S60 Open to new features

I'll shut down my work PC now and start holidays. Back to business on 27th of December.

For some time I have dreamed about a mobile phone sales packet without a charger. So many current Nokia phone users have owned many Nokia phones earlier and they have several Nokia compatible chargers at home. It is just waste of resources to ship charger with every sales package. It seems that I'm not the only one thinking like this. Letters to editor section in Helsingin Sanomat had also article about this today.

This is how it should go.  Mobile phone sales packet, very small and compact, having only mobile phone and adapter for charger (new Nokia phones use smaller plug than old and small adapter is needed), no flyers (these are so annoying anyway), no user guide (you can download it from internet), no CD (you can download everything from internet). Special branding for the packet could be used.

This type of sales packet is much smaller (better for environment, less carton, less weight to ship around the world) and as a bonus Nokia could donate saved money to good purpose, WWF for example. Buyer feels good when buying this. Sure this would mean more product packet variants and some pain for logistics to maintain with charger and without charger boxes, but nothing comes for free and new ways to reduce waste has to be searched.

What do you think? Would you buy a phone without a charger? (Please no complaints about the plug change to a smaller one).

When I listen people to talk about mobile search and location services, "Where is the nearest restaurant" seems to be most widely used example of location services. I think it shows just poor imagination.

 Yahoo's top search for 2006 was Britney Spears (probably something is censored from the list). Mobile search is certainly different, but still ... search for a restaurant, please something else next time.

Eating is one of the basic needs so there is a possibility that I'm totally wrong so how about making dedicated search window for this particular interest then. Define first type of restaurant, tick in the box: Chinese (Cantonese, Sichuan, Hubei etc), Italian, French etc. Price range. Good search should be able look into menu. Does menu have enough vegetarian, fish, beef dishes or Chile red wines etc. Well defined search like this is more valuable. Naturally the application would remember your personal preferences. The search result could be zero lines or the nearest restaurant you are looking is in Beijing. Integration to flight services needed, maybe not.

I think the most popular mobile location based search will be "Where is the nearest public toilet".

I will be showing S60 demonstrations in HP Software Universe in Vienna on 13-15th of December. It would be nice to meet blog readers there. Come to say hello and see the latest S60 development.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is on every company's agenda. At least in principle. When you go to any corporate web site, investor info pages, there it is. CSR report! Has anyone of you ever read any of those reports. Has any investor, analyst, fund manager done so? Consumer? Maybe couple of analysts at least. Those ones who are dealing with ethnical funds. But sadly CSR report seem to be just thing to do, hygiene. Companies spend huge money for consultants to write these reports. In UK alone 150 million euros annually are spent for this. Naturally Nokia has also the CSR report.

Walk the talk seems to be difficult. Rather to take a credit, polish the brand and keep doing everything as earlier. CSR reports are often done for external parties. More important is that managers inside the company know how things are and where to improve. A report that only highlights good points is not that valuable information for internal improvement.

McDonalds seems to have even public CSR blog. We don't have that in Nokia. That's probably not a big loss. Better to work hard rather than just make a big noise. On the other hand this type of blog is more convincing than shiny report. Something to consider.

Greenpeace released the latest version of "Guide to Greener Electronics" on last week. "Most companies have demonstrated commitments to greener manufacturing processes, such as eliminating the use of the most hazardous chemicals, and recycling policies such as financing take-back, reuse or recycling of end-of-life products. Apple, however, lags far behind the competition, presently occupying the last place in the ranking guide." Too bad for Apple. I have newer bought an Apple product. Never will if they remain in the last place of this list. Nokia is leading in this list.  

I'm getting more and more interested about CSR aspect when purchasing products or services. Keep on doing improvements there in Chiquita, some day I might fair trade bananas to your products. Probably I have to revisit some platations in Costa Rica before being totally convinced:-)

Couple of things I'd like to see to happen in order to get CSR more credible. The current CSR self bragging method has to be replaced by more systematical approach.

1. External auditing for CSR (similar to quality audits today). CSR report based on external audit

2. Basic values about different CSR aspects to be added to financial reports. This would make easy to compare companies inside the same industry and also in different industries. Values to be checked by external auditors.

I visited my old home town Beijing last week. Eating well, seeing old friends, trying to express myself with rusty Chinese. On Sunday I was watching TV and from CCTV2 there was a weird program. It was like a idols competition of mobile phones. Jury included a professor from Xinhua university. So this was not about people competing, this was a phone competition. The biggest difference to the real Idols show was that everything was polished, no harsh comments, no negative feedback. I wonder how much phone companies have paid to get in.

Xinhua university professor

 Mobile phone "Idols"

One S60 device was in the competition. It was Nokia N93. I'm not sure what it won but something I guess. Representative of Nokia was collecting a price on a stage.

Later in the evening same program format for used for digital cameras.

So weird. I hope this concept is not going to spread around the globe. At least replacement for Simon is needed. Mobile phone judge Simon should shoot down bad usability and infernal mechanical design for example.

I haven't. Because there isn't one! That's a shame. It's a world AIDS day and for example Google has this theme very visible on the front page.

Product Red idea is to raise money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  For example Apple and Motorola has announced Product Red devices.

Unfortunately S60 product red is still just a dream. I'll make a promise now. That will be the first S60 product that I buy with my own money.