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We’re happy to say that both the Nokia N900 and Nokia Booklet 3G are in the shortlists for various categories in the 2009 Engadget Awards.
The Nokia N900 has been nominated for Gadget of the year and Smartphone of the year. While the Nokia Booklet 3G has been nominated for Netbook of the year. We look forward to seeing the results.
For those of you interested in taking part, voting closes on Saturday February 20th at 11:59 pm EDT.
GLOBAL – We’ve been making a few changes behind the scenes which not all of you will have noticed. First up comes our intrepid editor-in-chief, Phil Schwarzmann, who’s now a weekly regular on Conversations’ own Blogbite. The show, which goes out every Friday, is a weekly round up of all that’s happening on Nokia Conversations. Blogbite is presented by Dan McGrath and Phil not only brings with him his wealth of insider knowledge on all things Nokia, but as some of you will already know, his solid background as a presenter on the Voice of S60 podcasts, from back in the day (tune in here to listen to what Phil sounded like in 2007).
There’s a multitude of ways you can pick up Blogbite. Listen to it right here on the site (using the built-in player over on the right). You can also subscribe to the Blogbite RSS feed or you can pick it up directly on iTunes. If you’re on your phone, use the Podcasting app to subscribe and listen right on your device.
Regular mobile users will know we now utilise the excellent Mippin to provide the mobile version of Conversations. As we announced last month, mobile readers of Conversations are automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site for fast and easy access to all the latest happenings on Conversations.
If you’d like to see anything else on the mobile version of Conversations, let us know in the comments below. And, if you’d like to hear Phil and Dan discussing any hot topics, then let us know in the comments.
COLCHESTER, England – Nokia Point & Find has generated a bunch of interest here on Conversations in recent months. So when we recently discovered that a real-world pilot project of the new service was taking place in the nearby city of Colchester in Essex, we hopped on a train to find out what it was like first-hand. Join us after the jump for the first in our two-part report.
If you’re new to the concept of Point & Find, at its most basic it’s a service that lets you point your Nokia camera phone at real-world objects to extract relevant and valuable location-aware information from your surroundings – a concept that is fast becoming popularized by the term Augmented Reality.
To experience Point & Find, you first need to download the beta app to your device – it’s still under development, but the beta app works with stacks of S60 handsets (scroll down to see the full list), although we found the N95 to be the most robust and reliable at this stage of its gestation. You can download the app via Nokia Beta Labs or direct from Point & Find website, where you’ll also be met with more info and videos on what the service enables you to do.
So, armed with our N95 and Point & Find installed, we hit the streets of Colchester to give it a whirl in the real world. Here’s what we did, and how we got on…
Scanning for treasure
Arriving in Colchester, we soon came across one of the Point & Find enabled bus shelters, replete with the set of scannable icons (pictured below), that we highlighted in our original story.
Pictured: From left to right, Download Nokia Point & Find, Local news (BBC news and sport), Entertainment (cinemas, theatre, clubs, bars), Eating (restaurants, pubs, fast food), Shopping (stores and supermarkets), Info (about town, such as nearest ATM), Travel (local taxis, train times, parking and hotel booking).
We thought we’d start with the basics, and tried scanning this series of icons using the Point & Find app. Once you’ve opened the app and entered the ‘Here and Now’ mode, you’re screen acts a a simple viewfinder, much like if you’d expect when taking a regular photo. We began with the orange News icon. Holding our phone far away enough from the icon so it filled the viewfinder was enough for the Point & Find app to recognize it, resulting in the relevant location-based info being sent to our N95 within moments. Using a combination of advanced image recognition programmed into the app, along with GPS and an Internet connection accessing a database of details related to any tagged images, in less than a couple of seconds Point & Find had presented us with a list of links to BBC Essex (the local BBC news service), BBC Sport Essex, as well as a link to the Daily Gazette – the website for the local newspaper.
We had similar success with the blue Entertainment icon, which unearthed links to local cinemas, pubs and bars. Likewise with the green Eating icon, listing nearby places to eat along with addresses, reviews and click-to-call phone numbers to make a reservation should you fancy it. We were met with similar results with each of the other icons. The purple Shopping icon brought up a list of local supermarkets, and nearby general shops. The pink Info icon triggered a link to Wikipedia about Colchester – turns out it’s Britain’s oldest town! Plus, the info icon dug up a local five-day weather forecast for the area. Scanning the grey Travel icon brought up a link to the nearest taxi rank, with a handy click-to-call feature.
This initial introduction to Point & Find left us fired-up and hugely encouraged at the possibilities that ther Point & Find service promises to offer when fully fledged. But in tomorrow’s follow-up piece, we put Point & Find through a tougher set of real-world challenges including scanning posters, barcodes and searching for useful location-based info on the move. So stop by in 24 hours to read part two, and find out how we got on.
Scanning to get local weather forecast >>
Point & Find enabled bus shelters are dotted all over the city >>
Nokia Point & Find currently supports the following handsets: Nokia N97, N97 mini, N96, N95 8GB, N95,N86 8MP, N85, N82, N81, N81 8GB, N79, N78, N76, E71, E66, E63, E51, 6720, 6290, 6220, 6210 Navigator, 6124 Classic 6121 Classic, 6120 Classic, 6110 Navigator, 5700 Xpress Music, 5530 XpressMusic and 5800 XpressMusic
If you want to find out more about Nokia Point & Find, click here.
GLOBAL – Fishing in Ovi Store’s pool of apps is getting harder. Not because there’s not enough apps in the pool, but because every week there’s more to choose from. Never fear though, as the DailyApp folks have been doing the hard work and once again this week we’ve chosen three from their picks to highlight. Read on to find out what’s in store.
As usual, we’re focusing on our three favourites from last week’s selection, and we begin with the quirkily named Seekbert.
We all have our search engine of choice, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to deliver exactly what you want every single time. Seekbert takes the hassle out of playing the field by offering you instant searching on up to 60 different platforms. Simply type in the term you’re looking for and tap the icon of the service you wish to use. You’re not limited to search engines, either: icons for the likes of Wikipedia, eBay, Facebook and IMDB.com are present for hassle-free contextual searches too.
It’s a great simple idea well executed, and you can give it a whirl by downloading it today from Ovi Store for a reasonable £3 fee.
We’re equally impressed by Socially Mobile, another clever app specialising in convergence.
It pulls together the latest updates from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and delivers all three in one interface so you can keep up to date with all your contacts’ comings and goings.
These days, though, that’s nothing particularly special, but this part is: it also integrates with your phone’s contacts list and brings up this information on screen when one of your contacts calls you, giving you an instant up-to-the-minute update on their latest news before you take the call.
Even more impressively, it’s totally free to download, and works with all Symbian S60 5th edition handsets.
The big advantage of these cleverly convergent apps is that they save you time, so for our third choice this week we thought we’d suggest something you can do with that spare time.
We’re talking about EDGE, a highly addictive non-stop puzzle game that works on all Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition phones. If you haven’t heard of it before, the concept is simple: you roll a cube around progressively more complex mazes, with the object being to collect up a handful of scattered prisms, then reach a finishing point to advance to the next level.
As you progress through the 46 levels, the mazes get a lot tougher, with moving panels and shifting surfaces ready to catch you out at every turn. To get an idea of what we mean, check out this video:
Like the very best puzzle games, it’s simple and infuriatingly fun, and costs $2.99/£3 to download.
That’s it for this week’s selection – for the latest Ovi Store apps, get your daily dose from MyDailyApp.com.
