ESPOO, Finland

If we visit a famous landmark, it can establish its own digital identity. Through our devices, we can see who has visited it today, what they did and even check out images and reviews of the place. This all exists right now, but with an ecosystem that brings all that information together we get a useful digital profile of the landmark.

Nokia is looking at the bond that binds relationships. Right now people tend to leave technology out of their close relationships. In the future though, the information we share over the Internet will change and evolve that, placing technology at the centre of the bonding process. Not in an intrusive way, but as an enabler. I can see this evolution beginning now. We’re already doing it with friendships, and as we share more digitally, it’s an inevitable next step.

Take relationships further out where people are joined together through a common purpose or goal. Think about mass participation events. The mobile ecosystem can add a completely new dimension to these gatherings, enabling complete strangers to share experiences and digital aspects of the common bond. This potentially brings complete strangers together in a way they’d never have had before.

The key for me in all of this is where technology is an enabler, rather than being the focus of what’s happening. I like the ideas, and can see how it can happen and more importantly how it can be useful (yes, I’d love my phone to remind me that the plants need to be watering!). The question is, can it happen without taking over?

ESPOO, Finland

Although clearly just concepts at this point, the devices shown in the animated video (we’ll try and get a copy for Convesations) paint a picture of how we’ll be using devices and services. Connecting to TV, so we can share TV watching experiences with people on the other side of the world, or even using the mobile device as a projector. Contextual awareness plays a big part too, with the device working together with the cloud, both pulling information down to the device, and also sending information back.

Take the fisherman in India. Not only is he using his device to get the best prices for his fish, but he’s making extra money by selling his data to overseas universities who can tap into his and other fishermen’s information for their research.

It might not be a single device either. We saw an example of the user who’s main device is his mobile computer, acts as a satnav and a multimedia centre – much as our devices do today. However Mr 2015 also has a smaller, sub device which he can use for sport. With the same interface as his main device, and the addition of the cloud, means he can move seamlessly between the two.

Of course, this is all still conceptual, but we can see easily how the services and strategy being laid down today form the backbone of the lives we’ll be living tomorrow. No, Ovi services aren’t perfect right now. But we’re at the very beginning. The pace of evolution, both of devices and services will see us all living in a very different world. And you know, it isn’t that far away!

ESPOO, Finland

Bridging the gap between the physical and digital world is the centre point for Nokia devices. Researchers in Nokia’s Tampere lab are working hard on the concept of mixed reality, where location, the device, the cloud and the person all combine to bring a new experience. Point and Find is the first example of this, but Mary hints at more to come.

So, what’s next? Super sensing the world around us. Going beyond location, it looks like we could see a range of bio and nano sensors to help us observe and detect our environment. Some of these might appear in our devices, some might even end up in our clothes. Take this information, use the device as the bridge and the cloud suddenly starts to take on a whole new meaning. We’re already seeing the early fruits of this methodology in Nokia HealthRadar and Nokia Data Gathering where information is gathered at ground level, sent through the cloud for sorting and analysis. Add sensors to that which have an understanding of what’s happening to the people who are using them and keeping on top of contagious diseases starts to become a reality. The cloud on it’s own is smart. Plug in a large number of devices and it becomes much smarter.

ESPOO, Finland

Kicking things off we have an interesting stat: the number of texts sent on Nokia devices would equal the complete works of Shakespeare. Makes you think, huh?

We’ll be back shortly with a rundown on what Mary has to say. Meanwhile, enjoy the snap of this morning’s fresh snow in Finland. If you want to watch what’s happening live, check out Symbianoid’s live Twitter page.

ESPOO, Finland –

Making his third trip to Finland, he was happy to be back in the Land of the Midnight Sun (or as we say at this time of year, Land of Very Little Sun).  On his first trek to Finland, he was treated to a traditional Finnish sauna and swin-in-the-lake by Nokia Design and Consumer Experience head, Marko Ahtisaari.  When asked if he enjoyed the sauna in the customary fashion of being completely naked, he quickly replied, “absolutely!”

This year’s award theme was “Open Innovation”, something that clearly resonates with Jimmy who believes that when it comes to mobile platforms such as Symbian and Maemo “the open approach will succeed” and “the locked days are over”.  He says, “I want to install what I want. Consumers don’t want permission”.  Jimmy believes the United States is “behind” with locked devices, he’s happy to see that Americans are beginning to choose device and brand loyalty over carrier loyalty.

Given that a large portion of the global population will experience the Internet for the first time on a mobile device, I asked what the mobile industry can do to make it easier for these newcomers to get involved in something like Wikipedia.  Languages are key, as Jimmy and the Wikipedia team have found through the work with site which supports 240 active languages.  He also encourages handset makers to support the project by contributing updated style sheets so newer web browsers are compatible with Wikipedia.

Hunting around online, the terms “world changer” and “hero” seem to follow Jimmy around. When I mention it, he blushes and says he’s “actually embarrassed” by such things.  Instead he tells a story of a guy who has been persecuted in his native country for simply updating the Farsi Wikipedia pages.  This man’s wife now has Jimmy’s direct phone number and if her husband was ever arrested, Jimmy vows to make as much noise as possible about it online, knowing that international awareness and pressure would help set this person free.

As Jimmy says, “this man is the real hero”.

GLOBAL

In some cases, it was clear that the number was significantly more than 11, too. Reader gregg003 proudly told us he has more than 40, Amit has installed upwards of 30 on his 5800 XpressMusic in just one month, while Farhan claims to have downloaded a whopping 75.
Widget2’s quota of 36 reads like an Ovi Store wishlist:

Apps: Mobbler. Local Tagging, Gizmo5, Yahoo!Go, Facebook, Sports Tracker, PhoneLocator, Opera Mini, Skyfire, MSN Messenger, DivX Player, Gmail, Google Maps, PhotoArt, Pocket Express, Strands Social Player, ColourChooser, Mail for Exchange, Files on Ovi, Presenter, WeFi, Nimbuzz, Plusmo, Point & Find, YouTube, Here and Now, Ovi Store, BBC iPlayer, Internet Radio, Vlingo, Qik, Shazam, Traveler, JoikuSpot Express, Tweets60, Pixelpipe.

The next-highest option, 7-10, received a healthy 18 per cent of the vote, while 4-6 garnered 19 per cent. That means JBC’s admission to currently having just three on his recently updated E71 puts him in the bottom 20 per cent – time to get redownloading. Right now I’m downloading everything and anything on Conversations’ own Nokia N900.

Just over one in 10 respondents (11 per cent) owned up to having just one, two or three apps currently residing on their Nokia handset, while five per cent admitted they hadn’t downloaded a single app and the same proportion couldn’t resist going for the ‘what’s an app?’ option.

Our poll question itself asked only the number of apps you had ‘downloaded and installed’, but an interesting debate cropped up over what constitutes a ‘running’ app.

Reader Simon argued that we should distinguish between apps that ended up just sitting there and ones that were in regular use.

Installed is not running. I run about 11 separate applications on my E71 at any given time. I have over 50 installed.

Another reader, cycnus, said their own proportion of ‘running’ apps was far higher.

I have many apps on my phone, but 95% I used opera, nimbuzz, worldmate, the nokia web browser. The other 5% (beside e-mail, sms, camera and pre-installed apps) is game. I download a couple of free/demo game, and so far have found no game that could really be counted as addictive enough.

But while Simon’s point that installed is not running certainly has merit, it’s worth repeating JBC’s thoughts in response:

I’d suggest though that we all have apps installed which we don’t run every day. But isn’t the same true of apps on your computer? It certainly is mine. There’re apps which you’ll try, but their usefulness is short-lived and so quickly become redundant. There are others though, which spend 99% of the time doing nothing, but spark up when the occasion requires them to.

Perhaps in the end it’s just a matter of interpretation. Either way, as Ovi Store goes from strength to strength we look forward to repeating this poll in a year’s time to getting another glimpse at just what apps you’ve been downloading, and using.

GLOBAL

Calendar entries, like contacts, are easy to keep updated using something like Ovi, but that didn’t stop it taking 11 per cent of the vote. Device and application settings, along with bookmarks all accounted for a small part of the vote, though the ‘other’ category threw up some interesting topics including: messages, FM transmitter and the call log.

Commenting on the poll, reader Hary makes a good point about backing up and restoring applications:

“I don’t think so far, there is any way developed by Nokia or anyone else to back up applications from phone memory. So if you lose them you have to download one by one separately”

That’d be like creating a disk image of your device, where the core installation, including settings, applications and what not, is backed up and could be easily restored in one go, an interesting concept that’d surely resonate in a lot of circumstances.

The other point is of course data security, as ready Rick Low explains in his comment:

“A good backup strategy does nothing to address confidentiality. If a mobile phone is lost or stolen, there is a window of opportunity for data theft before the loss is realized”

It seems the folks over at Betalabs are cooking something up in relation to all this, though we’ll have to wait and see what it’s all about. The survey is still open so if you want to have some input on what’s important to you when it comes to data security and restoration, head on over and take part.

GLOBAL

What tickles our fancy though is what kind of data you consider most important to back up. About five years ago my phone was stolen. I’d just recently been through all of my contacts to clean them up, but before I had a chance to back up, I lost the whole lot.

Today, my contacts and calendar live in the cloud (along with most of my working documents) and my phone, computer and laptop are becoming dumber and dumber. Replacing any of them shouldn’t be too much heartache, except now my concern about loss has more to do with settings and applications (images and video tend to synced the same day they’re shot).

And that’s where I think we’ve seen a big shift. Sure, for regular phone users, backing up their contacts would be a wise thing. Not having to plug a device into a computer to back them up would be even wiser (Ovi Contacts, anyone?). For those of us who spend more of their time with higher end devices though, our needs are entirely different. With myriad apps, advanced device settings and things like Bookmarks, map waypoints and myriad other bits of information to collect, our needs are rapidly changing.

Given the different tools we have at our disposal to store and back up information, I’m going to focus this week’s poll on understanding what you’d find hardest to restore. You can choose up to four options, and there’s an “other” box for anything I haven’t already included. Happy voting.

GLOBAL

This little nugget came to light when one Julian Treasure shone his stat torch on it. He gave a talk recently for TED on sound and how it affects us in four significant ways. Watch the talk below to see how bad an idea it is to work in a noisy open office! The talk is hugely captivating (okay, we were waiting to hear the bit about the number of times the Nokia ringtone is played daily) and well worth almost six minutes of your life. Julian is clearly a fascinating guy and as chairman of Sound Agency he leads a team advising companies and brands around the world on the use of sound.

He also writes a blog on sound which, if you’re into sound, is probably worth a read.

Oh, and he thinks we should all listen to at least five minutes of birdsong every day. I like this guy already!

GLOBAL

Talking up the prowess of the soon to be released N900 in the form of the PUSH competition, we even saw retro toys like the Speak N Spell and office perks such as the rolodex dragged into the 21st century. Perhaps it’s a simple case of connecting new with old, making the unfamiliar, familiar. I suspect it’s something more though. There’s no doubt that a fascination with the old exists. And it isn’t just in tech.

They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that recession and times of hardship bring about something in us which craves comfort and safety (in it’s simplest form – I’m no psychiatrist!) and so we reach for the old and the familiar. It’s why we’re seeing a big resurgence in old school brands now. In the UK old chocolate bars long consigned to the store shelves of history have been revived (at the people’s calling) along with traditional custard, meat and two veg and assorted other elements of our recent past.

Search for Retro Fascination on Google and you’re met with a story written only last month where the writer, Nick Churchouse of Stuff.co.nz asked the very same question (in a slightly more eloquent manner). His readers, it seems, were more mixed on the subject. Some liked a bit of the old, mixed with a bit of the new whereas Nick himself was a pure modernist.

It’s quite possible that I’ll never understand this fascination (and I suffer from it myself, in some ways). But there’s no doubting that falling from the pockets of modernity are treasures from the past which help us connect, remember and most importantly smile. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.