Wireless World Of Ramsey

MANAUS, Brazil – You might not know that Nokia’s biggest single social project in the world is in the city of Manaus in the Brazilian rainforest, where Nokia also has a factory.

The Nokia Teaching Foundation (the Brazilian name is Fundação Nokia de Ensino – FNE) celebrated its 25^th birthday last year as the 8^th best school in Brazil for secondary and professional education and is a five-time winner of the best professional school in the northern region of Brazil.

So why does Nokia have such a big project in the middle of the Amazon?

A short history lesson

In 1985, the Amazonas State Government and Manaus Free-Trade Zone held a seminar to discuss the lack of skilled labour for data-processing jobs in the region. Until then, no technical school offered such teaching in Manaus and the authorities decided to create, in the short term, an institution that would satisfy this demand. It created the Center for Professional Training in Computer Science (CEPI), offering a data processing course. 

In 1987, it received support from Sharp Electronics and was renamed the Matias Machline Foundation. It moved to the premises of a state school near the factory and established a selection test, focusing only on students from the elementary school. In 1992, in another pioneering initiative, 70% of the seats were reserved for students from public schools, a rule that continues today.

In 2001, after negotiations with the State Government, Nokia took over as the school’s maintainer, restructuring the institution to make it more innovative, such as launching the telecommunications course. It was renamed the Nokia Teaching Foundation. 

The expansion

The FNE will soon undergo a major expansion to increase its capacity. The project includes the construction of a new 14,000ms campus in the same location of the existing buildings. The construction will incorporate sustainable features; such as solar energy, water reuse and using the wind to cool the building. Over €16m ($ 21m) will be invested in the FNE expansion, which will support around 3,500 students – 130% more than its capacity today. The number of teachers will more than double, from 27 to 60 professionals.

Niklas Savander, Executive Vice-President of Nokia and the Nokia Teaching Foundation team present the cheque for the expansion.

Niklas Savander, Executive Vice-President of Nokia, was in Manaus to present the FNE with the cheque and said: “There is an explosion of young innovators throughout Brazil who are creating new developer applications, new manufacturing practices and new mobile services.

“As a company with strong ties to the community, we believe it is important for Nokia to continue to foster this growth through investments in educational efforts in Brazil. Therefore, expanding the Nokia Teaching Foundation in Manaus is one of my proudest moments as it helps support the creative students who are fuelling so much great innovation in Brazil and around the world.”

Sustainable construction

The expansion has been designed with the surrounding landscape in mind, and with a view to using the best green technology available. The architect, Marcelo Correia adds: “Everything was made considering the environmental side.”

Controlling the temperature is a major issue, as the average daily temperature is over 30°C all year round. Marcelo explains some of the details of how they do this:

• The building design is ‘like Swiss cheese’ – full of holes so the wind can pass through and make it cooler. This also lets the sunlight enter the building in a balanced way, helping to avoid the use of lights.
• Because Manaus is very close to the equator, the sun is almost directly overhead. The building has been designed so the sunlight is balanced so there is not too much light on one side and none on the other.
• The halls are external covered balconies, which creates a cooler shadowed area.
• Solar panels cover the roof, which convert sunlight into electricity.
• Rainwater is reused and water from the building will go into a modern sewage treatment plant. There is an idea to use special trees that purify water in the treatment. The water will pass through these trees, which help clean the water (please note this is still in the planning stage and not certain to go ahead).
• Trees planted in the car park create shadows for the vehicles.
• The school will plant 74 trees throughout the campus.

The building design is cost effective, and some clever extra touches make it almost magical. The yellow corridors you see in the picture are not covered, so when you walk along them you feel you are almost walking in the trees. The sport fields face the protected Amazon forest so students can enjoy being close to nature, and the school’s design was inspired by Greek amphitheatres.

Artist’s impression of the Nokia Teaching Foundation expansion for 2013

The design of the school is that everything is open, integrated and directed towards each other, with a human touch, bringing to mind Nokia’s strapline ‘Connecting People’.

This piece was originally written by Luis Joly, who works on the Nokia Brazil blog.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

HONG KONG – Today, Nokia launches the Essence Bluetooth Stereo Headset, a brand new accessory designed to let you make the most out of the entertainment potential of your Nokia smartphone or any other Bluetooth enabled music player. This is our highest performance in-ear headset to date, featuring stunning 99 per cent noise cancellation in the lightest, smallest package available.

The Nokia Essence stands out from other headsets through its Active Noise Cancellation technology, eliminating 99 per cent of background noise. This makes it ideal for any music lover, but especially for plane and train journeys or when you really need to block out any distractions while you’re working.

The headset works with any Bluetooth phone, but is especially useful with Nokia’s latest smartphones since it includes Near-Field Communication (NFC) to pair with a tap of your phone on the controller. Of course, the Nokia Essence also includes call handling and offers buttons for both that and for moving through your music.

How does noise-reduction work?

If you listen to music using regular earphones and there’s noise around, then you’ll probably have to turn up the volume very loud. Even then, you’ll probably still be able to hear outside noises and might even be doing harm to your ears. Noise-cancelling headsets contain microphones that listen to the sounds around you, then create an opposite sound which is blended in with your music. This “reverse-noise” is intended to cancel out the noise around you. The extent to which this works depends on the quality of the microphones, the responsiveness of the electronics and the quality of the algorithms that create the noise-cancelling effect. With the Nokia Essence each of these ingredients are the best we’ve ever produced.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

HONG KONG – In case you missed it, we announced a new OS update, launched three new world-leading smartphones and a great new Bluetooth headset today. Now we have the videos from the event, in which Colin Giles, EVP of Sales, explains the context of the announcements, the reasons they’ve arrived and all about Symbian Belle, the Nokia 600, 700 and 701 and the Nokia Essence headset.

Here’s part one. It lasts 14 minutes, and covers the context and background to the announcements, and then moves on to Symbian Belle, the Nokia 700 and the Nokia 701.

And part two, which also lasts 14 minutes, and covers the Nokia 600 and the Nokia Essence headset announcements. Then we move onto demos of the Symbian Belle OS and NFC, and the wrap-up:

What’s the most important announcement today for you?

Nokia Conversations – Posts

GLOBAL – For users of current Nokia smartphones, it’s all-too-easy to load up a location-based app on your phone to find out about something around you. But what if you’re using a Series 40 or a Series 60 phone that doesn’t have Maps or even GPS? Nokia Nearby – from Beta Labs – is at hand to help solve that problem. We’ve got all the details, after the jump.

Nokia Nearby is a hyper-local search app that does exactly that. It searches for venues that are in your immediate vicinity using the Internet on your phone, rather than a GPS receiver.

Once you’ve loaded Nokia Nearby, you’ll be shown a list of categories to search within: Eat and Drink; Entertainment; Shopping; Transport; Sight Seeing; Business and Services; and Facilities. Clicking on one of those categories will begin a search that concentrates on where you’re currently situated. A list then populates, showing you the nearest venue first, scrolling down to the furthest away.

Let’s say you’re searching for somewhere to eat, have searched within the Eat and Drink category and have found the venue you’d like to spend the evening. Selecting the venue name from within the app will provide you details, such as the address and the phone number. But what’s more useful, is that you can phone that venue right from the app itself by simply pressing the call option.

If you’re planning on meeting a friend there, you can also share that venue details with them by pressing options and then share. After you’ve enjoyed your night out, you can add the restaurant to your favourites list or even save the details to your phonebook making booking a table easier and quicker next time.

Here’s a video from Beta Labs, showing Nokia Nearby in action.

It’s probably worth noting that this app doesn’t actually guide you or provide you with a map of how to get to the venue, it just provides you with the details. A bit like a modern Yellow Pages. But easier to carry around when you’re wandering the streets.

Primarily, this is aimed at the emerging markets where always-connected smartphones are often too costly or impractical to own, so it’s mostly built to run on Series 40 phones. However, it does work on Series 60 and we’ve even had it running on the Nokia N8.

Remember, this is a Beta Labs app, which means it’s open to the public for tests, so it might be a little rough around the edges. The team at Beta Labs are very keen to know what you think of Nokia Nearby as they want to understand what people search for the most. So, leave some comments here or at their forum page to let them know.

Image credit: magnusfranklin

Nokia Conversations – Posts

ESPOO, Finland – Recently, we launched the new Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition. Designed exclusively for Eastern European and Middle Eastern markets, it brings together the popular Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type with a luxury 18-carat gold plating, ceramic-feel keymat and a matching theme. Pictures and details after the break.

We introduced the original Series 40 based Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type last year, and its combination of simplicity and classic phone design has made it something of a hit among people who are less into megapixels and gigahertz and more interested in “making a phone call”.

That’s not to say that the Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition doesn’t have the technology bases covered. Offering a quadband radio and up to HSDPA data speeds alongside WiFi and Bluetooth, you won’t have any problems getting connected. The hardware’s been updated with a 1GHz processor in this model, too, so it’s no slouch when it comes to performance. The screen is a 2.4-inch QVGA touchscreen. On the back, there’s a 5-megapixel camera with flash. There’s also a MicroSD card slot for up to 32GB of extra storage space.

On board, you’ll find Nokia Messaging for email and IM functionality and Nokia Communities for checking into Facebook and Twitter. And of course, there’s Ovi Store for downloading extra apps and games. New to this device is the Nokia Series 40 browser, for fast web access without high data use charges.

It measures 111 x 47.5 x 11mm and weighs 100g. The battery is rated as offering up to 5.5 hours talk-time and up to 18 days on standby.

The Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition has already started shipping in selected markets, and will extend to more in coming weeks, and, without local taxes or operator subsidies, will cost around €220. More information on the product page here.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

GLOBAL – Symbian Anna’s been out for a few days now, so you probably think you know all there is to know about the new software. Well, you probably do. But just in case you didn’t know all the ins-and-outs, we have a interactive video for you to watch. For the most part, just sit back and learn. At the end of the video, you can select what you want to learn about next. Simple.

Now there’s no need to get confused with Anna again.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

GLOBAL – Roll on Friday. That’s what we all murmur during the week isn’t it? Well it’s here. Finally. Not only does that mean the weekend is in sight but it’s also a time where we turn to the rest of the Web in order to find interesting or miscellaneous things we might’ve missed during the week. Find out what’s made it onto our radar this week, in our Friday Pick and Mix – it’s mostly NFC and Symbian Anna, by the way.

• 
  The Museum of London has began using NFC technology in a way of bringing the old history into the present. Old and new combined, if you will. Want to find out about a particular piece of history you see? Tap your NFC-enable phone onto the item to find out all about it. Want to test it out? Head on over the the Museum of London this summer to give it a try for yourself.
• 
  Here we have Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog going through the features that were brought to us with the new Symbian Anna update, released yesterday.
• 
  We’re all excited about the arrival of Symbian Anna, but probably more so are the owners of the Nokia C7, as it activates the NFC chip that’s stored inside. The video – from flyav8rboi – above shows an OTA update on a Nokia C7. If you’ve got a Nokia C7 and haven’t update yet, give it a try.
• 
  Whatleydude loads up his Nokia Oro and tries a bit of NFCing, too. See how easy it is? It looks like their NFC-enabled tag was is one of the ones from available to purchase from the NFC hub. But we could be wrong.

What else should we have been reading or watching this week? Let us know, below.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

GLOBAL – We’ve covered heaps in terms of Nokia news this week. Especially when it comes to apps. If you’ve not had the time to read each piece, yet, our Nokia Conversations podcast plays out to all, each and every Friday. In this week’s episode, Dan and Phil talk about the new Symbian Anna release, the Calling All Innovators competition winners and there’s lots of talk about apps. Tune in, turn up and enjoy.

Take our Blogbite with you with our very own app, free from Ovi Store.

Nokia Conversations – Posts

PORTLAND, OR, United States – Back in June, we requested your help in judging a little contest we call Calling All Innovators. The contest involves application developers submitting their best apps for consideration and some amazing prizes.

The total amount in the prize pool is $ 10M including $ 4M in cash and $ 6M in Nokia marketing for the chosen applications. Two Grand Prize Winners will each win $ 250K in cash and $ 1.9M in Nokia marketing. Seventeen Category Winners will each win $ 150K in cash. And five hundred developers will win a new customized Nokia X7 Symbian^3 smartphone.

After numerous amazing app submissions and a very active voting period, the votes have been gathered and tallied. Now is the time to unveil the Category Prize Winners. Go to the Calling All Innovators site and see the first, second and third place winners in each category.

Access all the winners in one easy app

To easily check out the winners on your Symbian^3 device, AppJudgment (available in Ovi Store and accompanying Facebook App) will be updated to highlight the Category Prize Winners, allowing you quick access to all the winning apps in one place. Using App Judgment, you can download the contest winners and even share apps you enjoy with your friends and colleagues via text, email, Facebook and Twitter.

Some of our favorites

There are numerous apps to check out, as first, second and third place winners are categorized in eleven categories ranging from social networking to finance to city guides, with a further six categories of games.

Here are screenshots of a few of our favorites:

App Judgment is available globally for all new Symbian^3 devices except the Nokia E6. We will finish Calling All Innovators in grand style by announcing the Grand Prize and Grand Prize Runner Ups at an event in Sunnyvale, California later this month.

Thanks to all those involved for making this a successful contest!

Photo credit: Uncleweed

Nokia Conversations – Posts

PORTLAND, OR, United States – With the summer season in full swing, we’re still in the midst of the major movie season, at least here in the United States. It seems everyone I know is going to the movies and constantly talking about the films they’ve seen. It doesn’t matter if it’s action, drama or the latest horror flick, people love to talk about movies. It’s almost like the weather or other current event, film binds us together as a society and provides a dependable ‘lowest common denominator” when it comes to hallway conversation or chitter chatter.

What’s a mobile toting movie lover to do? Well, load your phone up with amazing movie apps, of course! Today’s app guide will take us through the best apps to discover, investigate and share our latest films.

Nokia Trailers: Let’s start off with the most basic encounter. Either you’re looking for a film for an upcoming weekend or your just curious to know what’s in theaters now. Alternatively, perhaps your co-worker or friend told you about this great flick they just saw and you’re dying to see whether it’s a movie you might like. Check out Nokia Trailers to see what’s hot in theaters now.

By showing a default view of movie posters, you can click into each movie and see the category, short description, and even directors, main actors involved and of course, the trailers. If the film has more than one trailer (as is the case with Dolphin Tale), each trailer video is available. You can even share the trailer via Facebook and email if you want to find out if your friends want to catch the flick also. One other cool feature: you can download the full trailer, even in HD quality, if you’d like to watch it later.

Netflix Queue Manager: Netflix is the way to view movies in the United States and Canada if the film is out of the theaters. Through Netflix, we can watch any movie no matter when it was released – just add it to your queue and it shows up in a day or so. Problem is, most of the time you’re on the go when you hear about movies. This problem is solved with the Netflix Queue Manager, published by Netflix themselves. This app will let you see your queue and add newly discovered movies to the DVD queue or instant queue. You can also discover basic info including movie and TV show titles and descriptions.

Evri Movies: Evri is a publisher of online news and gossip stories. In the case of Evri Movies, one can see all the movie related news in one easy-to-use application. It doesn’t matter if you want to know why production on your favorite upcoming movie was shut down or you’re wondering what Charlie Sheen (or any star de jour) is up to these days, Evri Movies is a great source. That way, you can be up-to-date on what latest gossip is surrounding Hollywood in case friends want to delve into the subject.

What apps let you satisfy your movie needs?  Chime in below!

Photo credit: Som

Nokia Conversations – Posts