Travel+Leisure Design Awards: Nokia N900 is a Winner

What do the Nokia N900, a Swiss airline First Class suite and Berlin’s Neues Museum have in common?

If you guessed ‘winners of the Travel + Leisure magazines Design 2010 award', you are right. The Nokia N900 along with the 1st class airline suite, museum and other examples of design were awarded the magazine’s annual design honors. The winners are showcased in the magazine’s March issue.

Each year, the magazine looks for examples of design and architecture in the traveler’s world as selected by an esteemed panel of judges. The design awards cover a range of categories including best resort, restaurant, spa, museum, luggage, car, retail space and for the Nokia N900 mobile computer, the best travel gadget.

T + L magazine honored the winners at a gala held at the Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on February 23. Representing Nokia, Samir Agarwal, Devices R & D, attended to receive the prestigious award. Unlike a museum or resort, Samir was able to pull out his Nokia N900 and show why it was worthy of a design award.

Guests arriving at the gala saw a group of models wearing orange labcoats, each with an award category and winner printed on the back. The models stood on individual cubes with their backs to the door. Design-wise, the presentation of the models upon guests’ arrival was an indication of the fun evening ahead.

The Nokia N900 was up against stiff competition for the best travel gadget category. Joe Gallo, NAM Comms, submitted the Nokia N900 last October and recalls that “we beat out a variety of netbooks, digital cameras and eBook readers including the new Barnes & Noble Nook”. Additionally, he commented “other mobile devices were considered including the Palm Pre, HTC Hero and the Garmin NuviPhone.”

Congratulations to the entire N900 team.

Return your junk phone, get a tree planted

Every time you return a junk mobile phone to a Nokia dealer, the firm will thank you by planting a tree, apart from recycling that phone in an eco-friendly manner.

Announcing the initiative on World Environment Day, Ambrish Bakaya, director of corporate affairs in Nokia India, said the firm had already tied up with two NGOs in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to plant 22,000 trees. The programme would soon be extended to the top 15 cities of the country, he added.

"We already have 1,300 bins at our main dealers' shops around the country where people can throw in their junk phones," Bakaya said.

The mobile phone manufacturer with the largest market share in India has been getting a good response. "Now we have tied up with an NGO called Ahimsa in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu to plant 12,000 trees, and with Bangalore's Rotary Midtown to plant 10,000 trees in educational institutions around that city."

Nokia has also been working computer manufacturers to strengthen the laws on recycling of e-waste, which threatens to become a major problem in India.

Saying that the firm was working with the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology, the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Department of Telecommunications to put together stronger guidelines on the subject, Bakaya added, "We welcome any step which helps strengthen e-waste management and creates awareness about the need to recycle e-waste in an eco-friendly manner".

Nokia OVI Store launched

Today the Nokia OVI Store finally launched starting from Australia. The OVI Store look like is a WRT application.

How to purchase Apps/Games from Ovi:

Reorgnizing blog !

Till this time, I was just publishing news which I found interesting.
Now a days I have spare time to write what I think. I am going to focus more on Qt and LBS as I am currently working in these areas.

I am also planning to re-organize and re-structure my blog.

Nokia - voted best place to work in New York!

Nokia White Plains was recently named the #1 Best Company to Work for in the State of New York for 2009. The Best Companies list is made up of 40 companies split into two groups: 20 small/medium-sized companies and 20 large-sized companies; Nokia was placed in the large company category. Companies from across the state participated in a two-part process to compete for this designation.

The first part, which comprised 25% of the total evaluation, consisted of reporting each nominated company's workplace policies, practices, philosophy, systems and demographics. The second part consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience. Over 120 of our Nokia employees in the New York area participated in this survey. Their input constituted 75% of the total evaluation process!

Nokia received this recognition at the Best Companies to Work for in New York awards dinner on Thursday, April 23, 2009 in Albany, NY. We continued the celebration at the White Plains site with a cake and a champagne toast from Mark Louison!

New Symbian logo

Here is the new symbian logo:

Here's how Symbian explains the logo (link):

It is a brand that’s human and playful and friendly, where you feel the human hand. A brand that enables you to discover unlimited creative possibilities, that wants to share and talk A brand that’s fun, that isn’t fixed, but free to constantly evolve. A brand that’s owned by all the people that create and build with Symbian. A brand that celebrates new ideas and creativity in all forms. A brand that’s truly alive and refreshingly different, because it is! A brand that’s human to the core and that underneath beats a human heart.

Do you want to discuss about logo? Check All about symbian site.

.Net and Qt move forward on S60

Qt Software announced a new technology preview of Qt for S60 and Forum Nokia released Mobile Extensions for Qt for S60. More or less at the same time Red Five Labs announced the availability of Net60 version 2.1 with many improvements and support for the S60 5th Edition touch UI.

The latest Qt for S60 Technology Preview is an incremental step towards full Qt support on S60 devices. Code named ‘Garden’, this version is based on Qt 4.5. In addition, Forum Nokia has released the Mobile Extensions for Qt for S60 (try saying that in a hurry!) Mobile Extensions provide a number of Qt style APIs for accessing S60 features such as the contacts records and device location information. It appears some of these APIs depend on the Extensions APIs for S60 and a forthcoming update of Open C/C++, so this is still something for the hardcore coder.

More information can be found on the Forum Nokia Qt for S60 page.

Net60 has now arrived at its fourth release and Red Five Labs are claiming it offers a much improved WinForms UI and overall performance. In addition, support for touch screen devices has been added for the first time.
In my view Net60 is one of the more interesting independent runtime options for S60, opening up the possibility for both commercial and enterprise software developers to take advantage of S60 devices.
A 30-day trial is available, even if you trialled an earlier version. In addition, you could get a Free Net60 Professional license by responding to a survey Red Five Labs is conducting of its evaluator community.

More information can be found on Red Five Lab website. The web demo is a good starting point if you are unfamiliar with the technology.