ESPOO, Finland – We’re here at Nokia HQ for The Way We Live Next 2008, where the great and the good from Nokia Research Center gather to explain what they’re up to, and how they’re doing it. We’ve already seen some really cool stuff and we’re assured there’s plenty more to come. Keep an eye on this page for the latest updates as they happen.

Vision of the future

ESPOO, Finland - Nokia Research Center’’s chief visionary, Leo Kärkkäinen, summed up the chief, erm, reckons his job is about ‘finding the seeds of the future in the present’ and ’searching for trends that’ll affect billions, but are barely visible now’. Sounds sensible, but some of his visions for the future are pretty out there.

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Notes from the departures lounge

LONDON, England – This morning I’m writing from Heathrow’s terminal one (not as bad as they say) but tomorrow morning I’ll be updating from Helsinki. See, this week sees the second annual “The Way We Live Next” conference hosted by the folks at Nokia Research Center. Last year we struggled with the low light of Oulu, but this year we’re being treated to insights and updates directly from Nokia HQ.

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Is Nokia still in the phone business?

ESPOO, Finland – Nokia reorganized recently around Internet service creation and deployment, is rolling out Internet service after Internet service, and using a lot of brain cycles of very smart people to fuse mobile services with the Internet services. Yeah, this isn’t your father’s mobile phone company anymore.

But that got me thinking. What parts of Nokia could stand on their own? I mean, is Nokia just in the phone business?

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Nokia white coats nurture Homebird universal remote

HELSINKI, Finland – The minds over at the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, have just published a report on a new breed of mobile universal remote called Homebird. The idea simply being that you’d be able to control any wireless WLAN device in your home remotely via your Nokia handset, be it remotely scheduling TV recordings, adjusting lighting throughout your home, or controlling any networked digital aspect of your life from anywhere.

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A quick laughing round-up for today

ESPOO, Finland – I’ve not been able to do a link round up in the past few days. Did you notice? Do you like these round-ups?

In any case, I managed to get online today for a quick fix of info from around the neighborhood. I’m in a punchy mood, so certain things stood out. What I have for you today is a Retro Phone, a Car Phone, an Open Phone, and a Journo Phone. Intrigued? Then read on.

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NRC outreach calls for context aware pioneers

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The new Nokia Research Center project in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology has yet to officially swing its doors open, yet we’ve noticed in a hidden corridor on the NRC website that it’s already begun casting its net to pull in even more talent and creative thinkers – the core focus on context aware services and the “Internet of Things”, an extremely exciting area of development that we’ve covered a many times here on Conversations.

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Fresh perspectives on the future of mobile life

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Next Thursday 5 June sees the launch of the new Nokia Research Center (NRC) program in Lausanne. Fusing the talents of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and NRC, this collaborative research venture is already promising to explore some of the most exciting and unchartered paths on the mobile development landscape, including contextually aware interaction, environment sensors and bold new visions for sustainability.

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A new era of location, location, location

HELSINKI, Finland – Having recently stated, “We expect to ship about 35 million GPS-enabled Nokia devices in 2008, which is equal to the entire GPS device market in 2007,” Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, paints a picture of GPS as standard. But the significance of this goes way beyond just personal navigation. Having GPS so interwoven into our mobile lives, paired with the rapid increase of faster data connections, encourages a brave new world of location-based interaction, enabling us to effortlessly mine our surroundings for information consciously and unconsciously.