Nokia's The Way We Live Next 3.0

Nokia's 'The Way We Live next 3.0' in Espoo saw several speakers come

together at Nokia House to talk about new advancements in research and new

technologies for emerging markets. Running for the third time this year, this

two-day event demonstrates several firsts in mobile technology and software.

Speakers included Mary McDowell, Nokia's Chief Development Officer, Purnima

Kochikar, VP of Forum Nokia and Developer Community, Shawn Puckrin, Head of

Community Support at the Symbian Foundation, Peter Schneider, Marketing Head for

Maemo Devices and Henri Tirri, Nokia's Chief Technology Officer.

Nokia Beta Labs showcased several demos of the applications that they have for download. Nokia users can simply register and install useful applications like Step Counter, Mobbler Internet Radio & Race Chrono.	Speedhero is an application that turns your phone into a fun speed measuring device for sports. The app uses sound to determine the average speed of a ball as it flies through the air.

Some of the notable things discussed included 'The Progress Project' — an

initiative by Nokia and Lonely Planet which tackles social and economic

challenges, innovative new applications, 'Maemo', Nokia's new Linux-based

software platform for the promising N900 device, and the roadmap for Symbian

software and devices.

Nokia Braille Reader allows the visually impared to 'read' text from a phone. The phone vibrates in Braille patterns.

Nokia Point & Find integrates real life objects with your phone. Simply use your phone camera to point at a real object and find relevant information.

After the speakers, participants headed off to the demo area where all of

Nokia's current generation devices (including the upcoming N900, X3 and X6) were

available to play with. Other demos from developers included the versatile

'Point and Find', Nokia Life Tools, Speedhero and Nokia Braille Reader. 'Point

and Find', already available for several Symbian devices, fuses the digital and

physical worlds by allowing you to find relevant information about a place or

object by just scanning it with your phone's camera. Speedhero is a

sports-centric application, already available on the Ovi Store, that calculates

the speed of a ball using sounds picked by the phone's microphone. Nokia Life

Tools is a boon for rural areas of the world, where information scarcity is a

real problem. Nokia Braille Reader is an application targeted at the visually

handicapped. It basically uses vibrations to 'read out' text messages in

patterns dictated by Braille text.

(The author was hosted by Nokia at Espoo, Finland in November, 2009).