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Mona Lisa on Ovi (and on sitting for Da Vinci for a very long time)

Published
by
niini
on October 19, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 11 Comments

This week our Ovi fan girls Virginia Woolf, Marie Antoinette and Sacagawea will be accompanied by another famous historical female who needs no introductions: Lisa del Giocondo, also known as Mona Lisa.

Fun fact about Lisa: the painting made by Leonardo de Vinci of her has been used in more than 300 other paintings and 2000+ advertisements so far! (source) Yikes! The commercials have mostly focused on the aspect of ‘restoring’ or ‘ageing well’, so Mona Lisa has unfortunately had to promote everything from wrinkle creams to shampoo to pizza (ew?). Well, we’re still adding our own variant to the list, but hey, at least we’re acknowledging Lisa as a real person (a person who really likes Ovi, that is)! ;) So, behold the 2457th ad using Mona Lisa!

OVI_MonaLisa_LR_02

As usual, please let us know what you think in the comment section or via e-mail to niini@ovi.com

Ovi Store – scheduled maintenance this week

Published
by
EricJohn
on October 12, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 23 Comments

Hello Store Users,
This week we are working on a number of updates for the Store that will require us to take the service offline for a few hours. Just like a store in the physical world, the digital Store on your handset and desktop, at times needs to be closed so that we can do some renovations. We will be posting more details on these enhancements shortly here on the Ovi Blog.

In the meantime, please be advised, that the Store will be offline at the following times:
- Tuesday October 13th at 7 AM EST the service will be unavailable for approximately 2 – 3 hours
- Friday, October 16th starting at 6 AM, the service will be unavailable for approximately 7 hours

Note for publishers: The Publish service at http://publish.ovi.com will be unavailable from Monday, October 12th starting at 7 AM EST until the afternoon of Friday, October 16th.

We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll resume Store and Publish services as soon as possible!

Sincerely, the Store Team

Whoever said women can’t navigate? Sacagawea sets things straight (with Ovi)

Published
by
niini
on October 8, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 7 Comments

This week’s Historical Ovi Tweet features one of my all-time favourite historical characters, Sacagawea.

Sacagawea was the Native American (Shoshone) woman who – at least according to mythology – accompanied and, at times, guided the Lewis & Clark Expedition when they travelled from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806. The trip was around 8000 kilometres long (i.e. damn long!). Sacagawea was valuable to the Expedition not only because of her knowledge of Shoshone trails, but also for her translation skills, which proved crucial when Lewis & Clark needed to, for example, trade with the Shoshone for horses.

Sacagawea – who, by the way, made the entire Expedition with her son, Jean-Baptiste, on her back – was considered a valuable member of the party and was even given a full vote in deciding where to spend the winter of 1805-06. It’s no wonder, then, that she has had a river, a lake and a mountain named after her plus an American dollar coin that has her face on it! (Source)

So, with this in mind (and the fact that we really wanted to feature Maps this week), we decided to give this extraordinary woman an honorary Historical Ovi Tweet! Enjoy!

OVI_Twit_Sacagawea_082809

Edit: Just heard that our friends @ HistoricalTweets.com picked up Sacagawea’s tweet on their blog, check it out!!

Marie Antoinette on Twitter, discussing cake (duh!) and Ovi

Published
by
niini
on October 1, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 4 Comments

Our ongoing series of historical characters discussing (and loving!) Ovi by Nokia on Twitter continues with the fabulous Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette is, of course, known for being the ultimate 18th-century party princess (and from the looks of it, carrying around her own weight in hair and clothing). She also has the dubious honor of being regarded as the originator of the phrase “Let them eat cake” (when told that the people of France are starving). Some historians say “PAH!” and claim that she never said such a thing, but that it was merely attributed to her by her contemporaries (read: evil haterz) who wanted to make her look even more indulgent and ignorant in the wake of the French Revolution. Well, I suppose it could be worse. She could, after all, be known for saying something REALLY awful and incorrect like “you can’t use Ovi on your Mac” (since you can!)

Besides, I think anyone who can walk around wearing three feet of hair wrapped into a raccoon’s nest and make it look fierce deserves a shout out. Enjoy Marie’s musings!

OVI_Twit_Marie_082809

..

Keepin’ It Green

Published
by
Riitta Jantunen
on September 28, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 10 Comments

riitta jantunenHi, my name is Riitta Jantunen and I’m part of the Sustainable Lifestyle Solutions team at Nokia. 

As my group’s name implies, whether in the office or out, I like to do simple, common-sense things that make our modern lifestyle a bit more sustainable. Recycling and using public transporation are no-brainers these days, but there’s so much more we can do, like visiting local food markets, organic restaurants and vintage clothing stores. Even during my foreign travel, I try to look for solutions to make my trip a bit more sustainable. After all, it’s the small things we do everyday that makes a difference for our surroundings.

 That’s one reason why I was so excited to join my current team this spring. Our mission is to make a sustainable lifestyle easier for people. Green Explorer is one example of this: 

Green Explorer is a sustainable lifestyle guide powered by Nokia, helping people to lead a greener lifestyle and discover the “treasures” around them. From the Green Explorer web site, you can find information on local water quality, recycling practices and public transporation; read interesting viewpoints from the sustainable lifestyle blog; and check out local World Wildlife Fund projects and UNESCO World Heritage sites nearby- just to give you a few examples.

If you ask what’s my favorite part of Green Explorer – -I’d have to say it’s the ability to share my “green” experiences on the go. The service is available through both web and mobile phone. But what’s really handy is that I can save my favorites to a mobile notebook with the Green Explorer widget, which is available in the Ovi Store for several Symbian devices. http://store.ovi.com

With Green Explorer, anybody can join in the “green” experience. It makes me proud to belong to a team involved in this important work. Nokia was rated world’s most sustainable technology company by the 2009 -10 Dow Jones Sustainability Index. So let’s use mobile technology to help us live more sustainable lives.

As a free Ovi service, Green Explorer can be accessed with the same Nokia account that’s valid for all Ovi services. Check it out for yourself at http://greenexplorer.ovi.com !

Regards, Riitta

Virginia Woolf has the sads, but still enjoys Ovi Music

Published
by
niini
on September 26, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 1 Comment

Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite authors. Well, actually I just saw that movie about her where Nicole Kidman had a prosthetic nose. Good times.

However, I do know that Virginia was a celebrated novelist, a prominent feminist and overall a fantastically intelligent lady. One of her most memorable quotes include “Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind” from 1929’s “A Room of One’s Own”. You tell ‘em, Gi-Gi! That’s how it’s done! But do you guys know what I always say? Don’t read the following tweet if you’re a rabid fan of Nick Cave’s. Enjoy!

OVI_Twit_Virginia_082809

Let us know what you think about the Historical Ovi Tweets below! Also, kudos to our friends @ HistoricalTweets.com who picked up a couple of our tweets on their blog this week! Check them out!

Ovi Store Scheduled Maintence

Published
by
EricJohn
on September 22, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 12 Comments

Hello Ovi Store Users,
Please be advised, this week Ovi Store will be conducting scheduled maintenance at the following times:
- Wednesday September 23rd at 8 PM EST the service will be unavailable for a few minutes.
- Thursday, September 24th at 8 PM EST the service will be unavailable for a bit longer.
We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience. We’ll resume Ovi Store service as soon as possible!
Best – Eric

Breaking: Odysseus tweets about Ovi Maps

Published
by
niini
on September 18, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 5 Comments

Hi, everyone! My name is Niini, and I’ll be posting the next couple of Historical Ovi Tweets.

Madho started off with Charles Darwin (and Bob, of course), and I’ll continue with the tweet of my homeboy, the great Greek king and all-around busybody Odysseus. Fun fact: even though Odysseus was portrayed as a hero in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Romans considered him a “cruel”, “villainous” and “deceitful” character (source). This may or may not be true, but we here at Ovi strongly believe that Odysseus could have easily been a bit testy once or twice because he didn’t have immediate access to Ovi Maps and this caused the personality clash with the Romans who are, of course, renowned for their sensitivity.

Don’t believe us? Check out this authentic tweet!

OVI_Twit_Odysseus_082809

As before, we encourage you to post your own ideas for Historical Ovi Tweets in the comments section or directly to madho (at) ovi (dot) com. We’d love to hear your suggestions!

Some Ovi fun with historical tweets

Published
by
madho
on September 15, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 3 Comments

Here on the Ovi team, we love the web.  Some (like our product teams) say it’s because we spend all of our days online and working hard to make things that help people feel closer  to what they love.  Some (like my brother) say it’s because we are naturally in love with the web.  I agree with both of them, but also want to add– it doesn’t hurt that we get every meme in our mailbox:)

Since there are some of us (@ovibynokia , @madho) that tweet frequently, one of the memes that we’ve followed is #Historical Tweets (and we encourage you to enjoy their work)

we couldn’t resist making a few of our own:

darwin_HistoricalTweet_LowRes

But this is the only one I’ll share. :)   Samuli, in fact, used some of these in his work last week at Nokia World, in Stuttgart.

I also want to take a moment to introduce Niini, our talented colleague who dreamed up the idea.  Niini will be joining us from time to time to share some the terrific work that she’s doing, starting with many of the SFW tweets:)

Cheers

@madho

PS: feel free to post your own in the comments, and you can email us @ madho (at) ovi (dot) com  we’ll choose some of our favorites and repost/retweet them

Ovi SDK + you = Ovi Apps for everyone

Published
by
admin
on September 3, 2009
in Ovi by Nokia
. 14 Comments

 Hi- my name is Martin Ramsin– I’m in our Social Location team and am the product manager for the Ovi SDK, which we announced today at Nokia World in Stuttgart.

Ovi SDK is a developer toolkit we’ve been working on for the past year that exposes JavaScript APIs to Ovi Services on mobile. The Ovi SDK, available right now in beta, enables you to create contextual apps for Nokia devices, we call them Ovi apps.

The first APIs that are available are for mapping and navigation.  The Ovi Maps player API for web has been in beta for a few months and now we bring those to mobile. High level JavaScript APIs to vector based 3D maps, satellite pictures and a whole lot more. Map data is based on Navteq maps with best in class data and global coverage. And best of all, for you we make it both open and  free.  The Ovi Navigation player API introduces turn by turn navigation and routing APIs for pedestrian and car navigation.  Again, for you, free.

We call these Ovi APIs “players” because they are like media players: easy to embed in your web site, and now easy to use in your mobile app. With one line of code, your app can enable car navigation or pedestrian navigation to the destination.

The Ovi SDK is based on web technologies. With basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, You can create Ovi apps for mobile and embed the Maps player in your web site. We have even gone one step further in the SDK by including a UI library for mobile devices that automatically scale to different device form factors.

The SDK itself is runs as a plugin in your Firefox (on PC) and Safari (on Mac) browser.

Ovi apps are contextual. What does that mean? It means that the apps put the user in the center. Literally. By using positioning APIs and time, the app can filter out information that is relevant for the user “right here, right now” without the need for even a search query.

The map is great for visually display large amount of data on small screens. With navigation, the Ovi Apps can bridge the virtual and real world by guiding the users to a location he or she has discovered.  

Ovi SDK is launched today as a developer preview (i.e. in an early beta) to get your feedback. Go to http://www.forum.nokia.com/ovi, apply for the beta program, join the conversation in the discussion boards and let us know what you think!

 Cheers from all of us on the team– we’re excted to see the amazing things that we know you will make! 

Martin