So long, folks. We'll meet again on 27 December. Until then, have fun!

Seven months have passed since I wrote the post titled "2D barcodes will rule the earth", which provoked a lively discussion. Thank you for that.

Now, we are finally about to put Nokia's Barcode Reader application under N80 and N73 support pages, and to the Download! client. In addition, the app should be in the latest N93 firmware in all variants. However, it will work only in these devices. There is a simple explanation for this: to ensure the best possible user experience, we will have to do tweaks for each camera module, and build separate versions of the app.

Anyway, here's my 10-point manifesto about 2D barcodes, mimicking Guy Kawasaki's famous presentation style. I wanted to publish this post on the day that the app becomes available, but I'll be on vacation during 13-26 December. I hope the app becomes available during this time.

Read on, my friends.

Just came out of Phil's Voice of S60 recording studio, and here's the result.

Thanks everybody for your questions!

Ps. please forgive me for all the "um's", "uh's", and "err's". I'm really not a radio personality, and this was the first time for me to be interviewed publicly... But I guess you can't learn without practice :-)

The courier guy called me this morning that he tried to bring me a package, but I wasn't home. No worries, he said, he could bring it to my office.

Now, here it is:

Everything, the device and the delivery, free of charge. Nice.

If you live in Sweden, Finland or Denmark, go get yours now. Check the details from my previous post: Let's create a FON network - for free! (offer valid until 24.12.)

Congratulations My-Symbian!

My-Symbian was the first S60 application site that I ever used, back in 2002. And it's still the #1 site for me personally, when I try to follow what kind of stuff 3rd party developers build on top of Symbian/S60.

Note for Michal Jerz (the man behind My-Symbian): I love your site, thanks for everything. Why don't you make it even better, and give it a facelift, and maybe implement some of the so-called Web2.0 features à la Digg etc?

Excellent shortlist of first-rate S60 applications.

Next Monday, 11 December, Phil Schwarzmann will interview me to the Voice of S60 podcast. What would you like to hear? About me, about S60 blogs, about Nokia, about S60, about S60 ecosystem, about the major industry trends, about something else?

Please send your questions (via comments or email) by Sunday, and Phil will ask those in the interview.

I think it'll be fun :-)

John Hagel wrote a great post about the Economics of Attention. Here's he quoting an article by Nobel-prize winning Herbert Simon:

...in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

I think this is a powerful message for 21st century bloggers, marketeers, knowledge workers, etc: maximize the return of attention of the people whose attention you attempt to attract. Or be ignored.

ps. once again, I'm getting way off-topic here. I wonder if I should change the name and punchline of this blog. Any suggestions?

Stuart Carlaw of ABI Research commented Nokia's vision and strategy today:

The serious question must be raised whether the 24 hour a day ubiquitously connected online social environment will be one that seriously damages the fabric of society and brings a generation of socially maladjusted people to the fore.

Umm... Just like the telephone, radio, and TV did to the previous generations? And what computer games did to the next?

I am a firm believer that increased communication across the borders (national, ethnic, political, generational, ...) is doing vastly more good to the society than damages. But what do you think?

Bonus link: good thinking about the same subject, written by a JP Rangaswami (49-old, married with three children)

I've been ranting that we need desperately some new vocabulary.

Brian McConnell from O'Reilley Emerging Technology makes the first move:

I’ve been testing the Nokia N80i (Internet Edition) for the past month or so. As I write this, I am at cafe in Buenos Aires. I have been trying to come up with a shorthand way to describe making a VoIP call from a wifi hotspot.

Voice over WiFi is too long, and too techy. So what about Spot Dialing? What do you think? If you like, pass it along.

Last July, we had a big debate about should Nokia (or somebody else) set up application testing labs. The conclusion was that they would not be economically feasible, but that remote testing looks really promising.

Now, I just bumped into a really good-looking start-up company called Mobile Complete, that I think could solve your problems.

Read the full story from MobileCrunch.

Remember when I asked for "totally useless but funny things that people will create with this 3D sensor" of Nokia 5500?

Now, we have a winner: Psiloc Wattery ScreenSaver

Motion sensor on Nokia 5500 detects the angle and sloshes the water to the left or right depending on the direction. The water level depends on the remaining battery power.

Note: I haven't tested this myself, and I don't know how well it works, what is the power consumption etc. But it sure meets the requirements of being "totally useless but funny"...

I just read Stephen Johnston's very good post Nokia World: OPK: Just call me Mr Internet. Quote:

The two themes that dominated CEO OPK's presentation were "Internet", followed closely by "consumer benefits".

Marvellous themes, indeed.

However, I got this weird feeling that there is something obsolete about the vocabulary that we in Nokia (and the mobile world in general) use.

Let's see what kind of vocabulary the Internet players use:
- MySpace talks about people, friends, communities
- Digg talks about users, and user community
- Google talks about users, people, advertisers
- eBay talks about people, communities, individuals
- YouTube talks about people, users, and community
- Flickr talks about people
- Skype talks about people

I can't see the term "consumer" anywhere.

Oh. (sudden moment of enlightenment)

I wonder would it be the time to drop the word "consumer" from our vocabulary?