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Nokia's Kamppi Trial succeeds at indoor positioning, gets shelved anyway (video)
Sure, GPS can get you to the mall, but can it route you from the Bon Ton down to Penney's? Not so much. Indoor navigation is still generally a paper map reliant affair, something Nokia attempted to do away with at the Kamppi Shopping Center in Helsinki. The service, also called Kamppi, relied on wireless LAN to position people within the complex, meaning anyone with an S60 handset with WiFi could simply browse to kamppi.nokia.mobi, see their current position, locate their friends, and find their way around as shown after the break. 15,000 people tried it out successfully over the summer and so the service is receiving a fitting send-off: it's been "archived." Nokia is pledging to use the tech in future products, but we expect to be reliant on those giant, obelisk-mounted maps for many years to come.
Finnish mall rats take Nokia's WiFi positioning system for a test drive
Nokia is currently testing an indoor positioning system at the Kamppi Shopping Center in Helsinki that lets users triangulate their position from a series of WiFi transmitters on their Nokia S60 cellphone. The handset runs an app that allows users to pinpoint their location on a map of the mall, send SMS messages with their location to fellow shoppers, and find the shortest route to the Orange Julius (or its Finnish counterpart). Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen a company try to make GPS-like positioning viable indoors, but it may be the first that's expressly designed to enable your shopping addiction. We'll be keeping an eye out for further developments -- in the meantime, peep the video demonstration after the break.[Via Switched]
Nokia releases widget platform for S60
If you're a fan of Apple's Widgets and Microsoft's Gadgets, Nokia's software engineers hear you. Nokia's Symbian-based S60 platform now has support for dashboard-like widgets thanks to the recent introduction of its "Web Run-Time" tools for web developer types. Nokia is claiming its S60 widgetry to be a first for a mobile platform, although Microsoft may be readying the same concept for Windows Mobile 6. So, if you're ready to stock up that slicker-than-slick N73, just remember that you're going to need Nokia's S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 to get those new widgets -- then let the WeatherBugging begin.[Via Mobilewhack]
Nokia makes play for Linux developers
Nokia's had a long-standing relationship with mobile operating system maker Symbian, but that doesn't mean the world's largest mobile phone maker wants to limit itself. Nokia's newer "Open C" for use with its own S60 software development kit (SDK) is an effort to encourage open source application developers to take a stab at porting their existing apps to the Symbian platform on which S60 is based. Potential result? Getting some of those cool mobile Linux apps sitting on that sweet Nokia S60 handset you may have.
