An Unlikely Promoter Drives Nokia’s Push in Hollywood

clipped from www.nytimes.com

An Unlikely Promoter Drives Nokia’s Push in Hollywood

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Indeed, it was. While once formidable competitors like Motorola struggle just to deliver their phones on time, Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple.

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Nokia is also positioning itself as a promoter of social networking, with photo and video sharing and games for users of its cellphones. That is because Nokia predicts that in the next five years, mobile phone users will create 25 percent of the entertainment watched on so-called smartphones, like the iPhone and BlackBerries.

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Nokia joined with Sony BMG and the Universal Music Group, which have agreed to give consumers a year’s worth of free downloads they can keep indefinitely as long as they buy and use specific Nokia models.

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And to overcome Apple’s formidable lead in delivering digital entertainment to handheld devices,

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wants to bridge the gap between musicians and filmmakers and their fans, allowing consumers to get exclusive concert video and recordings or collaborate directly with artists like the director Spike Lee, whom Nokia hired recently to oversee a mobile video sharing and social networking project.

Nokia buys social networking site Plazes

clipped from www.reuters.com Nokia buys social networking site Plazes HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services. Plazes (http://www.plazes.com/) provides location-aware services that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities. To achieve new growth as the cellphone business is set to mature in coming years Nokia started to invest heavily in building up its presence in Internet service. It has offered $8.1 billion for U.S. digital maps firm Navteq — a cornerstone of its services push — and has said it would invest millions more this year and next.

Japan Snack Company Creates Mobile MMOG

clipped from www.smartmobs.com Japan snack giant - Tohato - used mobile phones, two flavor of snacks and 2D barcodes to create a MMOG allowing users to pit themselves against one another depending on which flavor (Habanero or Satan Jorquia) chosen. This marketing ploy is both attractive and addicting, which created a community around Tohato’s product. Perfect example of what the future holds in advertising and how mobile devices will play a role.

Social Networks’ Sway May Be Underestimated

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. a growing body of evidence is suggesting that traditional social networks play a surprisingly powerful and underrecognized role in influencing how people behave Christakis and Fowler took advantage of detailed records kept between 1971 and 2003 about 5,124 people who participated in the landmark Framingham Heart Study. Because many of the subjects had ties to the Boston suburb of Framingham, Mass., many of the participants were connected somehow — through spouses, neighbors, friends, co-workers — enabling the researchers to study a network that totaled 12,067 people In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit

Explosion of indie games kills “best of” Column

clipped from www.wired.com But in the last two years, things have blown up spectacularly. There are now hundreds and hundreds of superb indie games coming out every year, from creators in the United States, Japan, India, China and all points on the globe. I’m not counting the crap games, by the way. Throw them into the mix and you’re well into the thousands. Two years ago, I wrote my first column celebrating the best indie games: small, offbeat titles, programmed usually by a single auteur and given away for free I think it’s because the videogame industry has hit precisely the same maturation point that movies and music once hit. What’s more, there are now formal distribution avenues to encourage indie games — ranging from the many blogs devoted to them (TIGSource, Indie Games, Jay is Games and many more) to awards events like the Independent Games Festival and Slamdance Games.