JAKARTA, Indonesia – It’s almost a year to the day that we first reported on an intriguing new service called Nokia Life Tools. Piloted and then officially debuting in India, Life Tools was designed to help improve the livelihood and lives of farmers, students and many people in more remote and rural areas in emerging market countries. It does this by offering easily accessible and up-to-date crop prices, education tools and entertainment packages, delivering this valuable information on a simple SMS backbone. Hence we’re excited to see Nokia Life Tools announced for Indonesia, where it has been keenly tailored towards its people’s needs.

Read on to find out more, see photos of folk using the service, and as always, share your comments below.

Nokia Progress Project – chasing the stories you want to read

Nokia Life Tools opens side door to the Internet in rural India and beyond... via SMS! GLOBAL – Last week we talked about Nokia’s new Progress Project in collaboration with Lonely Planet. It encompasses a bunch of Nokia initiatives that see technology used to help improve the quality of life of people in emerging markets, and empower folk with valuable and often life-changing info and tools. Life Tools and Nokia Data gathering are two of the more talked-about projects. But we remain keen to find out what you want to know more about, so last week we posed that question in our latest poll.

We’re going to take your responses to David Mason, one of the guys responsible for the Progress Project, with an aim to bringing you more on these stories (we’ll keep you posted). Read on to find out what you collectively voted for after the break.

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Nokia stories in emerging markets – what do you want to know?

Gathering data the easy way GLOBAL – Regular readers will be familiar with our coverage here on Conversations of Nokia solutions and initiatives taking place in emerging markets, and our keen interest in shining a spotlight on the activities in rural communities and areas where a service can be life changing. Such as the Life Tools and Data Gathering projects. Yesterday we brought you an update on the Progress Project (which includes these and number of other similar projects), and a bunch of videos highlighting a few of the initiatives currently being undertaken.

However, we’re aware that we’re relaying stories on these fascinating stories and important projects, but not necessarily asking you guys what you’d like us to explore on this topic and related matters. So we thought we’d run a poll to help us find out what’s of most interest and what you’d like to see more of. Let us know, and make suggestions by selecting the ‘other’ option in the poll below. And as ever, keep your comments and opinions flooding in.

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Nokia Life Tools – initial reactions to launch in India

MUMBAI, India – Earlier this month we were stoked that one of our favourite Nokia services, Nokia Life Tools, officially touched down in India. Following its successful pilot scheme in Maharashtra, Life Tools has now officially launched via the Nokia 2323 classic and Nokia 2330 classic devices, and will be later become available on other Nokia devices and extend its reach to many more rural areas in India.

If you’re new to Nokia Life Tools, the concept is to deliver valuable and up-to-date information on the core topics of agriculture and education, providing rural communities without access to the internet, with timely information via SMS at a low cost. Perhaps the best example of this in practice is the agriculture tool that has been designed to deliver farmers with precise commodity prices on from a network of 291 local mandis (marketyards), meaning farmers don’t need to travel often long distances to the nearest town to arm themselves with these details, saving them time and money and enabling them to improve their quality of life.

We’ve gathered together a few initial reactions to the launch of Nokia Life Tools from a handful of Indian websites, so read on to see what others are saying, plus if you find any other reactions or want to voice your opinions, share them here as we’re keen to hear your thoughts.

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Nokia 2720 fold delivers top design for 55 Euros

ESPOO, Finland – Just as the trickle-down effect of innovative mobile technology is flowing into mid-range and entry level handsets, today’s unveiling of the new Nokia 2720 fold, which will launch in the third quarter of 2009 for around 55 Euros, highlights how top-class design can be tailored for emerging markets at a price that makes style available to all.

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Twitter begins to shriek in the UK. But why?

GLOBAL – I’m sure many of you will know what Twitter is, so I’ll keep my summary for those that don’t to less than 140 characters: “Twitter is a micro-blogging social network, where you write updates limited to 140 characters, and follow anyone’s ‘tweets’ via mobile or PC”. Wow, that’s 140 characters on the nose! Anyway, I’ve been aware of Twitter since back in early 2007, when I first tweeted to the world, but admittedly I’ve not been a hardcore committed Twitterer, although more recently I’m beginning to get into the rhythm of it. However, in less than a month there seems to have been an explosion in Twitter activity in the UK. Sure it was popular before, but this swell in interest and people using it seems (at least where I’m tweeting from) as somewhat of a UK second wind.