LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

Nokia's new strategy poses a lot of questions

I've just completed two days in Singapore as a guest of Nokia, hearing about its vision for internet services on mobile devices, which the company has dubbed Ovi (apparently a Finnish word meaning 'gateway'). The presentations were big on vision but unfortunately short on detail - I suspect because much of that detail is yet to be determined. What does seem clear is that Nokia has grown tired of waiting for partners to create the models to grow services such as down-loadable music, maps, games and internet services, and is setting out to build them itself.

What remains to be seen however is whether Nokia can wrestle together enough of the component parts to make its vision a reality. Providing mobile services means untangling the different motivations of groups as diverse as application developers, handset makers, infrastructure companies and telcos. While they will usually point at growth in data traffic as being their mutual goal, they often differ in their view as to how that goal can be reached - and who will make the money once they all get there.

Nokia is starting with music and games as its cornerstone services. The music service will be up and running in the first half of 2008, in direct competition with Apple's iTunes. It's a somewhat belated effort from a company that prides itself on having sold more music-capable devices than any other - around 200 million multimedia phones - and was no doubt prompted by Apple's success with iTunes and the iPhone.

The second offering - games - sees the evolution of Nokia's failed N:Gage dedicated games handsets, by reinventing N:Gage as a platform for games development that will provide commonality across new phones. Hopefully this will mean fewer porting issues for developers (up to 40% of the development effort of a mobile game goes into porting it to the different multimedia settings on hundreds of different handsets), but then we have heard that promise before also.

At its best, Nokia's Ovi strategy may kickstart the otherwise slow progress of the mobile content industry. At the very least, it is a step in the right direction from a company that has previously been reticent to take a leading position in the industry's development.

Web Directions South early-bird discount to end soon ...

John Allsopp just dropped me a note to say that early-bird registrations for the upcoming Web Directions South event will end this Friday, as too will the nominations for the McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australia web design. The event itself will be held on September 27 and 28 at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre. Well worth checking out for anyone with an interest in the latest in internet and digital media development.

Advance to hold first networking event in Australia

Anyone who is going to be in Sydney on August 30 might want to swing by the inaugural Revolving Doors networking event being hold in Sydney by the international Australian ex-pats association Advance. The event is intended for anyone with an interest in moving overseas, or who has recently returned to Australia - or who is interested in meeting people in either group. Further events are being held in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth throughout the next month.

Sunday Magazine - Technology Hot 10

I don't write a lot of consumer tech stories, and fewer reviews, but every so often it is great to get to play with new toys. So in addition to my semi-regular gig assembling the gadgets page for GQ Australia, it was great fun to put together this list (a couple of months ago now) of the Top 10 tech gadgets for the Sunday Telegraph's Sunday Magazine. You can check out the scan of the page here: Download sunday_magazine_techology_hot_10.pdf (apologies to anyone who had trouble downloading the TIF file - have re-saved as a PDF, although the file is around 9 MB in size).

GQ - Sinking Feelings

Since reading Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers last year I've had a strong interest in climate change and its impact on our planet. I've been thankful then to be able to explore the topic from several different angles - both from my usual perspectives as a technology and marketing writer, and from more broad perspectives, such as this article in the most recent edition of GQ Australia (the one with Jessica Alba on the cover). The chaps in the subs team have given this one the GQ treatment, but a lot of my original research remains - many thanks to the CSIRO and other experts who contributed their work and opinions. For the full story, check out the scans posted here: Download gq_sinking_feelings.pdf (apologies to anyone who had trouble downloading the TIF file - have re-saved as a PDF, although the file is around 9 MB in size).

Australian Anthill Issue 23 out now

The latest edition of Australian Anthill has now hit the streets, featuring a cover story on the old contest of the entrepreneur versus the venture capitalist, along with features on Wotif.com founder Graeme Wood and how to get your company noticed through advertising, as well as my regular column.

ANZA Gateway program registration opens

For the past five years I've trekked over to San Francisco to attend the annual ANZA Technology Network Gateway to the US conference and showcase. Rarely do you get a chance to see a group of some of the best up-and-coming ANZ tech companies gathered together in one place. Just got a note from ANZA to say that registration is open for the first step in the path to this year's conference - the FocUS Marketing Workshops. If you want more information, click here (ANZA was one of the groups mentioned in my recent feature article on exporting Australian technology and knowhow to the US).

Second Life updates

The various discussions around Second Life and other virtual world's at last week's X Media Lab sparked my interest again in virtual worlds. One article that caught my eye was this one looking at the impact that the recent financial dramas in the US have also had on the virtual realm - check out the article from MIT Technology Review here. Around the same time the law firms Deacons issued this release about the dangers of dealing in a virtual realm. Worth checking out.

On a related note, X Media Lab speaker and virtual worldmaker Bruce Joy from VastPark has just issued this news relating to the upcoming release of his Virtual Content Platform for creating and running customised virtual worlds. You can check out the full release here:  Download vastpark_worlds_collide_press_release.pdf

Follow-up from X Media Lab Melbourne 2007

Just finished a great three days at X Media Lab Melbourne 2007. Big congratulations to organisers Brendan Harkin and Megan Elliot for pulling together such a diverse and interesting group of people. For anyone interested, the blog notes I made on the seminar sessions on Friday are still online at iTWire - you can check them out here (I hope). You can also check out film maker Shekhar Kapur's blog entries here, and The Guardian's blogs editor Kevin Anderson's thoughts somewhere around here.

Live from X Media Lab Melbourne 2007

Am currently sitting in the audience of the X Media Lab forum in Melbourne's Town Hall. The presentations so far have been excellent, but if you want to keep up to date, you'll need to go over to IT Wire to check out my live blog.