My iPhone 3G is like a prototype

During the past 13 years I have used maybe 100 different prototypes and my brand new iPhone 3G feels just like one of them. One of the classic characteristics of prototypes is poor battery life. Battery life is optimised last in the process and optimising it pays off. Since Apple is not selling the iPhone in Korea, they have probably not done any field testing.
When I arrived to Seoul with my new iPhone 3G on Monday morning, by 5PM the battery was flat, and I had not made any call, and tried hard not to use any roaming mobile data. It was practically just on Standby. Tuesday same was repeated. Today I had to charge it during lunch. I mentioned this to a guy living in Japan and he said he had same problem, he could not take it out at night as it would run out of battery. He said people have the iPhone in Japan as a second phone.
I decided to upgrade my iPod 32GB Touch to the 16GB iPhone essentially to support a new business, but also to have data available when I need it. I guess I felt that Wi-Fi is just too patchy. Now I regret it.
I am really unhappy, I don’t like to pay for prototypes. The iPhone has been unusable during my Korea trip.
My dilemma is. Can I actually take it back and claim I do not get the promised standby or talk times, mine are so ff that the shop will think I am insane, and when I claim I use it in Korea they will probably say though luck, your contract is with O2 an we only guarantee it living up to its promises in UK, yet they still will be happy to make money on me while abroad.
I am puzzled, what should I do? I turn to you my dear smart readers. Help me.

Update in November; I have now tested the iPhone 2.1 SW in France, Finland, UK and it is a clear improvement, it is more stable and bettery life is better. 

(Image courtesy of: http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/2008/06/apple-3g-iphone-battery.jpg)

In San Francisco for Mobile 2.0 Conference

I am in San Francisco for the Mobile Web 2.0 conference and a week of meeting people talking convergence and mobile.

If you want to meet, drop a mail or text on +1 510 735 71 26 and we can connect.

Participated on the panel on user experience. Key messages:

• Mobile is the cheapest object of personal aspiration.
• A key topic in mobile convergence experience is identifying the seams (legal, brand, technical etc.)

On Wednesday and Thursday I will be hanging out around the Web 2.0 Expo like many others.... Good opportunites to meet.

Going Deep on Mobile

I believe great user experiences are born through a deep collaboration of the guys designing the interface and the guys writing the code. The more I do in mobile the more I tend to want to understand what happens in the engine room, it is hard. I feel this same frustration when I talk to designers. At the same time when I talk to guys writing code, they want to know he big picture. This gap I want to help to bridge. I want to bring these disciplines closer to each other. What better way to do that than to get folks I know and don't know together for the first MobileCamp in London. The idea to arrange it was not mine, but came from Victor Szilagyi and Imran Ali, but I thought the idea was so good that it was worth implementing. Sign up here!

We are arranging the camp by Fjord offices, in the hearth of Soho, one of the most bubbling hubs of mobility design, media, advertising. I guess of convergence of everything. Fjord designers will be present, spend time helping to design some cool hacks. We will crate a stage for conversation where the brands are ’left’ at home and where the user is in the center. A week-end of brainstorming, networking and hacking is in store for the 100 who sign up.

It is also my great pleasure to announce that Orange, Nokia, TAT and OpenMoko are showing up with some cool stuff and helping to fund the event. I am being promised that they will mobilize the lab, and leave the propaganda at home. This is an event to in a simple grassrooth manner serve the users. Everything done during the week-end is open source and public.

So if you want to make some progress on your ideas, get some help on your design, discuss big or little thoughts, you should come.

Joining Fjord - A hub of convergence

After a sabbatical traveling, being with the kids, building Lego and sailing it is time to return to industry. Time off gave me lots of opportunity to think where things are heading. We wanted to stay in London, like many we think it is the capital of the world or at least an amazing melting pot of trends and culture. I wanted to work on convergence with great people. This time this opportunity was closer to me than I thought. When Fjord asked if I wanted to join their board I instantly accepted. Here was a fantastic group of people working exactly in the domain of convergence. Fjord does mobile and web design and services for leading players in the industry. Over the course of our we realized that there was plenty of scope to so I joined as a partner and will spend the bulk of my time there. A small proportion of my time I will spend advising start-ups or players on product and mobile strategies as well as design. At Fjord I will help grow the business, do business development, some strategic consulting and look after their venturing activities. Their first spin-off Flirtomatic is already a good success in in the emerging lifestyle community space, generating more than 90M page view on mobile web in UK alone.

What makes Fjord truly unique is its understanding of convergence. It was founded by trio Mike Beeston, Mark Curtis and Olof Schybergson.  Mike is a veteran of the advertising industry and founder of what became Razorfish London and Mark is a pioneer in the interactive space and the CEO of Flirtomatic Olof a design genius, former creative director of Razorfish London. The Fjord team really understand the context behind different screens, the dynamic of mobile, the value of real-estate. This was why I hired them to help on Lifeblog and Yahoo Go 2.0. They have an office in the hearth of London's Soho and Helsinki and soon opening up in Berlin. Looking forward to working with you guys.  So if you are looking for kick-ass design look no further ;-)

2007, a time for change. Leaving Yahoo

Since late last year I decided to leave Yahoo. I will take a bit of time off to play with the girls, hangout with my wife and meet friends. During spring we plan to complete a big Lego City project we decided to build. A city the size of a door is being built. Complete with a castle, canal, church, some family homes and high street with shops. When not Legoing, I will think about the future of mobility, convergence and internet, so if you want to have a chat, send me a mail or call my mobil. You find latest contact info in the about me page. I am mostly in London during spring. I will be in Barcelona for 3GSM. Later in the spring I will do a trip to US among other saying goodbye to my friends at Yahoo Sunnyvale.

This week is the annual bash at 3GSM in Barcelona.

I am not sure if I think the move to Barcelona was a great one.

Palace of shows.

I am looking forward to the week in Barcelona, a city dear to me. People say that 3GSM is all about the people. Since the people are here we will be able to see what location does. What I am hoping to see is good Java based client server solutions. It is finally possible to make them. Furthermore I hope to see some interesting transformers. The first impression is more like Cebit. The stands are bigger. More air, and many halls. . .

The conclusion of the show is that Cannes is a better location. I did not like the "Mini Cebit" feel that several people coined. The lack of casual cafes, restaurants dropped a couple points of my score.

Since i heard that the GSMA has made a several year comitment to Barcelona, I guess I will be back.

I have seen my Future. It’s at Yahoo!

After 10 fantastic years at Nokia I have decided to quit. As of September 12th I will join Yahoo! as VP of Global Mobile Product first based in London and then moving to California late in 2006. This opportunity will allow me to increase my competence in the Internet domain, the area where I envision lots of growth and innovation coming from in the next years. The job will allow me to leverage my understanding of mobility, mobile devices and their users. I think this will become an amazing learning and creation journey.

This move will mean a total life transformation. Our family will move to London and later to California. My wife, I and our two daughters will experience a different culture, something I grew up with through my Danish mother. I believe that in global world it is crucial to have a international background. I was fortunate to have lived in Finland, United States, Denmark, and United Kingdom before I was thirty and now I have been living in Finland for the past ten years. It felt time to move abroad and try something new.

Leaving Nokia is very emotional, a company I have seen grow, prosper. A culture which has been a strong part of my identity will become a vivid memory. I think it is now a good time to leave; Nokia is in my opinion in good shape. The high end, driven by the multimedia group is making money, the products are cool and they are consumed by millions.  The new Nseries sub-brand should create good momentum, and with Anssi Vanjoki at the helm you can count on an innovative drive. The Mobile Phones group with Kai Öistämö at the helm, an old close colleague of mine, has got mid range back in shape. The low-end in emerging markets is a very interesting innovation and growth opportunity. My old boss and mentor Erik Anderson came back early August eager to do some cool phones. Enterprise Solutions is a question mark for me. I see more and more little Communicators and the users seem very pleased. Finally Networks has new management, which should be good as there is lots of work to be done. A collective thanks to all my former colleagues who taught me so much. Keep on connecting people!

So why change Nokia for Yahoo! There are three reasons:

1. Yahoo! is a great company.
Yahoo! is a perfect blend of a communication and content company, filled with humble, very smart and dedicated passionate people. I had a rare opportunity to meet most of the management team and the two founders. One of the things I probed with them was trust. The fact that people trust Yahoo! with some of their most valuable content, photos, e-mails and their blogs put a lot of pressure on Yahoo! to retain integrity and ensure things are not lost in cyberspace. This is something I am very dedicated to work towards. Here the humble culture of Yahoo! makes a great foundation.

2. Internet is the big growth opportunity and I think big players will score big.
We are at dawn in a Web 2.0, a phase when Internet will transform tremendously. Small players will be able to reach global audiences; big players will reach small developers with their open API’s. It will be a time of rapid innovation, here Yahoo! is very well positioned with big user base and strong brand.

3. I believe Yahoo! really want to crack mobile internet nut.
In the next 5 years the Internet will be accessed as naturally on a pocketable device as on a bag sized laptop. In my opinion no one has cracked how to put Internet in the pocket. I do not have the answer, but I have the passion and dedication to try to crack it and I see no better place to have a go at it than at Yahoo!

Let the future begin…

Juha Pinomaa should be good for Suunto

My former colleague and briefly my boss Juha Pinomaa has been selected to be the new CEO of Suunto, the maker of sports wearables and fine navigation instruments.

I have been following the company for some time and particularly their wearable products, I am not sure their strategy of going after different sports is a great one, as there is too little synergy to platformize the offerings.

I think Juha could be a breath of fresh air at Suunto. He is a very smart guy and a hard worker. I think his key strenghts are in marketing, branding and creating good processes. I think he might have the discipline needed to grow the company. Where he could need some help is in product creation and design. He is not in my mind the 'product maker', but those he can hire to his team.

My problem with wearables and particularly the Suunto ones, which I have worn on my wrist from February 2001 until spring of this year when I switched to rival Polar, is their usability. They have no overall UI logic as they overload each button in each state of the UI, making the total experience a mess. Do less better is my simple advice. I still make mistakes when setting alarms, adjusting dual times or other simple tasks like that. I know, I am embarrassed to admit it. The GPS and using it for navigation is hampered by the fact that the battery only last about 4h. As a cruising sailor I sail between 5-10h days depending whether kids are on board or not....

I am not to optimistic that the 'Up - Down-Yes-No' paradigm, know from phones is functioning in a wearable. It gets to hierarchical and as the buttons are too small and not ergonomic enough to press frequently. It makes the whole experience is very techie. Some general leap of innovation is needed in this domain, longterm I think wearable will be on the wrist.

Whether Juha will succeed or fail in his new job is largely dependent on the new generation they have in their pipeline. Maybe something including this. If that generation is good, he has a chance to  succeed, if it is not I am more prone to think he will fail. When a small company does two generations of failed products it puts them out of business. I hope they learned from their mistake with the current generation, but sofar their latest products have at least not trilled me, I just do not think the styling is good enough. OK I might be hard to please. I am always willing to revise my view.

Looking forward to the next stage in this wonderful saga...Very best of luck Juha.....

As Nokia Lifeblog transfers from Nokia Ventures Organization to Multimedia Business Group it is time for me to look for the next big thing.

Today Nokia Lifeblog has transferred to the Multimedia group to become a central component in the Nokia Nseries experience.

It is a day with mixed feelings; on the one hand I am really happy and proud that Lifeblog is becoming a core component in all Nokia Nseries devices. It is a major milestone for a venture to become deeply integrated into the core of a business group and get the scaling benefits. Lifeblog has completed all the venturing milestones and has reached a venturing goal of creating new and innovative solutions, which will help to renew Nokia.

What makes me sad is that I will not follow Lifeblog team to their new home. The team has been the best part of the journey. You have worked so hard shaping the vision, designing and engineering, promoting Lifeblog inside and outside of Nokia. I am so proud of you all; I really enjoy working with you. I am sure you will make your new ‘owners’ equally proud. In the past I have always left innovations dear to me. I think that is the best way for the innovations and for me. I firmly adhere to the theory that each phase in the product lifecycle needs a unique style of management and my way of managing works best in the early phase with lots of chaos and uncertainty, where the task is to define something out of nothing. A phase characterized by leadership more than management. In the Multimedia group there are well defined management and marketing structures in which Lifeblog will fit, ready to scale the solution as soon as the Nseries devices starts shipping. I am of better use somewhere else.

I am looking forward to a long summer break. Six great weeks of holiday, two weeks bonus after being 10 years with Nokia and 4 weeks of normal vacation provides a perfect transition from Lifeblog to the next thing. During the summer I will think of what to do next. I am not in a rush away from Nokia, a company very very dear to me. It is one of the greatest companies to work for; the people are extremely smart, there are lots of opportunities ahead. I am excited what is going on in the company. On the other hand I think it is good to stop for a moment, look around with open eyes. With my wife Nina we have even agreed that we can move anywhere in the world, so if you know of something very cool, let me know!

Speaking at Nokia's Destination Multimedia event in Amsterdam

Destination Multimedia was  a very interesting event for Nokia. Launching the sub-brand Nokia Nseries and its three first products the Nokia N70, N90 and N91 was really cool. I think we have not had that kind of event in many years, where the company took such a big leap in its business. I urge you to go and look at the web casts here. I gave a speech there and it is available as a web casts. 

Unfortunately during my speech the technical devil struck and my speaker notes were only half visible. Hence those of you who know me will notice a bit of nervousness.

I had asked the team to update some graphics so that I could see where I was in my presentation and that was done on a Mac and when putting it back to the PC the column was too narrow and half the notes were not visible. Standing in front of 250 people mentally relaying on my notes for cue...and the notes not being visible makes your pulse go up... I was thinking should I stop and reveal my technical problems, or press on, I decided to press on, and towards the end, I started to wing it and it got better, but the beginning I am really embarresed with.

The key lesson, if you use more technology you need to do more double checking and now I did not run through all parts just before, just some parts which would show to the audience. The good thing about this is one will always remeber this and make much more sure next time...

Recording lifestyle with the pros.

Shooting slick life style pictures for Lifeblog.

Tapani Pelttari in action.

Instant feedback, is magical.

At home Lifeblogging. Klaus in action.

Doing a day of photoshoots brings me some wonderful teenage memories helping my Father with all kinds of photoshoots during summer breaks. Staging these fantasies require live creativity. It is a fun process much faster than sw creation. Digitalisation has simplified the creation in a dramatic way. The instant gratification, seeing the light, the field depth takes much of the guess work of photography away. Back then Polaroids were the only insurance. But in the end a good shot is as good as the photographer. The resolution that these shots were taken at was 16M pixels, so there is room for lots of cropping and zooming. The pictures I shared were all taken with the Nokia 6680, which has 1.3M, which is plenty, actually too much for mobile web sharing. I shrink them down to VGA before sharing.

Qix from Zi Corporation could revolutionize search on mobile phones

At 3GSM my friend Ben, who knows what is hot, tipped me off on something he found interesting namely Zi Corporation's new S60 application Qix, I ofcourse checked it out and the first impression was nothing less than a spontaneus WOW. Qix could be thought of as Google or A9 on the phone. It lets you find anything just by typing on the keyboard.

Continue reading "Qix from Zi Corporation could revolutionize search on mobile phones"

Christian visiting 3GSM in Cannes this week

One Tuesday and Wednesday I will be at 3GSM in Cannes, so if you are there get in touch and lets have a chat. I will try to post some impressions from the show.

My new iPod is infinetly more valauble then the old ones

Few days ago I bought my fourth iPod, the 40GB. This time I was not looking for a music player, but a good reliable small hard disk. I wanted to make back ups of my most valuable data, my Lifeblog while traveling. My Lifeblog lives on my IBM X40, and I do not want to loose it. Doing the back up on a DVD felt unpractical in regular use. I investigated the different solutions and decided between a LaCie Data Bank HDand the 40GB iPod. The iPod became my choice, as I got the music feature as an added value. This has caused a very interesting multidevice storing problem. My master music collection is on my Mac, I want to be play my music via my PC and the iPod should be the link between them. This is not possible, the iPod is either a PC iPod or a Mac iPod, the reason for this is that the HD is initialised for either platform. Also the connectivity does not support it.

This whole dilemma provoked some thoughts about media usage, I asked myself, my Lifeblog is on the iPod, would I want to use it from there? The answer is no, I do not think so. This leads me to believe that the emerging mobile devices with landscape screens, the Nokia Mediaphone, the SONY mobile playstation and the Microsoft Mobile Media Centers and original Archos Personal Video recorder will not survive. The reason is very simple they are too big ergonomic compromises from moving use too and secondly they will not be able to store enough. The more I think about it the more convinced I am getting that mass market lies in a very versatile one hand operated Life recorder with fair media consumption capabilities and a very good mobile wireless Laptop with great media consumption and creation capability. This solution offers unique best of both world experience: moving use when you need it, mobile power when you can sit down. There is only problem that these two will not handle: The ultimate storage problem, so a third device or entitiy is needed and that is the Home server or the multimedia bank on-line where everything that cannot be mobile fits and then the stuff that is not local on these two mobile devices can be fetched via wireless anywhere anytime.

The quest for Autenthicity

I am participating in the ThinkAbout seminar hosted by Jo Pine and Jim Gilmour. Jo Pine has through his books been on my radar for many years. He wrote the legendary book about Mass Customisation which in many respects was 10 years ahead of its time. A Couple years ago I had the pleasure of meeting him at a seminar where he gave a keynote on the emerging experience economy. The thoughts are captured in theirs first joint book. Both of these books are some of my favorite works and his talk was great. Seldom does a non UI guy talk so well about UI. I now use UI in its broadest sense, the experience. This is where I feel I am working; I am in the 'experience making business'. We have since then stayed in touch and agreed to meet, it will finally happen. Their latest direction seems to be about authenticity in experiences and services, something I find very interesting. I am asking myself what can be done to products or services to give them that feeling of authenticity, lets see what I learn. I will post some thoughts and my feedback here for you to read.

Lifeblog will blog to TypePad - some reflections

Our team today announced that we are partnering with Six Apart to make TypePad the preferred destination when you blog from Lifeblog.

To me this is a natural choice. The first time I met Mena Trott and Barak Berkowitz was a dark, cold December morning in Finland. They could not have picked a worse day to come. The chat was warming us all, we chatted about blogging, mobility and ease-of-use. It was really great to hear how Mena’s thoughts had evolved over time. What really clicked in me was her view that blogging will not be a new form for broadcast, but very much a form of communication between small groups of people. This made perfect sense to me. At the time I knew little about blogging. I had a TypePad account before I met them, but I was not happy with the templates, it did not feel like me. Mena offered to help, and with some local designers few weeks later Moving Experience was live and I was e-born.

Continue reading "Lifeblog will blog to TypePad - some reflections "

Demo mobile is the focus next week

I will be speaking at Demo Mobile next week in a panel on the need for broadband wireless. It will focus on short term opportunities, my angle is very simple I the more content you have the more you wish to share and hence one can never have enough bandwidth. It is moderated by John Patrick, a longterm internet shaper, the marketing man behind ThinkPad brand! I am looking forward to meeting these gentlemen and try to provoke some stimulating discussion. Our Lifeblog team will also be demoing something cool, so stay tuned. I have heard so much about the Demo conferences, so my expectations are very high. If you are there lets get together and have a chat.

Nokia Lifeblog beta is available

Our team reached a major milestone while I have been on vacation. We have published a public beta of Lifeblog. You can download it here. I thought I would announce it here on my blog, as I am really proud of this achivements of the team.

I also wanted to shed some light on what I do with my Lifeblog, as I have used it for a few months.

You can use the beta to import all your old photos and create a timeline of them. Lifeblog will clone all your pictures so nothing is lost if you use some album SW. Once done you will with little effort see a very interesting account of past accounts. I was amazed to see the scattered memories come into an organised chronology. I have used other photo album SW, but the horisontal timeline is unique and it is more interesting then what we initially thought once you see your own data in it.

I use it as a people diary. I take pictures of people I meet and write a small description and then I can easily search for the name and find their photo, should improve my name memory.

I use it as a "project record" for small projects like when I painted my boat hatch, I took a picture every now and then and it is fun to see how long it took.

I take pictures of food and write small reviews, some of which are found on my blog.

I use it as a visual diary, if I see something I want to remeber, I just take a picture, rename it in Lifeblog and it is syncronised to the PC.

The simple diary notes function is a great way to annotate the timeline and thus create some searchable metadata.

If you have the 7610 then you should try it, if you do not have one, then I recommend you take a close look at it if you are in the market for a new phone. It is my favourite Series 60 device so far and megapixel resolution is so much better than the VGA found in other Nokia phones. For me it has become a Life recorder. I really like the thinness of it, so if you have not seen it live check it out.

Creative Commons is the DNA of a rich connected future

I had heard about Creative Commons, but I hadn't heard it from the horses mouth. Meeting Lawrence Lessig quickly convinced me of the benefits individuals have of Creative Commons. His passion and determination is impressive, a real intelectual rebel, exactly what the world needs in this age of complexity.

I think Creative Commons will be a fundamental building block for the future of electronic sharing. It will stimulate creativity in totally new directions and fuel new forms for communication. I am always impressed when I meet people which are willing to take an establishment and seek new ways do do things. As the internet is becoming a place for multimedia communication enablers such as Creative Commons will play a key role. I am planning to integrate creative commons licensing into my blog to signal my support for future creativity.

Professor Lessig, was in Finland announching Creative Commons Finland, the event was a great success. There will be a video of the speech here

I will certainly keep an eye on how this unfolds! As I am a true believer of free creativity in an age where passive media is being push into the brain faster than ever.

Porno fuels monologue

I am sorry to say, but I decided to cut communication aspects of my blog down to a monologue from me to you. I just had nearly 700 spam comments mainly from some porno sites, so I decided enough is enough.
I do not mind porno on the net, but it should be pull not push, just like in real life. After all lust is one basic driver to build business upon.

I do not know what the root cause why they found my blog, but it could have been my post on A9, which got quoted on a porno blog called Mature erections. This public blog originated in New Zeeland, now living in the internet, seemed to be a blog mixing porno and technology. Interesting convergence I must say.

It is fun for me as a new blogger to go through the life cycle of blogging from: Setting up a blog, making news, getting readers, figuring out what to write, now getting spammed.

So I must say my dear collaugues were right, when they told me: 'soon you will be blogging about blogging'. This post is just about that.

What I really like in this little mess, is that I am the editor. My blog is my place and if I do not wish to have comments, I can stop. I feel in control. I do not know if I am in control, but the feeling is enough for me right now.

It just proves to me that we are living early days in blogging and lots of small challenges needs to be ironed out before blogging could go main stream, and with main stream I mean a new type of communication tool.

Search turned Find with launch of the A9 Beta

With the launch of the A9-search engine searching became finding. I am impressed, happy that someone is making such an effort in helping people find stuff. Google need some stimuli, not that they are lazy, but competition always sharpens the mind.

There are several issues that are very interesting with A9:

1. The merger with 'Search within the book'-feature which quite quickly will become the worlds largest library searchable online.

2. The browser agnostic search history, which in a mobile context will be wonderful as typing is difficult, particularly if they involve URL’s.

3. The name is short, which in mobile context is very good.

4. Searches get personalized and there will be lots of contextual (metadata) information by applying the concept of 'People who visited this page also visited that page', which we know so well from Amazon. This should create a quantum leap in results.

In my brief test with Series 60 based Nokia 6600 using Opera A9 seemed to work very well. I would however like to see a slightly more condensed layout for mobiles, where screen real-estate is scarce. See attached screen shot and the good comment below from Jean-Yves.

The page loaded fast enough, I will at some point compare the Google and A9 via mobile.

I am a big fan of both Amazon and Google, and both companies share a deep goal to help humans educate or entertain themselves, during Easter I found myself spending maybe two hours in Amazon and it was a nice and somewhat expensive tour in the virtual mall.
As they now are competitors I hope they try hard to do good, not evil. - At least that is what they claim in their disclaimers and/or visions.

One of the key assets Google have is a verb. People might still 'google' when they actually are 'anining' (I am not sure if 'anining' would stick on the tongues globally. It looks weird written in both forms and phonetically is hard to globalize). I am curious who thought of that name, it will be interesting to see if it sticks. (There is a good explanation below, thanks!)...My silly theory of it being the guys in Seattle behind K2, and T9 got trashed.

As Google leverages their platform into 'shopping' and 'news' services, and then the leverage advertising bigtime they become a portal and then hmmm....they dissapear. The challenge is ads take up pixels and so do the content and what is more important for the stock owners of a public company looking for short term profits...OK I am speculating ahead of time...

What I still have to digest is that all my page visits get stored on the Amazon server, once logged in and provided I turn on history tracking. I registered offcourse, but will I like it tomorrow, lets see. I saw a collague today and he said no thanks.

A9 is another one of these Orkut style lets capture alot of meta data machines...will be interesting to follow the debate about privacy.

Convergence lessons from Cebit

Cebit 2004 is over for me and I am now in Atlanta for the CTIA show, where we show Nokia Lifeblog on the Nokia stand.

Cebit was unique as my focus and interest was much broader than just phones. In addition to the telecoms hall I spent a lot of time on the Intel, IBM, Toshiba and at the SONY stand. From observing an array of different products and services some major trends of convergence became appearent.

Continue reading "Convergence lessons from Cebit"

Moving experience 2.0 launched

You have arrived to a new version of Moving experiences. It is my digital home in transition. Version 2.0 is now more mobile friendly, by introducing a third column as a timeline of the most recently phone blogged pictures. What I want my visitors to immidiately get a sense of what I am up to.

Continue reading "Moving experience 2.0 launched"

Lifeblog has seen the daylight

Nokia Lifeblog, our multimedia diary is finally out in open daylight. It feels great.
I am insanely proud of the whole team, without you, I would still be PowerPointing!

In this post I will try to correct some initial misunderstandings circulating in blogs, before everyones expectations are raised too high and we cause dissapointment to our users and ourseleves.

1.) Nokia Lifeblog is not a blogging tool, it is a logging tool or as we prefer to call it a multimedia diary.
2.) Initially the Nokia Lifeblog will not be available for the Nokia 6620, but some other terminal.

Nokia will show Lifeblog at the Cebit fair in Hannover starting in the middle of next week, so if you are there, stop by the booth and get a demo and the facts.

The views in this post are strictly personal and have not been checked for facts and should thus not hold me or Nokia liable ;-)

Continue reading "Lifeblog has seen the daylight"

Getting most out of Series 60 - My selected gems

There are numerous shortcuts that help you get most out of your Series 60 phones, which are not very well know. I thought that it could be nice to share some of them here on Moving Experiences. They are not in any specific order.

Continue reading "Getting most out of Series 60 - My selected gems"

Themes for Series 60

Mango Design Management, the designers of my theme announced their UI Themes shop this week at Cannes 3GSM conference. I have now used my unique theme for about a month and I still like it. Everytime I start a task I take a mini vacation, for about a second, when I look at the idle screen. It sounds silly, but it is actually really pleasing. I discussed with Andrea Finke-Anlauff, the CEO of Mangothemes if they would provide unique themes for sale and she said it could be possible to do the idle custom, but are people really willing to pay for it. It takes about an hour to actually do it. Contact them if you are interested in custom themes.

The Finnish Post is offering personalised stamps

Digital Imaging technology is entering a classic business of communication, the stamp business. The Finnish post today announced that they will start to offer personalised stamps for a small premium. You can have a picture or graphics. One needs to order a sheet of 20 stamps. I thought this was a wonderful idea, and will follow up on this topic, once I learn more.

Thoughts on Multi-tasking

Multi-tasking is one of the 21st century mega trends. As we are living more and more hectic lives the pressure to perform several task in parallell is growing and perceived by many as a refuge to save time for relaxation. Is this intense multi-tasking a good or bad thing? At Etech I was again stunned by the level of multi-tasking people seemed capable of doing. People were listening to speeches, chatting on IRC, blogging and of course answering e-mails. I am not sure if the audience actually once logged-on to web intensive tasks actually resulted in a log-off from listening? I was atleast logged-off from listening, when I was trying to multi-task. I do not know if this is due to lack of experience, a poorly working PC or a genrally mal functioning brain.

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Started blogging via Ecto

You are reading my first post using the Ecto blog client for the Mac, which I just bought. This is the first proper blog client, and should make my life easier, as blogging via browser to the TypePad server directly is slow from Finland.

Blogging via Atom API on Nokia 6600

Pertti Korhonen, Nokia’s new CTO introduced PhotoBlog for Series 60 in his keynote at ETech in San Diego. This application proof-of-concept is supporting the Atom API enabling users to post to leading blog platforms. The application was developed by Futurice, who is developing a Photblog platform.

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R&D-Live - My ETech learnings

ETech is for a mobile guy like entering a different solar system. One where laptops and wi-fi are on center stage and rest is context revolving around it. It is very eye-opening to experience this hands-on. ETech is like an big adhoc R&D lab performing live. The crowd is really switched on and I am really impressed by the people here.

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Mobile Usability book goes mobile

The Mobile Usability - How Nokia Changed the Face of Mobile Phone book has gone mobile with a S60 maxdox abstract. The included screen shot is not alluding to the mobile version of the book, but to one of the less successful concepts we worked on a few years back ;-).

Find out how to download it for yourself in the end of this document.

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Experiences from 8 generations of digital cameras

After 5 years of digital camera experience I felt it was time to stop and summarize some design drivers or purchase criteria for a good digital camera used for snapping.

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My Blog theme goes mobile

My blog theme has gone mobile on my S60 based Nokia 6600. Sailing in the Finnish archipelago is very central to my personality and I thought this would be perfect to keep me going through the long and dark winter.

The enclosed screenshots give you some indication of what it looks like.

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Reflecting on my blog motivation while preparing for ETech

In a week I will be back in the US, this time to take part in the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. You find a small intro to my speech here (speech outline). I am very much looking forward to this conference, several people have called it really hot and cosy. It will be very interesting to meet heavy bloggers and to hear about their blogging motivation and experience. In this post I will discuss a bit of my motivation a week into being re-born on-line.

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A blog -what's that? -My first demo of Moving experiences

"A block, on the web, what do you mean?", was the comment from my collague Jarmo, when I told him that my blog, Moving experiences is now live at www.christianlindholm.com.

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Christian Lindholm Biography

This section is devoted to me as a person some of the experiences I have had while working.
My plan is to extend this an make it interactive, but for now it is a start.

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