ESPOO, Finland – Apologies for being absent these past many days. I’m still trying to figure out where last week or so went. There was a lot going on (the world did not end) and I had some great deep discussions with folks inside and outside the company that will have me writing some interesting things over the next weeks.
As for the news online while I was offline, the theme was synchronization. So, let’s get our bookmarks in sync and I’ll share a few items of note.
Mail for Exchange
This was the surprise for me, to see all the articles that came out about this update to some software we’ve had already for a few years. James covered some of the news, but we also had coverage from Alec Saunders, TechCraver, jkOnTheRun, and Johnathan Greene, among a ton of others.
Alex de Carvalho once mentioned that ‘smartphones free up more time for meatspace by liberating us from the desk’. Indeed, the excitement over such a simple piece of software suggests that freedom from their desks is what people want.
Ovi Sync gets a boost
Quietly released in August, Ovi Sync is the newest member of the Ovi family of services. It’s a first step in projecting your mobile onto the Web and fusing the life you lead on the Web with the life you lead on your mobile. What made me happy was the modest to very good coverage it received. But, we all know that this is just a start and the Ovi team has a lot more in store for us.
One thing about Ovi Sync is that the sync solution is based on SyncML, so that from the get-go it supports a ton of devices already on the market. With so many new services supporting only the latest and greatest, this is refreshing (especially for a 1100 Club devotee like me). Also, I don’t know if anyone has tested it, but there are a ton of non-Nokia phones that also use SyncML. I wonder if those devices could also use Ovi Sync. Anyone try it yet?
Face to face synchronization
I was at the Nokia Open Lab on Friday and was bowled away at the caliber of the discussions there.
We talked about mobile social media, the future of entertainment, and stuff around what it means to know where you are. It was a great conversation and the talking is still going on on the participants’ sites. Go to the Open Lab site for all the relevant feeds of info and what people have been writing and posting since.
Image from foxypar4