Although there’s miles to go before it is perfected, solar powered phones are here to stay. Where electricity is scarce, more and more people in the provinces are relying on mobile phones to do more than just call and SMS. RIght now, Nokia has led the pack in terms of offering two good things: phones that have built in flashlights and phones that have built in “Life Tools” services for farmers. Add email to the picture and you get more than just an Internet cafe on your hands. Solar charged phones complete the circle, allowing folks to do more while …read more

Here’s a photo I took of all the gadgets I have stored in the room:

The photo above illustrates 75% of all the gadgets under my custody. I own 50% of that. Inside the boxes and crates are more gadgets, chargers, cables, and over 10 lenses for my SLR. Not seen in the photo are my podcasting equipment (mic, desktop and boom stands), 2 portable drives, ACER desktop, two MacBooks, all in one printer, Quad Core rig, my dive gear, my Randall amplifier, and extra LCD monitor.
Last week I advertised a contest I was running on behalf of Nokia. if you’re …read more

It’s the last stretch of my Nokia DiscOVIries contest. I’ll be collating and choosing a winner of the best workstation photo come midnight GMT +8. If you still wish to join, all you need to do is follow the simple instructions and upload a photo of your workstation at home or in your work place. You don’t need to have a Nokia phone to do this, but you do need to be based in Manila, Philippines to join.

The Philippines has been hit by the recent Typhoon Ondoy, twice the amount of rainfall than hurricane Katrina. Over 80% of the Metro Manila had been submerged in water. Since Sunday, numerous companies and NGO’s and volunteers have been helping with relief goods. Nokia has been active in the relief efforts by sending out over 150 phones to the affected areas and rescue centers so that victims and volunteers can use them to communicate with loved ones. Nokia Philippines has also released charging stations usually found in malls to help keep the juice flowing in affected areas that have lost …read more

I was having a conversation with a colleague in the publishing industry. We were talking about how Nokia has been trying to promote efforts for their Comes with Music brand in different parts of the world. At one point we talked about how it seems that they want to go head to head against the iPod as the choice for music. Although it doesn’t seem evident, there is truth to this as in my hypotheses, people only keep one music library — and that would be kept in their iPod.

Sure, their phones may have music but if you can …read more

How i wish the Philippines could properly implement the Comes with Music program of Nokia. In Singapore, buying a Nokia phone allows you to enjoy one full year of free music downloads. In the Philippines, w cannot implement such a scheme because of (1) the record labels and (2) there’s a rule that value added services should go through a company that is owned by a Filipino. Which means Nokia may have to go through a third party service provider or through a telco, which completely defeats the purpose of having the Ovi store and the Comes with Music freebies. …read more

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How do you say OVI? More than half the people don’t know what it is and unless you’re from Finland, you won’t know how to pronounce it. This works on two levels for Nokia either they have a really great viral campaign or the 5th most valued brand in the world has a hard time getting a new brand out (I guess this is how ‘Nokia’ overshadows ‘Ovi’).

What a great viral campaign, finding out what Ovi actually means. The word ‘Ovi’ means ‘door’ in reference to Nokia’s doorway of services which includes Comes with Music, N-Gage, Maps, Mail, …read more

Have you ever thought these two applications were the same? In most Nokia phones today, Active Notes magically replaced the Notes app. Other people have confused the two — and in reality both apps still do exist. Active Notes is usually available in Eseries phones. Other phones, like the N86 doez not have this app and relies solely on Notes.

Active Notes allows you to add some multimedia functionality to your note taking. Active Notes is sorta like the HTML version of the regular notes application allowing you to port multimedia into your computer when you sync. There’s a great deal …read more

OK so this is a rare moment. I am currently a recruit for the Ovi by Nokia campaign here in the Philippines. This is a purely local effort that taps bloggers from different niches in the Philippines to help spread the word about Nokia’s shift to a software and services company. I’m classified under “tech” obviously.
So yeah, this was the second time I’ve been asked to participate (the last time was as an ambassador for the Xenon flash enabled N82) and the overall objective is to get more sign ups and create active users for the plethora of Ovi …read more

So the Finns are at it again. There was a time when a Nokia phone was branded with a “7″ isolating it as an experiment for the market. Later on, the “7″ became a fashion line. With the release of the 7705, it is a little of both. The 7705 is a messaging phone: threaded SMS, instant messaging, chat, huge QWERTY keypad and a big light on the bottom right allows you to do color coding for your contacts. The phone also comes with a 3.0MP camera.
The 7705 will be available for USD$99.00 from Verizon with a mail in rebate …read more