S60 Open to new features

This week's Report of the Week comes to us from Ritesh. I of course am a fan of this report because
1) Ritesh shows how being an Ambassador is a hit with the ladies and
2) Ritesh is talking about Widsets while he saves the world by reducing his carbon footprint. Just like we did way back in the "Share on Ovi" campaign :-)

Check out our modern-day Casanova in action:

Guess this has to do with the increase in fuel prices, but I decided to join a carpool. Today was my first day. The concept is different. I pay a fixed monthly amount as a deposit/maintenance charge and then based on usage pay the car owner some fixed amount of money every time I use the ride. Then there are 3 different slots (say in evening cars leaving at 6 pm, 7 pm, and 7.30pm) and you can choose anyone you will use in the evening. You need to decide by 2 pm and inform the co. about your choice for the evening. On my way back, I got a ride with 4 ladies (don?t get excited, they were elderly ladies) and since I was the youngest, got chatty with me. Within a few minutes they knew all events in my life and with nothing more to share, I pulled out my N82 to pass time. I had recently installed Widsets and wanted to set it up. The fancy setup of widsets caught my neighbours attention and asked whether I was watching a cartoon on my mobile. I told her that I have created a pet and am trying to take care of it. For a moment, she gave me a look as if I have dropped from a different planet or something. I explained to her that it was a program where in one creates and maintains a pet. Then I showed her the application and told that just today I have installed this on my phone, since I am fairly new to this phone. Then I asked her if she knew about facebook and she had heard about it. I told her, this was an application created for facebook and the developer had also created a mobile version which all java based phones could use. I explained a bit more technical stuff about java/non java/S60,S40 cellphones, which they surely weren?t interested in. Then the usual remark came out ?you young fellow know so much about technology!? when I told them that I was a part of the S60 ambassador program which made me aware of technology. I quickly explained about the S60 ambassador program, lest not to bore them to death. I got off 2nd and I know what the ladies must be thinking about me ;-)

Thanks Ritesh! (We'll send a loaner N95 your way for submitting such an engaging report).

This week's report comes to us from Furie in the UK:

How To Get A Beating From Your Girlfriend And Entertain Her Little Sisters

It had to happen eventually. You get all these different applications and widgets that eventually you forget about some. Take Widsets Pets for example. I'd gotten my girlfriend to create herself on it for me to torture, um I mean play with and love when we're apart. Unfortunately I haven't really been looking in on her this past month and she's gotten thin and her clothes are all but rags as she stands alone in the desert with a broken heart. I didn't mean to do it, honest.

Anyway this all came as quite a shock to me and I swore when I saw her like that, eliciting high pitched giggles from her two little sisters who were visiting that day. As I explained what had happened they all started to look at me like I was insane, so I passed my phone over to the girls and explained how to use it. They spent the next hour bathing, brushing and feeding their big sister as if she was a doll, and loving every minute of it. Their mum and her boyfriend had never seen them so engrossed apparently, so I explained how they could get it on their own phones for the girls to play with. After wrestling my phone back (early teen girls stick to mobile phones - must be a genetic mutation of the species) I demoed a bit more of the Widsets service to let Dawn see how it'd benefit her as well as her girls and they left with the web address to download it for themselves, instructions on how to create their own pets, as well as a tip to get 3 UK sim cards as they have a cheap monthly data deal. Personally I refuse to let the lil monsters adopt my pet. They'd torture him soooo much.

Oh, you want to know about the beating in the title? Well, it wasn't so much that my real girlfriend was angry that I'd neglected her virtual self for so long, more that the last action I'd performed (that was still visible on the reaction screen) was to whip her. We made up though... eventually. =o(

EDIT - Everyone I know knows that I'm a phone guru and I explained about this WOM advertising thing and got permission to use their names in online reports about conversations we have about relevant features.

Thanks Furie. Contact Kristina to get yourself an N82 loaner to show off to your friends and your friends' little sisters...meantime, pls stay out of trouble ;-)

The results are in and have been lovingly tallied. Here are our Top 75 "Share on Ovi" Ambassadors:

75. Kikobaya
74. Smashpop
73. Esinclai
72. Sevendc
71. Lucky
71. liftii
70. dissonation
69. acurrie
68. tcarstensen
67. ganeshmoorthy
66. chino
65. rcampoamor
64. Gubro
63. bisito
62. Zanmato
61. mikealive
60. zainman
59. bogart
58. radical24
57. trupter
56. anirudh
55. coloboxp
54. ykbks
53. steve4130
52. gauravbr
51 akhilchawla
50. hoevenrobert
49. ashish
48. Micky
47. NormanJohn
46. merlin3212
45. iN10Se
44. jagteshwar
43. jmckitterick
42. javsmo
41. sevendotzero
40. manisha
39. technologicali
38. obsidial
37. simrantiwana
36. mirkocorli
35. MartY3
34. dochoa
33. EvilPhish
32. hmarsili
31. aashish
30. domon07
29. sigma421
28. ProfessorSmashy
27. NZtechfreak
26. jebbrilliant
25. pablopoo
24. Sirul
23. auntiewiv
22. mcpezza
21. Mitko
20. cnupy
19. RobertSe
18. gersbo
17. shewhowearsred
16. buddhake
15. dandandan
14. omedina
13. gwapz
12. jamaalism
11. jobber99
10. nikhilchawla
9. craigl21
8. vaibhavsharma
7. maksim
6. ritesh
5. MattWPBS
4. kukalubo
3. gomcoite
2. LENNYBONS
1. crazysehaj

Thanks for all of your hard work, your engaging reports, and your general commitment to the "Share on Ovi" campaign. As noted previously, if you are in the Top 75, you'll have a choice of rewards. Everyone is guaranteed a BH-900. If a winner would rather have something different, we'll also have a limited supply of iGo Stowaway BT keyboards, Nokia MD-5W BT speakers, and the Nokia DT-22 Tripod. The awards that are in limited supply will be first come, first serve -- let Kristina know on that day if that's your preference.

For the rest of you aspiring Ambassadors, remember that you have to sign up for a specific campaign to 1) get your welcome kit, and 2) to be eligible to earn rewards. "Always S60" doesn't have specific rewards associated with it, but there are spots left for our "Widset Pets" campaign. To sign up for a campaign, go to the Ambassador website, log in, and choose "Campaigns" on the left hand side.

Additional campaigns are in the pipeline, stay tuned to this blog and http://www.ambassadors.s60.com for updates!

We asked our Ambassadors to tag anything and everything Random13. Lots and lots of great photos were posted. And we got kinda of sad at the prospect of not having anything to rate in the future. Looking back at the themes over the weeks-- place3, sneaker4, food5, animal6, transport7, print8, door9, hand10, sign11, water12. A lot of great stuff.
So we wanted to give out as many props as possible. So: Instead of just one pic of the week, here's a smattering of some of our favorites, the best Random13 posts from last week:

Nikhil Chawla -

Gomcoite -

Maksim -

mcpezza -

Thanks to everybody who contributed and we look forward to starting a new "Share on Ovi" campaign in the coming months.

OK, so our most active "Widset Pets" Ambassador seems to be better at this thing than we are. Kukalubo has a non-broken heart, is well-groomed and fed, and has a high intellect score. Meanwhile, I keep feeding steaks to Kristina but mini-Kristina never gets more than 40% full. What gives? Are we corporate types just not cut out for this kind of thing?

As an experiment, we're running a contest for one week: Who can get the most attention - a corporate "suit" (Kristina :-) or a real-live S60 Ambassador (Kukalubo)? Over the course of the week, we'll see who gets the most attention. Kristina or Kukalubo. Winner gets bragging rights.

If you want to feed either one of them, sign up for widset pets on Facebook and create your own pet,(use the link below), then adopt one or both of them.

Kukalubo:

Kristina:

Our "S60 Agent" word of mouth marketing program is now in full swing. Here's one of my favorite reports from Agent "Joe":

>A few friends and I rented a house for the weekend in Dewey Beach,
> Delaware.
> The place was a total beach town, populated with college students and
> families on vacation. For our trip down there from NYC my friend had put
> the address into the GPS software he downloaded for his Verizon phone.
> Since we had four hours to kill, I whipped out my laptop and proceeded to
> tether it to my N93. This definitely drew comments from the other
> passengers in the car with me. I explained to them that the USB cable and
> Nokia PC suite made it all easy to do this, all for $2.99 a month on a
> tmobile tzones plan. Unfortunately tmobile had a lot of dead spots on the
> way down, but that's another issue L. The laptop, with n93 still
> attached,
> was quickly passed around as everyone used it to check their emails and
> even
> IM. They balked at the price of the phone however, a common reaction from
> many people I come into contact with J. As we got closer and the streets
> got smaller, the Verizon gps began to fail. Now if I had an N95 or E90
> perhaps, I could've just fired up the built in GPS feature, but this was
> not
> the case. Still tethered to my laptop, I fired up google maps and
> basically
> talked him thru the last 30 minutes of directions. N93 saves the day!
>
> Google maps has been a tremendously useful application for me. I would
> say
> it's the most used 3rd party application that I have. Now this would be
> useless if I had the N95, but I promised myself I would at least keep the
> N93 for a full year before getting a new phone! It next came handy when
> we
> were deciding on a place to eat dinner. No one knew the area, so I
> searched
> the area for our food of choice, which was sushi. In minutes I had a
> location, directions, a phone number and even reviews. This was done all
> while sunning myself out on the beach! Needless to say, everyone was
> impressed. I on the other hand spent that night drying to blow sand out
> of
> my keypad. They said they would all consider an S60 device for their next
> phone, but the main problem is the prices. I've seen enough people's
> faces
> when I tell them the prices to know this is usually the main issue that
> stops many people. I just explained that this is more than just a
> cellphone, and that I've proved that just now. I usually recommend one of
> the S60 v1 devices to try out. They have gotten significantly cheaper but
> still have many more capabilities than a lot of phones out on the market
> today.
>

Great stuff from Joe! If you want to join the New York agent pilot campaign, stop by here. (Remember that for the pilot stage we are only accepting agents in the New York City area).

Yesterday I wrote about how people talk about brands everyday, online and off, and how the S60 Marketing team is looking for ways to amplify the conversations that are already taking place.

One way we to amplify word of mouth conversation is through blogs like this one and womworld.

Another way is through "offline" word of mouth. We're piloting a volunteer program for people interested in S60 software called "S60 Agents: New York". The idea is encourage current S60 device owners in the NY area to talk to their friends and families about the devices and software they use, and then find out from them what the reactions of our target audience "across the chasm" have to say about the software. The Agents are rewarded with marketing schwag and the most active and detail-oriented agents will be given application/hardware goodies. (We are working out the details, it is still in pilot phase). For those interested in the Word of Mouth marketing concept, there is a wealth of background information available here. I'm interested in comments and feedback from agents and non-agents on how to expand the program and make it more effective.

We've had good response from our fans in the New York area, many many people have signed on, and many have submitted excellent reports. I'll use this blog to post their reports from time to time. The first is from Judy:

On Sunday July 1st while my cousin graduation party, a bunch of us sat
around the back yard, someone just happened to call me so I excused myself
and whip out my phone to answer the call. I currently have an N80 and of
course I am drooling over the N95. So after I hung up a few of my other
cousins asked me about my phone. They noticed it was thicker than a regular
slider and that intrigued them, so I took the opportunity to talk to them
about all the cool features of the S60 OS. They seemed interested on the
phone, and where asking me what I like most about it. I told them I liked
everything but most importantly the stability and all the software choices
we had to choose from. I told them about the MP3 player, since they are all
young they were really excited about that and the fact that the phone
supports a 2GB card for music overload. Of course I told them that my love
for the S60 platform was so strong that I became an agent. They asked me
where the phone could be purchased and I told them about the Nokia
Manhattan store. Though some were just comaparing their phones to mine,
some seemed really interested in the phone and its platform.

Judy gives WoM'ing a good name. Thanks Judy!!