The E71 is the social media device of choice.

I was just reading Glen’s post on his belief that the E71 is the social media users dream. I’d have to agree with him, the keyboard makes messaging and replying on social media sites such as Twitter and Jaiku a breeze. I too had one of the loaner E71’s for the NokiaOpenLabs08 event, which was the second time I’d had the device. The three days or so with the device was enough to convince me that the E71 was the right device for me and I upgraded from my N95-1 to the E71 as soon as I could. I haven’t looked back, I spend most of my time, typing out messages or micro-blog posts and the QWERTY keyboard is a must. Having said that the E71 is a great device and I won’t be giving mine up for a long time, the E63 has an even better keyboard than the E71. It has a softer rubber feel to the keys which grip your fingers and finger nails better than the E71. The extra keys also mean it’s easier to insert brackets, the impact this has on the space bar, i.e. shrinking it is almost unnoticeable.

A nice present from WOM World

it’s been yet another day with the phone glued to my ear today, when just 20 mins ago there was a surprise knock on the front door and there was the postman stood there with a special delivery envelope. Having photographer the said envelope (below) I proceed to find a gold envelope inside containing, some OVi Stickers, a Finland Key chain, a 1GB mem stick and the new Nokia add campaign paper for Nokia legends and a lovely postcard saying “thanks” and signed by the WOM world team. I can only say it’s a nice surprise and I’m like to say as I’ve said many times before the WOM world team do a great job!

 

Mining Loyalty Card Data for the environment and your health.

An hour or so on our last day at Nokia open labs 08 was taken up with the Green workshop, we got a chance to see some cool videos made by companies trying to make going green more fun than it is right now. We also saw a video for Carrotmob, a group forcing and changing the environmental strategy of businesses.

However, during one of the conversations, the guy from Nokia that had joined us, briefly described a program in Finland where a company was taking the shopping receipt from people and giving them back a health status, how many vitamins they had consumed for example, I’m sure there was a little more to it than that, but I can’t find the service via Google for any more information.

What dawned on me, was that the loyalty card data that big companies like Tesco and Sainsbury’s etc hold, has m0re information than a simple receipt and thus could potentially be much more valuable. That information must be able to show us how healthy we are and also how green we are.  By getting at this data we can see which products we are buying and therefore plot how green we are, how many locally produced vegetables did we buy versus how many that have traveled thousands of miles.

This data source I’m sure could provide much more than just how green or how healthy we are, but that’s two uses for the data that could have a positive impact on our lives. The next question is how do we get Tesco’s and Sainsburys to let a third party gain access to that data. There must be a business model in there somewhere, a new service partnered with the retailer, for example.

Nokia Legends

Whilst in Helsinki at the Open Labs event 08 Nokia launched it’s Nokia Legends add campaign to us first which was pretty cool.

The web site is not up and it’s available at www.legendstelegraph.com

Open Labs and Open People

I wrote this on the plane back from Nokia Open labs 08 in Helsinki, Finland;

It’s been an amazing 3 days, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again,  a big thanks to the WOM team for picking me to come along and for organizing an event fantastically well. They’d thought of every last detail, organizing cabs, giving us sim cards for Sonera, just amazing, thanks guys, a great job.

One of the highlights for me was the people that I met and I’m sure only got to know a little bit, but who I found to be really interesting, funny, informed and willing to have great conversations on a range of subjects.

I learnt some cool stuff from Nokia and the workshops, but have also learnt a lot from the conversations that took place outside the managed time slots with those people.  For example not being afraid to share ideas and to have people come back and challenge those ideas and help build a better and more informed view on a subject.

I’m looking forward to continuing those conversations here, on Twitter, Jaiku and hopefully face to face more regularly than it’s been so far.

 

You can recycle a Service

One thing that I found interesting during the Nokia Open Labs 08 event was that it was more about being connecting and living in that connected world, which was the most important thing. It wasn’t about forcing Nokia products into the conversation, it was much more interesting than that.

It’s about the connected eco system, Nokia are building upon the device and making services such as Ovi to make live easier, easier to share, easier to communicate, easier to locate.

The interesting aspect to this will be how Nokia’s business model evolves from appearing on the surface to be a device manufacturer, but to become an enabler of connectivity, through applications and services that make owning a Nokia handset only a small part of the transactions you have with them.

It became clearer to me during the green presentation that we had following on from the talk by Adam Greenfield, that we’re moving into an era when consumerism and the fragrant disregard given for the environment in the context of the constant upgrading of devices, will become unacceptable.

This obviously becomes a huge problem when society finally wakes up to the green debate and rebels. It can therefore only be a good thing, having a services and software business model supporting green devices rather than one built upon consumer greed.

Finally,  on a lighter note, I’d like to say a big thanks to the WOM team, Donna, Frank, Robbie and Rich.