Finnish Mobile Association

Nokia has been moving in the right direction with the latest releases of the Nokia Ovi Maps for free and the Open Source Symbian. This is step towards a 21st century model in operations. FinnMob is exicited to see if these moves from the boys at the bay will make Nokia a bit leaner and meaner, cause we all saw that she was getting a little heavy and clumsy. So let’s see what these piruettes will do to the old lady and we hope to see her make some nice moves in the future.

The Ovi Maps are getting downloaded about once every second and we hope to see some statistics about the symbian release soon as well. And to be honest, Symbian does need some new cool looking clothes and a pair of sunglasses to compete with the iPhone OS and Android.

In other Nokia related news, there has been some buzz about the Nokia Radar research consept and I was there to see it at Nokia Demo House. In terms the current demo was just a cool feature as the volume could be adjusted with a simple movement of the hand, but the really intresting stuff is there to be developed – the technology can be used for so many things that it could not just be cool, but a real door opener for new novel mobile services.

FinnMob Open Bar – Lounge Opening, Friday 5.2. 14:00-18:00 Location: Innopoli 2 1st Floor, Tekniikantie 14, 02150 Espoo

(No registration needed)

Facebook: Join Facebook FinnMob Fans
Follow us on Twitter: FinnMob

The mobile digital identity front heats up today with an announcement of Gemalto’s acquisition of Valimo Wireless, the world leader in mobile authentication. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

¡Hola! FinnMob is going to Barcelona on February for the Mobile World Congress 2010!

Meet us at the MWC 10 for more information about us, our members and our offerings:

- Hall 1 (1E19). Join us at our wireless charging PowerBar, where you can recharge yourselves and your mobile devices while taking a look at the coolest and latest mobile developments from Finland.

- Hall 4, level 1 (4.1HS01). FinnMob has its joint pavilion with
Israel Mobile Association (IMA), with 10 FinnMob exhibition stands, featuring the following companies:

There are also plenty of other FinnMob member companies @ MWC.
More information about these companies can be found in our
Mobile Event Guide, which is accessible via mobile browsers
at http://m.finnmob.com or from the touchscreen at the PowerBar.

Follow our MWC activities on http://twitter.com/FinnMob. Please
use the tag #FinnMob, or reply to us @FinnMob, when
Tweeting or sharing pictures on Twitpic related to FinnMob.

FinnMob contacts onsite:

@ismorantala / +348 40 5567770
@petegreen2 / +358 40 5707911
@pvesterbacka / +358 50 5552682

Take a look at all the IMA and FinnMob (FMA) participating companies in the IMA-FMA catalog.

¡Adios! See you in Barcelona!

MWC2010 Hall 4 FinnMob Pavilion

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Here you can see the MoneyTalks Mobile / Mobile Circus performances captured by Floobs. You can see more info on the speakers from the Mobile Circus agenda here: http://www.moneytalksforum.fi/

Also do check out the great (Freight) Elevator Pitches on YouTube.com/FinnMobTube/. Log in to give your comments just like Limor Schafman. (Thanx Limor:)

And if you cannot see the videos here, then go to http://floobs.com/channel.html?id=18016

Comments and Feedback on the Mobile Circus welcomed here:

Slush09

“Slush is a slurry mixture of snow and liquidwater. In the natural environment, slush forms as ice or snow melts. This often mixes with dirt and other materials, resulting in a gray or muddy brown color. Often, solid ice or snow will block the drainage of fluid water from slushy areas, so slush often goes through multiple freeze/thaw cycles before completely disappearing.” -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Slush is something were all use to in Finland. it’ s what makes us jump for joy when crossing a busy street, be thankful to God for and remember to book our Holiday’s on the Canary Islands ( The vacation choise #1 of  Mr.Virtanen, the Mr.Smith of Finland). Slush has always been here and it has made our lives a little less enjoyable. But for Finn to get innovate you need a bit of slush?

Slush is where Nokia, MySQL and Linux came from. During this time the sun is not up when you go to work and it has gone down before you leave the office – it’s like our very own +60h/week generator for even the Mr.Virtanen working the 8-16. From these dark times of the year, dressed like inuits and battling the slush to get to work is where our innovation’s come from. Summertime Finland closes for cottage season, but during the Slush it’s all business.

Slush Helsinki is a great event, it will bring together the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem with startups, entrepreneurs and experts from various fields like marketing, software developers, legal, design, branding, everything that a new business needs to get going.

The event will feature tons of really cool startups from Finland which often have a problem to get out and meet people. Slush sets out to change all that and also let the world know that there’s Entrepreneurial life in Europe as well, even without pretending to be another wannabe Silicon Valley. But we do have some very hot startups with some very passionate entrepreneurs.

Slush09 takes place at the Cable Factory in Helsinki on November 3rd and 4th.
More information can be found at http://slushhelsinki.com

Slush! Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29857709427

Finnmob will be presenting at a two-day efficient matchmaking and networking event, the 6th MoneyTalks™ Forum 2009, with main focus on cutting edge mobile technologies.

It is an event linking high-tech and innovation based companies, corporations and international and Finnish investors. Also Elevator Pitches will take place… in an elevator.

The brand new Finnmob Pavillion will play a centric role at the event, especially on the Friday the 13th when Mobile Circus takes place with over 10 participating Finnmob member companies and great performers from the Finnish Mobile Ecosystem. Finnmob Value Proposition: No boring, nor long presentations, but true mobile interaction and involvement!

MoneyTalks™ Forum is Finland’s most important event series for high tech and innovation based companies and investors globally http://www.moneytalksforum.fi/

The event takes place on Thursday 12.11.2009 (main focus on Financing) and Friday 13.11.2009 with Mobile Circus (main focus on Partnerships). The event venue is Innopoli 2, in Otaniemi Espoo.

P.S. Also the FIG (Finnish Israel Gateway) Networking Reception is there!

During the Maemo Summit in Helsinki Nokia announced that they are porting Qt to Maemo opening up development of apps from individual apps for Symbian, Maemo and Windows mobile to a possibility of developers creating a single app that will run on all platforms.

We will see how this translates to real life apps that are kick ass, but this move does make Qt a really important platform for developers to reach numerous platforms with the same app.

If you are a developer, you might want to visit http://qt.gitorious.org for more.

Nokia  Qt integration with Maemo 5 on an N900 on Youtube

Editors note: Previously I had misspelled the linux based platforms name as Maebo, sorry about that one. Will not get it wrong again, but about typos you got to love this

With Nokia topping the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as the World’s most sustainable technology company it got us thinking about what we are doing in Finnmob. Finnmob’s mission in advocating the World’s most successful mobile ecosystem is a big one. A small country right in between the New York and Shanghai Stock Exchange geographically, but at the edges of  Europe we see sustainability as a key factor of how to work.

It’s about using your brains and your passion instead of big budgets, running lean means you run mean. The Man up north has been awakened and it isn’t Santa Claus – Even though he enjoys the ease of which innovations around mobile have brought to his work. The busy days in December haven’t been this easy for Father Christmas to create, share and update wish lists on the go and keep on track with GPS systems.

The Man up north is a running things Talkoo-style – the way of working that made Finland one of the World’s leading countries in innovation, education and social welfare after the war against Russia during WW2. It’s all about making things happen with a real sustainability and bootstrapping spirit. It’s about coming together and collaborating for common good. Personal agenda’s are out the window and it’s all about making a drive for the best end results.

And that’s what we are after at Finnmob – the best mobile ecosystem in the World. Yes, we have been successful and could be described as the best in terms of the past.  But the past is gone and tomorrow is all that matters. The mobile industry has made a jump like the Audio visual industry before us. We’ve gone from battling between Beta Max vs. VHS to DVD vs. Blue-ray. The rules have been rewritten and the amount of things possible has gone through the roof. From basic SMS to location based information of your twitter post to personalized apps and the power of the internet unleashed in to smaller and more innovative devices.

So advocating the Finnish mobile ecosystem is about making success sustainable – Doing the right things instead of the many, about being in the right places instead of enjoying cocktail parties. It’s being there where our members are, listening to them and letting them know about what’s going on while they are not there. We don’t use time talking about ourselves; we talk about our members, about what they can do.