S60 Open to new features

One thing what I learned during 3 years working in China was that 3G licensees are always expected to be awarded within 6 months. Already year 2000, when I moved there, we expected 3G licensees to be awarded in 6 months. Then 6 months went and we expected them to be awarded during next year half and again and again… This has continued now for … let’s see… for 6 years. But now there is a change in expectations. Licensees are not given before 2007 writes Xinhuanet.

Software tends to bloat over time. It has happened to PC software and it seems to be happening to our product. I’m actually very proud when there is courage in the organization to drop some old features and I want to encourage doing it more often, especially when better usability is achieved. One example is dropping of Wallet application. Now we have also decided to drop resolution support for 176x208 and double of that from 3rd Edition FP1 onward. QVGA is becoming widely used standard resolution in smartphones. Display component prices are dropping and supporting reduced set of resolutions makes life in platform development easier, less verification and testing and I’m sure it helps also in 3rd party application development and testing.

I had a quick trip to China and just came back. In Shanghai I stayed in Holiday Inn which gave me a good example what it means when a global and Chinese process meets in an international company. Obviously Holiday Inn global is taking environmental issues seriously and couple of notes was left to the hotel room. If customer wants that sheets or towels are not changed daily (Slogans on the notes: Conserving tomorrow and Help us to preserve the environment), he or she just lefts a right note to bed or places used towels in a right way. Then localization comes to the picture. Aquariums are quite pop in China, have always been. In my hotel room there was a very small vase 0.5 liters maximum and there was a gold fish swimming in it. There was nothing else but water and this poor fish in the vase. I wonder how often a fish needs to be replaced so that it won’t change swimming style to backstroke. There were about 20 rooms per floor and over 20 floor in the building so about 400-500 fishes on duty every day. If changed daily it makes almost 30 000 fishes per year in this hotel. If every Holiday Inn is having similar practice in China, we are talking about hundreds of thousands goldfishes. Or is there a goldfish recreation clinic where they can swim in oxygenous water and being fed as well and then returned back to hotel room duty?

We have had now over one month long waited telecom freedom in Finland (well I wasn’t waiting for it to be exact). Operators are focusing to advertise as cheap as possible monthly packets to consumers. When in US for example the smallest Cingular monthly plan includes 450 min phone calls (anytime calls) and more common is to provide over 1000 min, here in Finland operators advertise 70 min plans and you pay extra from extra minutes. It’s nice to show 19,90€/month number and squeeze the basic value as low as possible, but it makes me wonder why the tactics are so different. Or maybe I know the reason. With 18€ per month you can get 500 min calls. It is very difficult to ask more than 20€ even when you give a phone for free. People have mindset that about 20€ should be enough for mobile phone usage. Then you still have money left for gas, beer and Norwegian smoked salmon too. US has different telecom history. Bundling of subscription and phone has been there forever and people have used to higher monthly payments.

I usually work at least one day per week remotely from home. Funnily this is called remote work. I think when I go to office is more remote and being at home is local work. Remote work is has become more popular and basically developed technology has enabled the whole thing. Sametime, Netmeeting or similar with voice conference is all you need and meeting can be held from anywhere.