Day 3 of SXSW and the brilliant folks at WOM World had something incredibly awesome planned – the Ovi Maps Route Race. The idea was simple – navigate around Austin with Ovi Maps. The fun part was that we were going to be doing it on Segways and on a ‘confrence bike’. The experience was incredible, but that’s not really why I am writing this post. It is to share the navigation experience.

As you are aware, Ovi Maps navigation just went free worldwide for quite a number of devices, including …

I have just received an awesome email from the Nokia India Music store with the much awaited news that Nokia Music is finally going DRM free and that it will soon merge into the Ovi brand. The email carries no specific date for the transition to occur, we can only hope it happens soon.
DRM free means that you can use the music you downloaded from the Nokia store on any device, be it your computer, mobile phone or mp3 player. After Ovi Maps going free, Nokia saw a lot of …

The Nokia Messaging team has just rolled out an update for the S60 5th Edition client in the form of version 10.2, available via the in the Software Update application on your phone. An update for S60 3rd Edition devices will follow soon.

The current update focuses on faster email deletion, support of destinations so that email can be pulled using your favorite access point and easier on device setup.

The Nokia Booklet 3G marks Nokia’s first foray into the netbook market and is currently only available in a few markets around the world. You can think of the Booklet as a premium netbook constructed out of a single block of aluminium, much like Apple’s Macbooks. It packs a 10.1″ 1280 x 720 display, a fanless 1.6 GHZ Intel Atom processor (which makes the Booklet virtually silent), a 120 GB hard drive, 1GB of non upgradeable RAM and runs Windows 7.

What sets it apart from the average netbook …

By now you might have heard that Nokia will be making some pretty big announcements relating to ‘Ovi’ tomorrow. When the news first broke it appeared as if Nokia was probably going to announce the new version of the Ovi Store, but since Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia was  going to be there, it seemed it would be something slightly bigger.

Since then we have had news of parallel events happening in the US, Germany and a few other places and I have just been invited to a similar …

Last Wednesday I told you about DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite launch that will bring high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery to Ovi Maps in order to improve the global driving, hiking and walking navigation capabilities. Today, I’m glad to say that I have been invited to a Q&A about the launch and what it will mean for Ovi Maps.

I am also glad to say that we will be joined by the CEO of Digital Globe to talk about how the satellite will improve the Ovi Maps offering and also by representatives …

Boeing will launch Digital Globe’s WorldView-2 satellite tomorrow i.e. Thursday 8th October in California. WorldView-2 is the first high-resolution 8-band multispectral satellite commercially available. The new bands support greater levels of feature identification and extraction, more accurate change detection, and a realistic mirror image of the world’s natural colors.

If you are wondering what does any of this have to do with Nokia, then read on.

Nokia today unveiled the ‘Booklet 3G’ a ‘mini-laptop’ that packs a 10.1″ HD ready glass screen, an A-GPS, and a claimed 12 hours of battery life in a 2cm thick chassis that is made of a single piece of machined aluminum.

The 1.2 kilogram netbook (yes, despite Nokia trying to avoid the term, that is what it is) also includes 3G/HSDPA and WiFi connectivity, an HDMI port for HD video out and will most likely run Windows 7 (from the images available).

The ‘Ovi Store’ is accessible in India and works here like it does in any other country, however that’s not enough as Nokia plans to introduce a localised version of its store in India according to the the national daily, Economic Times.

According to Vineet Taneja, Nokia India Director (Marketing), the desi-version will have a slew of apps which are customised for the Indian market and the focus will be on Indian apps in areas like location-based services (both GPS and cellphone tower based), music, entertainment, business and even utilities. …

If you are in India or a few other countries where the Ovi Store is still not available via the Download! client on your Nokia 5800 or the N97 (if you are lucky enough) then you can simply go ahead and install this installation file that I was able to pull from the Nokia N97.

I’ve tried installing it on a Nokia 5800 and it works perfectly. Nokia, you know what I am going to say. Why do this?