dopplr
Latest
Nokia's VP of Design has a plan to crack the US market with MeeGo, and we're all accomplices
One look at the N8 and E7 should be enough to convince the casual observer that Nokia is serious about design. The man behind Nokia's hardware and software design for the last year is Marko Ahtisaari, Senior Vice President of Design and former CEO and co-founder of Dopplr. We asked Marco what it would take to be successful in the US market. His response, while not direct, was still illuminating and gives us implicit insight into how MeeGo, not Symbian, might be Nokia's near-term play to conquer the American smartphone market. While gesturing to the N8, Marko had this to say: "In the US I think it will require a somewhat more consequent approach in the high end. No matter how smooth and fast we make this, and we improve the camera -- this is the best camera right -- it still won't cut though enough until we do an operating system level innovation. It will do extremely well in the market but it's not a breakthrough device." Marko later added this clarification: "In order to cut through in the media environment, I think you need to do operating system level innovation. The products will be cut-through successes in the market, in people's hands, in share of palms and share of thumbs it will be successful. But in order for it to cut through and people to say, whoa, why didn't somebody else think about that and that's kind of what Nokia should do, it will be easier to cut through, from the media point of view, with MeeGo." In other words, it's the media (read: us), in Marko's opinion, that will affect consumer opinion by influencing enthusiasts (read: you) who will in turn evangelize Nokia's products throughout the US. MeeGo, not Symbian, is the product that will generate that degree of buzz and excitement. Marko finished by adding, "My goal is that very soon it will be cool to upgrade to the Nokia." So, what will Nokia's high-end MeeGo devices look like? Click through to find out.
Nokia Head of Design Marko Ahtisaari talks about priorities, competition, and future direction
Marko Ahtisaari will be a familiar name to Dopplr users, being both the CEO and one of the major investors in the startup's social networking software. Having been acquired by Nokia in late September 2009, his team now works to help Symbian regain its world-conquering ways while Marko himself has returned to Nokia to helm its Design group -- an outfit that, judging by the world's disappointment with the N97 and other devices, is frankly in need of some fresh ideas. So, when we were invited to meet him this morning for a journalist get-together where Marko hoped to "begin the conversation" about Nokia's future direction, we grabbed our pen, paper and DSLR and rushed off to go have a listen. The camera came in use when we got to handle a Nokia N8 prototype for the first time, but do join us after the break to see what else we learned.
Metaverse U conversation: Raph Koster, Cory Ondrejka, Howard Rheingold
We headed to the Metaverse U event at Stanford University this weekend to hear a smorgasboard of prominent thinkers and workers in the fields of virtual worlds and online gaming have a meeting of the minds. Below is a recap (caveat: some paraphrasing involved!) of one of our favorite sessions featuring a conversation with Metaplace's Raph Koster, former Linden Lab CTO Cory Ondrejka, and social media and online community guru Howard Rheingold. Henrik Bennetsen (moderator): (Introduces 3 panelists and asks Raph to kick off with his thoughts on virtual worlds) Raph: From the beginning, virtual communities has never been about the "virtual." All the oddities come from the mediation, not from human nature. We build trellises, and communities are plants growing on them... you get to shape them a little bit, and sometimes in very bad ways if you're not careful. We tend to think we have more power than we do when architecting these things. I wince at the title "community manager" ("relations" would be better) because it perpetuates the myth that we have power to control what users do. Mediation gives us a window into things that in the real world can be hard to see. Virtual communities are an opportunity to see how people tick. Cory: Having spent 7 years building Second Life, the interactions and collisions with the real world are what make it interesting. We had only 400 users at launch and we were ecstatic! Can you imagine that today (especially for companies with big name investors)? I think about virtual worlds as communication technology. I agree there's a need for customer service and arguments about the declaration of avatar rights are important but yet I feel there's something off in these arguments... (he's referring to earlier conversation about declarations of avatar rights) %Gallery-16285%
