Getting press - part II
Yay! There’s a story about Nokia Beta Labs in the front pages of Digitoday and Taloussanomat (Finnish tech & business magazines).
Thanks Aleksi!! As you wrote such a good piece, you are forgiven for publishing that dorky picture…
Anyway, there was only one thing that I and a couple of other commentators were not fully comfortable with: using the word “geek” in the title. Of course, geeks - using the particular Merriam-Webster definition “an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity” - represent one large and important segment of Beta Labs users. They tend to push the technological limits, and set the highest technological demands for Nokia R&D guys. But they are not the only tip of the lead-user iceberg, as we like to call the user community around Beta Labs. There are several peaks. We hope to attract athletes to shape the sports apps, traveling salesmen to shape the navigation apps, and visually impaired people to shape apps like audiobooks. Or artists. Or race drivers. Or priests. Or war correspondents. People at the edges. People pushing the boundaries.
That’s a great place for certain kind of innovation to happen, I believe.
Time for a question from the audience:
Q: Doesn’t Nokia listen to normal people anymore?
A: Well, yes. Obviously, lead-user innovation à la Nokia Beta Labs is not suitable for everything. Usability studies, for example, are better conducted with more regular folks. And Nokia does.
Hi
I actually find it very interesting that companies now open their product development processes much more than they used to.
I think that one of the major motivators behind all this eagerness to open up and share is - drum roll, please - the Internet, which has driven down the costs of distributing software and collecting feedback.
If you can have feedback from a large pool of customers, why not give it a try?
Comment by Aleksi — March 14, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
How about creating a cell phone that can predict weather..
like the barometers in the shop.
it must show humidity, temp, atmospheric pressure,
the alitutude for hikers who climb mountains.
must have a trend bar for atmospheric pressure so it can warn if the weather is going to be sunny / cloudy / rainy.
for more info email me on this.
Regards
Colin Kars
South Africa.
Comment by Colin Kars — March 19, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
> How about creating a cell phone that can predict weather..
Umm… I would just use the browser for accessing some mobile-optimized weather site, or maybe a dedicated weather application / widget.
> it must show humidity, temp
So if it’s hot and sweaty in your pocket, that means… rain?
Seriously speaking, even in perfect conditions, a mobile device can’t predict the weather with an accuracy that would be even remotely competitive against real weather forecasters.
Comment by Tommi Vilkamo — March 19, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
Well with the localisation ability (thanks to A/GPS) then it’s probably possible to have a local weather update program on a mobile.
You get them for Desktops all the time. All you’d need is a small program to update and phrase the info once every half hour or so.. and you could use the GPS to input local info (location and height).
There are probably programs like this out already but don’t think any of them use the localisation abilities of GPS phones…
Comment by Solitaire — March 19, 2008 @ 6:35 pm
hey guys,
U hv done a lot for phones on the higher end.Are u planning to ignore folks like me with 6233 ??
Fibinse,
India
Comment by fibinse — March 23, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
great. Publicity for Betalabs !!
Comment by markku — March 31, 2008 @ 10:30 pm