Przedstawiciel PLAY LUBLIN

First 3D movies, then 3D TV, and now 3D printing? Those Star Wars holograms are starting to look a little old hat from where we’re standing in the twenty-first century. But, wait: what actually is 3D printing? And how’s it going to make expressing yourself with your smartphone easier? Surely slapping ink on paper is a pretty two-dimensional process, right?

Slice it right

Well, yes; but 3D printing, aka additive manufacturing, is more like building than printing—or, at least, the part we’d recognise as printing is in fact just one step in the process. Additive manufacturing takes blueprints from software like CAD or animation modelling programmes, and chops them up (virtually) into cross sections, like very thin slices. These slices then get printed (so far, so familiar), and, as the printing proceeds, the machine binds them together in order so that the virtual model from the blueprints takes shape as a 3D reality.

The binding methods vary, and the materials used for the slices also vary (paper, polymers, metal and even ceramics, glass and precious metals are all used), but though the tech is complex, the end result is the same: rather than merely printing out the blueprints for construction or model-building or parts manufacturing, 3D printers can be used to print functional components from scratch.

The 3d printed pluses

Any catch? Not really. 3D printing is faster than ordinary manufacturing, and, if you’re working with relatively small quantities of parts, it can also be less expensive than, for instance, injection moulding processes. And, unlike what the industry has started to call ‘subtractive’ manufacturing, there’s very little waste.

Instead of cutting and drilling into your raw materials to stick them together and leaving large offcuts behind, additive manufacturing only uses the exact material needed to make the part. Plus you cut down on the manufacturing needed to make the very specific manufacturing tools themselves, since the 3D printer does all the work. The tech isn’t perfect yet; it’s not dirt cheap and it’s messy if it goes wrong (think goo!), but it’s improving very quickly.

A swell shell

So how does it affect me? To start with 3D printers are starting to break into the domestic market, with prices in the low thousands, which has got to be getting plenty of cottage industry crafters very excited indeed. The model-making possibilities for engineers and designers have exploded; 3D printing makes it considerably faster to produce a prototype than ever before. What’s more, office suppliers, Staples, are soon to open European branches with a 3D print facility. Then of course there’s the Nokia initiative to help people to 3D print shells for their Nokia Lumia 820s.

Express yourself

Why have we done this? Well, for a start, personal expression is part of Nokia’s design DNA. In fact, we’ve created phones that help people stand out from the crowd for decades. By working with Makerbot to make 3D printing affordable, we hope to both inspire personal expression, and accelerate the development of an exciting new technology.  Added to that it’s incredibly exciting to see what people create and how they makes shells to reflect their personalities and lifestyles.

Living in the future just keeps getting better and better, but what most excites you about the 3D possibilities? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo credit: My Nokia Blog

W pierwszym kwartale 2013 przeszło do PLAY najwięcej, jak do tej pory, klientów ze swoimi numerami;-) Czy to efekt bardzo skutecznej kampanii reklamowej? Zobaczcie sami kilka liczb. Jesteśmy bardzo zadowoleni i tak łatwo nie oddamy żółtej koszulki lidera!

Czas na wieczorną lekturę Takie raport pojawia się tylko raz w roku dlatego trzeba zwrócić na niego szczególną uwagę! PLAY daje rade Zobaczcie zresztą sami jak dobrze radzimy sobie zarówno w kategorii abonent jak i „na kartę”. Raport liczy kilkadziesiąt stron, ale wybrałem kilka ciekawostek Ceny połączeń w wybranych planach taryfowych MNO [...]

Skończyła się przedsprzedaż BlackBerry Z10 – telefon cieszy się bardzo dużym zainteresowaniem Wraz z zakończeniem przedsprzedaży wprowadzamy telefon do oferty podstawowej. Dodatkowo zmieniają się ceny następujących telefonów: emporia Talk Comfort Huawei Ascend G300 LG Swift L5 LG Swift L7 Nokia C3-01 Nokia Lumia 610 Samsung i8160 Galaxy Ace II Samsung S6102 Galaxy Y Duoz [...]

W pierwszym kwartale 2013 przeszło do PLAY najwięcej, jak do tej pory, klientów ze swoimi numerami;-) Czy to efekt bardzo skutecznej kampanii reklamowej? Zobaczcie sami kilka liczb. Jesteśmy bardzo zadowoleni i tak łatwo nie oddamy żółtej koszulki lidera!

Czas na wieczorną lekturę Takie raport pojawia się tylko raz w roku dlatego trzeba zwrócić na niego szczególną uwagę! PLAY daje rade Zobaczcie zresztą sami jak dobrze radzimy sobie zarówno w kategorii abonent jak i „na kartę”. Raport liczy kilkadziesiąt stron, ale wybrałem kilka ciekawostek Ceny połączeń w wybranych planach taryfowych MNO [...]

Skończyła się przedsprzedaż BlackBerry Z10 – telefon cieszy się bardzo dużym zainteresowaniem Wraz z zakończeniem przedsprzedaży wprowadzamy telefon do oferty podstawowej. Dodatkowo zmieniają się ceny następujących telefonów: emporia Talk Comfort Huawei Ascend G300 LG Swift L5 LG Swift L7 Nokia C3-01 Nokia Lumia 610 Samsung i8160 Galaxy Ace II Samsung S6102 Galaxy Y Duoz [...]

Although HERE is available on different devices and OS, it works best on Nokia Lumia. Windows Phone 8 allows Nokia, Microsoft and third parties to develop location experiences based on the HERE platform. Also, the popular HERE Maps, HERE Drive(+), HERE Transit and HERE City Lens are optimized for specific uses, so you get exactly the information you need whether you’re walking, driving or catching the train. These HERE experiences also make the most out of Windows Phone 8 and its Start screen. Let’s see how.

The home beacon

With HERE you can always know how to get home on foot, by train or by car. Just pin your home address to the Start screen from HERE Maps, HERE Drive or HERE Transit. The last option is particularly useful after a night out in the cool bars of your city.

The traveller

It’s easy to collect places you want to visit on your travels. You can add them as favourites on the go on your smartphone or at home on here.com: they’re all automatically synchronised. But this isn’t everything. You can pin the directions to that particular art gallery with HERE Maps. No matter how many detours you take on the way, you can always get to the destination with a tap.

The foodie

If you love to try out all the restaurants in the city, you can pin the eat&drink category of HERE Maps to your Start screen. No matter which neighbourhood you’re roaming around, you always know what’s hot.

But you can also be more specific with your restaurant search. Let’s say you are a sushi lover, you can search for it with HERE City Lens and pin it to the Start screen. The next time you are craving for some maguro nigiri, you’ll find a sushi restaurant by just looking through your smartphone camera.

These are just few examples and the possibilities are endless. You can also use kid’s corner to create a location dashboard. Are you pinning any destinations, directions or place categories to your Start screen? Let us know in the comment section below or tweet to @heremaps.

image credit: puliarf

We all know that the Nokia Lumia 920 is one of the best camera smartphones on the planet.  Tech blog The Next Web said of it, “ Its camera is exceptionally good, including a f/2.0 8.7-megapixel sensor, but the magic is in its optical image stabilization and low-light sensitivity.” And we, of course, agree. Happily, we’re not alone, because Noka Lumia Lovers far and wide have been enjoying the benefits of this low light wizardry to take some stunning photos.

Last week, we asked you to share some of your best with the world. Here’s ten, which blew our collective minds. 

London by Goangeek

Hoan Kim Lake, Vietnam by David Durance  

Lyons’ eye by Rami Kondii

Houses by Mareah

Bangkok by night by Janne Huhtanen

Tampere Cathedral by Anna K

Han Sung Sot Cave by Gerald Sarmiento

Guitar man by Busted Buttons

Christmas tree by Toowicked

Street life by Fakhr-E-Alam

Auckland Sunrise by Steve Chadbourne

We love them all, but which of these fantastic photos do you think best showcases the Nokia Lumia 920′s magical low light properties? Let us know in the comments below.

We’re very proud of our phones, not least because of their durability.

Late last week, a report appeared in the Finnish newspaper Iltasanomat that made us prouder than ever.

According to the paper, construction worker Ossi Pyykkönen lost his Nokia Lumia while driving a 24-ton earth mover through a Finnish mining site. Fortunately, a colleague found the missing phone half-a-metre below ground when they heard it ringing. Seemingly, the phone had been driven over by the massive vehicle. The screen had unfortunately been cracked during the incident, but the phone remained fully operational.

This is not the first time we have received reports of almost supernatural powers of survival.

Late last year, we received reports of people driving over the Lumia 920 with a car. Not to mention this video of a Lumia 900 being used with, and as, a hammer.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Sons of the 3310

Just recently, we heard that a Finnish store had set out to recreate Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking parachute jump from the edge of space using a Lumia 920. Without the parachute.

The guys at NokNok put a Lumia 900 into a Mach 5 wind tunnel, to see how it fared. It isn’t their first attempt at destroying our phones, having previously been filmed setting a Nokia phone in jelly.

In 2009, The Sun covered the story of a Nokia recovered from the belly of a fish. It still worked, amazingly.

Of course, we don’t encourage any of these activities and we do concede that it’s perfectly possible to break your Nokia phone just by dropping it, if you’re unlucky.

However, every time we hear one of these shocking tales of survival against the odds, it reminds us once again why we’re proud of our Nokias.

image credit: Neil Kremer