The Way We Live Next video round up - part 1

ESPOO, Finland - We brought you some of the most exciting stuff from The Way We Live Next as it happened the other week, but now we’ve corralled videos of all the major demos and made them available in one place for you to watch at your leisure. So, time to stick the kettle on, sit back and relax and enjoy the, er, shows.

There was loads on show at The Way We Live Next and whilst some of it will be hitting our devices before the end of the year (such as point and find) other features are still in early stages of development. We’ve split the videos into two chunks (yes, there are that many) so here comes the first lot….

Local Interaction
Building on Indoor Positioning, ‘Local Interaction’ is like a set of
indoor Location Based Services. So, in a shopping centre it could
include a map of the shopping centre, details on individual stories and
even the ability for store owners and customers to add information and
reviews on each store. Tempting stuff!

Voice Idle
Designed to help the visually impaired, Voice Idle offers a simplified
version of the menu system and supports voice feedback. Rather than
looking at the menu, the phone reads out what’s happening and where you
are, so visually impaired users can get the most out of their device.
It’ll even read out text messages.

Mobiledu
This is one of the first interactive mobile learning services and has
already been helping the learning of English in China. By taking a
range of interactive learning materials from a number of sources, the
service enables users to learn on the go.

Betalabs
The true home of next generation applications, where Nokia users can
get involved in the testing and shaping of new applications. Internal
Nokia R&D teams are free to use the platform to talk directly with
users and test and evolve their applications. Once an application
graduates from Beta Labs it frequently goes on to become an inbuilt
application or becomes available via the Download! service.

3D in mobile devices
Think you need those funny glasses to watch video in 3D? Not anymore.
With a special 3D display bolted into a Nokia N800, you can actually
watch movies in 3D on the move. But this isn’t likely to hit the market
anytime soon. It’s just an R&D experiment.

Gaze Tracker
Now for a real bit of sci-fi - using nothing more than a user’s gaze,
the system can detect where and what at a user wants to look and move
around an image and even zoom in. We can’t see these goggles going on
sale anytime soon, but an interesting development nonetheless.

Related posts:

• The Way We Live Next video round-up - part 2
• The great indoors (UPDATE: New video)
• The way we live next 2008

Tags | 3D, betalabs, demo, Gaze Tracker, Local Interaction, Mobiledu, The way we live next, Voice Idle