GLOBAL – Uncharacteristically, we have another “administrative” announcement. The last one was pretty recent and mentioned things like Blogbite, @nokconv on Twitter, and blogs.nokia.com. This time around we want to introduce something a bit larger.
One thing that we’ve been wishing for is a central place that has all the information on a particular product or service. No, we don’t mean some static page with fancy graphics and long lists of technical specs. What we wanted was a page that had some info on the product, some photos, some dynamic ever-changing info about the product, and something fun. A jumping-off place for all you would want to know about a particular product.
What we came up with is The Almanac. And we think it’ll be a hit. Read on for more details.
The Almanac
When you first visit the Almanac pages, you get an array of products and services. These are NOT ALL the products and services from Nokia, but a mix of the latest and greatest, such as the Nokia N97, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and Nokia Maps, but also a few old greats, such as the Nokia N73.
Open any one of them and you get a rich collection of images, quotes, and information about the product. Two parts, in particular, that are very Almanac-y are the “only one thing…” and “miscellany” sections that have short interesting things related to the product.
Ever changing
On the more dynamic side, on each Almanac page we’ve created two boxes with links to Web articles that we or others have written about the product. These links should me more or less changing all the time as we stumble upon interesting articles and add them to these lists. We also have a little section of related videos out of YouTube that are tagged with the product’s name.
This dynamic part is our way of making sure you always get the latest info on each product.
Cool?
More to come
This is a growing Almanac. We’ll be adding more products and services. We’ll also be trying to get some cool images, such as designs and the like, more than your usual set of product pictures.
The Almanac URL is easy to remember: https://blogs.windows.com/devices/almanac. Feel free to give us any feedback, for example, to tell us what you think of this, or of any classic devices of the past you’d like to see included, or it we mis-stated or omitted something.
In other side(-bar) news
While we are talking about the Almanac and have you doing a bit of exploring, please note that we’ve changed our side-bar. All year, the lower side-bar had been forgotten and getting dusty. We’ve now made it easier to see what our main channels are for you to follow (that’d be: this site, of course, but also Nokia Conversations on YouTube, Twitter, Delicious, and SlideShare). We also stole an idea from our pals at blogs.nokia.com and also are promoting other Nokia channels available on Twitter.
The List
Another thing you might have noticed is that we killed that bloated blogroll. After so many have asked to get on that list, we realized that it was not the right way to let folks know what sites we followed or knew about that were related to the things we read and thought about. So we found a simpler way to get everyone recognized and created a directory we call The List.
The cool thing about The List is that you can provide us the URL for us to review and approve. Our goal is to create a list Nokia mobile-, design-, and business-related sites out there. If you’re running a Nokia related site then feel free to submit your site to The List.
We’ve already entered a few on our own. But, as is usual, we might have made mistakes or need to update something, so please let us know.
As with the Almanac, the URL for The List is simple: https://blogs.windows.com/devices/the-list.
Summary
As you can tell, we keep adding and tweaking things to better deliver the information and conversations you are all interested in. The Almanac and The List are just the latest in a long line of things we’ve built around here and I am sure there will be more.
Cheers!