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Fresh out of Nokia Beta Labs comes Friend View, an experimental location and micro-blogging service which works both on mobile phones as well as on the web.

To show your location, the Friend View application is using the built-in GPS or the network if there is no signal available (you can also set your location manually). When you turn on Friend View, it locates you as an avatar on a map and shows you all your friends as well. Whenever you send a micro-message, it appears as a word balloon on the map, and you can get a quick overview of what’s going on with your friends with the ‘What’s Up’ feature.

Stefan Constantinescu from Nokia Corporate Strategy shares more about the new feature, which is currently in development:

Our friends over at ArcticStartup reviewed the software and were left unimpressed:

I’m not blown away, nor have I completely lost hope with Nokia. They are trying fairly hard. The service is very Nokia-like in that it’s not very user friendly compared to some others that have emerged from the west coast of US. The UI is rather ugly and after you start using it feels that someone has designed it on paper, but never really used it herself as it’s not logical all the way through. Similarly the service is still very buggy, not loading the map on the web browser, eating one’s battery in no time …the list goes on and has still some really retarded features like the fact that the nick name is case sensitive.

AllAboutSymbian also wrote up a review and has more screenshots.

At first, we thought this had something to do with Nokia’s acquisition of location-based service Plazes earlier this year, but peculiarly the Plazes team released a mobile version of their own just yesterday which looks like an entirely different thing than Friend View.

Maybe the two teams should talk to one another. I hear Nokia has this new app in development called Friend View that lets you keep up with what your friends are doing.

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Source: Robin Wauters

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Finnish mobile giant Nokia has announced that it is trimming down its operations by cutting over 600 positions, mainly in marketing and sales departments. The Nokia Research Center (NRC), the business unit that explores and develops technologies that will be available in the marketplace in five to ten years, will also focus on fewer research areas from now on.

In addition to the lay-offs, Nokia is closing an entire company site (Turku) by the end of January 2009, but hopes to relocate all of its 220 employees to Nokia’s site at Salo or in the capital area in Finland. The changes in the Markets unit, Nokia Research Center and in other Nokia functions will come into effect on January 1, 2009.

In another release, Nokia touts the introduction of a range of low-priced mobile devices and new services catered specifically to people in emerging markets (e.g. India). In total, seven new handsets were announced, and the first services Nokia will offer in emerging markets will focus on email (Mail on Ovi), agriculture and education (Nokia Life Tools).

Like many businesses, Nokia is feeling the nasty sting of the economic downturn. Its recently announced Q3 earnings weren’t spectacular either (down over 28 percent on a year earlier), so these lay-offs don’t exactly come unexpectedly. It’s easy enough to find the irony when you look at the two news releases side by side, but I think Nokia is actually making the right strategic move by shifting its focus to custom internet services for countries where there is much room for growth and very specific needs.

I doubt the employees that were fired will feel the same way, though.

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Source: Robin Wauters

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve already seen Nokia’s N79 up close and personal, but if you’re just not ready to commit until you see exactly what your potential purchase will entail, you may want to hit up the Nseries Workshop blog, which has the requisite unboxing video of the device, on video and outdoors, no less. In case you missed it when it got official, the phone is a tri-band GSM number, and packs a generous 5-megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash, built-in WiFi, 4GB of microSD storage, swappable back covers (as seen above), and an unfortunately lackluster screen — at least in our experience. Head on past the break for the complete unboxing.

[Thanks, Steve]

Continue reading Nokia N79 gets unboxed on video

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Source: Donald Melanson

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

While it may not be Nokia’s first touchscreen phone (anyone out there remember the 7710?), the 5800 XpressMusic is certainly the first to come out of Finland with a mainstream appeal. What we’ve alternately known as the “Tube” throughout much of its development cycle is the first production device to run S60 5th Edition — the fourth major overhaul of Nokia’s ubiquitous smartphone platform since 2002 and the first to support fingers, styli, and high-res displays. Speaking of high-res displays, the 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards. It’ll be available in three versions — European HSDPA, North American HSDPA, and GSM only — and ships this quarter in black, red, and blue for €279 (about $392) unlocked with an 8GB card thrown in for good measure. Music fans with voracious appetites for new tunes might want to hold out, though, for the Comes With Music-equipped version that follows on “early next year” at a to-be-announced price.

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Source: Chris Ziegler

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

We thought he probably would’ve at least stuck around long enough to see the Tube get announced later this week, but Nokia CTO Bob Iannucci has announced that he’s stepping down from the world’s number one cellphone maker effective immediately for undisclosed “personal reasons.” Though it might seem that the move leaves a gaping hole in Espoo’s senior leadership, the company actually says that Bob will continue on in an advisory role while it decides whether it even needs a CTO going forward. Bob also served as head of the Nokia Research Centre — also known as the place where you get to play with Haptikos — where Henry Tirri, current head of the center’s Systems Research group, will be taking over.

[Via mocoNews]

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Source: Chris Ziegler

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Filed under: Handhelds

Last week we got a few tid-bits of information on where Nokia is heading with its next round of Internet Tablets and now we’re learning a little bit more courtesy of a spy shot taken at the company’s Maemo Summit (held over the weekend in fabulous Berlin). The 3G HSPA connectivity and a TI OMAP3 processor mentioned earlier are confirmed, the latter of which will open the door to OpenGL ES 2.0 compatibility for graphics acceleration and, hopefully, alleviate the occasionally stuttery video playback that made the N810 a somewhat less than ideal PMP. Beyond that all we know so far is that it will utilize the company’s Maemo 5 OS (Windows 3.1 is right out), will support USB 2.0 (surprise!), and that use of hair-care products at the Summit was apparently optional.

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Source: Tim Stevens

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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Espoo’s usually a pretty cold place, but HTC’s S740 has to feel the heat coming off Nokia headquarters now that the purported E75 slider has been spotted in its natural habitat. We don’t have a ton of information about this thing, but considering the length of time that transpired between the E71’s first spy shot and its release, we do know that we could still be in for a bit of a wait before this thing is announced, much less retailed. If Nokia manages to keep the thickness in check, we’re thinking this could be a fantastic form factor for S60, Eseries or otherwise — and since the phone borrows heavily from the ID of the beautiful E71, we’re optimistic it’s going to be a looker. Let’s just get it out the door in a reasonable amount of time, alright?

[Thanks, African Remix]

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Source: Chris Ziegler

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Filed under: Robots

No matter how much we do it, video conferencing is still one of the most awkward internet-related tasks we undertake on a regular basis. Nokia hopes to bring a more casual air to the event with its Jeppe video conferencing robot pet concept. Similar to most telepresence bots, Jeppe can be controlled remotely — through a Nokia interface, conveniently — and zips through the home with its digital compass and sound sensors seeking humans to bother. Unfortunately, the video is at a fixed angle and there’s no option wipe that creepy grin of its face, but obviously Nokia has some refining to do before it brings Jeppe to market, if ever. There’s video after the break of a couple Finnish engineers proving once and for all that there’s no solving the awkward video conferencing problem.

[Via Core77]Continue reading Nokia’s Jeppe video “pet” concept

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Source: Paul Miller

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