Yesterday morning, I listened Rafe Blandford's (founder of All About Symbian) interview in Voice of S60 podcast. Among many other insights, Rafe made a point a that really resonated in me:

"I have been into various shops in various countries, and almost without exception the people will look at you like you're some kind of a criminal if you ask for a S60 phone, because they don't have a clue what you are talking about"

Hehheh... But frankly, that's what I have been hearing too. For example, when I asked last week "How could Nokia (or somebody else) make your life easier?", I got unanimous replies:

Max Odendahl:

"Do more and better marketing, let the people know what you can do with your device. In all stores here in Germany, all Symbian devices are right next to any other phone without any mentioning of the capabilties."

James:

"I'd like to see Symbian platforms and their benefits promoted more too"
...
"Here in the UK I have not seen S60 mentioned in phone shops"

Dr.Pratik:

"max is right about marketing.Most of my mates use this s60 phones.but not many of them know there true potential of multitasking,extra applications out there.they purchase this phones for multimedia capabilities. But nokia india is not providing enough attention to marketing the series 60 platform"

Dear Nokia, let's do something to this.

Luckily, I think we have already made significant progress, including:
- creating the logo and tagline "open to new features" for S60
- adding S60 section and S60.com links to Nokia.com
- adding S60 info to sales boxes (is this true?)

...but I guess we still have some work to do.

Eldar Murtazin from Mobile-Review.com has just published a very good and detailed (p)review of Nokia 5500. The (p)review features a lots of pictures, audio samples, and video clips, and concludes with a unequivocal comment "This is one of the best smartphones in Nokia’s and S60 history".

Special note to Eldar: our development team definitely noticed your systematic review of our voice UI and text-to-speech functionality. In fact, one of them sent me the link to your review... Many thanks for your feedback! It increased our confidence that we are on the right track.

One of the managers in my unit wondered last week aren't we going see any product reviews about Nokia N71. Well, infoSync World just published one.

Since it was our Cover UI developers who asked for it, here is infoSync's feedback to them:

"The bulk is to an extent explained through its extensive slate of features, which includes a dual display setup; one a decent external affair with a dedicated button for a handy, backlit time and date view"

I too bumped into Arto Viitanen from Bulbon at the Global Mobile Monday Summit two weeks ago. He showed me a demo of their S60 application called Comeks, and I thought it was pretty good. To try it yourself, download the free trial from http://www.comeks.com/. Or to get a glimpse, just click this thumbnail:

A couple of days later, Arto sent me an email and invited me to a dinner at Memphis bar in Helsinki. Free burger and a chance to meet battle-hardened S60 developers? Sure thing, I thought. But before that, I had to dig out my old Nokia 6680, which by now (after playing around with S60 3rd Edition devices) seemed like an ancient relic. But that's another story...

The chat was again a real eye-opener for me. These guys had faced tremendous challenges: first in setting up the development environment in 2004, then getting the application Symbian Signed, then the license manager being cracked, and finally the somewhat disappointing sales. These guys had succeeded in developing a cool and well-implemented S60 application - but the sales had been a little disappointing, and they were looking for alternative ways to monetize their work.

As usual, I suggested all kinds of whacky things such as:
- lowering the sales price to the "impulse buy" range
- putting the application to freeware and making money from premium Comeks content
- hotmail.com kind of viral marketing "get your own Comeks application from here"
- selling the application to operators (for operator-customized devices)
- selling the application/technology/company to a bigger player

I have no idea could these ideas work for them or not.

Have you faced similar challenges? How could Nokia (or somebody else) make your life easier?

By the way, does anybody of you download/buy applications from Nokia Software Market? As you can see, Comeks is there on the main page...

Phil called me today and warned me that he was just about to update our S60.com blog templates. Now they have been updated, and I think it looks pretty good!

How do you like our new layout yourself?

In particular, how do you like the new blog header that they designed for me?

I kind of like it, although I'm a little unsure about the size of the ice-cube and the *bling-bling* effects. The ice-cube itself is fine, as it is the same that we have in the logo of the unit I work for in Nokia (=NSS).

Two months ago I wrote a post with a title "Where to find applications for S60 3rd Edition?", and asked:

Here's a plea for Handango, My-Symbian, Allaboutsymbian, SymbianOne, SymbianGear, and others: please make a separate section for S60 3rd Edition applications. And please, make a separate RSS feed for them. I promise to subscribe immediately :-)

I just noticed that My-Symbian has created a separate section for S60 3rd Edition.

Great!!

...although I'm still waiting for the RSS feed, how about it?

Warning: totally off-topic.

I read today a really good post by Charlie Schick in his Nokia internal blog. Once again, he made me think. In his post, Charlie referred to an article by Brandchannel about how corporations are trying to jump on the Cluetrain's blogging wagon, but fail miserably:

The sad truth, however, is that the current corporate marketing blogorrhea is too often characterized by a lack of consumer insight, misguided strategic thinking, and uninspired content.
...
The analogy is that of the out-of-touch dad who starts using words like “phat” and “homey” in front of his kids and their friends to try and look hip and with it. In trying to be someone he is not, not only does Dad get dismissed from that realm of cool he has tried to venture into, but he potentially loses some of his regular dad-variety credibility in the process.

So right. I replied to Charlie:

I have also come to believe that in writing blogs (or basically in everything else), you should never pretend to be something you don't truly are. People smell out-of-touch-daddies a mile away. I admit, I have been guilty writing a couple of times in a way I don't feel my own. Each time, I have felt like an out-of-touch-daddy. And I believe my readers have felt it too. So I have tried to stop it, and be my genuine self.

I think you should never try to be hip by imitating others. Nobody in the history of mankind has succeeded in it. Be hip with your own way. Look at the popular bloggers such as Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Hugh MacLeod, Robert Scoble etc. etc. Not one of them is cool in the traditional sense. They are just unafraid to be themselves, which is exactly what makes them cool.

Sorry about all the posts in which I have been the out-of-touch daddy. I'll try not to do it again.

Here is a plea for all my colleagues in Nokia who either write a blog or are considering to start one: whatever we do, let's not be out-of-touch daddies. Let's just be ourselves.

Three months ago, as Nokia had just released Python for S60 to open source, I urged casual programmers to:

"...go and show us what you can do with Python!!"

Now, we might have a winner.

Go check out WizBit, a BitTorrent client for S60 phones written in Python. The developer says:

WizBit is a BitTorrent client for Symbian S60 smartphones such as the Nokia 6680, 7610, , N70, N80 or N91. It uses Python, which is a free download.

It is currently not complete. It does not fully work yet and is only suitable for Alpha release.

I am making it for my final year project at Exeter University in the UK.

And:

Unfortunately the code will (probably) not be fully working tomorrow. It should hopefully be done by the presentation on July 7th. Wish me luck.

May the force be with you!! As you know, this kind of stuff will definitely create some noise around the industry...

Via: Feet Up!

I noticed that the user manual of Nokia N93 mentioned our barcode reader application on page 109, so I guess it is safe for me to write about this subject.

Here is a 2D barcode in Data Matrix format that has the URL to my blog http://blogs.s60.com/tommi encoded into it:

I created it with this Free Online DataMatrix Barcode Image Generator. Creating one took about 5 seconds. And did I mention it was free?

Now, Nokia S60 devices are starting to ship with a barcode reader application built-in.

(image stolen from Charlie's blog post, sorry...)

1+1 = ?

I'll let you do the math, but I believe this will be big. Huge. Massive. And not just in Japan, where it already is. They use 2D barcodes for everything imaginable - from business cards to magazine ads to billboards.

Two must-read bonus links:
Mainstream America is Ready for Bar Codes - Converging "Realspace" and "Mobilespace"'
WINKsite: fusing the mobile and Web worlds through barcodes

Thoughts?
--
ps. I have used a sizeable chunk of my thinking and working bandwidth to 2D barcodes lately, and I might have totally brainwashed myself into a fanatic believer. Therefore, I don't go into details, until I have some hard proof about how cool this stuff really is.

Allaboutsymbian has written a nice hands-on preview about Nokia 5500.

I'd like to highlight the feedback to our Voice UI team:

"It interesting to see that sound, somewhat ironically given mobile phone's primary usage, is increasingly becoming the third input/output mechanism for interacting with phones. S60 has already made good progress in this area with speaker independent number dialing, voice commands and now text to speech. While voice interaction is rarely utilised on a PC, I think that it has a great deal of potential on mobile platforms. It will be interesting to see how widely these features are adopted as they become part of the standard offering."

Eagle-eyed Jukka spotted that Nokia Catalogs application is now available also for S60 3rd Edition. Free download, naturally.

The list of supported devices mentions only N71 and N80, but Jukka said that it works also in his N91. My Nokia E61 had the app already built-in.

The list of applications in Nokia Catalogs' catalogs is far from exhaustive, but I think it's a good start for many people.

Lifeblog's S60 development manager Ivan Kuznetsov writes:

Lifeblog 2.0 update (2.0.24) for N70/N72/N90 Nseries multimedia computers is now available for download from www.nokia.com/lifeblog. This update contains fixes to the problems mentioned in "The power of blogs" post three weeks ago.

Thanks everybody for your help in fixing this case.

Bonus link: Lifeblog is not a blogging application!

Two Nokia E61 reviews well worth a read:
All About Symbian's Nokia 61 review (a loooong and detailed one)
InfoSync World's Nokia E61 review

One interesting detail from the AAS review:

"54 application icons on the E61..."

Exclusivity alert!

I just received a few audio samples from the project manager of our High-Quality Text-to-Speech stuff.

Cranck up your speakers, click the links below, and listen! (the links point to the attached .wav sound files)

In English:
"Your speed is 10 kilometers per hour."
"You are doing well. Keep up the pace."

In Italian:
(some Italian phrase #1) "Benvenuti sul nuovo forum più efficiente e funzionale."
(some Italian phrase #2) "Il mio numero di telefono e' il seguente: (06)495727."

Unfortunately, I cant speak Italian... Could you Marco and other Italian readers tell me how does it sound? And what does it say? Hopefully not any obscenities... ;-)

I think our Text-to-Speech quality is already now quite impressive. Traditionally, text-to-speech in mobile devices has sounded very robotish and it's usage has been limited to very short phrases. Now, the technology we have put into Nokia 5500 Sport provides an almost human-like speech quality, and it is basically able to read any texts with this quality.

How do you like the quality yourself?
--
ps. many thanks for your comments to my last post about Text-to-Speech. I think these are really valid points. Let's see what we can do.

Yesterday, Nokia press release announced proudly:

"The Nokia 5500 Sport also offers "text-to-speech" technology. Don't take your eyes off the track or that magazine, just tap the Nokia 5500 Sport and the message is read out to you. In sports mode, the Nokia 5500 Sport reads the status of your workout, allowing you to stay focused on the task, or the excercise, at hand."

So, we have this cool new technology with lots and lots of opportunities.

Hmmm...

What do you think: how should we use it? How would you like to use it yourself?

I promise to forward your feedback directly to the team responsible of this functionality, although many of them are probably reading this conversation already.

---
ps. I tried Nokia 5500 a couple of weeks ago, and I'm really impressed. I didn't believe that you can do smartphones also this way, before I saw it myself...

Here is a refreshing rant from the model-geek-blogger Anina: "The mobile offerings suck":

"I find it all very frustrating. I am here since 8am searching for software for my phones and it's just a sad state of affairs. There are very very few good softwares out there and the user experience is UGLY, UNINFORMATIVE, and ALL AROUND SUCKY." (read Anina's full rant)

You might disagree with some of Anina's strong statements, but if I hosted an application site, I would take a note or two.

Anyone of you going to Mobile Monday Global Summit today?

I'll be the tall guy with a messy hair wearing a black shirt and jeans. Feel free to come say hi.

Today's program:
9–12:30
- Executive Morning (apparently, I'm not an executive)
13–17:30
- Trends – Profit – Fun
- Demohalls
17:30–21 Peer Awards Party

Yesterday, I received an email from one enthusiastic S60 application developer, who asked:

"Tommi,

I hope all is well. Sorry to hassle you again! But I was wondering if you had any advice on marketing S60 applications?"

Glad to help! However, I must make two disclaimers. First of all, I have never marketed S60 applications in the traditional sense. All the applications we develop in my unit are preinstalled on Nokia S60 devices. Secondly, I assume you want to market your app globally. Third, I assume that you don't have any marketing budget. If you have the money, discontinue reading and go buy a Super Bowl ad.

Now, here comes "Tommi's quick guide for marketing S60 applications - part I", written in a style proudly stolen from Guy Kawasaki.

1. Create a great app

Please don't waste your precious time and money marketing, if you don't have (and are not going to have) anything worth using and talking about. Period.

2. Ship, then test

Initially, don't try to be perfect. Ship, then test. And be quick to improve it based on the feedback.

2. Free trial easily available
Let's face it. I'm not going to buy your app unless I'm 99% sure it is worth the money. Put a free trial version permanently available. And make the download page linkable. It makes a world of difference.

Let me repeat: Free. Trial. Easily. Available.

Bonus link: Steve Litchfield's rant "No trial version? Crying shame..."

3. Be remarkable = worth making a remark about
As Seth Godin preaches in Purple Cow and everywhere else, you need to be remarkable to make everybody talk about your brand-new S60 app. Being remarkable means simply being somehow worth making a remark about.

Why should I write a blog post about your app? What makes it remarkable = worth remarking about?

Bonus link: "What makes an idea viral?"

4. Suck up to Allaboutsymbian, My-Symbian, MobileCrunch, Darla Mack, us S60 bloggers, other popular bloggers and other influencers
To get the idea, read Guy Kawasaki's post "How to suck up to a blogger". Better yet, be friends with them. I don't like strangers who suck up to me, or ask me to promote their stuff. But I like it when a trusted friend tells me about something truly remarkable.

5. Write a blog and comment to other blogs / discussion forums
You can do it wrong, but I believe that done right, writing a blog can be tremendously valuable for gaining credibility, publicity, and eventually marketing your stuff. Good examples include Antony Pranata, Marco Casario, and Simon Judge. Hopefully, we S60.com bloggers are good examples too. If you don't know how to start a blog, Google around, check out the Blogging Starter Checklist on Squidoo and Seth Godin's free e-book Who's There.

6. Close the feedback loop
Make it easy to send you feedback. Ask feedback, listen to feedback, reply to feedback, and improve your app based on the feedback. Repeat.
---
What do you think? How should S60 application developers with limited resources market their applications?

Phil wrote in the See-into-S60 blog in January about turning your S60 smartphone into a web server. Radu Popescu was suspicious:

Until there's a version released or available somewhere, this sounds pretty much like vapourware.

Well, I just received an email note from Johan Wikman: the client is now publicly available for download from http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mobile-web-server/phone-software

Great!

I haven't tried it myself, but all you geeks: go try it and give your feedback to the Nokia Research Center team!
--
Bonus link: main project page of Mobile Web Server

Once again, All About Symbian's Rafe Blandford has published a detailed and insightful product review: Nokia N91 Review - Real World Usage. Grab a cup of coffee and go read it!

In general, he seems to like the device really much:

The N91 is a very impressive smartphone and is the best converged smartphone music device available today.

In addition, I would like to highlight the part about the out of the box experience:

One thing Nokia, especially with its S60 devices, is starting to get really good at is the out of the box experience for the new user.

...

The result of all these helper applications is that it is much easier to get your new phone set up and transfer your important data across to it. For the average user, this solves one of the biggest headaches involved in upgrading your phone. These tools have received incremental improvement over the last year or so and I would now rate them as excellent. There may be scope for adding a few more transferable item types to Data Transfer and supporting a wider range of phones, but I think the emphasis should now be on building awareness of these tools. For the Data Transfer application it is especially important since it should be one of the first thing a new user takes advantage of. Perhaps a similar message to the Tutorial application could be shown the first time the device starts?

Thanks! I just forwarded your feedback to the team. Let's see what we could do...