ESPOO, Finland – Now that the year-end holidays are over, we here at Nokia Conversations are back in full force. We have a thing or two cooking in the kitchen, and we’re thinking of our plans for the year. More of that as it develops.

Right now, I’d like to empty out some open tabs in my browser. I can’t say I caught everything since the last time we shared links. And I’m a bit silent on other things as I mull how best I can usefully add to the conversations. But, this is a nice set to start the year with.

To the list!

Awards

Oh, it’s great to toot our own horn. I found out that our Morph concept got a prestigious red dot design award for Best of the Best in Design Concepts for 2008, under Interaction and Communication. That’s super. And go check out the other cool designs, like this communicative flower pot.

Also, I heard that our advertising folks won a Gold Prize in the Interactive Category of the Eurobest advertising festival for the The Unloader and Get Out and Play. We’ve shown the Snake animation from Get Out and Play (and there are more), but you have to see the Unloader. Very funny. Very, uh, gratifying, especially as we clear out the old and make way for the new.

And, all because the global economy is in the lurch, that doesn’t mean that awards need to stop. We all know that adversity can breed creativity, so I’m optimistic that great things will be created in the coming year. And I am sure that one place mobile geniuses will be highlighted will be at the annual Mobile Peer Awards, brought to you by the folks behind Mobile Monday Barcelona. Taking place every year before the start of the Mobile World Congress, hundreds of participants come together to honor the most innovative mobile industry startups. And it’s looking to be a great lineup. I’ll keep you posted.

Videos

The folks at Nokia Care now have a video channel with how-tos. It’s a new channel for them, so go out and promote it for them (and maybe send them some video responses as you make your own how-to videos).

Also, don’t miss this cool video on the early history of mobile networks. We’ve come a long way, huh?

Become a legend

I just want to point out that the very funny Nokia Legends site of tech urban myths is now looking for contributions. Create your own legend and submit it for review. The winning entry will be published on the Legends site. Cool.

The Sounds of Silence

Just a heads up. There’s a malicious hack that was discovered recently relating to maliciously coded SMSes and S60 devices. Cat, over at The Register, has the scoop (and there are some comments on DarlaMack.com). Due to the “silence” over the holidays, Cat got a good headline out of it. But, kudos for her spreading the word.

As for breaking any silence on our part, it’s already been reported, and I have nothing to add. Of course, Nokia takes security very seriously at every phase of our system development and we’ve been investigating this incident. We’ve been testing the devices affected by this issue and working with Symbian and with carriers to assess the situation.

I know that might sound a bit corp-speak, but what else do you expect us to say other than, “thanks for letting us know, we looking into it, and we’ll see what we can do about it”? If I hear anything new about this, I’ll post it here.

Image from Matt Watts