One more cool reason to think about the Nokia E71

The E71 has a dual personality - it's the perfect mobile companion for the business user (think push email, messaging, office functionality etc... but it's also a cool device for the non-business user - 3MP camera, video, messaging, web browsing, MP3 etc... One of the really cool features I enjoyed with the device is listening to messages and email. See the short demo clip below.



See more about the E71 here
See also this E71 image Gallery

The Nokia E71 smartphone, great for personal use, fantastic for the business user!

I've had a way cool Nokia E71 smartphone at my displosal for a couple of weeks. This bad-boy runs on Symbian S60 3, sports a large screen, QWERTY keypad, bluetooth, GPS, loads of memory, incredible apps, camera, video, and much more. The slideshow below shows a few images of the device which is an ideal personal and business companion... Blackberry has nothing on this one!




Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

More Nokia OpenLab Videos

Indeed there's tons of images and video that came out of Helsinki at the recently held Nokia OpenLab... almost overwhelming since about 3 dozen attendees and the show planners were all generating content (live) while there. The Nokia team put together a very cool video montage that summarized some of the cool moments during the 3 days... enjoy.

And more videos from the adventure!

• Drinking in Helsinki (CT Moore)
• Workshop #1 (Whatleydude)
• Workshop #3 (Gypsybandito)
• OpenLab workshops on events page
• Environmental workshop - listen to the freaking crash 10 seconds in- wow!
  

SlideShow from Helsinki Finland - Nokia OpenLab 08

Just realized I hadn't created a slideshow of last week's images of Finland yet so here we go...



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Geo-Social location services for musicians from Nokia OpenLab

An interesting follow-up out of last week's Nokia OpenLab08 comes from musician, Steve Lawson. Steve has a done a great job at sharing his thoughts post-OpenLab, sometimes expressing his frustration at not being able to take part in conversations where he should have been and he also shares some cool vision on his take on the role location-awareness can/should play in the real of mobile music in the future (great stuff Steve!) I love this suggestion from Steve and this is exactly the sort of output that I'm sure Nokia was hoping to get from the event... "the ability to map a tour, plot any media captured on it onto it, group crowd-sourced flickr-photos by location and date, and even to network a street team by geo-tagged data are the stuff that every band in the world should be jumping on"

Indeed Steve is hot for location-awareness as it pertains to his passions (like music) and I have no doubt there's many clever solutions that will come. Imagine your device listening to a tune, providing feedback on the song artist, a chance to purchase the song etc... and then the abililty for your mobile sensor to provide playlist suggestions based on your location, or perhaps based on who you're with at the time, then connecting you to people nearby that may share your love for an artist or particular genre of music. I like the possibility of tracks or even concert tickets etc... being offered to me (maybe at a discount) via mobile, based on where I'm located...

Follow Steve on Twitter @solobasssteve

Coming Down from the Nokia OpenLab08 High

We'll I'm back from a whirl-wind journey to Finland where myself, along with about 3 dozen other bloggers, new media technologists, early adopters of mobile technology and social media technology gurus, where we had a chance to discuss the what, where, when and why of mobile, particularly with respect to our social networks. I have to admit, like many others in attendance, I'm still trying to process fully what transpired! Made up of several "workshops", one of which I facilitated, we shared our tales and thoughts on the likely direction that social networking will take, and in particular, the role that the mobile web will play as things evolve. There were no correct answers, there were no stupid comments, there were no misfits, etc... there was simply a group of cool people sharing their stories and offering up insights from their own special corner of the social web or geo-social web as I like to call it! This might sound a bit abstract and you may wonder, what the hell was Glenn doing there and what is he talking about? Well, that's how Nokia (sponsor of the event, via their WomWorld extension) likes to roll, that's how they like to get a glimpse of future technologies and the role that the company's solutions will play as the mobile web expands it's reach.

Obviously, with me being the "Geo" guy, I was providing insight into my thoughts on the geo-social web and other location-aware solutions that users take advantage of to expand their networks and share their experiences. If anything, the event not only enabled us to brainstorm, but we also had a chance to take part in a very interesting social networking test where a group of 35 people were introduced to each other, provided with a mobile device (Nokia E71 in this case) and told to have at er... setting us free in Helsinki to collaborate, socialize and communicate via whatever means we could. At the end of the day, the group Wiki, Twitter, Jaiku, Flickr, Qik, and Ovi proved invaluable in bringing us closer together and enabled us to have a much different experience had these mobille technologies not existed. If this is all too much for you to think about at the moment (I know it's been a load for me as I try to recoup), I can relate... I'm still absorbing a ton of material and media. I have to say thanks to Peter Batty for planting a seed in my head last week and reminding me how combining future location location focused applications more with current location focused applications is where we are headed... I couldn't stop thinking about this and now couldn't agree more! I also couldn't help to wonder while we were there, how crucial the latest social networking tools were to us all to help us enjoy the event and communicate with each other... indeed if we could build on the geo-social web experience we could have benefited even more - there's opportunity a plenty in that space in my mind!

Thanks to the team in Helsinki (along with WOMWORLD and 100Heads) for getting us together and for sharing some media with us via Ovi Share... Nice Job! And a big thanks to my 3 dozen+ new friends who have greatly expanded my social network and given me much to think about regarding the Geo-Social Network and the possibilities that it brings to our lives.

The OpenLab08 Group (Image Credit NokiaOpenLab08 on Ovi)

Enough of that for now... maybe take a load off and test your Geographical skills in this contest from Nokia called the Mapsters... have fun - you just might win a new Nokia 6110 Navigator! I just got a score of 69,900 on first try, can you beat that... I'm sure you can! Oh, and please, don't forget about thegreenthing! I'm doing my green thing by not watering my lawn every day like my entire neighborhood. Instead, once a week by hand and I have grass just as green as anyone else... go figure that one! More to come soon...

Some additional resources to consider include:

• Ovi Share Channel
• WomWorld on Jaiku or me on Jaiku
• Twitter
• NokiaOpenLab08 Flickr
• my Qik
• OpenLab on qik
• OpenLab Official website
• OpenLab Wiki
• James Whatley video on Join The Community

Blogs, comment, and Vlogs from attendees:

• Goodby Helsinki (Gypsibandito)
• Phil Campbell's closing comments
• Nokia Openlab 08 (Mickipedia)
• OpenLab Part 1 (Steve Lawson)
• NokiaOpenLAb08 in Review - Nick Bouton
  
• OpenLab 2 - Geo-Location workshop (Steve Lawson)
  
• NokiaOpenLab08 qiks
  

the green thing

Something we heard about last week at OpenLab was an initiative called the green thing, a community that encourages people to be a little bit greener. We even had group discussions on mobile technologies and suggestions that might be useful in the future to help us all do the green thing a little better. See more at http://www.dothegreenthing.com/
see also the green blog at http://www.dothegreenthing.com/entries

Preparation for Nokia OpenLab 08, Finland

Well, I'm getting prepped for my trip to Helsinki Finland to take part in the inaugural Nokia sponsored Open Labs 2008... a networking / brainstorming session including workshops to discuss mobility, geospatial enabing technologies, social networking, and anything somewhat related to these topics. A total of 35 of us have been invited to take part with most people showing up Thursday, myself and 3 other workshop hosts will arive a day early. I'm gearing up to moderate/host, etc... my session titled ‘The Connected Life’. It will revolve around attendee views of how location aware technology will develop in the future, and will involve concepting future solutions for geospatial services. Should be fun! Workshops will be run by the following individuals:

Workshop: Neighborhood
Facilitator: James Whatley
Link: http://whatleydude.com/

Workshop: Business/Work
Facilitator: Chris Moore
Link: http://gypsybandito.com/

Workshop: Entertainment
Facilitator: Anne Toole
Link: http://writerscabal.wordpress.com/

Workshop: Connected Life
Facilitator: Glenn Letham - ya that's me!
Link: http://gisuser.blogspot.com/

I'm still sorting out some of the social networks and blog tools that I'll take advantage of. These will likely include:

Twitter - http://twitter.com/gletham
Blogger http://gisuser.blogspot.com
Qik (Video) http://qik.com/GISuser
Jaiku - http://glenn95.jaiku.com/

I'll be posting to these services via a trial Nokia E71 smartphone.. way slick and my first QWERTY smartphone! To prep I've installed shozu, twibble, jaiku, qik, yahoo! go, boopsie view ranger (with Helsinki maps), locr, zonetag (Yahoo!), gmail, gsearch, google maps, and loaded up a few tunes as well!

Also, a flickr Group Page has been created at http://www.flickr.com/groups/nokiaopenlab08/

I'll be back Sunday night... have a great week all!

WOM World, The Connected Life and the future of geospatial

Finland or bust... It's been a couple of years but once again I'm preparing for a trip to Finland. I haven't mentioned much about this but given that I'll be absent most of next week I figured I'd share a bit of what's taking place next week.

To my surprise I was recently sent an invite to what's billed as WOM / World, a Nokia-sponsored workshop that will conincide with the Nokia Open World Event - recall WOM World is also a blog that covers off what's happening in the social media space coupled with related developments with Nokia devices and services. Given that I've been covering the topics of Geospatial / LBS, and Symbian OS devices for a number of years now I guess I was a good fit to take part in the event! What I find exciting about this event in particular is the heavy focus that LBS will play in discussions, particularly with respect to social media apps and services... heck, just think about it, just today I mentioned a new application from Singapore called GPS Movies that enables users to essentially affect the content and outcome of a movie depending on where they are geographically located when watching the movie on their handset. This and other exciting technologies will no doubt be hot/fun topics of discussion at the event.

Of particularly interest next week will be a workshop that I'll be moderating - the topic of discussion - The Connected Life. During the session we'll look at attendees views of how location aware technologies are developing and will involve discussing future solutions for geospatial services and they might integrate in mobile apps and services. Should be interesting.

This first of it's kind event is scheduled to take place Sept 11-14 in Helsinki. According to the event planners, "the aim is to involve everyone from creative’s, designers, video producers to open source software bloggers and mobile tech pioneers thorough discussion on what the future holds, for everything from mobile tech to media co-creation." During the week we'll also be outfitted with a new trial Nokia device, the E71 http://maps.nokia.com/e71 so we can share stories and thoughts about some of the supported location-aware apps like Twibble, Joikuspot, Wcities and others. I'll also be sure to discuss some of the other location-aware mobile apps that i use like Google maps, Spoprts Tracker, ZoneTag, locr, Earthcomber, WHERE, Boopsie, Qik, Lightpole, and others.







For more on WOM World see the blog at http://www.womworld.com/Nokia