Monthly Archives: October 2011

GLOBAL – Last week, we asked you to participate in our new tab or same tab poll to find out if you preferred the messages in the notifications bar on the left to open in a new tab or in the same window. When the new site went live we had this set to open a new tab, however lots of you commented you didn’t like this. We’ve closed the poll and now we’ll take a look at the results.

Poll results: new tab or same tab

The results are clear. At 63 per cent, the majority of you who participated would like to navigate around Conversations by using the same window. That left 37 per cent liking new tabs when browsing our site.

We asked, listened and we’ve responded accordingly. From now on, when you look for other content on our site using the notifications bar, you’ll open up the link in the same window. No more tabs.

For those who still like tabs, you can always right click the link and select Open Link in New Tab. Or use the middle button if you have a sufficiently empowered mouse.

image credit: denn

LONDON, United Kingdom – Nokia Lumia 800 phones are shining at the UK’s top shopping mall, close to the Olympic stadium, where up to 750,000 people a week can get a hands-on with the stunning mobiles.

A headphone-shaped arch like the one unveiled at Nokia World 2011 has been installed at Westfield Stratford, which is a short walk from the Olympic park.

The innovative retail experience, which opened this week, will be seen by visitors from all over the world and is set for a global launch.

It is designed to allow shoppers to see, touch and play with the Nokia Lumia 800, ask questions about it, and then go to one of the nearby phone shops to buy it.

The new owners will then be free to go back to staff at the arch for help to transfer contacts and other media from their old phone.

The outside of the arch is a screen which carries information and advertising for products, making an eye-catching attraction for customers.

The Nokia Lumia 800 would be an ideal phone to use at sporting events because of its amazing camera and Maps software which will guide users to stadia.

Blueprint for Nokia retail arch

Westfield Stratford has already become the busiest shopping centre in the UK since opening in September and has 730,000 visitors a week.

Mark Dence, Head of Nokia Branded Retail UK, said: “The Nokia Arch at Stratford will provide thousands of customers with a unique opportunity to enjoy the full experience of the Nokia Lumia 800.

“It’s a fun and chilled retail environment where our expert team will help customers get the most out of their new phone.”

GLOBAL – Some of you may have noticed a beautiful feature that we brought to maps.nokia.com recently. Now, if you type the name of a city, and click on more details, it will take you to City Pages, which will then give you a complete snapshot of that city. Whether you live there, or plan to visit it, this is a useful overview of all your city has to offer.

Not convinced? Here are my top five reasons as to why I am a fan of city pages

It is Global: Covering 53 cities spread across five continents, the world is literally at your fingertips. The cities showcased are in every nomad’s list, and is pretty much some of the great cities of the world. And what more, these cities house some of the biggest fans and users of maps.nokia.com.
It is beautiful: We can all do with some pretty, especially these days when it gets dark, rainy, and grey in the morning. City pages bring some of the best images of these cities, shot by people like you and me and uploaded to Flickr.
It gives me a heads up on how to dress:Autumn can be a tricky time – one day it is sunny, the next day it is all rainy. The weather forecast helps me to decide what to wear and if I need to carry an umbrella when I am going out. And as it has the forecast for the next three days, it helps me to pack when I am going on a short trip to one of these places.
It tells me everything I need to know about the city: From Lonely Planet, the best travel guides in the world, I get to know a little bit about the history of the city, about the different neighborhoods and what they have to offer, an update about the weather, what fun things the city is famous for, and what are some of the “must-do” stuff that you have to try out once you land there. They even give you a heads-up on the kind of accommodation – from hostels to hotels and everything in between – that you can find there.
It shows off some the great places worth exploring in the city: Most of these cities are full of choices, so finding that one great place to take a special someone to celebrate their birthday, or just to celebrate them, can be a hassle. But the explore tab showcases some of the finest restaurants, hotels, bars, and pubs so we can pretty much close our eyes, pick a place, and get all the credit for being so inventive

So, have you to check out the City Pages yet? Let me know what you think of them. I have been told by a little birdie that these pages will keep evolving, so give us your ideas of what you would like to see on your city’s page. However, the city pages are not the only great things about maps.nokia.com. To tell us more, here is William Gill :

John Waibochi of Virtual City

LONDON, United Kingdom – Last week saw the launch of the Nokia Asha range with better features and services for people in emerging markets. Connecting the next billion in the world to mobile technology is about more than delivering new handsets, however good they are: it’s about encouraging the next generation of mobile entrepreneurs who get what mobile really means to people in the developing world – it’s their phone, internet, newspaper, business manager, TV and doctor’s surgery. Basically, it is their life, in one device.

John Waibochi is a Kenyan entrepreneur who has been in the tech industry for 11 years.  

John studied Electrical Engineering at Michigan State University. His first job was selling HF and VHF radios.

  Virtual City developed a solution dubbed Mobile Distributor – aimed at streamlining the supply chain in emerging markets.

“People in the West don’t get it. They already have a houseful of appliances and gadgets and entertainment systems. A new mobile that does fun things is great, but it doesn’t have the same transformative effect.”

John Waibochi, is the CEO of Virtual City, Kenya’s market leader in developing customized supply chains for mobiles. In the last five years, Kenya has seen an explosion in business conducted on mobiles, and Virtual City’s products allow retailers and distributers to take orders, keep track of sales and deliveries, and collect the cash.

Like many successful mobile enterprises in Africa, Virtual City makes a profit from the transactions undertaken on its products.

Last year Waibochi won the Nokia Innovation Challenge Award 2010 – worth $1million. Now he is back at Nokia World to talk about his experiences. He knows what works.

This year at Nokia World his ideas won the ‘app shootout’, attended by Nokia CEO Steven Elop, where developers pitch their concepts in a quick fire round of pitches.

“There is an edge space in Africa, and you see new things happening,” said Waibochi. A country with less regulation seems chaotic to western business eyes, but to Africans it is full of opportunities.

“I started my business around the dining room table at home in Nairobi. Now we’ve got an office, and a staff of people, but all around me I see lots of young Kenyans saying – ‘hey let’s become developers’, and moving to Nairobi to work in their bedrooms to try and make it happen.”

If Nairobi doesn’t quite have a new technocrati elite yet, mobile penetration at 70% means that the country has seen a blossoming of young tech entrepreneurs building a would-be Silicon Rift Valley.

But can you make money out of mobile technology in Africa?

“There’s a great deal of money to be made. We have fewer monolithic industries and more smaller enterprises. We have less regulation. Sometimes we take a platform and abuse it way beyond the capabilities of what people think it can deliver. And Kenyan users are blunt, it’s make or break quickly. You can’t expect people to sign up for expensive contracts, but you can make money on a transaction by transaction basis.”

Other mobile trends in Kenya involve personalized handsets, “anything that’s cool and funky, and allows people to express themselves,” and hyper-local news and information.

If there’s one thing Waibochi knows about mobile business, it’s this – progress will not be a one way street from the West to the developing world: “Emerging markets are going to take on this and transform it in ways people don’t expect. The next billion is going to surprise people.”

Richard Quest speaking at Nokia World 2011

LONDON, United Kingdom – “Losing your credibility is like losing your virginity. It’s hard to get it back.”

CNN business correspondent Richard Quest thinks the mobile phone is like the birth control pill, viagra and Napoleon – small, liberating and powerful.

Quest told an event on ‘The Next Billion’ at Nokia World that he’d first used a mobile phone to cover the news of the sale of John Lennon’s Rolls Royce in 1985. Naturally the first person he called on it was his Mum. Handsets were larger and less empowering in those days.

The growth of mobiles, social media and citizen journalism has been a transformative, if sometimes unsettling, experience for news organizations like CNN. Quest denies, however, that the news agenda is now driven by social media: “We have a section in every morning editorial meeting where we discuss what is happening on social media – but it doesn’t change the agenda in terms of the big story of the day. That will always be determined by big events.”

Those big events themselves are now often driven by the momentum of social media. Most dramatically, this year’s ‘Arab spring’ showed how social media could spread information in a way that a traditional news organization couldn’t hope to compete with. Quest added that while citizen journalism sometimes complemented traditional journalism – he still thought he could do the job better. “There’s a component for social media. There always has been: it’s like the old radio phone-ins.”

Those who tweeted from Tahrir Square, or sent photos around the world of Colonel Gaddafi’s corpse may beg to differ with that analysis of who’s complementing who – with journalists chasing behind a fast pace of change.

Unless, of course, the system goes down. Reporting the London 7/7 terror attacks in 2005, Quest found himself unable to make any calls on his mobile. Then he said it was, “my kingdom for a landline.”

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LONDON, United Kingdom – In the last of his broadcasts from Nokia World, Dan McGrath interviews some of the visitors to the show and gets their impressions of the new phones and service offerings.

hackathon contestants

LONDON, United Kingdom – 40 developers, 40 hours, too much caffeine and no sleep – but it was all worth it for the winners of the Nokia World Hackathon.

While other Nokia World delegates were lying in hammocks in the chill-out zone drinking ‘optimism’ smoothies, a hardened core of techies were shut in a stuffy white room at the London ExCeL center, coding until they dropped.

The Hackathon distills the 300,000 concepts submitted to the Nokia Ideas Project into viable mobile apps for use on the latest Nokia phones. This year the teams had to submit working apps for use on three platforms: Nokia with Windows Phone, Qt, and Series 40. The best are developed as products for the Nokia Store.

The winners of this development dance-marathon were a Swedish team who designed their first ever game. The app, called Duudle, works like pictionary for mobiles. A player has 30 seconds to draw a picture, and then push it out to opponents who try to guess what it is.

hackathon winners

Peter Lindgren, Lukas Gustavsson and Hendrik Pettersson from Visiarc were delighted to pick-up the 50,000 Euro prize. Lindgren said: “We wanted to develop an app on Windows phone. That was the opportunity the competition afforded us. We wanted to be the first to have access to the new hardware.”

It didn’t quite work out like that. The developers were working with prototypes of the new phones until the official launch of Nokia Lumia on Wednesday morning, and intermittent internet reception meant that they couldn’t actually play their game until Thursday afternoon.

“I’m shocked that we won,” said Lindgren. “We’re really a document company, but our advantage is that we work with tons of users and pushing information back and forth. The game we developed, Duudle, draws on those advantages.”

Visiarc is better known for developing enterprise software, including the Mobile Document app that was developed in Nokia Beta Labs.

“We wanted to explore our less serious side,” said Hendrik Pettersson, “but when we saw some of the game developers that were here – including the guys behind Fruit Ninja – we thought we had no chance.”

Normally their work takes longer than 40 hours: “I came with some drawings in my bag, and we created the logo, Lindgren said, “ and that was it. The key to developing a great app is simplicity, you strip away, and strip away – and a ticking clock is great for generating that kind of focus.”

Then Visiarc take their cheque and champagne and drift away, happy and dazed, to get some sleep.

The other finalists in the Nokia World Hackathon 2011 included Tieto with a mobile polling app, and Seattle-based Viafo who developed an app to coordinate blood donation.

LONDON, United Kingdom – One of Nokia’s greatest and most useful services is without doubt, Nokia Maps. Finding that special place you’ve been looking for or just wanting to find the nearest bar on a Friday night has never been easier. Nokia Maps is now available on our Nokia Lumia smartphones and we caught up with Dan Martins Product Manager or Nokia Maps to find out all about it.

Monthly Archives: October 2011

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