visualradio

I've been looking at the German market and trends that are different from the Finnish lifestyle. One remarkable difference is the way mobility is profiled and presented. Finland is Nokialand and all discussions about mobility center around the mobile giant. Great, nothing bad about that, but I feel the Germans are looking at mobility from applications point of view. There are more brands on sale and that changes the way mobility is presented and advertised. Our advertising is very product and price oriented. Why can't we tell more what mobility means for the average man and woman. How does it change our daily life? Let's keep in TOUCH with reality. The gadgets are just tools for social innovation. There are tons we can do with the computers we carry in our pockets but the carriers (ISPs) are doing a poor job in presenting the applications. What could we do here to make a better job for the consumers?

Latin America used to suffer the deepest gap between rich and poor. We might say that it's now one of the regions narrowing the divide. Brazil, for example, had 97 per cent of school-age kids in the classroom more than a decade ago; those students are now being rewarded with better jobs.

Brazil has to improve education in order to see a real reduction in inequality. What could be the role of mobile technology, social media, instant messaging, etc. in the transformation of the society?

Let's take a trip to Brussels where computer specialists from India, Egypt or Ukraine are smashing their heads together to participate in European innovation projects. One of the ideas high on the agenda are how to increase the opportunities for social and business innovations in their own countries. Think Tanks are need to solve a variety of problems. We tend to think here that all problems are technical and can be solved by engineers. Should we lift some new ideas and concepts to our To-Do -lists? What do you suggest? Where could Finnish technology, innovativeness, and social competence play a role on a global scale? What about energy? Equality? Social Care?

Vodafone had problems 2007 to motivate its clients to use mobile phones for Internet surfing. Customers didn't like the "push" for mobile Internet. The average person wanted to keep the Internet and Mobile separate while the service providers tried to bundle services into packages where people got services they didn't want or they couldn't use. Now, two years later, we've better mobile phones and Internet surfing with pocket computers is increasing. Let's imagine how things are two years from now. We're going to get much more advanced mobile devices in the coming years. Apple's iPhone started a trend, I hope Nokia is able to challenge with new mobile computers. The race has started. Are we going to be among the winners? More applications are also needed.

I remember well how there was a definite belief that the internet and mobile wouldn’t unite. As we all know for the developing countries the mobile internet gives almost unlimited opportunities. So to the mobile internet the world is open and literally borderless.
From my special expertise I know that there are also unlimited chances for open and remote medicine. And because we have long distances, we are good candidates to experiments. The quality of photos and sounds and our knowledge of data security might be well enough.

@oaw You're so right. Nokia has a great global strategy and understanding of both poor and developing country. Even though, I like Apple's design and some of their solutions a lot, the iPhone is for gadget freaks and rich people. There are vast possibilities in education and medicine, logistics and global trade of sustainable production of crops and food. But Nokia needs social and application engineers to evolve and expand the possibilities. The engineers in Keilaniemi etc. can't do all the things. We've to take responsibility for the expansion of a great platform.

We can repeat it here too (one more time is never enough) and maybe in Qaiku is the first time.. Mobile Internet should be free. That could launch innovation in the market, it could help also Africa and who knows how many other people. All of us pay for the phone calls and I personally accept to pay for any legalized Voip too - but it seems that here, first, it has to end the bubble of protectionism / speculation. In few words, ended to pay the fee we could start to pay for real services, about which no one seems interested - at the end of the counting..

@visualradio There is no engineers in Keilaniemi.

@DanieleBeta Free Mobile is a radical innovation (destructive).@jounikj I guess you're right...but how about the basic education? [nothing bad about that]. But folks we're certainly heading towards something very important. Education, Africa, Poor nations, there are tons of possibilities and as @oaw said, distance medicine and education are huge issues.

@visualradio In some other countries the operators have been a lot stronger and influential than has been customary here in Finland. One of the effects of iPhone was, if I've understood right, that the role of the operator has diminished to be a 'mere' pipe provider. The link between consumer and hardware and software developer is more direct now.
What I expect in practice is that we get new network technologies, LTE and beyond, to raise the communication speeds, improved battery technologies so that one wouldn't need to charge daily, enhanced memory technologies to pack even more memory in those tiny mobile terminals (I have a 16G device with just a few hundred MB free due to my music collection). I don't think the size of the mobile devices grows much, at least I like to put it in some pocket, that's a quite limiting factor.
I think Nokia has excellent chances in the mobile competition. For one thing, I believe N900 to be just the first show of new Nokia devices. On software they have a good combination of their own and community-based packages.

@jwa I agree with you. The N900 promises a new era. As a heavy writer I do want a bigger screen and keyboard. E71 is a good pocket device but I've hopes for something that will eliminate my need to carry a laptop with me to most of the places. However, I see that a new era is emerging and in addition to technology we need to team up with people understanding the vast possibilities of improved applications that will change the daily life of billions. We still have to move a few miles ahead in the tech jungle.

Now we have ridiculously lot of computer power in mobile devices. I believe that when we really notice that it gives us more wider view of what can be done.

For example $8000 device vs. iPhone...

Does anybody know possibilities in iPhone to connect some external hardware? There is lots of equipment that could be connected to phone instead of laptop (medical care, military etc)

@Ile I remember seeing some people guessing the computing power equivalent in desktops for iPhone. They ended up in 2nd or 3rd generation iMacs (with 400 MHz processor &c). That is a lot considering the size of the device The lack of moving parts helps, of course.
One area that could benefit from added power and other devices communicating with the mobile is well-being and personal healthcare. One could imagine small sensors in a watch, or some other people are wearing, collecting data from the body, and the mobile then computes information a simple person can understand.
IIRC one of the demos earlier was a blood pressure device providing information to an app in iPhone. The other device has to have some network interface for the information exchange, be it Bluetooth or WLAN. I don't think cables make a good user experience in these kinds of circumstances.

@jwa Cables is not ok for "big audience", still it's possible for some kind of field work where laptop is considered too big or expensive.

@visualradio I think that the tech jungle is unavoidable, unfortunately. We just have to deal with it.

New technologies are often more complex then the previous ones, making the supporting infrastructure more elaborate and complicated. These technologies then trickle to the less developed environments gradually, as those get ready to manage them.

@jwa About the tech jungle: French Telecom blaims that the suicides inside the company correlates to the use of Smart Phones and people being 24 / 7 / 365 available for calls and emails. Some people don't know how to relax. Technology is changing our daily routines and behavior, but I understand you referred to the challenges the tech jungle is placing on those responsible for the infrastructure, gadgets, applications, and operating systems. The average consumers don't see what happens in the back office, neither what the pressures are.

Lisa Lomas wrote in a Facebook message today: "We are the voice of opinion, comments, information and sharing. We are the ones that hold the power everyone one of us have a voice. We can all now be heard, no matter how, where, what and why."

I think that in addition to the technical gadgets we also need to understand the power-shift these new mobile and internet tools are providing. We can manage change better when we know what we're doing.

How well are we as consumers and citizens aware about the new possibilities the communication technology, social media, and communities are giving us? Instant messaging is changing China and India? How about Finland?

It is true that some people need to relax. I think that there should and will be a kind of two or three different profiles or channels (I don’t mean separate but in other level) with what we can easily turn into the softer level of a day. One has different level of cognition in the evening, especially when one has taken some alcohol or is very tired. You can easily be in net all day, but in the evening the web sites turn into bigger contrast and music into softer one. It could choose different news and send only private microblog feeds.

@visualradio Right!

Recently, Advertising Age reported on the 400% surge in mobile video uploads to YouTube, attributed to the new iPhone 3GS. Beyond the implications of what that may mean for the value of ad inventory on YouTube, one thing is clear: There is an inseparable link between social media and mobile devices.

I think that the future is mobile. I feel it in my skin. The office is a thing that will be fading out. We should be walking in the streets and woods and leave the offices fore bureaucrats and rats. We can be more creative with more real-life experience.

The Future Store Concept is moving from concept to reality. We've a new thing emerging in the City of Lahti but it seems that the whole concept is becoming generic and can be applied to very different applications. The newest point of view means that it's applicable to real estate development. More about this in the coming weeks. Lahti is also along the Innovation train track if we come back via Kajaani an Kuopio...Or is it? I have to make reality check.

Tiwit Foresight Messuhalli - Mobile Cloud Computing.

Apple the company of the decade What's your opinion? Apple and Jobs have been incredible and real innovators. They’re first to bring a scratch-resistant multi-touch screen and O.S./ UI to the masses. That’s real innovation translated into public use. It started with the iPod 2001 and next year we are probably seeing a new generation touch pad to be used to read the future paperless books. What's your opinion? What should Nokia do to find a sharper edge against companies like Apple and Google. Android is going to do damage to Nokia as well. Samsung coming from the east doesn't make life easier. What could open innovation do to re-shape Nokia and take it into the front-line?