Continuing ournotes from Nokia World 09. Rermember if you are there, Scott, Joe, Julien and David are too and are keen to meet people.
From Scott 9.30
Primordial wins Apps on Maps at NW09 Calling all Innovators. Originally built for US Army to provide map where no roads exist. Pretty cool.
Niklas Savander announces Ovi SDK. Says that it is based on web technologies using WebRunTime and provides faster and richer user.
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From Julien 9.45 am
Niklas Savander: Nokia opening to the world by providing OVI APIs to mobile developer via the OVI SDK, a web based application development toolkit. Allowing web developers to quickly and efficiently productize their online content towards millions of existing and upcoming Nokia Devices.
Based on WebRunTime (WRT), it offers ready made User Interface components, assembled easily via your computer Web Browser. Openess is the future, these first set of APIs are setting the direction and the vision.
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Joe at 10.01
Videos about how people in the third world are using Nokia life tools to improve their lives, from people learning to speak other languages, using phones to steam line the ordering of goods such as textiles (through Nokia Tej) and people using emails for the first time in developing countries.
Mary McDowell from Nokia states there are over 3 billion people with mobiles but a lack of people with access to financial services, Nokia is rolling out a service to make mobile payments via your phone, known as Nokia money, which will give access to bill payments, top up prepaid services, transfer money to friends/family and pay mercents with or without a bank account. Nokia money is independant of operators as consumers cannot be restricted to the same device or same network and that can only happen by creating a viable ecosystem.
Find out more about Tej here and here.
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From Scott 10.09
Lots of focus this morning on mobile services. There are so many cool apps and fun games that extend entertainment and/or bring minor new capabilities or the extension of capabilities that we already have today. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy these like everyone else. But I do believe it is quite is easy to overlook or not realize, especially in the US and even Europe, how mobile services can and will drastically change the lives of many people in many regions where mobiles are their only connection/computer.
Things that we take easily for granted on a day-to-day basis like computer & internet access, TV, credit cards, etc. are not always readily available if at all. Mobile phones can be the only true access that people have to the world outside of their local communities. Take mobile payments/banking. I was caught by surprise to hear the stat (I think I got it right…) that of the approx. 4 billion mobile users, almost 50% do not have access to a credit card and/or even a bank account. Huge opportunity to make a valuable change in many lives.
Getting back to more fun items. Henri Moissinac Director of Mobile for Facebook, said that users spend over 5 billion minutes per day on Facebook. It now has 65 million mobile users. US, Canada, UK and Indonesia are biggest markets.
Facebook also has 7 games that have over 12 million users each. That means 7 games that are the same size in scale as World of Warcraft. Funny point is that Facebook presentation contained 1 slide all focused on iPhone. First person to do that!
From Joe 14.18
Wandering around the assorted exhibition areas, things that really stuck out for me include the push for music through the X6 and X3 devices and unlimited music download capability. It really seems like Nokia are convinced they will be able to compete with Apple in the field of music on your mobile.
Personally, I think the X3 has a real chance of doing that, the device is small, light and affordable (115 Euros) and could offer an alternative to more expensive competitors.
The beta device n97 minis are a lot slicker and faster than I expected. The way the menus pop up is a lot smoother than on my n97 (even though I have the 2.0 firmware already patched) and the kinetic scrolling seems to be a lot faster.
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Joe again
Scott and I tested a Nokia concept that involved you wearing on a pair of adapted glasses that register your eyeball movements through a landscape visible through the lenses of photos. Although the concept is quite gimmicky, the fact that both mine and Scott’s eyes are hurting due to having bright lines shined into our retinas does not want me to rush our and pre-order a paid, or even try to use them again.
I think over time the technology may improve but I couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t that far evolved from the Virtual Reality machines that were popular in the early 1990’s
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Just heard the Symbian main website was down last night. Sorry for that folks. Anyone want to comment, please do – I’ll ask the IT guys to come on and respond.
