonlib.com site). This seems to indicate that Nikon Japan is taking complete responsibility for software releases now, not the subsidiaries.
I'm happy that Nikon is continuing to try to refine View. But they still seem clueless as to how to build a tight and powerful user interface. The "scatter" of UI elements is insane in this version and looks like a hodge-podge collected from partly copying a half dozen other products rather than a well-thought out integrated approach of their own.