Finland's Ovi

Tens of thousands of Finnish network service passwords and usernames have been leaked onto the internet. Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the situation.
 
The file contains information from chat rooms and social networking sites. Bank usernames are not part of the list.

Some of the usernames and passwords are used by individuals on many different sites.

The information security company F-Secure is urging people who visit such forums to change their passwords. The Finnish National Computer Emergency Response Team Cert-fi also issued a warning on Saturday. It said that passwords should be long and contain symbols.

The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority announced on Saturday that about 80,000 Finnish network service usernames were floating around on the internet. It said Finnish usernames have never been revealed to such a wide extent in the past.

The police have asked foreign countries for assistance in finding those responsible for the leak.

Source: YLE

Nokia cuts the price of one of its top-selling phones in anticipation of the holiday shopping season.

HELSINKI — Nokia slashed this week around 15 percent off from the price of its 3G phone model E65, one of the top sales and profit generators for the world’s largest cellphone maker, market data showed on Friday.

Analysts said the price cut was deeper than usual, but they were not surprised by the timing as handset vendors are setting up their offerings for the upcoming Christmas sales season.

Nokia sold more than one million E65’s in the second quarter, making it one of the top three products for the firm. It will report July-September results on October 18, but analysts said all signs showed that good sales of the phone have continued.

Nokia said E65 price cut was part of its normal price adjustments after the phone has been on the market for more than 6 months. Its success helped to pull Nokia’s ailing enterprise unit to the black in the second quarter after years of losses.

“This is normal for any product, the price varies at different stages of the product life cycle,” said a Nokia spokeswoman.

After the price cut E65 competes in the same price category with rivals hit phones Samsung’s U600 and Sony Ericsson’s K810i.

Apple cut its iPhone price by one third just two months after it launched the phone, but later offered some rebates after phone owners’ uproar. Price cuts of up to 10 percent are normal in the industry after first few months of sales.

Nokia has also clearly lowered prices for its E61i, N73 and N73 Music phones this month, but not as sharply as E65.

“Nokia has been very aggressive with its pricing strategy during 2007,” said Ben Wood, head of research at consultancy CCS.

Source: Reuters

Google seems to be intent on making waves.

There’s speculation that Google could launch a Facebook-rivaling service on November 5th. Today the company announced that they’ve acquired Jaiku - the ‘what are you doing’ and presence service based in Helsinki, Finland.

Whilst there’s no mention of how much Google paid (all the terms remain confidential), it’s certainly something that’s going to weigh in the minds of rival services such as Twitter (particularly as Twitter has yet to establish its business model).

As for what’s next for Jaiku, all the founders will say is ‘Check back in a few months to see what we’ve developed.

Relevant Links: http://jaiku.com/help/google

Source: Nik Fletcher

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In Older News:

Yesterday (Oct. 10), search giant Google announced that it will be buying Jaiku, a Finnish startup company that specializes in enabling friends to keep in touch and share whatever they are doing at any given moment using mobile devices. However, the terms of the transaction were not disclosed when the deal was officially closed.

Jaiku, a Helsinki-based firm that was founded early last year is a social networking and mini-messaging service that enables people to keep track of each others; activities on-the-go using mobile devices.

The Mountain View, California-based Google believes that activity streams and mobile presence are important areas in which it can add a lot of value for its users.

Google also added that Jaiku’s technology and talented team would be a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

As it is Google seems to be making it a priority of following Internet users as they go mobile. In fact, a while ago, it was reported that Google was busy crafting the so-called “gphone” using an open-source software platform tailored to its online services.

Besides, last month, Google acquired Zingku, a mobile social networking firm targeted mainly at teenagers and the youth.
According to Google product manager Tony Hsieh, “Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder. Living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it’s more difficult to keep track of everyone when they’re running around at warp speed. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve acquired Jaiku.”

Following the transaction, Jaiku will continue to support its existing user base. Jaiku users would be able to invite new friends but new user registrations have been closed for the time being.

By Sharon Cotal

Three teachers who taught fifth grade at Highlands Elementary School last year have been selected by Microsoft to serve as ambassadors to a teaching forum in Helsinki, Finland.

Highland teachers Bonita DeAmicis and Cindy Hallman, and Amy Panama - now a fourth-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary - were selected from a national pool of candidates to participate in the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum taking place Oct. 29-31.

“We are very excited about it. We’re just a little concerned about having warm clothing,” said DeAmicis, who plans to borrow some cold weather gear from her sister in Colorado.

The forum is designed to recognize and reward outstanding educators and allow them to collaborate and share their expertise. When they worked together last year, DeAmicis, Hallman and Panama incorporated the use of handheld computers, interactive whiteboards, the Internet and desktop software in a series of science stations where students worked in teams to learn about the human body.

The teachers’ use of technology in the learning process and the way they worked together to develop the stations got Microsoft’s attention.

“They liked it. They were very excited that we were able to create seamless ways to integrate technology into our teaching. But the technology was not the focus of the learning - it was used as a tool to learn about the human body,” DeAmicis said.

The trio of teachers were also one of 20 learning teams selected to attend the United States Forum, held Sept. 26-28 in Seattle. The trip took Hallman back into familiar territory.

“I grew up in Seattle, so it was fun to see my family and I enjoyed seeing Seattle again,” Hallman said.

In Seattle, the teachers experienced the teacher version of speed dating, with teams spending five minutes with one another discussing their projects.

“They called it networking, but essentially we steal ideas from each other,” Hallman said. “It was great to get ideas from teachers across the U.S. that we probably otherwise would never meet.”

Panama, at 25 the youngest of the group, said she is honored to be selected for such a prestigious event at the beginning of her career and looks forward to meeting with the teams from other countries in Helsinki.

“It’s a lot of work to prepare to go, and I’m going to miss my students, but I’m very excited to go,” Panama said. “I can only imagine the different teams we will meet there.”

At the Helsinki forum, the three local teachers will be competing with teams from 70 countries and international judges will select one winner from all the projects presented.

“It’s like a science fair for teachers,” DeAmicis said. The teachers have been working on their display, getting it ready for the international competition.

“I’m very competitive, so game’s on,” Hallman said. For Hallman, the trip to Helsinki will be kind of like a trip home.

“My grandfather was 100 percent Finnish. I never dreamed I would go to Finland, but that’s where my ancestors are from,” Hallman said.

DeAmicis plans to do some sightseeing while in Helsinki and hopes to see the Northern Lights.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to walk around the city and see some sights,” DeAmicis said.

Panama is looking forward to spending time with the two teachers she used to work with at Highlands.

“Obviously, we won an award for collaboration, so we really worked well together,” Panama said. “Mountain View has really welcomed me, but it was hard to leave.”

Source:The Signal

Known for its high featured mobile phones, Nokia, is coming with its ovi web portal – The new Ovi, making foray into web services market. The Finland based company has designed Ovi to run music download services, games, maps and other online applications.

Nokia says that Ovi, which means ‘door’ in Finnish or is known as a nickname for Oliver, will open new market possibilities for the Finnish mobile handset manufacturer. The company is keen to start generating revenues from services like sale of games, music over mobile Internet with its innovating Ovi.

The company has also launched variety of new phones in the market, including the Nokia 81, a flagship music phone to give competition to Apple’s iPhone. These phones would be available on its new website.

As a part of its Ovi brand of Internet Services, Nokia is reviving N-gage platform in a new way. The new portal allows you to browse a wide selection of game titles, download free trails and purchase the games directly from Nokia. You can either purchase the game over the air or directly download on your PC first. You can buy game titles, including EA Sports’ FIFA 08, The Sims 2 Pets, Tetris, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and Crash Bandicoot, directly from Nokia.

The new Nokia Music store is ‘dual download’, allowing download over the air or through ’sideloading’ of music from a PC. Tracks are delivered in WMA format with Windows DRM protection, and cost €1 with entire albums starting at €10. The company announced that some 3m tracks will be available, including music “from major labels”. However, whether or not Nokia had deals with all four major labels was not disclosed.

The N-Gage platform will ultimately run on all Series 60 (smartphone) devices but is limited to a handful of handsets at launch. N-Gage games are C++ based, which allows for better performance than J2ME, the current programming language used for the majority of mobile games.

Nokia will also run and manage an online store which allows users to download free trial versions of games, and like the music store is ‘dual download’. The store allows payment by credit card and also integrates with the billing systems of over 80 mobile operators. The N-Gage Arena, a multiplayer and community platform, will allow developers to create multiplayer games.

Mail, messaging and search applications are provided through partnerships with both Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as Nokia’s own messaging application, Gizmo. The Nokia Maps application allows free downloads of maps and sale of additional content such as city guides. The photo sharing application is based on the technology of Twango, which Nokia acquired in July 2007.

Also…
Historically, Nokia’s attempts to move into mobile content have not met with success and the launch of these new services immediately attracted criticism from Nokia’s biggest customers, the network operators. Orange threatened to cancel its order for handsets integrated with the Music Store until it had assessed the impact this service could have on its own mobile music sales. 3 UK, which accounts for 75 per cent of the UK’s mobile music sales, reportedly followed suit.

In contrast, the relaunched N-Gage has received a warm welcome from the mobile games industry. Network operators seem unconcerned about the impact on games revenues, even though Screen Digest predicts that the market for mobile games in 2007 will be more than four times larger than that for mobile music.

Around 10 mobile games publishers have agreed to support the platform, including the top three companies (Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glu). Nokia’s previous iteration of the N-Gage was released as a hardware platform in October 2003 but design problems and consumer disinterest in such a niche device led to very low market penetration and subsequently publishers hastily withdrew support.

In contrast, 16m Series 60 devices were sold last year, device volumes which should lead to significantly greater penetration and more extended publisher support.

Source: Vaisala 

Helsinki Testbed, a joint effort of Vaisala and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, has won the community category of this year’s Productive idea contest.

Helsinki Testbed is a research and experimentation platform for new weather observation equipment, systems, services and forecasting models. It covers the Greater Helsinki area. Helsinki Testbed enhances the cooperation between researchers, companies and end-users, and facilitates the utilization of research results in practice, such as in precision weather services.

According to the contest jury, the Testbed research project is an unconventional and bold demonstration of how meteorology and technology can be harnessed to communicate local weather conditions in real-time. The jury stated that the Testbed project utilizes Finnish technology and know-how in an exemplary way. The long-term goal is to promote the formation of a leading edge meteorological center in the Helsinki area. The idea has significant societal impacts, and it has already gained great international attention.

The contest, established to promote creative business activity, was organized for the 28th time. It seeks new, maximum 3-year-old innovative ideas that have already been taken to productive use. The contest has two categories: business category and community category.

The Productive idea contest is organized by the Junior Chamber International Finland. The contest is carried out in cooperation with the Kauppalehti and Kauppalehti Optio magazines, OP bank group, Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Finnish Industry Investment Ltd, Tamro Oyj, Federation of Finnish Enterprises, Central Chamber of Commerce of Finland, and the Association for Finnish Work.

Read more about the Helsinki Testbed project at:
http://www.fmi.fi/weather/stations_88.html

Visit the Testbed pages at
http://testbed.fmi.fi/

Nokia has introduced Ovi, its new Internet service, expanding from a focus on mobile devices to offering a range of Internet services.

Ovi, means ‘door’ in Finnish and looks to enable consumers to access their existing social network, communities and content, as well as act as a gateway to Nokia services.
 
As part of Ovi, Nokia announced the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage, two services that make it easy for people to discover, try and buy music and games from a range of artists and publishers, including exclusive content only available through Nokia.

Also under the Ovi umbrella is Nokia Maps, a navigation service that offers maps, city guides and more directly to compatible mobile devices.
 
Ovi is the gateway to Nokia’s Internet services, including the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games. It will also be an open door to web communities, enabling people to access their content, communities and contacts from a single place, either directly from a compatible Nokia device or from a PC. The first version of Ovi.com is scheduled to go live in English during the fourth quarter of 2007 and additional features and languages expected to go live during the first half of 2008.
 
The Nokia Music Store offers millions of tracks from major artists, independent labels as well as a broad range of local artists from around the world. The store is accessible via a desktop computer or directly from a compatible Nokia device, such as the Nokia N81 or Nokia N95 8GB multimedia computer. Users can browse for new music, buy what they like or add a song to their wishlist to download later. Users can also transfer purchased songs to your mobile device and with the built-in music player, create playlists on the go.
 
The Nokia Music Store offers full track streaming on PCs as well as individual track and album purchase. The store opens across key European markets this fall with additional stores in Europe and Asia opening over the coming months. In Europe, individual tracks cost EUR 1.00 and albums from EUR 10.00, with a monthly subscription for PC streaming for EUR 10.00.
 
N-Gage allows users to find, try and buy games directly from compatible Nokia devices. By selecting the N-Gage application on compatible Nokia devices, users can preview available games, connect with friends, read reviews or download a free demo. They can buy games either with a credit card or by charging it to their monthly phone bill. The application is expected to be available for download from here in November 2007.

Also:

Along with announcing a brand-new lineup of handsets, Nokia is also venturing into the brave new world of Internet services. It’s called Ovi, which is “door” in Finnish, and it signifies Ovi’s open access to existing social networks like MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook right from a compatible Nokia phone.

But the big news here is that Ovi will also be a gateway to Nokia’s newly launched Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games. Though Ovi can work on any personal computer, it is really designed for the mobile experience. It will go live in English in late 2007, while additional features and languages are expected next year.

The Nokia Music Store will have millions of tracks from a variety of music sources that include everything from major artists to independent labels. You can browse for music, buy the song directly over the air to your phone, or add a song to a wish list for later download.

If you like, you may also download the song to your PC and later load it onto the phone. The Nokia Music Store also supports full track streaming on the PC. Another neat thing about the Music Store is there will be a music recommendation engine based on songs you have purchased.

Songs are available in 192kbps WMA files, and can be managed either via Windows Media Player or Nokia’s own Music PC client. As for pricing, a song will cost one euro each, while a whole album will go for 10 euros. But the interesting part here is that Nokia will also allow you to have a subscription for PC streaming for 10 euros a month.

Right now, compatible Nokia phones include the following: Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, Nokia 6267, Nokia 6500 Classic, Nokia 6500 slide, Nokia 6555, Nokia 7500 Prism, Nokia 7900 Prism, Nokia N75, Nokia N76, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N91 8GB, Nokia N95, and Nokia N95 8GB.

Music Store will open in certain European markets later this year, with additional stores opening next year.

(HS) The condition of lorries arriving in Finland across the country’s eastern has improved significantly. According to Finnish police, the quality of vehicles used by foreign haulage companies is getting to be close to that of Finnish trucks.

Finland’s Traffic Police have been closely scrutinising the condition of heavy goods vehicles in the southeast of Finland this week. According to police superintendent Jouni Ryhänen, the director of the campaign, the foreign vehicles are no longer in any worse shape than those owned and driven by Finns.

“Competition works. In some cases, the vehicles are even better than what the Finns have”, Ryhänen says.

Most of the foreign trucks are Russian.
During the crackdown, the police plan to inspect thoroughly more than 100 domestic and foreign lorry-trailer combinations. On the first day, 64 vehicles were inspected, and 36 drivers were given fines or warnings.

Jari Strengell of the traffic police in the Kymeenlaakso region says that in spite of the high proportion of vehicles with shortcomings, there is no reason for other motorists to worry too much. He said that a great many of the problems involved minor issues such as faulty lights, which do not necessarily have immediate serious implications for traffic safety.

During the week only one vehicle was not allowed to continue on its way: the brakes of the trailer on a Finnish lorry did not work at all, and the vehicle was left on the side of the road.
On Thursday, inspections focused on the Port of Hamina, where the violations that were found were mostly minor.

There were exceptions, however: One Russian driver en route from the harbour to the Russian border had failed to secure his load of 900 kg. paper rolls in the trailer. If the lorry had been stopped on the road, the police would have confiscated the driver’s licence without further ado.

“If something like that were on the road, it would be considered serious negligence”, Jouni Ryhänen says.

There have been news reports recently of drink driving by Russian drivers. Six drivers have been stopped for driving under the influence within a few weeks.

Strengell says that Russian traffic discipline is not particularly lax: considering the vast growth in truck of traffic, these kinds of cases are quite rare.

“Most of them are all right - no different from the Finns. But there are always these bad apples that cause everyone problems”, he says.

HELSINKI (Reuters)—New Zealand-based company Michael S Sutton Ltd. has filed a complaint against Nokia in the United States for infringing a data packaging technology patent and is seeking damages, court documents showed. 

The complaint—which says the world’s top cellphone maker is using in its messaging applications technology patented by Sutton—was filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on April 30.

Nokia said it would actively defend its rights in the case.

“This case was previously filed against Nokia and then voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff. We will analyze the details of the new case which was filed on 30 April, 2007 and actively defend the rights of Nokia,” a spokeswoman said.

Legal rows in the wireless industry have increased as the complexity of technologies in phones grows.

Nokia is currently in a major dispute with U.S. Qualcomm on a cross-licensing agreement between the two firms.

UPDATE:

Nokia CEO says Qualcomm can’t set industry rules

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s top handset maker Nokia Oyj said on Thursday its talks with Qualcomm over technology patents were continuing, but the U.S. chip maker shouldn’t be allowed to dictate rules to the industry.

“Talks are ongoing, the situation is open, and I have to say, the agreement cannot be reached before both parties have agreed,” Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said at the annual shareholders’ meeting.

“It’s completely clear that we cannot give one company, in this case Qualcomm, a chance to dictate rules for the whole industry. The issue is not Qualcomm versus Nokia, it’s more about Qualcomm versus the rest of the industry,” he said.

A major cross-licensing agreement over technology patents between Qualcomm and Nokia expired partly last month, and their increasingly bitter battle is worrying investors and the industry on both sides of the Atlantic.

The legal dispute between the two centers on Nokia’s use of Qualcomm patents for high-speed wireless technology, but it also has a bearing on Qualcomm’s chips business, which according to Nokia uses many Nokia-patented technologies.

The world’s top wireless network maker Ericsson said last month it hopes to see a quick solution in the technology license dispute before it hurts the whole wireless industry.

Ericsson is part of a group of six companies including Nokia that have complained to the European Commission about how much Qualcomm charges in royalties for use of its technologies.

Shares in Nokia were 0.8 percent lower in Helsinki, in line with weaker DJ Stoxx European technology index, while Qualcomm shares were 0.5 percent weaker.

Also:  Ovi Nokia