Nokia Ovi Blog

Tag Archive for 'culture'

It’s Fan Tweet time, y’all!

We here at Ovi love our fans. And they love our Historical Ovi Tweets! A couple of weeks back we started hearing rumors that there are “fan tweets” going around the interwebs, and whaddyaknow: the rumors were true!

We also found out that we are apparently quite famous in the Philippine blogosphere, as an organization called the Pinoy Expat Blog Awards (PEBA) has not only made an Ovi by Nokia promo video (we’ll post that as well here soon!), but launched an entire Historical Ovi Tweets competition! We here at Historical Ovi Tweets HQ (i.e. my couch) have watched new Ovi fan tweets pop up almost daily for the past couple of weeks, and we figured it’s only right we post some of them here, as they just look so cool!

So, let’s get started!

The first one is from artemis070829 who sent this one directly to us. It features the noted chessmaster Emanuel Lasker (and his nemesis Wilhelm Steinitz), and we just thought it was hilarious :) Thanks, artemis070829, your tweet will be made into a T-shirt and shipped to you shortly!!

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The next one is actually made by yours truly, but it was featured at HistoricalTweets.com a while back, and a commentor by the name of Anusha made such a great suggestion for an alternative text that we just had to feature it here:

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Love it! Then we have the PEBA bloggers as well. Since it was sort of a competition, we chose the winner (which, by the way, was so hard since the tweets were all so friggin’ good!) and it is….

The superb Cyrano de Bergerac tweet (click!!) from NEBZ of Isla de Nebz! Congrats, NEBZ! Your tweet will also be made into a T-shirt and sent to you!

Another fantastic fan tweet comes from Reymos of “My World is Getting Smaller Every Day” in the form of Michelangelo’s David (click!!), who came in second and will also get his tweet made into a T-shirt (congrats, Reymos!).

Other cool fan art comes from AZEL of Panunumbalik ng Ulirat in the form of David and Aphrodite (click!!)

The super funny “Scream” tweet (click!!) from the Pope of Palipasan

…and Lady Liberty’s tweet (click!!) from the DETH of Minddeth!

We would just like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who made and submitted their tweets!! Have YOU already sent us your own Historical Ovi Tweet? ;)

This just in! Mozart + Beethoven + Ovi = magic!

This week’s Tweet post features not one, but two historical characters! In our first tweet of the week, musical wünderkind Mozart discusses ring tones and Ovi with his long-time homeboy, Joseph Haydn:

OVI_Mozart_LR_02

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And in the second one, Beethoven in his usual shy manner admits he loves Lady Gaga (and Ovi):

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What do I and Sun Tzu have in common? Why, Ovi Files of course!

Confession time: Files is my favorite Ovi service. It really is. I know you’re supposed to love all your kids equally, but I’m only human! A lesser known fact about me is that I’m actually still in school (HSE all the way, woot!) and Files pretty much got me through the recent writing of my master’s thesis. So I thank you for that, Files.

Anyway, back to the post. Sun Tzu (below) is of course known for writing the very famous book “The Art of War”, which tackled the issues of military strategy and management of conflicts. He was also a heroic general for the ancient Chinese king Helü of Wu who reportedly won many battles with Sun Tzu’s help. But enough about that guy: the real reason I wanted to make a post about Sun Tzu was, of course, so that I could post this:

Click! (SFW, albeit a bit disturbing)

Now, my life is complete.

Oh right, here’s this week’s Tweet!

OVI_SunTzu_LR_02

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

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

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

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!

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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

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

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Virginia Woolf has the sads, but still enjoys Ovi Music

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!

Breaking: Odysseus tweets about Ovi Maps

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

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