Nokia is releasing a new blogging software package that they will not sell directly to consumers but will offer to operators so that they, in turn, can offer it as a subscriber service. Christian Lindholm, director of multimedia apllications, says he thinks blogs are the future for personal content. He has an interesting definition of a blog: "An evolution of the classic homepage with a content management system." That's about the best mini-definition I've heard.

Called Lifeblog, the application has quite a nice interface and allows the use of lots of pictures. The idea is less that you might have a blog that looks outward to an audience of readers and more that you have a personal space to store personal memories, reminders, images, schedules, etc. Of course Nokia would like to see the mobile phone as the centre of this exeperience. I'll look for a screenshot or two later. It will be released at the end of this month, at the same time as the 7610 handset.
9:35:10 AM  #   your two cents []  

More from the camera on the Nokia 7610. Some shots taken at Klippen, a lovely restaurant on a little island off Helsinki:

On the boat trip over:

A view from a window:

Outside on the little island, a nice contrast between yellow wildflowers and stone:

Dancers at the evening entertainment:

9:24:27 AM  #   your two cents []  

Joi's just done his spiel -- a quite interesting flow of ideas on 'continuous partial attention', mass marketing of content (why 'professional amateurs' may have more success in the content biz), and how gaining consumer attention is going to be more difficult that resolving content delivery issues. That shook up a roomful of sleepy journalists...

Here's Joi -- taken with the 1.3 megapixel camera standard in Nokia's new 7610 phone. Using only ambient light, transferred by bluetooth to my Mac, posted here:

12:35:03 PM  #   your two cents []  

No particular reason to post this except I haven't posted any pictures in a while and none of this little fellow, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel pup Jaspar, in QUITE a while. He's just over 7 months old now and beginning to lift his leg (the things you get excited about when you don't have kids...kind of like being thrilled over first steps, but more likely to annoy your neighbours [grin]).

9:30:59 AM  #   your two cents []  

Coming to you from Helsinki today. More clamshells, more mid-range phones, more games for the N-Gage: that's the news from Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila after his keynote address at Nokia's annual press event here in midnight-sunland.

Grand Blogging Poobah Joi Ito speaks this afternoon, I see from the schedule (does that globetrotting man EVER just stay in at home for a night?). If I can find a plug adapter for my Mac I'll add some more this afternoon. Of course I did bring one then promptly left it on my hotel room desk afetr charging my mobile this morning. Doh!

As always the sky at night is amazing here. It does not really get dark -- instead at midnight you have a kind of dusk or dawn-like state with the sky an exquieite deep blue, lit by horizon level streaks of light, then it gets really bright again by oh, say, 2:30 am. It can be quite disconcerting and necessitates heavy curtain liners in all hotel rooms. One annoyance is that, due to scheduling and later arrival yesterday (where Finnair almost didn't let me on the flight as they'd sold my seat during the time I flew from Dublin-London for get my onward Helsinki flight) I don't think I'll get to use the hotel sauna. One of the best things about coming to Finland is always to take at least one good long sauna!
9:04:57 AM  #   your two cents []  

So, Microsoft considered buying SAP, with talks at one point well underway. No wonder CEO Henning Kagermann was politely warm and fuzzy (if you know what I mean -- in a nice, Germanic kind of way) when I heard him brief journalists at HQ in Walldorf last month. Oracle, which dug this up in preparation for arguing its case for acquiring PeopleSoft, will no doubt have some fun with this tidbit. On the other hand, I'm sure Oracle's had plenty of similar talks with companies it has considered buying or merging with -- any large company does, I should think. Still, the mind boggles slightly at imagining this particular marriage, between Walldorf and Redmond. One imagines there would have been plenty of bedroom arguments as they attempted to consummate the relationship. And I can't really see the product or corporate culture fit -- not without lots of awkwardness. Chinos meet Hugo Boss?
6:49:39 AM  #   your two cents []  

Coming to you from Cannes folks, where it is beautiful and sunny outside across from the glorious Hotel Martinez on the Croisette, but I am inside looking at new Dell producst!

LOOOOOONG time no post -- had reached point of total exasperation with my wireless connection, which I need to easily post from my Mac (otherwise have to plug in ethernet and then reset all the modem settings... argh!!!). Because my eminent Guardian colleague Jack Schofield is here in Cannes, I was able to directly Ask Jack (his wonderful techie agony aunt column on Thursdays in the G) and find it is, as suspected, a faulty modem causing the problem. So hope to fix that asap.

Anyway -- I am gorging on LOVELY French food and have a room that has just a peep of the oceanfront here on the Cote d'Azur and am enjoying this inofrmative break, badly needed.

Updates anon. I am off to a gamers round-table!
11:13:25 AM  #   your two cents []  

The government's voting commission has ruled against using electronic voting machines at this time in Ireland. A surprise -- and a decision to be welcomed -- but certainly not what I was expecting. The reasoning is that while the machines seem to work fine, it has not been demonstrated definitely enough that they are secure and safe and reliable.
1:05:16 PM  #   your two cents []  

Totally off topic but I thought this was a good funny for a Friday (before our May Day bank holiday weekend!). From an email list I'm on:

Letters to God from the dog:

Dear God, How come people love to smell flowers, but seldom, if ever, smell one another? Where are their priorities?

Dear God, When we get to Heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it the same old story?

Dear God, Excuse me, but why are there cars named after the jaguar, the cougar, the mustang, the colt, the stingray, and the rabbit, but not one named for a dog? How often do you see a cougar riding around? We dogs love a nice ride! I know every breed can't have its own model, but it would be easy to rename the Chrysler Eagle the Chrysler Beagle!

Dear God, If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, does he still get his butt whacked with a newspaper?

Dear God, Is it true that in Heaven, dining room tables have on-ramps?

Dear God, If we come back as humans, is that good, or bad?

Dear God, More meatballs, less spaghetti.

Dear God, When we get to the Pearly Gates, do we have to do that stupid shake hands trick to get in?

Dear God, We dogs can understand human verbal instructions, hand signals, whistles, horns, clickers, beepers, scent IDs, electromagnetic energy fields, and Frisbee flight paths. What do humans understand?

Dear God, Are there dogs on other planets or are we alone? I have been howling at the moon and stars for a long time, but all I ever hear back is the aroused beagle across the street.

Dear God, Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to apologize to them?

Dear God, Is it true that dogs are not allowed in restaurants because we can't make up our minds what NOT to order? Or is it the accident on the carpet thing, again?

Dear God, May I have my testicles back?
10:16:03 AM  #   your two cents []  

Doc and gang have gone to the Old Schoolhouse pub (near the canal in Ballsbridge) and anyone is welcome to join them. His blog still says Paddy Cullen's but you get the late breaking tech news here! LOL. It is 6:30-ish now and I imagine they'll be there for a pint or two.
6:40:02 PM  #   your two cents []  

Just back from having a hotdog with Doc Searls at ICT Expo. A gentleman among bloggers, and it was fun to meet the face that beams from the blog and figure out who we knew in common (I also went to university in lovely Santa Barbara, where he now lives, so that's a point in common too). Of course he would have been identifiable anyway as the man with the big Mac laptop open and about a zillion windows operational, tappy-tappy-tapping as he multitasked a row behind me...

Cycling home I wondered that we have become so blandly globalised that Irish IT shows serve hot dogs. It was pretty scary looking, but rather, um, delicious... or maybe that was just the appetite worked up by a series of brief and interesting presentations on open source software at LinuxWorld, which is part of the Expo. Though the Expo organisers had taken the open in open source a little too literally and made the OSS "mini-theatre" (as they called it) a wall-less space with some chairs right in the middle of the showfloor. Not the best acoustics and there was no going incognito if you were a journalist trying to pretend to Microsoft that you weren't there... not that I was (trying to pretend, that is).
3:37:58 PM  #   your two cents []  

Wow, BMC to acquire Marimba. There was a time when Marimba was one of, if not THE, hottest companies in Silicon Valley with a glamorous CEO in Kim Polese and cover story coverage regularly. Now to be acquired by this rather dull if worthy monolith, BMC. Who'd a thunk? Boy, is the dotcom hipness era ever over...:

BMC Software, Inc. (NYSE: BMC) and Marimba, Inc. (Nasdaq: MRBA) today announced they have signed a definitive merger agreement under which BMC Software will acquire Marimba for a purchase price of $8.25 per share in cash. The transaction reflects a purchase price of approximately $239 million.  After adjusting for Marimba's expected net cash balance, as of March 31, 2004, the net purchase price is approximately $187 million. BMC Software will also assume outstanding Marimba stock options and convert them into BMC Software stock options based on a conversion ratio derived from the purchase price per share. BMC Software will not be required to have a shareholder vote and expects the transaction to be accretive to earnings per share within 12 months of closing.  
3:27:36 PM  #   your two cents []  

I.B.M. Plans to Build Servers That Act Like Mainframes. I.B.M. plans to introduce server computers, priced as low as $1,500, that behave more like mainframes. [New York Times: Technology]
11:23:47 AM  #   your two cents []  

Dixons to close 106 stores. Dixons, Britain's biggest electrical goods retailer, today announced the closure of almost a third of its high street stores amid disappointing sales. [Guardian Unlimited]
11:22:27 AM  #   your two cents []  

Offshoring foes protest at IBM annual meeting. Sporadic chants of "Offshore the CEO!" punctuated a gray Tuesday morning here in Providence, Rhode Island, as about two dozen picketers representing a group of current and former IBM Corp. employees welcomed attendees to the company's annual meeting. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, this crowd-pleasing (for the US) article: Companies Finding Some Computer Jobs Best Done in U.S.. Some entrepreneurs are finding that Indias vaunted high-technology work force is not always as effective as advertised. [New York Times: Technology]

Of course, you could say the same about the US's vaunted tech work force... or Ireland's for that matter... [ducks]. Isn't this piece just a teensy bit inappropriately gloaty in tone?
11:21:46 AM  #   your two cents []  

For Linux initiates, potential initiates, or fans, LinuxWorld is on today and tomorrow as part of ICT Expo at the RDS in Dublin. Some interesting speakers including Doc Searls. Hope to get out to hear Doc today but it depends on whether I finish a story I'm working on -- I'm already behind deadline [sheepish face].
11:19:31 AM  #   your two cents []  

Looks like John Naughton was over in Ireland recently: On reflection...

Ashe Street, Tralee, seen in the window of a white van. [Memex 1.1]

John also points to this. Very interesting read:

Fascinating article by Simpson Garfinkel about Google's secretiveness. Here's a quote:

"Farach-Colton was giving a public lecture about his two-year sabbatical working at Google. The number that he was disparaging was in the middle of his PowerPoint slide:

150 million queries/day

The next slide had a few more numbers:

1,000 queries/sec (peak) 10,000+ servers More than 4 tera-ops/sec at daily peak Index: 3 billion Web pages  4 billion total docs 4+ petabytes disk storage

A few people in the audience started to giggle: the Google figures didn't add up."
10:30:35 AM  #   your two cents []  

When Einstein was left as sick as a parrot.An assistant's newly discovered diary casts fresh light on the final years of one of the 20th century's greatest scientists. [Guardian Unlimited]
10:28:33 AM  #   your two cents []  

Fast track for ID cards. National identity card legislation will be on the statute book before the general election, Blunkett predicts. [Guardian Unlimited]
10:27:57 AM  #   your two cents []  

Two from the space/time continuum :^)...: George Wald. "A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms." and Arthur C. Clarke. "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum." [Quotes of the Day]
10:25:16 AM  #   your two cents []  

California set to reject Diebold e-voting machines.. [The Register]
10:23:40 AM  #   your two cents []  

Hey! Doc Searls will be here in Dublin Wednesday, speaking at the Linuxworld part of ICT Expo. Gotta get over there for that. From Doc's website:

Mean time.

I just moved the blog to Greenwich Mean Time, since that's the zone where I'm headed today. I drive to L.A., fly to London and then to Ireland to speak at 2pm Wednesday 28 April, at LinuxWorld Ireland/ICT Expo. That's 6am here, where I'm writing this, in California, and it's still yesterday for a few more hours. In other words, the talk is coming pretty soon. (Looks like the weather will be okay, which is nice.) On Friday I head to London for the weekend, then home on Monday.

I've been corresponding (though not nearly enough to feel fully coordinated) with folks in Ireland and the U.K. about get-togethers and such. Should be a lot of fun. Can't wait to get over there.

The subject of my talk is "DIY-IT: How Open Source is turning IT into a Do-IT-Yourself Marketplace". [The Doc Searls Weblog]
10:20:40 AM  #   your two cents []  

Oh, Yeah, He Also Sells Computers. Steven Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has convinced the recording industry that he has found a solution for ending its nightmare of digital piracy. [New York Times: Technology]
10:17:41 AM  #   your two cents []  

Google Goes Public? The Rich Get Richer. Tiger Woods, Shaquille O'Neal and Henry A. Kissinger are among those lucky enough to own a sliver of Google. [New York Times: Technology] And also see: To Silicon Valley, a Sign of Things Improving
10:15:39 AM  #   your two cents []  

Busy week last week, so less posting than normal. I had a very good time (treated like a queen, actually!! :^)....) at the EGEE grid computing event down in Cork last week. I moderated two panel sessions, one comprising grid providers and one, potential grid users. I learned loads form all these bright and energetic people and have a much better insight into what is happening on the European grid front, as well as what some of the issues are (as separated out from the hype). A very interesting area of development to watch. And how cool is that Large Hadron Collider anyway?!
10:14:43 AM  #   your two cents []