Nokia Ovi Blog

Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Working the night shift

Published
by
madho
on May 29, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 19 Comments

Sooo..we know it’s the middle of the night, but we have a dedicated midnight crew hard at work tonight to help roll out some cool new stuff on Ovi.com. We’ll come by tomorrow to tell you more, but we wanted to tell you to expect some downtime tomorrow, especially for the homepage, Contacts, Calendar and Sync access. Don’t worry, everything will be fine when we come back, and you can still visit Store, Mail, Maps, Share and Files directly.

While we’re on the topic, if you have anything you want to put on your Ovi wishlist, let us know in the comments!

Sleep tight— we’ll try and keep down the noise.

madho

Store Update

Published
by
Marco
on May 27, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 30 Comments

Hey, folks, this is Marco Argenti from the Ovi Store team. It has been an exciting first 24 hours here in the shop!. We are super excited to share that we have people who have registered for the Ovi Store from 131 countries around the globe. People from Oman to Beijing, Finland to Fiji, Palo Alto to Panama City, have been registering, downloading and rating content.

We have also heard back from many of you in blogs and emails. We really appreciate all of the feedback that has been coming in and we want you to know that we have already incorporated some of your suggestions into improvements we are making to the Ovi Store today. So, in the first day since going live, let me tell you what we have done to make the Ovi Store experience even better:

  • We have now added an auto detection feature to store.ovi.mobi, so compatible Series 60 devices will immediately be alerted that a downloadable client is available for their device and is a click away.
  • For compatible Series 40 devices the client is downloadable through the Download! folder, as previously mentioned for all devices .
  • We have also increased the number of Ovi Store compatible devices 20% to over 60.
  • As mentioned in our earlier blog post, we have added additional server capacity that has balanced the traffic and created a faster and more consistent experience.

We hope you continue to enjoy the new service and continue your conversation in the comments with us!

Marco

Update on Ovi Store opening

Published
by
EricJohn
on May 26, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 45 Comments

Hi all,

Shortly after launching the Ovi Store at 2 am ET, we began experiencing extraordinarily high spikes of traffic that resulted in some performance issues for users accessing store.ovi.com and store.ovi.mobi. We immediately began to address this issue by adding servers, which resulted in intermittent performance improvements. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused Ovi Store users and encourage you to continue giving us feedback as we develop the service further.

The Ovi Store device client, however, has continued to perform very well and there were no reported issues from users logged on through that entry point.

We’ll keep you posted,

Eric

Ovi Store, now “Open for Business”

Published
by
EricJohn
on May 26, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 8 Comments

Hi, My name is Eric John. I’m based in the US and I head up product marketing for Ovi Store. I’m excited to tell you that it’s official… the Store is now open! Thanks to a dedicated, admittedly over-caffeinated team of Nokians and the creative efforts of hundreds of developers big and small from around the world, we are now open and the shelves stocked with apps, widgets, ringtones, videos and more.

Ovi Store is – at the end of the day – all about what’s inside. Our number one goal is to enable you to discover all that’s possible on your device. Below you’ll find highlights of some of my favorite content and apps currently installed on my own Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. But first, a couple of quick tips on how and where to get Ovi Store on your Nokia.

Start by opening your Nokia device browser and go to store.ovi.com. Once there, you can immediately browse content, and begin downloading and personalizing your device with games, tones, videos, location-based apps and more. If you live in one the following countries – Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the US or the UK – you can also update your device with the Ovi Store mobile application by selecting the Ovi Store icon in the Download! folder on your device. You can purchase content with a credit card globally from our mobile website as well as from the mobile client in the US. Operator billing is available in all countries except the US, where credit card billing is available. In the US, AT&T will be offering Ovi Store to its customers later this year.

More countries, languages and devices will be added in the future! And now, here’s just a few of my favorite apps available today on Ovi Store, and running on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Gravity: If you tweet, this is a must-have app! With its wonderfully intuitive interface, Gravity lets you quickly login and manage your Twitter posts, track and stay connected to the fast-moving world of Twitter. (search Ovi Store: Gravity)

Trapster: For the lead-footed drivers amongst us, here’s a handy app to help you avoid another speeding ticket. On a GPS-enabled Nokia, like my 5800, I can give it a quick view before I jump in the car to see where the hot spots are. It crowd sources the information from other commuters and is 100% legal (no radar required). Try it out and you may find as I have, that the process of looking for hotspots encourages you to slow down in general, (good for the gas budget). (search Ovi Store: Trapster)

AP News: The world’s largest news network, the Associated Press, fits in the palm of your hand! When you need a chuckle, choose the “Wacky” category for the best in “strange but true” news. (search Ovi Store: Associated)

WorldMate: This Swiss Army Knife for the road warrior just got better. The version for the Nokia 5800 is nicely designed with all the features we love: flight schedule and tracking, weather monitor, currency converter and world clock. Lots of great features even without the upgrade!

Fodors: This widget by Mippin offers a deep-dive into the world’s best travel destinations with articles, guides and pictures optimized for your Nokia. (search Ovi Store: Fodors)

EarthComber: Should I end up vacationing in North America, this app will use the GPS on my Nokia to help me find great things to do from restaurants, movies, nightlife (great band listings!), events, and stores. (search Ovi Store: Earthcomber)

Be sure to check back for updates on future roll-outs of operator billing supported countries as well as more devices with Ovi Store pre-installed. If you have recommendations for content we should know about or thoughts on how we should improve the service, please let us know in the comments. And if you’re a developer and are inspired by the apps I’ve highlighted above, head to Forum Nokia forum.nokia.com for tips on how to develop applications on Nokia. When you’re ready, go to the self-serve publishing tool Ovi Publish at publish.ovi.com

We look forward to hearing from you and working together to evolve the Ovi Store experience!
Enjoy! – Eric

Men at Work (Ovi.com scheduled maintainance)

Published
by
madho
on May 23, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 5 Comments

Over this holiday weekend in the US, we’ll be doing a bit of work/spring cleaning/renovation behind the scenes to spruce up Ovi.com

Since we’ll be men (and women) at work, we thought you’d like some Men at Work. Enjoy, and see you next week.

-madho

Men At Work – Down Under

Where 2.0: Opening up Ovi

Published
by
Aapo Bovellan
on May 21, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 9 Comments

Since the launch of Ovi by Nokia, we have emphasized that we want Ovi to be open for developers. We took the first step recently by opening Ovi Store for developers and publishers of all types of content: apps, themes, videos and more at publish.ovi.com. The development community has been busy ever since submitting amazing content.

Today in Where 2.0, San Jose, we are announcing another significant step: we are beginning to open up one of our hottest properties, Ovi Maps, to developers. With the introduction of the Ovi Maps Player API developers can bring Ovi Maps to their websites, complete with cutting edge features such as 3D view, satellite and terrain views and customizable visuals. The Ovi Maps Player can also be mashed up with content from other services, such as the terrific content from the Associated Press.

To give you an idea of what the Ovi Maps Player API does, we produced a short video of the cool things you can do, along with first hands-on experiences from some of our truly innovative partners – Lonely Planet and AKQA.

We are opening up Ovi in a very deliberate way. We want to provide functionality that is uniquely useful, but also delivered in a way that’s easy to develop with and well polished. For this reason we begin with an invitation based beta for Ovi Maps Player. This is just the first step of many.

Also, today we are joining forces with our friends at Forum Nokia, launching a permanent, Ovi specific section in Forum Nokia – www.forum.nokia.com/ovi. This will become the home base for all developer resources, news and supports related to Ovi.

Join us in building Ovi – for developers.

- Aapo Bovellan

Share more in more places

Published
by
madho
on May 19, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 8 Comments

Hi!

A quick intro, My name is Jason Madhosingh, but most people call me madho.  I work on Samuli’s team and look after various Ovi by Nokia digital projects.  It would be cooler to be an Ovi Ninja, but I couldn’t get legal to approve my business cards.  Go figure.  I’ll be dropping in from time to time to help answer questions from the community, so you should also feel free to send them to madho (at)  ovi.com and I’ll do my best to follow up or answer them with blog posts.

One question that has been coming up lately:

Fans of Ovi Share have been wondering about the future of the service in light of Nokia’s recent announcement. I’m here to tell you that Share is alive and well. The primary objective of Share is to let people capture and share their experiences using photos and videos via their Nokia handset’s power, via Ovi.

The recent announcement about Ovi Share represents a clarification of Nokia’s mobile service strategy.

Our next natural evolution is to extend and democratize the social media experience by integrating it with other social media services and partners, just as we’ve already done with Flickr, Vox, and a number of other partners around the globe.  Our goal is to enable people to personalize their mobile experience based on their needs and desires. This is what Ovi by Nokia is all about.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments, and if you’re hungry, here is a picture of a pie that I made for Mother’s Day.  enjoy.  recipe on request.

Mother's Day Pie - Share on Ovi

Cheers

madho

out of retirement?

Published
by
Samuli Hänninen
on May 6, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 4 Comments

Way back,  about 15  years ago , I used to wake up everyday at the crack of dawn  (seriously, at 6am,WAY before class) and  write news articles for a start up.  I haven’t written much of anything  since then… so let’s see how this goes :)

Around the  same time, Nokia created the first phone book for mobile phones.  It may  sound small today, but for me that was the start of a revolution.  When  there were only landlines, a phone number basically equaled a location.
I  can even remember Grandma answering her phone by stating the number (and this  little boy wondered if someone else could be answering the phone!)

The  insight behind the mobile phone book was simple, when you think about it  now:
when you can take your phone with you everywhere, a number starts to  equal a person, not a place.  This is exactly when everything started to  change, communication became personal.  Even today, in the world of  personal and professional social networking and microblogging, the first truly mobile social network, the  phone book, remains the biggest.

Today, I’m not so little anymore, and  I head up product marketing for Ovi by Nokia.  We believe that another big shift is coming, this time,  it’s about the Internet and it’s about  communication.  It’s no longer about just calls and texts; it’s becoming  everything we do (or don’t do).

My three year old doesn’t understand why  he can’t instantly share pictures with his Grandma with a normal digital camera,  or why grandma doesn’t answer the phone although she’s online, and I haven’t  explained it.  For him the paradigm has already changed. 15 years ago, no  one told me why some people answered phone calls by number…

Ovi by  Nokia, the brand for our Internet services, is continuing on the same path  Nokia started 15 years ago, continuing to build relationships. Our goal is to  make those existing relationships stronger and to also build completely new  ones. We can do this because of context. People and Places. I already  elaborated about the phone book, and as natural as people is to us, so is  places. Your mobile phone is always with you…many folks even sleep with it  next to them!

Some glimpses can be seen today with Ovi Maps, and the  platform behind it. Friend View which was announced some 6 months ago, also  gives a good understanding on where the world is going. Ovi Store, which will launch in the coming weeks, will also do this.  I am looking so forward  to see all these things in action, and you wouldn’t believe how much we have  been waiting to get this stuff out for you!

We want you to use them and to help us build more, both independent and mashed up, as  we believe  that being open is fundamentally the only way to succeed.

To make Ovi  services successful we have 3 things that we always keep in mind; context,  openness and trust.  I’ll elaborate a bit more on those next time  I write.

We [the Ovi team] will do our best to build those contextual  Internet services, meaning more relevant and personal Internet experiences for  everyone…bringing those connected people even closer.  (And yes, the last  sentence was the marketing part of this post.)

Cheers, and thanks for reading

Samuli

Hyvää Vappua!

Published
by
mattmiz
on May 2, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 3 Comments

Hi everyone. We’re guessing you probably noticed that yesterday we had a substantial amount of downtime on Ovi.com. Originally we thought perhaps our servers decided to leave early for the Finnish holiday of Vappu, but in the end it turned out that this was due to a cascading power failure at one of our hosting facilities. The outage was not limited to Ovi.com but rather affected a number of other properties as well. That being said, we do apologize for the outage and any inconvenience it may have caused. If you are wondering, we have no reason to believe that there was any adverse effect on any user data or any other parts of Ovi.

The good news is that the problem is fixed and we are currently back up and running as usual. We’ll now leave you to enjoy the rest of your holiday.

Hyvää Vappua!
-Matt