Have you heard of S60 Ambassadors? I've touched on it a few times here at the blog, most recently concerning my new job with the S60 Ambassador Marketing Team. A new campaign has been launched for all North American S60 Ambassadors to spread the word in the real world about Nokia Maps 2.0.
You know that "iPhone" buddy you have? Go show him/her what your Maps program can do that theirs can't. Show them that you can use maps without an outrageous data plan, or any data plan for that matter. Or maybe you have friends/family/coworkers that are new to the smartphone world, or don't understand why you would need GPS & navigation on a phone. Just talk to them about the benefits and then come back to the S60 site and report your stories.
Besides bragging, what are some of the benefits?"Each Ambassador will get a voucher to try our voice navigation service for 3 months. At the end of the 3 months the 25 most engaged and active Ambassadors will earn rewards. As usual, we'll assign a 2 month loaner phone each week (the E71) to the Ambassador who writes the "Report of the Week."
Not a bad deal right?
To learn more, check out this article.
Anyone can become a S60 Ambassador. Click here to sign up!
Leave a comment below if your already an Ambassador for S60. I'm curious to see how many of you are already on board.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wanted: North American S60 Ambassadors - Spread The Word About Nokia Maps
Sunday, July 6, 2008
What N82 Car Mount Do You Use? Check Out The ProClip Review
I've been meaning to show you this post for awhile now, but just kept forgetting. Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog wrote a review about the ProClip Car Mount Kit for the Nokia N82 and N95 8gb. As you can see in the picture the car mount holds the N82 tight and securely so you it doesn't go flying around in your car while driving.
I personally don't have this car mount kit for my N82 but after seeing Mark's review I am really tempted to buy one. Having your phone so easily accessible in your car will allow you to use your phone as a music player, car navigation guide, and of course communication center. Plug your phone into your car's 3.5mm jack and your jams will sound great through the car speakers.
Click here to head over read Mark's full review of the ProClip Car Mount Kit for the Nokia N82. Let me know if you use any other car mounts for your smart phone so I can check it out.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
New Nokia Maps Loader 2.0 Beta - Buy Navigation and City Guides From Your PC!
The fellas over at Nokia Beta Labs have a new PC program to help enhance your Nokia Maps experience with your N82. It allows you to purchase navigation and city guides directly from your PC. You can preview different navigation methods such as Driving, Walking, etc. before you make a purchase.
From Beta Labs,
Selecting “Guides” will let you browse through City Guides and Multimedia Guides from all over the world. Selecting one will show you information on the contents and you can download them directly to your device. It has never been so easy to find the right guide for your destination!
Also new in this program is the ability to connect several devices...
Nokia says,
New connection mode
Map Loader 2.0 now supports PC Suite connections. This means that you can connect several devices over USB or Bluetooth connection. Mass storage mode is also supported for older Nokia Maps versions and memory cards. In mass storage mode the new “Services” tab will not be available and Map Loader 2.0 will behave like Map Loader 1.x. On startup, a popup will show connected devices and will let you choose the drive/device to use. Make sure you have the latest PC Suite installed (http://www.nokia.com/pcsuite).
Keep in mind this new program is still in beta and may have bugs. Nokia is so kind to put this out their for us to try before it's ready so we can give them our personal feedback. If you try this out and have problems or suggestions be sure to leave them comments on their blog.
For more information, check out Nokia Beta Labs.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
We Have Built In Geotagging. Now What?
If you've picked up a Nokia N82 black or upgrade your original N82 to the latest firmware then you now have geotagging built in. What this does exactly is imprint the exact gps location onto your jpeg file. There are certain programs that can read this data and lay them out on a map for you or categorize your photos based on the location they were taken. A few include Flickr, Google Maps and Google Earth. I also came across a few PC based programs that have even more detailed maps that you can overlay your photos on.
In this older post from a few weeks back I talked about uploading photos to Google Maps and embedding them anywhere on the web. You can look back read that article if you want an example of embedding into Google Maps.
Before you start your own geotagged maps though you need to make sure of a few things. Go into your camera settings and enable record location. Then if your using Flickr to create the geofeed (the most common way) you gotta first go into the Flickr privacy settings and turn on the following...
When your logged into your Flickr, go to this page...
http://www.flickr.com/account/?tab=privacy
Scroll down to the area where it says "Defaults for new uploads" and you will see an option that says "import exif location data?". Click edit then click yes. Now any geotagged photo you upload Flickr will read the location data and allow you to put it on a map or give you the geofeed for embedding on other programs. Your geotagged photos that you have already uploaded won't show the location data, only newly uploaded photos.
Now when you go to your photo page you will see on the right side a "Taken In" line. Click the link "map" and you'll get just that - a map with your photo embedded. At the top of your Flickr page you can click Organize > Your Map. There you can find a full screen map of all your geotagged photos.
If you have a bunch of your photos from one even tagged you can view that tagged page and click "geofeed" at the bottom of the page. You will be given a link so that you can embed those photos into your Google Map or whatever map service that allows geofeeds.
Don't forget one thing though. These locations can be seen by anyone. If you want to erase the location data on a certain file look a few articles back here at the blog and read the guide. I got a few emails asking about this so that article should help.
For more information on geotagging with your N82 head over to this Howard Forums post where people are showing off their maps and giving eachother tips.
Have you mapped out your photos? If you have any you'd like to share, leave a comment below with a link to your map.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Photo Sharing: Point Ferman Lighthouse, Sunken City, & The Korean Bell In San Pedro, CA With The N82
Today my sister, girlfriend and myself headed out to San Pedro, CA. to visit Point Ferman Park where you can find a lighthouse and something even cooler called Sunken City right below the park. San Pedro is located on California's coast. We also visited the Korean Bell of Friendship that was given to America as a gift from South Korea over 30 years ago.
As we all know "Storytelling Rediscovered" is the catch phrase that Nokia uses to promote NOkia N82. In this post I'll share the story of my day by showing off the photos I took. Ever since I got the N82 I find myself taking a lot more pictures than I ever have and then sharing them later with friends and family. Storytelling with photos has been discovered for me.
The map below has a handful of the photos I took laid out in the exact GPS location they were shot. Using Location Tagger the N82 automatically tags all my photos with the GPS location. Location Tagger is a free application still in beta that you can try out on your phone. With the next firmware update and the release of the black N82 this will be built into the phone.
navigate and zoom using the controls on the top left to see more pictures
View Larger Map
Using the new Share Online 3.o the photos are tagged and uploaded to Flickr with one touch upload where I can then grab the feed and embed the photos into the Google map that you see below. I can go in and add titles and descriptions to each photo to explain the story of the photo. The map is live so if I go back there tomorrow and take some more shots I can upload them to Flickr and tag them accordingly. The pictures will show up on the map automatically so I can share them with friends and family. I find this great for recording trips and vacations to go back a look at them later.
Technology that the Nokia N82 brings changes the way we view our media. My parents keep photo albums that they pull out of a closet to show off when people visit. Of course this will never go away. But now we have more options. I don't keep a physical photo album myself. Instead I'll pull up a map on the internet just like the one above and show off all the pictures that way. For long distant friends or relatives I can email the map to them instead of waiting years to see them and show off my stories.
I was going to write up a tutorial to show you guys exactly how to do this but remembered that Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog wrote a good article a while back ago. Click here to learn how to embed your N82 photos on a map then onto your website, myspace, email, etc.
In the slideshow are photos from the Sunken City, Point Ferman Lighthouse, and the Korean Friendship Bell. Sunken City is a chunk of a park and road that simply fell apart and into the ocean. The land is on a cliff overlooking the ocean and just gave way over 50 years ago. I don't really know much history behind it but it was an amazing experience walking around all the rumble that is still there. Of course its all been vandalized as you can see. Some of the photos of the bunker with the locked door is a place where the US military had cannons that they could shoot into the water since Japanese subs were thought to be creeping up on the West Coast. Not sure if they ever did get that close, but it's nice to know thatour forces were there to protect us during World War II. The bunker now just sits there for everyone to check out.
Making this slideshow was easy using Ovi, Nokia's new online photo sharing service which is also integrated with Share Online 3.0. There are also ways to do this with Flickr but I prefer Ovi because of the simplicity. To make the slideshow you just go to the Ovi Channel you want to share and off to the right click the link "embed this channel". You are then taken to a page that looks like this where you can grab the code provided and embed it into your website, myspace, etc. I couldn't use Ovi for the maps because they don't currently support geofeeds like Flickr does. I've contacted Ovi about this and they said they are working on it and it will be available in the future. Hopefully that means soon so I can do away with Flickr and their $25 a year once and for all.
If you have any photos of places or events that you would like to share here at the blog via a slideshow in Ovi don't hesitate to contact me so that I can make a feature article.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Track Gold Metalist James Cracknell On His Quest via His Nokia N82
He says,
"I'm aiming to show how close Africa is to the UK by getting there in less than a week - rowing the channel, cycling down through France and Spain then swimming to North Africa. Africa is not a place on the other side of the world, as Lenny Henry said "This is your doorstep."
Travelling to Africa under my own steam has always been something that I wanted to do. The majority of the trip will be spent on a bike which is a great way to see any country.
Hopefully by challenging myself other people will sign up for one of the Sport Relief Miles, it is a great way to raise money for an amazing charity."
This of course is all sponsored by Nokia, in attempt to get the word out about the N82 and its capabilites.
If your interested in checking out James Cracknell and his adventure, click here to head over to his website. He's currently on Day 7 so his time is almost up.
