D'oh! Sorry, Your GPS Unit Led You Astray

Tweet could be cyber crime in progess
Cyber criminals are setting snares that move at the speed of news.
D'oh! Sorry, Your GPS Unit Led You Astray
It's no secret that even GPS units are subject to GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), leading users astray due to incorrect map data.. People have even been led to the edge of cliffs. Wouldn't it be appropriate to hear the expression "D'oh!" if such a failure occurred?
The Download: Digital TV Switch a Boon for One Local Station
The switch to digital TV has caused static and headaches for thousands of viewers in the Washington region. But for one local station, the transition has been something of a revival.
Is Nokia’s Ovi What You’ve Been Waiting For?

As a guest of Nokia, last week I spent some time getting up to speed on all things Ovi at the Nokia Connections conference in Singapore. Ovi is the combined brand under which Nokia’s add-on network services â€" music, photos, maps, applications, and email â€" all now live. The cynical perspective is that Ovi is Nokia’s response to the magic of the iPhone and its App Store. But companies like Nokia require more than just one year to make a course correction as big as they hope Ovi will be.

Keep in mind, Nokia still has the biggest install base of mobile phones in the world, so while its grip on the smart end of the market has slipped it still has plenty to work with.

At the event, first we heard a lot of talk about Nokia transitioning from a ‘product’ to ‘service’ company. It felt like the kind of talk you hear from a company eager to prove they really care about their customers, so it was easy to dismiss.

But then there was some meat to the discussion. First up, unlike the latest developments at other companies, Ovi isn’t just about smartphones. There are around 75 current models of Nokia phones that can now use Ovi related tools and services.

Nokia also talked a lot about how its new focus serves users in developing countries. According to Nokia, 80% of the world’s population now live within range of a cellular network, and the next billion network users will get online via mobile instead of PC. So for Nokia, Ovi is also part of a strategy where the handset is the only device a person will need to be connected and online.

Indeed Ovi does away with the need for any PC syncing to complete the experience, which is a great strength of Nokia’s new ecosystem. Your email, your music (through Nokia’s subscription music service), your maps, and your content sharing services, all easily accessed and managed directly through the handset.

Nokia is doing a lot here to encourage their lower end users to stick with them. With a lot of services available even to users of lower range handsets, there may be enough to delay some users from migrating elsewhere, or getting comfortable with things like the Ovi photo sharing and email tools so they stick with Nokia on future upgrades.

The biggest problem at launch is the price of applications. In the Ovi Store you can expect to pay a lot more for comparable apps in the iTunes App Store. Think along the lines of $4.00 on Ovi against $1.19 on iTunes. There is only so long users will wear significant price difference without any good reason for its existence.

Nokia points out the developers set the prices, but if it can’t encourage them to price lower and aim for volume sales, the Ovi Store could struggle to gain traction. There is already a good range of free content, though, so it isn’t all bad news on price.

Refreshingly, Nokia admits Ovi is very much an infant, and that they will aim to quickly respond to user feedback and criticism. After years in development, it’s good to know it understands the real work of proving its new service strategy begins now.

Seamus Byrne is the host of Midnight Update.