Inside the Nokia Lab at SXSW

Nokia’s R&D lab is being transplanted from its snowy perch in northern Finland and dropped into the middle of the warmer climes of central Texas just for SXSW. The Nokia Lab – a first-of-its kind, three-domed structure for SXSW (located at 2nd and Brazos), will give SXSW Interactive attendees an engaging, behind-the-scenes sneak peek at the latest Nokia has to offer.

Nokia will show off its newest Nokia Lumia Windows Phones, and host app demos from the likes of Foursquare, textPlus, iHeartRadio, Ask Ziggy, and Smart Tile Pro (details about the demos are below). Nokia and Windows Phone experts will be on hand to answer questions, tell you how to join Nokia Developer, and give tips about building apps. Later in the night, a live band and DJ will take the stage to keep the party going.

Guests will have the opportunity to check out the new Nokia Lumia portfolio of Windows Phones, including the much-anticipated Lumia 900 from AT&T and the recently launched Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800, too.

On your way in to the Nokia Lab, be sure to get your Nokia Developer t-shirt and grab an energy drink. Then chill out while you peruse the lineup of new smartphones and talk with developers demonstrating their newest apps.

In between app demos, check out the rest of the Nokia Lab, test your foosball or ping pong skills, and enjoy complimentary drinks and appetizers. To keep up with everything that Nokia will be doing at SXSW, check out Conversations by Nokia. The blog will follow all the action.

The Nokia Lab is an experience you won’t want to miss. Come be amazing everyday with Nokia at SXSW. Ready. Set {Code}.

App demos in the Nokia Lab at SXSW:
Foursquare – Helps everyone keep up with friends, discover what’s nearby, save money and unlock deals wherever you are.
iHeartRadio – More than 850 of the nation’s most popular live broadcast and digital-only radio stations from 150 U.S. cities, plus user-created custom stations.
textPlus – A leading provider of free mobile communications worldwide. Over 25 million people have downloaded textPlus to talk and text for free. Coming soon to Windows Phone.
Ask Ziggy – Your Personal Virtual Assistant. You can have Ask Ziggy perform tasks and retrieve instant answers to questions, all by speaking to your phone.
Smart Tile Pro – Users can put any text, notes or reminders they want on the front and back of a live tile. The user can choose any photo to use as an image on a live tile and create as many as they want.

We want to show off your Windows Phone app at SXSW. If you have a unique, cool, or downright amazing app – and are headed to SXSW – you could land a chance to demo it inside the Nokia Lab, a one-of-a-kind, free-standing structure Nokia will erect near the convention center for SXSW Interactive.
It’s simple to take part. Just tell us about your Windows Phone app, and you may get to show it off to hundreds of people during Nokia’s Developer Day at SXSW on 12 March 2012 at your own demo station inside the Nokia Lab.
Visitors to the Nokia Lab at SXSW will experience Nokia’s newest Windows Phone devices, including the Nokia Lumia 900, as well as getting a first-hand experience with your app. The app demos inside the Nokia Lab will run from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. that day. Up to 10 apps will be selected for this special opportunity.
Here’s what you need to do to have your app considered for a spot in the exclusive demo section at Nokia’s Developer Day:
• Have an app that works on a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone device
• Send the following brief details via e-mail to nokiadeveloper@thelucidway.com:
o Your name, company and contact information (include email and phone)
o A link to your app in Windows Phone Marketplace, or link to the private beta of your app in Windows Phone Marketplace
o A brief description and any screenshots of your app
o Why your app is amazing, cool, or unique
That’s it.
We will select the apps to demo by 1 March 2012, and we will contact all developers who are chosen to participate. The Windows Phone Marketplace currently has nearly 65,000 apps and publishes about 300 apps every day. Come build an experience – not just another app – and bring smartphones to life for brands and consumers. Come be amazing everyday with Nokia Developer.
See you at SXSW. Ready.Set {Code}.

The next time you are out and about, take a look around – you will likely notice everyone is connected. There’s no need to stop and ask for directions or get a recommendation on neighborhood restaurants, when the answers can be found with a swipe of a touch screen. Mobile applications have created a society that thrives on convenience at your fingertips. Need to check movie times? There’s an app for that. Need a flashlight? There’s an app for that. Need to get rid of a bad date? There’s an app for that, too.

Mobile apps are being developed at a rapid rate. In 2010, the mobile app market brought in $2.2 billion, a 160 percent increase from 2009. The growth is astounding.

To help keep up with this rapid growth, Mobile development events are popping up all over the world - taking the form of education, networking, hackathons, and more. Businesses have been hiring programmers and marketing teams for new mobile segments and developers all over the world are joining forces to share ideas and create digital tools.

Once these brilliant tools are created and launched, how do you keep them from being lost in the app sea? What brands and developers really want to know is how to make an app that catches on and stands out. Mobile App Accelerant, an AT&T sponsored event taking place San Francisco tomorrow, promises to answer some of these questions.

A panel of leaders from the mobile app industry, including Sheena Chandok, co-founder of Mobile{Dev}Sync, will be speaking to mobile industry trends and educating developers and entrepreneurs about how to successfully develop and launch their products in the current market. Check out the link for more information or to register for this event: http://www.efactor.com/hackathonsf

What: Mobile App Accelerator
When: Oct 20, 2011 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Where: Twitter Building
795 Folsom St
San Francisco, California 94107
United States

Last week at a tech conference in Seattle, mobile industry folks debated (ok dumped on actually) the idea Near Field Communications (NFC) would take off for mobile payments. A few predicted it was at least three years away from implementations if it takes off at all.

Here is where they may have missed the mark, especially from a global perspective. Last week French mobile operator Orange and credit services provider Barclaycard introduced a new NFC-based mobile payments network that includes 500,000 U.K. merchant locations. That’s a big chunk of businesses to launch with. The Orange NFC-enabled phones are made by Samsung – not a small player either in the handset market. With giants like Samsung & Orange onboard it does make NFC more than a contender.

Point two. Google, it was reported in March, was going to start testing NFC-based mobile payments on Android smart phones in San Francisco and New York. They are reportedly using terminals made by Verifone. Google already introduced the Samsung Nexus S smartphone with NFC support on the Android Gingerbread operating system. That means consumers will be able to use it to interact with NFC sensors and exchange data, including make mobile payments. That sounds like a very real case for NFC and mobile payments coming soon to the US market.

Point three. Almost one year ago, Korea’s SK Telecom (no small player either) said it was committed to working with its partners to make NFC the standard for mobile payments and work across both Korea and Japan. Trials have already been underway and the goal is to make NFC the standard financial method for payments across borders.

If all that isn’t a case for NFC and mobile here is one more. The Android 2.3.3 version has an API for insecure Bluetooth socket connections. What does that mean in simple terms?  That newer Android phones and NFC can be used to let developers build a tap to connect feature for connecting your phone with other Bluetooth devices, like headsets, speakers, vehicle hands-free kits and more. No more complicated pairing of devices.

NFC is already in use for mobile payments. It will continue to grow as it gets to used more and more to make it much simpler to pair Bluetooth devices, securely share data and of course make mobile payments. NFC is no chump in the mobile marketplace.

By Kevin Keating – kkeating@mobiledevsync.com

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We were really happy to have Metaio with their Augmented Reality browser Junaio on stage. Next to the demo of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s first augmented reality enhanced magazine, they also presented one of their latest AR experience they created for the readers of USA Today during Super Bowl, see the video below:

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Below you can find the promised video on iButterfly use example:

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UbiNav presented their award winning application that will turn your BlackBerry into a reliable GPS mapping solution with real-time turn by turn navigation.

When driving with UbiNav you may switch between 2D, 3D & Overview map and the navigator will provide you with your time to arrival, distance to arrival and time of arrival. UbiNav also lets you interact with your Facebook profile to provide friends and contacts with real-time information about your movements.

See the video below:

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 You may also listen the turn-by-turn vocal instructions and find whatever you need wherever you are. You can find, map, navigate to, or simply call over 10 million businesses listed within the database (No more expensive directory calls!) and eventually save them among a your list of “Favourite” locations for future use.

When driving with UbiNav you may switch between 2D, 3D and Overview map.  Moreover, the navigator will provide you with your time to arrival, distance to arrival and time of arrival.  In addition, a small pictogram icon will help you know exactly which way to turn on complex intersections or which exit to take at a roundabout. UbiNav lets you interact with your Facebook profile to provide friends and contacts with real-time information about your movements: every time you start a navigation with UbiNav you can update your profile with information such as "I’m leaving now for ..."," My estimated time of arrival is ...", "I'm arriving at. ..".

iButterfly showed us a new cool way of couponing. Their couponing platform combines Location-Based couponing with Augmented Reality. They showed us an example on how a sushi restaurant in Barcelona could use the app to to drive traffic to their restaurant during the MWC – a video will be uploaded later on this blog. For now, check the iButterfly app in the video below:

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