Sharing Good Things with the Nokia N97 and Ovi Maps - Behind the Scenes at OviGoodThings
Written by Glenn Letham (@gletham)
Thursday, 12 November 2009
What happens when 10 mobile technology geeks get together in London for
a surprise visit? Well, in this case you get a fair bit of blogging,
loads of social book marking, a ton of mobile geotagging of photos and
videos, and you get a first look at the World's largest suspended
signpost, designed to encourage mobile device users to share details of
their favorite places and things to do... enter the Ovi Good Things
tour 2009
Yes indeed, I was one of the fortunate 10 bloggers/journos invited
to take part in a social location experiment designed to enlighten and
inform on the merits of mobile geo technology and social location.
Armed with Nokia N97 smartphones,
the ten of us (most all from Europe, with the exception of yours truly)
spent 2 days in London discussing, sharing, Twittering, blogging, and
yabbering about mobile technology, S60, the Nokia N97, Ovi maps, and
other topics centered around mobile technology, social media, and
social location (SoLo as i like to call it).
And so our journey began on Thursday, October 23 as we were paired
up in teams of 2 (5 teams in total) and each presented with a loaner
Nokia N97 (yes we gave them back) along with the all-important O2
pre-paid SIM card - When in Europe you can secure a SIM card for one
month for a mere 5 pounds! Equipped with N97s loaded with Ovi Maps 3,
we proceeded to setup the devices with all our favorite tools and apps
(I promptly loaded Gravity for Twitter, Shozu, Nokia Sports Tracker,
screen capture utility, and a few others that escape me at this time) -
I also ran the way-useful Nokia Switch application [via Bluetooth]
designed to easily import your important data (contacts, bookmarks,
notes, calendar) from another Nokia device.
The Task - Find those Good Things
We were then informed that we had a first clue, a set of
Lat/Long coordinates, which were our first hot spot to locate. Once we
arrived at the destination we were to grab a screen shot of Ovi Maps
showing our position, Twitpic a photo, and SMS in to HQ for our next
clue. The objective was to put our mobile mapping skills and knowledge
of Ovi Maps to the test (luckily I was paired with Jay Montano who did
a fine job running his N97 and Ovi Maps). My job was to Tweet and
photograph the journey and also tag images to be loaded with a Sports
Track of our journey... sad to say at this time I'm still having
difficulties getting my tracks uploaded to the Sports Tracker server -
in hindsight I should have carved up my trips into segments rather than
storing one 3 hour long journey with about 60 associated images - a bad
idea!
Our task was simple in concept, receive a set of coordinates,
proceed to that location, record the find, get a clue, then proceed to
the next location. We set out on foot with a few dollars [UK pounds] in
our pockets, our N97s (and backup devices) and one clue - a set of
geographic coordinates. Indeed it was a fun, albeit a tiring excercise
as we walked about 7 miles in total although during that time we had a
fantastic tour of the sites of London and managed to observe and record
numerous "Good Things" along the way. And so we get to the objective of
our 2 day visit to London, Ovi maps Good Things. At the end of our
scavenger hunt we found ourselves near the Tower Bridge along the River
Thames where a massive signpost was illuminated and hanging, suspended
from a large crane... the sign (and bright arrow) was pointing to a
"Good Thing" and displayed a custom message.
It was then that we learned that Nokia was encouraging users of the
latest Nokia smartphones (N97 and N97 mini) to share details of their
good things (See official PR at http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/6558/)
- this could be done via mobile messaging or via the Ovi Maps service.
You can upload and share details of your good Things at this location.
It was at that time that we found out that our journey was
arranged to coincide with the release of the Nokia N97 mini - I'm still
a little unsure why Nokia didn't elect to have us use the New "minis"
loaded with the latest Ovi Maps. Nokia was using the release to hype
details that Ovi Maps 3.0 on the Nokia N97 mini shows you where you
are with best ever street maps, satellite, terrain maps, and 2D and 3D
views for pedestrians in unfamiliar surroundings. It allows you to find
your position, search an address or location and explore local services
to get to good things in over 180 countries worldwide. Ovi Maps 3.0 is
free to download or is pre-installed. The company is asking people to
send in their 'Good Things' to http://www.nokia.co.uk/maps
or text 62010 to have it displayed above London's skyline. From an
end-user's perspective, the Ovi Maps data (think NAVTEQ), feature-rich
POIs, and pleasant UI (be sure to use maps in 3D mode) are a real treat
to use and offer what i would consider a high-end or "premium" mapping
experience - i.e. something you would easily be willing to pay for!
Care to add your own Good things? Simply locate the position of
the “Good Thing” on the map, drag a pin to placemark the location, then
simply enter details, a description etc... Save
to your favorites (add categories as well) and share with the World.
Good things are available to all users via an RSS feed of recent
additions and you can also contribute your Good Thing to appear on the
World’s largest sign post! You can start building you Good Things
collection on Ovi Maps at http://maps.ovi.com/goodthings (details from this blog post http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=5188)
About the excursion and the technology
Pitfalls of such an excercise... Like any challenge, there's
always obstacles to overcome and this was no exception. From the get
go, some of our crew seemed to have various difficulties including
getting the pre-paid SIM card inserted, configured, and connected. Once
online, the next hurdle was having all the required software loaded
(yes, this meant navigating and trying to get what you need from the
Ovi store... yes, I know, that is a little scary but then again, it is
Halloween!). To critique Ovi Store, really, if I enter an application
name in the search I would expect to be able to quickly and easily
access and download that application!
The biggest technical issue was likely establishing and maintaining
GPS connectivity. We never really nailed down if these issues resulted
from urban canyons, device failure, device OS firmware, or ?? but it
did seem that maintaining a constant, quality GPS signal while being
connected for data throughput was a huge challenge. A few other device
specific usability issues did creep up along the way as well including
the never ending battery life dilemma. I elected to tote along a second
device (n95) with 2 batteries, and i needed them! For myself, memory
issues seemed to constantly put a damper on my use of the N97... I'm
still baffled by that one as I really had no software installed on it
and only had a need to run the following: web browser, Gravity, camera,
Ovi maps, mobile gMail, and text messaging - yet I was constantly
presented with memory related conflict messages that demanded I close
an application... totally frustrating. Now keep in mind, the N97
firmware 2.0 update had not been released yet so we were using devices
with "dated" and trouble-plagued firmware.
For many of us, a standard solution was implemented... we all took
advantage of using 2 (or more) devices to get through the day! Myself,
I came prepared and in addition to using the N97 loaned to me for the
trip, I also used my trusty N95 8GB (show me any N95 user that can part
with his/her old faithful workhorse) and had a spare battery as well.
This proved to be indespensible as I used the N95 to run sports tracker
for the scavenger hunt - lucky for me as the N97 battery lasted until
about 4 PM as a result of heavy camera, video, and twitter usage during
the day. My team-mate Jay had a second N97 and a digital camera with
him in addition to the loaner N97.
Any long time Nokia (S60) device user will likely be able to
relate as to just what you have to go through when you put your
regular, FT device on the shelf for a few days, get handed a new
device, and try to get up and running "as usual" in a hurry... its
sometimes enough to keep you awake at night!
On the upside, Ovi Maps (3.0 in this case) is always a pleasure to
use. Sporting excellent data (NAVTEQ), the data viewed in 2D or 3D mode
along with handing POI data and places of interest displayed on the map
- standard map and satellite views are available. If I could make a
suggestion regarding the sharing of good things, functionality I would
love to see included in future Ovi Maps is a simple and quick way to
add POIs or "good things"... perhaps pre-configurable to assign a
hot-key for input and also including the ever popular ability to share
the location (and associated media) with my favorite social networks,
particularly Twitter, facebook, and Ovi share. I'd have to think that
with Nokia already posessing similar technology via their Sports
Tracker application and the recently acquired Dopplr (social location
sharing) that these technologies could be integrated with Maps. If the
end user is to use these capabilities though it HAS to be simple and it
HAS to work.
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