Monthly Archives: September 2009

sunset-deckchairsBOSTON, USA – This is my last day at Nokia.

Back in June I stepped down as Editor-in-Chief and handed over the leadership of this site to Phil, in preparation of my eventual departure from the company.

Since then, I have been just another writer on this team, focusing more on my usual “round ups” of links, generating discussions based on articles from elsewhere in the Nokia neighborhood. I’ve also been transferring as much of Nokia Conversations’ culture as I could to Phil, who has been mixing it with his special sauce to take this site and ancillary channels to a new level.

In this final post as a Nokia employee, I’d like to leave some parting words, pointing to things that I think will be major parts of the conversation over the next year, if not longer. These are more my observations, and, at some points, may deviate greatly from the established corporate line. But these comments are more to generate a discussion that I hope lasts a long time.

Care to join me? Then read on.

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Nokia-experimental-appsGLOBAL – The folk over at Nokia Beta Labs continue to showcase and give public access to some super experimental Nokia apps, in a dedicated section reserved for innovative research prototypes. The sort of stuff that gives us goosebumps of the good variety. The latest app to appear, and as featured in our video stream, is a new Nokia Braille Reader (watch the full video). We know many of you are keen users of the apps found on Beta Labs, but you may not be familiar with all the cool things going on over there on a more experimental tip. So we’ve decided to run a video poll to find out which ones (yes, by popular demand we’re allowing you to pick more than one thing) you like best.

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Nokia N900GLOBAL – Reading an interview with Nokia CEO OPK in India’s Economic Times, a few lines just struck me. Talking about the evolution of the mobile handset, OPK shines a light on the competition for mobile devices – in essence, saying there isn’t any. Specifically, OPK says “I don’t think that it’s the mobile device versus anything else. It’s a question about the convergence space where a lot of opportunities will arise.” Now, I’m not going to read into what OPK is saying here particularly as he’s talking in a much wider business context, but instead I’d like to use it as a base point to think about what it means from a consumer point of view.
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long-haul-batteryGLOBAL – Well that’s the verdict according to our most recent reader poll in which we posed you with the question what is the most important feature in a business device? It certainly surprised me that long battery life landed the top slot as the most crucial aspect of an enterprise device (of course I see it as important, but most important?). What’s interesting is that battery life has proved itself a most popular and top ranking feature in each of our recent series of polls, landing first place in the music phone stakes too. Opening the question, do we underestimate the significance of long battery lives, or does it remain true that some devices require it more than others (such as basic devices aimed at rural communities in emerging markets)? Share your thoughts on this topic and read on to find out all the results of our recent business phone reader poll.

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Nokia 6310GLOBAL – I still had a couple in the drawer up until recently. Even though they’d long since been retired, I couldn’t really face parting with my either my 6310 or 6310i. And neither could a lot of people. Certainly everyone I’ve known who’s used one will testify its many endearing qualities, most common of which seemed to be its ability to last forever. Like the cockroach of phones, it didn’t seem to matter what you did to it, you couldn’t stop the thing from working.

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toolbarcomplexityBOSTON, USA – My article on the never ending march of tech did not just hit a nerve, but set off a flurry of passionate comments. One idea that came up in the comments was that hardware differences are starting to diminish, elevating the importance of software in product differentiation. But moving from hardware to software does not remove the importance of user-centered design.

I’ve mentioned a few times the disconnect between what a designer hopes and what a user gets. I’ve collected a few recent links that ask questions around design issues, such as adding apps to smartphones that are close to app-complete, juxtaposition of conflicting expectations, good enough being the enemy of perfect, and a design scorecard proposal.

Read on to stimulate those brain cells. These are some really good articles I’ve collected for you today.

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