First impressions on Ovi Suite - no thanks

I thought that I'll explore Nokia's relatively new Ovi Suite and start using it with my Nokia N96. After all Ovi Suite should be designed for NSeries phones. How wrong could I have been?

I'm not going to go through all the features Ovi Suite has because it has lots of those. Maybe best way of describing Ovi Suite is to say: "Ovi Suite tries to be your 'home entertainment center' that has everything, from music to maps and from videos to software updater and phone backups."

My first impression was that it is just a big mess and it is difficult to find or do anything. I don't know the reason for this because, for example, I think Nokia's phones, especially S60 phones are easy to use and I can find all the features easily. If I compare Ovi Suite to iTunes, iTunes was much easier to use in the beginning. I think the reason for this is a little similar to the fact some say that iPhone is much easier to use than S60 phones. After all with only few features it is easy to make usable product. This is a really big challenge for Nokia because they want to do all the possible things with their Ovi concept.

I have to be honest and say that I haven't used Ovi Suite enough to make a final decision, but it didn't impress me in the beginning. I'm for example getting "runtime error" when I've chosen "Yes, show me what's new" and try to resize the window.

This is something that you shouldn't get in this kind of product.

I'm a big fan of PC Suite and use it daily at work for synchronising calendar and contacts and sending SMSs using my PC. It seems that Ovi Suite is missing all these features; at least I didn't find them.

If I understood correctly, Nokia remade everything from scratch when they created Ovi Suite, and might eventually stop supporting PC Suite. I would like to say that this will not happen any time soon.

I think I'll try to reserve some time on weekend and explore Ovi Suite more, maybe my thoughts will change...

Should you be scared of mobile viruses?

I attended to a quite big party recently and noticed that someone was trying to send me something via bluetooth. As you can guess, it was a mobile virus.

I did two things that you should never do. Firstly I had switched on bluetooth and secondly I answered yes to every possible question. I received a virus to my phone, but it refused to install. The reason for this was platform diverseness. Virus was from a S60 2nd edition phone and my phone (N96) was 3rd edition Feature Pack 2.

Now you might ask why did I do these things? The reason for this is work. I'm working with different kind of technologies and security is also part of it. The second reason is that I'm just interested in these things.

To answer the question in the title, I would say "No, not yet". There are a few mobile viruses, but at the moment there isn't any business case for virus writers / criminals. I have received a virus via bluetooth 5 times in 3 years or so. Here is a simple list how to avoid mobile viruses:

1. Switch off bluetooth. Bluetooth is a really common way to distribute viruses because usually operators filter viruses that are included in MMSes.


2. Don't install any programs if you haven't initiated the installation process. Viruses don't install themselves, usually the user needs to answer "yes" multiple times. It is also good to remember that cracked software can contain viruses, so don't use cracked software.


3. Don't give your phone to anyone you don't trust. At the moment there are some keyloggers for phones and software that records your phone calls, but if you don't allow anyone to install these, you are safe.


4. Install Anti-Virus software. If you want to be 100-percent sure, install Anti-Virus software. They work pretty well nowadays and don't slow down other processes in your phone.

Some thoughts from Symbian Smartphone Show 2008

I had the opportunity to participate to Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 for the first time. It was work-related so I spent quite much time on S60's stand but still had free time for exploring the rest of the area. Now someone can ask why a Nordea employee would spend time on S60's stand? I'll answer to this question after a while.

I'm not going to give you a full coverage of the conference, just some miscellaneous thoughts:

I know that you've heard this before but Symbian is going open source. It will be interesting to see how this will affect Symbian development, smartphone market share and number of services.

User experience was seen extremely important. This is really good news, users are not interested in technology (well, some are), they want useful services.

Different kinds of widgets were popular topic. There are a number of companies that offer a widget platform, e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Nokia and Opera. MS and Apple weren't in the conference but they are also supporting widgets. It is interesting to see if widgets will keep their original purpose? I would say that companies will misuse widgets by thinking that it is the main thing now and everything users want is widgets. This shouldn't be the case, widgets are "small services" that provide you important information, not everything. A good example would be a financial widget that provides basic stock information, and when you want to sell or buy stock you are following you would open your desktop or mobile browser.

Be proactive, not reactive. Mobile users don't have multiple browser windows open for checking if something has happened. This why it is important to tell the user if there has happened something important. If I had to advertise Nordea's proactive products, I would mention account alert.

Nokia's Kai Öistämö mentioned in his keynote that Nokia offers an innovative platform to developers and they are not disdaining anyone. He actually mentioned Apple a few times and how they are behaving toward developers. I believe this kind of approach is really interesting and most probably there are lots of discussions internally when some service is competing with Nokia's own service. On the other hand, this keeps everyone awake and improving their services.

During the conference it was also mentioned that "Qt is going Symbian". Qt will be supported in S60 starting from S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1. Qt offers real cross-platform support. Read benefits of Qt.

Overall Symbian Smartphone Show was worth participating and I can really recommend it to anyone who is working with / interested in Symbian / smartphones.

Ovi - door to success?

I bet you've heard about Nokia's Ovi, but do you really know what is it about? If you know what it is about, do you know how Nokia will make money out of it?

The reason for these two questions is that one of my friends asked me recently: "That Nokia's Ovi, what is it? I would like to use it, but I don't know how and I don't know what I could do there." I explained to him shortly that Ovi is a place for accessing Nokia's different services. You can find maps, music, games, share pictures there and upload calendar, contacts and files. To be honest, this was a kind of lousy explanation. After this I started thinking a little more about Ovi.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Nokia's general idea is to offer a service where you find everything you need and you can access it with any device (pc, mac or phone). Maybe it could be described in a few words as "personalised multi-channel portal"? Personally I think that if something cannot be explained in a few sentences, it won't be a success among users.

This "personalised multi-channel portal" looks quite nice and if you synchronise your phone with Ovi, it can be an useful service.



I tried it once, just to check it out how it works with generic data and stopped using it. Reason for this is that I've have company confidential information in my phone and I really don't want to share it. I know Ovi should be safe, but still I don't want to take that risk. I believe this is a quite big question / threat for IT departments because syncrhonising is really easy.

I'm not saying that Ovi concept wouldn't become a success, but I must say there are still lots of work to be done. I've listed some of things that need to be improved before success.

1. Too many user IDs and passwords. At the moment there isn't any general user ID and password for Ovi services, because it builds up from different services. Users won't use a service which need own credentials for Ovi (synchronisation), music, sharing pictures and games.


2. Integration. Basically same as above, all services must be seamlessly integrated before it is usable. If I use a portal, I want to be able to use all services easily and smoothly.


3. Common user-interface. I believe that a portal should have common user-interface because otherwise the usage of different services will be much more difficult.


4. Logic. A service must be logical to use. I was really surprised when I went to Ovi.com, clicked Sign In and saw a page saying "contacts & calendar". My first thoughts were: "What did I do? I don't want to sign in to contacts & calendar, I want to sign in to Ovi".
5. Useful services. Ask yourself why would someone create credentials and start using this service daily and suggest it to his/her friends? When Ovi is "fully personalised multi-channel portal", I believe this is possible.

Don't get me wrong, there are also good features already existing, for example easy syncrhonisation and your content from your Share on Ovi comes automatically to your Ovi portal. Atleast I don't remember giving any Share on Ovi credentials to Ovi, probably sharing is done by checking e-mail addresses.

A more difficult question is: "How Nokia will make money out of this?" If I would need to guess, I would mention three different approaches:

1. Offer first free services, then start charging. This seems to be the case in the Maps for example. Most of the new handsets have a free license for a year, after this the user needs to purchase a license.


2. Offer first free services, then start charging small amounts. Almost like previous, but with smaller amounts of money, e.g. a few euros (even cents?) per month.


3. Bundle the price to handset. Nokia is trying this with Comes with Music and everyone is waiting for the results.

I suggest that you check Ovi out yourself and make your own decisions. So, go to Ovi with your desktop or mobile browser and explore it.

Having fun with 2D barcodes before NFC arrives

I had some sparetime and thought to check out what one could do with 2D barcodes. The main idea is that when you see a 2D barcode you point your smartphone's camera to it and hold it there for a while. After this, something happens. This something depends on the content of the 2D barcode. It can be either a link, a phone number, an e-mail address or a business card. If you try the code below, you'll notice that it contains my work information (first name, last name, phone number, e-mail address).


In addition to camera phone, you also need barcode reader software. Some Nokia phones have the reader pre-installed but there are also numerous 3rd party softwares. For more information about 2D barcodes, you can check Nokia's site. You'll find also a tool for creating your own 2D barcodes.

I didn't do anything special with these codes, I just added barcode to back of my business card using a sticker paper which I found from my workplace.



Although 2D barcodes aren't too easy to use, they have some clear benefits: they are free to create and you can put them basically anywhere. I've seen them recently even in newspapers in some municipal elections ad.

With these two benefits, you would have the possibility to tackle the traditional chicken and egg problem. You can just add 2D barcodes anywhere and this way get more users, probably relatively slow, but still. With numerous 2D barcodes on the wild, I believe there would be more and more 2D barcode readers pre-installed in phones.

When users have learnt to "point-and-click" using 2D barcodes, transformation to NFC will be much easier. NFC is much more user-friendly than 2D barcode because you don't need to have an additional reader software installed and turned on. NFC is also much faster, "swiping" is usually enough for activating the session.

NFC has all the same use cases than 2D barcode plus a few more. You can pair devices, initiate proximity payments and exchange information between devices with it. Unfortunately NFC is not yet available widely but there are some different kinds of pilots around the world. Nokia is bringing their first NFC-capable phone, Nokia 6212 Classic, to the markets soon. (Yes, there is also Nokia 6131 NFC, but it hasn't hit the mass markets.)

So before NFC comes, you can play with 2D barcodes in the meantime. How would you utilise these 2D barcodes? What is the most weirdest place you've seen these?

No more backups when updating - FOTA saves you

You've been able to update your S60 phone by yourself for a while, but the problem has been that you've first needed to backup your phone, then use Software Update and then restore your phone. This procedure has taken quite long, usually tens of minutes, if not hours.

Luckily there is a salvation near your. Just check if your phone has FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) feature. Some SonyEricssons have been having this possibility for some time, and now it has also come to Nokia phones. In Nokia phones, you can check this by entering *#0000# and choosing Options - Check for updates.



After choosing desired internet connection, (use WiFi if you need to be careful with your phone bill) download starts.







Phone suggests that you back it up before updating. I had to do this, mostly because I participated to a christening today (congrats to Juha, Njeri and Andre!) and there were some photos I didn't want to lose. After you have finished backing your phone up, you'll find update option from Device Manager.











Update process itself took something like 5-7 minutes. During this time the phone was unusable and there was a status bar showing the update status.

After the update the phone started normally and you had to enter your PIN code and lock code if you are using one.



I must say I was really positively suprised about the whole process. Everything went really smoothly and the phone had all the content that it had before the update. This way is much, much more convenient than using Software Update. I recommend you to try this out!!

MobileMonday - Crowdsourcing and ambient awareness

MobileMonday had an interesting topic: Social and Mobile. Here are some points / thoughts from Monday's event.

A company can use its customers for innovating but it doesn't need to stop there. It can use its customers in any process when creating a service / product. Two companies that were mentioned few times were Lego and Cisco. These companies have used social innovation successfully.

Most of the companies are not using social innovations because of their cultural background, not because they would be missing the tools. Companies, in spite of being big or small, should try things out more openly.

Crowdsourcing is coming / already here. The main idea is that individuals all over the world are connected and are doing small things to help someone. Few examples could be social journalism or publishing photos that others can use. The interesting part was that money is not the only motivation, but there are lots of other reasons, e.g. you get to be innovative and because it is fun.

It was also mentioned that mobile will be a really important channel in crowdsourcing, but not the only one. Mobile can be used for example initiating something and then finalizing the task in other channel / media.

Yahoo is providing a number of applications / services that help to produce ambient awareness. One example of this kind of service is OneConnect. The main idea is to aggregate needed information (e.g. phonebook and different social networks) and provide it to the user. This way user can publish content once, use multiple times. This would mean that phonebook would turn out to be proactive. You wouldn't need to call someone to ask where he was or what he was doing.

Marc Davis from Yahoo was also telling about Blueprint that should give a service provider opportunity to support multiple devices/platforms when they are developing services. He didn't go into details but mentioned that same content could be used in J2ME, S60, and different browsers.

Yahoo thinks that they can make money when users have more shared and more accurate data. This data is then being utilized for advertising. With a lots of data, advertising can be much more accurate and people are willing to pay for it.

When I was walking home from MobileMonday these things were in my mind:

1. Social innovations would be worth trying out because that way you can get more brains working on the same issue. When the crowd grows, usually also the diversity grows and this brings good ideas and results.


2. OneConnect seems interesting because I know that I'm not the only one who has real difficulties using multiple social networks. It would be really nice to connect my phonebook with all the relevant social information from the Web.


3. Blueprint also sounds interesting, but will this really work? This is not the first time when I hear someone telling about "multi-channel". Usually it ends up being just a "channel".