Nokia gives a glimpse at mobile future

Nokia today shared its vision for technologies which will impact the future of the convergence of Internet and mobility at The Way We Live Next, an exclusive briefing at the Nokia Research Center in Oulu, Finland's northern technology hub.

Presentations and demonstrations at the event highlighted areas of advanced research being undertaken by the company, many of which are in cooperation with individuals, companies and research organizations around the world, reflecting the company's drive for open innovation and establishing a strong "beta culture" -trialing and evaluating new applications and services quickly - around the company's products and services.

During the briefing, Nokia delivered presentations on topics including:
- Web technologies driving innovation in mobile,
- Nanotechnology and solutions for the environment
- The evolution of the Internet user experience
- Mobile payments and banking using Near Field Communications
- Future energy sources
- Smart Connectivity and the future of wireless broadband

Podcast interviews with the presenters are available at Nokia.

Nokia also demonstrated a range of breakthrough technologies, including:

MOSH: a one-to-many distribution platform - a targeted channel for developers and technology leaders to publish applications and other content, for mobile devices, to a global audience.

Widsets: a mobile Internet service with more than 3 million registered users and over 2000 widgets, which allows people to enjoy and share their favorite Internet content and to create and publish their own widgets in the spirit of Web 2.0.

Point & Find: an exciting new way to discover more about your surroundings, using the camera on your mobile device. The mobile device then displays relevant information about what you are looking at, fetching real-time information from the Internet.

Shoot to Translate: a demonstration using software that translates written characters into another language; the original text is captured with the camera on the Nokia multimedia computer and translation happens in real time.

Virtual worlds: in addition to previewing the first ever photographic exhibition taking place simultaneously in Second Life and the real world, Nokia showed how 3D virtual environments could be implemented on mobile devices to create an immersive user experience.

Nokia also announced a re-launch of its Beta Labs site at www.nokia.com/betalabs, with more interactive features. Beta Labs shares some of the exciting new ideas that Nokia is working on and let users help shape their future development. A strong online community has developed around Beta Labs, attracting especially technology savvy, early adopter mobile enthusiasts.

Nokia demonstrated Mobile Web Server, a beta lab application running on S60 smartphones. It allows the mobile device to function as an Internet server, making it possible for people to access content on their mobile remotely from a web browser on another device, or to allow other people to do so. Mobile Web Server takes the development of Web 2.0 communities to another level as, rather than centralizing content from many people on a single site, it emphasizes decentralization as a way of creating another kind of community.