Nokia's The Way We Live Next 3.0

Nokia's 'The Way We Live next 3.0' in Espoo saw several speakers come together at Nokia House to talk about new advancements in research and new technologies for emerging markets. Running for the third time this year, this two-day event demonstrates several firsts in mobile technology and software.

Speakers included Mary McDowell, Nokia's Chief Development Officer, Purnima Kochikar, VP of Forum Nokia and Developer Community, Shawn Puckrin, Head of Community Support at the Symbian Foundation, Peter Schneider, Marketing Head for Maemo Devices and Henri Tirri, Nokia's Chief Technology Officer.

Nokia Beta Labs showcased several demos of the applications that they have for download. Nokia users can simply register and install useful applications like Step Counter, Mobbler Internet Radio & Race Chrono.	Speedhero is an application that turns your phone into a fun speed measuring device for sports. The app uses sound to determine the average speed of a ball as it flies through the air.

Some of the notable things discussed included 'The Progress Project' � an initiative by Nokia and Lonely Planet which tackles social and economic challenges, innovative new applications, 'Maemo', Nokia's new Linux-based software platform for the promising N900 device, and the roadmap for Symbian software and devices.

Nokia Braille Reader allows the visually impared to 'read' text from a phone. The phone vibrates in Braille patterns.

Nokia Point & Find integrates real life objects with your phone. Simply use your phone camera to point at a real object and find relevant information.

After the speakers, participants headed off to the demo area where all of Nokia's current generation devices (including the upcoming N900, X3 and X6) were available to play with. Other demos from developers included the versatile 'Point and Find', Nokia Life Tools, Speedhero and Nokia Braille Reader. 'Point and Find', already available for several Symbian devices, fuses the digital and physical worlds by allowing you to find relevant information about a place or object by just scanning it with your phone's camera. Speedhero is a sports-centric application, already available on the Ovi Store, that calculates the speed of a ball using sounds picked by the phone's microphone. Nokia Life Tools is a boon for rural areas of the world, where information scarcity is a real problem. Nokia Braille Reader is an application targeted at the visually handicapped. It basically uses vibrations to 'read out' text messages in patterns dictated by Braille text.

(The author was hosted by Nokia at Espoo, Finland in November, 2009).