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New Zealand is not for the faint hearted. Just ask the guys and gals who’ve been mule kicking, cannonballing and miller flipping off peaks in the first ever Burton ‘High Fives’ snowboarding competition. With a little tech magic from Nokia, this cool event showcased the Kiwi’s passion for hardcore sports perfectly. But what makes this island country such a magnet for the madly adventurous?

It dares you!

Temperate climate all year round, a third of its glorious land marked for conservation, but less than four million people. Not just filmic in the Frodo Baggins sense – it screams ‘I dare you’ thrills from every sun-buttered stone. Add history – that mighty Maori heritage and the influx of nineteenth century gold-seeking Europeans crafting skis to get around. Then spectacular caves littered with glow worms and sulphurous pools secreted in the woods. Perfect.

Upside down on elastic – really?

It’s fine, as 1980s entrepreneurs Henry Van Asch and AJ Hackett, who developed the bungy/bungee, will tell you. Want to jump 400 metres off Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown? No problem. The whole concept was inspired by a myth from Vanuatu (not in New Zealand) of an abused wife tricking her husband into jumping after her. She had vine and he did not. Some Vanuatu people land-dive still, as a harvest ritual. No fatal trickery in modern bungy though – the ‘vine’ is latex – just great opportunities for bouncy scream-inducing leaps. Both North and South Islands offer it.

You better roll with it

Remember a big white ball called Rover, that followed The Prisoner in sinister fashion? Well you can be inside something similar and zorb your way around – but this one is transparent. OK, so you may not see a complete inventory of landscape clearly – those beaches, mountains, lakes, rivers and forests will be going round and round as you do. Invented in New Zealand, you can also do liquid zorbing, where water is added, or hydro-zorbing, where you roll on a lake. What’s not to like?

Water babies

You can always do white water rafting in New Zealand. Or take a spin in a jet boat. The country is at one with water, with its ‘outdoor-can-do’ sportsy attitude. Last century, farmer Bill Hamilton developed the jet boat to navigate through even 3cm of shallow water, to reach inaccessible land. But if you’ve been there, done that, then black water rafting is the thing. While if you like alliteration and small spaces, then fun and adventure in Hagga Honking Holes in Waitomo is ideal. New Zealand also offers spelunking (deep water diving within caves) and cave abseiling for the claustrophobia-adverse.

The fun never stops

New Zealand has an adept way of not simply showing you their country, but making you use it. Mountain? Cycle up it. Rocky slide called Bealey Slide in Arthur’s Pass National Park? Try scree running. Glacier? You can go by helicopter to the best known – Franz Josef. There, you can see a frozen waterfall and walk on top of ice, staring at the drop below and squeezing your way through crevasses.

Like a savvy cook plundering every bit of the chicken for a meal, New Zealanders use every geographical asset they have. Feast on it all – it’ll make your heart beat faster.

image credits: imprinttours, misterbisson

Well hello there. Welcome to the new and improved Nokia Connects on Nokia Conversations! While we settle in and make ourselves at home at the new residence, why don’t you take a look around?

In case you’ve missed it, what’s actually changed? See here for full details, but in a nutshell, the new look Nokia Connects will focus less on us and more on our community, as we celebrate all the great stuff you guys are up to. Things like amazing videos, photos and Nokia experiences. 

The trial programme is growing (let us know if you’re interested in trialling a phone!) and we are, as ever, available for a chat on Twitter on @Nokia_Connects (say hi!).

We hope you enjoy the new site – if you have any questions, please give us a shout.

Image credit: Suzy Taylor

A few years ago I was standing in a queue at a bank when an elderly woman’s mobile phone rang loudly with the crazy frog ringtone. I have never seen someone blush so brightly.

The moral of the story, of course, is to never be caught out with an embarrassing ringtone. You can play it safe by using one of the standard ringtones that comes with your phone, but who wants to use the same ringtone as everyone else?

With the Lumia smartphone you can easily make your own ringtones. There are apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace to help you do this, but we think you’ll get much more satisfaction if you can do it yourself!

So, in the latest of our practical guides, here is how you can create custom ringtones for your Lumia.

The ringtone file

The first thing you will need is a media file – the song, tune or sounds that you want to be your ringtone. This file needs to meet the following criteria:

• It must be in the MP3 or WMA format
• Less than 40 seconds long
• Less than 1MB
• Not protected by digital rights management (DRM)

I have come across several fun homemade ringtones that may inspire you to do something similar. A friend of mine recorded his daughter singing; a Formula 1 fan recorded the sound of the cars speeding past and a cricket fan used the shout of ‘Howzat’ as their custom ringtone.

Let your imagination run wild, but always be mindful that your file meets the requirements above.

Depending on your computer or laptop, you can probably record audio using the built-in microphone, external headset or webcam.Audacity is an excellent audio editing suite for both Windows and Mac.

Alternatively, record with your Lumia using a voice recorder app. I would recommend Pocket Recorder, which is free and also lets you assign your recorded files as a ringtone, but wouldn’t you rather learn how more about the manual process?

Setting your file as a ringtone on your Lumia

Once you have the media file on your computer and you are happy with how it sounds then you need to synchronise it to your phone and assign it as the ringtone on your Lumia.

If the file is already on your Lumia, then you still need to assign it as a ringtone first.

The steps are slightly different on a PC and a Mac, so we’ll them each in turn.

Zune for PC users

1. In Zune, find the media file you want to turn into a ringtone
2. Right-click on the file and select Edit
3. In Genre list, click or type ringtone and press OK

Connect your phone to your PC with a USB cable and transfer your file to your Lumia. Then on your Lumia:

1. Go to Settings
2. Go to Ringtones + Sounds
3. Select Ringtone and then scroll down to the file that you’ve created to make it your ringtone.

Windows Phone Connector for Mac & iTunes

1. In iTunes, find the file you want and right-click and select Get Info
2. On the Info tab, find genre and type ringtone and click OK.

Open Windows Phone Connector for Mac and synchronise the file to your phone and then repeat the three steps above on your Lumia.

Making custom ringtones sounds like a daunting task but hopefully this guide demonstrates that it is relatively straightforward and simple to do.

Let us know if you have been making custom ringtones for your Lumia and if you’ve created something unique.

Image credit: Ernest Vikne and MacKinnon Photography

How do you spell competitive, stimulating fun? W O R D A M E N T, that’s how. It’s different to your usual hack and slash game and it really challenges the mind.

We first wrote about Wordament back in March and since then it’s grown to a hugely popular word spelling game, receiving 4.5 stars from over 15,000 ratings.

The idea of the game is really simple. You’re presented with a square grid of 16 letters from which you need to spell out as many and as long a word as possible. Each letter must be adjacent to the previous one and you spell the word by tracing it on the screen without lifting your finger.

Each letter is assigned a score, so make sure you make the most of those high-ranking letters and use them whenever possible in order to score big.

The length of each game only lasts for two minutes so you need to think fast. While you may not think that’s an issue, it is when you consider that you’re playing the exact same set of tiles with every other player around the world. They’re all trying to beat you and you must return the favour.

After the two minutes is up, you’ll see on the leader board how well you’ve done and you can also compare your efforts with everybody else who was playing.

Wordament is an Xbox LIVE title, which means that there are achievements to be won. Some are easy to achieve, however some are only accessible for the VERY good Wordament players.

One nice feature is the addition of guest mode. You know how it is. Somebody wants to play for a bit but you don’t really want him or her to play, as they’ll mess up your rankings. This lets them play without compromising your hard-earned stats.

With every board guaranteeing over 100 possible words, you’ll find it almost impossible to exhaust the board before your time runs out.

Wordament is free and can be downloaded right no and available for the Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 900.

Have you played? What’s your best ranking? Let us know, in the comments below.

Image credit: Laineys Repertoire

Today, we’d like to tell you about a great tool that helps SMBs (Small and Medium Business) put their business on the map and attract customers, free of charge, with Nokia Prime Place.

At Nokia we care about our customers and work hard to deliver a great user experience. In line with this, we aim to deliver great experiences and support discovery and adventures. We have been working with small and medium size businesses since 2010 and now offer primeplace.nokia.com in 20 countries and 11 languages.

Prime Place enables business owners to add their business listing free of charge to Nokia Maps on web and mobile, share opening hours, website and contact details, and add lots of images to show what their business or service is all about, and why you can’t miss to visit! This provides Nokia customers with lots of unique businesses that can be discovered, wherever you are, and helps you to be a local anywhere.

We understand SMBs and know that time and budget to promote your business is often limited. This is why Nokia Prime Place was born. We offer an end to end experience from adding your business listing to the map and becoming discoverable, to enriching your business page with content, like images or opening hours. To round up your business page, we’ll automatically pull in reviews from partners like Qype and TripAdvisor. This gives your business additional credibility.

We keep adding and improving Prime Place features that we believe are of essence to SMBs and to date, are proud to offer:

Account Management – We have introduced users roles (owner, admin, manager) in order to address the need of businesses with a larger number of locations to manage access rights.

Facebook publishing – Businesses can now publish posts about their business(s) to their FB wall or existing FB pages, directly from the Prime Place dashboard.

Secure place verification – To ensure that no-one else claims your business listing on your behalf, we offer a versatile and secure verification system. Businesses can choose between postcard, phone verification and credit card verification in most countries.

Bing Adcenter – Should you decide that you want to give your business that extra boost, then we offer a direct link to Adcenter, where you can create ads to promote your business.

You can join Nokia Prime Place with you small or medium business anytime and for free at primeplace.nokia.com

It is only because of the good taste of Nokia Conversations readers that I discovered Weather Flow and it has rapidly become an indispensable app on my Lumia 800.

As many of you pointed out, Weather Flow is a beautiful app to look at, it is charming to use and delivers on its core purpose with maximum efficiency.

As it happens, the brains behind Weather Flow is the developer of another Windows Phone app that we had written also about enthusiastically: Cocktail Flow.

The creator of both these apps is Gergely Orosz, 27, a Hungarian national who has been living in London for the last couple of years.

Despite being ‘not really interested in computers’ as a child, he ended up becoming a computer science major at university and only then at 21 years old did he begin to consider a career as a software developer. 

Now, Gergely works in partnership with his brother’s mobile app development company, Distinction.

He spoke to me about the work behind Weather Flow, the importance of good design and the advantages of developing for Windows Phone.

How did you start developing for Windows Phone?

We were software developers who had heard about Windows Phone coming out. We were a small team of developers and a designer and we decided we should try to write an application for it.

We came up with the concept of a cocktail application just because we had a cocktail database at the time. So, Cocktail Flow was the first Windows Phone app we did. 

What’s the story behind Weather Flow?

We came up with the idea about a year ago and there were already some weather apps out there but we wanted something that fitted much more natively into Windows Phone.

We did a lot of research, we went through all the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and of course Windows Phone applications and we tried to categorise them to see what kind of weather apps were successful, and why they were successful.

To our surprise, we found that the highest rated and most downloaded weather apps on all the platforms were extremely simple. The complex apps with tonnes of features never got good ratings or made it to the top of the list. 

That told us that most of the people wanted their weather application to have a simple interface and tell them what the weather is like now and later in the week, without any of the fancy stuff. So we went down this route with a bunch of prototypes, had our friends try it out and then we refined it.

Many of the comments say that your apps are beautiful. How important is design to you? 

I think that is the most important thing in all of our apps.

Our apps are robust and all those things but our design separates us from the competition.

We place a lot of emphasis on it and we have a really good designer in our team. When developing any app we spend a huge amount of time prototyping and creating animations to give it a native and natural feel. 

What are the striking differences between the different mobile platforms?

In terms of my motivation and how applications sell on different platforms, Windows Phone, in terms of purchases per user, does very well. Windows Phone is side-by-side with iPhone, but Android is way, way behind. You have to put a lot of resources in Android and it is really heard to monetise.

As a developer, what are the advantages of working in Windows Phone? 

Apple does a really good job of making sure that about 75% of its phones are updated to its latest OS. On Windows Phone it is 100%, which immediately is an awesome win. If you test an app on one device you know it will work on all devices.

Also, the development environment, I think has the best performance, the best features and the best emulator. A lot of developers still don’t redesign their apps for Windows Phone, they just port the design and user interface from their Android or iPhone app. We don’t do that and it works because our applications get high ratings and good downloads.

What are you working on for the future?

We are very much looking to Windows 8 and putting our apps onto tablets as well. We’re also looking to put our apps onto Windows Phone 8.

We are expecting Windows 8 to be opening up the market very much in terms of download numbers and more developers, so the earlier you are there the better position you are in. 

Have you switched to Lumia recently? Well, we want to hear your story! We recently travelled on planes, trains and automobiles to find out what new members of our community had to say about the Lumia family. And we’re not stopping there. Your town could be next…

We’re always seeing recent Nokia owners talking about their newfound love for Lumia, so we’ve decided to escape the confines of Nokia HQ and pay some of you a visit. Here are the initial fruits of these labours: two interviews from Lumia switchers, and an infographic to help you understand in numbers why people are loving life with Lumia right now.

First stop on our trip was Drew from Toronto in Canada, who filled us in with some interesting news about employees of a certain other smartphone manufacturer…He also expressed his love of the Lumia 800 interface (which is pretty gorgeous, even if we say so ourselves):

Bidding Drew a fond farewell, we jumped on the next plane across the Atlantic to (somewhat surprisingly) sunny Scotland. We arrived in the beautiful city of Glasgow and tracked down Chris to chat to him about his experiences with the Lumia 800 after switching from a Motorola Atrix. Here’s what he had to say:

Chris and Drew’s feedback was music to our ears – and they weren’t the only ones. We also asked our Twitter community for their reasons for switching, and we were pretty taken with these responses too. So taken, indeed, that we made them into a pretty infographic:

:

[click for bigger]

As for the rest of you, are you thinking of switching to Lumia? Or have you already switched? Either way, we want to hear from you.

Pondering a change? Why then, request a trial! Already switched to Lumia? Tell us why! That’s what the comment section is for – and Twitter too, if you’re feeling pithy. We’re looking for more switching stories, and we may be heading to your neck of the woods very soon!

Your Nokia Lumia smartphone is a peerless operator in the digital realm but helpful can it be in the real world?

I’m not talking about using your Lumia to bash in some nails (even though we all know that it can do that as well) but using your smartphone to help you around the house in a well, smarter, way.

Doing general jobs around the house can be deeply infuriating, as well as hugely satisfying, so you need to tool up properly if you’re going to make a decent job of it.

Thankfully, there are plenty of apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace that can transform your Lumia into a veritable Swiss-knife of DIY usefulness.

So, the next time you have a shelf that needs putting up, make sure you have your Lumia close to hand and give these apps a try.

Flashlights

To anything around the home, you need to be able to see what you’re doing.

Flashlight-X is a highly rated free app (over 1700 reviews and averaging four and half stars) that uses the camera’s LED flashlight to turn your Lumia into a torch.

Other nifty features include a compass, SOS mode and shaking the phone to turn the light on and off.

Measurements

Getting your measurements right goes a long way to ensuring a decent outcome for any DIY job.

This app turns your Lumia’s screen into a Ruler (FREE). You’ll need to calibrate it the first time you use it (because of different screen sizes) but this is simple to do and you only need to do it once. You can also switch between centimetres and inches with a click of a button.

If you want to try obtaining measurements by some more hi-tech means then give RollRuler (FREE) a try.

This uses your phone’s sensor to measure distances while you are ‘rolling’ your phone. Beware though; even the developer says the results are only approximate.

Spirit level

Trying to hang pictures on the wall and making sure that they are hanging straight can be a real nightmare. This is where you need a spirit level.

Another Level (FREE) does just the job for Lumia and a little more besides. Cleverly, your Lumia vibrates when it is held at 0 degrees horizontally or vertically and there is also a graph mode that shows the changes in angles over time.

Along similar lines, is MagicLevel (FREE), which combines a spirit level with your Lumia’s camera. Not sure how useful this is in DIY situations but maybe it can help you put an end to taking wonky photos?

Tiling

I think there is only one thing more difficult than tiling a bathroom or kitchen and that is working out how many tiles you need to buy for the job in the first place.

Tile Calculator (FREE) is a must if the mystery of numbers is an impenetrable fog for you. Tell the app the size of your tiles and then the width and height of your walls and it will work out how many tiles are required.

It even includes some useful tips for a happy tiling experience.

General

It is always useful to have a toolbox around the house and that is no exception when it comes to your Lumia.

Here are a few all-purpose DIY toolkits for your phone.

Carpenter’s Friend, FREE

This has a protractor, spirit level, ruler, spirit level and plumb bob to keep you on the straight and narrow. There is also a unit converter so you can see imperial and metric measurements.

Cool Tools, FREE

Cool Tools is an all-purpose digital utilities app. As well as things like a flashlight, stopwatch and a ruler, it also has some more specialist features like an accelerometer and soundchecker.

Tools for Phone 7, FREE

You can’t really accuse the developer behind this app of not trying – it even includes a password generator, simple Morse code and a teenager repellent that blasts a 17khz sound at unruly mobs of youngsters and is not heard by adults.

Those features are on top of the calculator, ruler, screen light, level, seismometer, random number generator, list manager and massager.  Yes, a massager, which is basically your phone’s vibrate function but running for 1 minute or 5 minutes depending on how tired you are.

A massage is the least that you deserve after all that DIY work.

Image credit: Kanemojo

Welcome to the latest version of Nokia Conversations.

With this new release, we welcome our colleagues from the Nokia Connects blog, bringing the two sites, Connects and Conversations, together as one.

From the point of view of readers, we know that having lots of different Nokia blogs isn’t ideal. Earlier this year, we integrated posts from the Location team here on Conversations, instead of Nokia having a separate Maps blog.

Now, the Connects team join us too, to create a bigger, more inclusive site than ever before. 

So that means there’s now just one destination for all the latest from Nokia. It means this site will be livelier and more packed with content. And also that you’re not reading the same news twice, if you follow both sites.

The blog is split into three main sections:

• News – the latest announcements and happenings at Nokia
• Features – deeper dives into products and the people behind them
• Connects – The wider world of Nokia, the community around it and the content you used to read at Nokiaconnects.com

There’s also a whole section devoted to Location, of course.

Lastly, we’d like to welcome the new writers from the Connects team: Joel, Paul and Tom. We look forward to reading their posts and to a richer, more varied mix on the site.

As well as taking remarkable photographs, it would appear that the Nokia 808 PureView is also pretty good at winning top prizes and attracting stellar reviews.

Ever since it won the Best New Handset award after it was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, the 808 PureView has been attracting prizes like a magnet.

Last week, the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) honoured the 808 PureView by declaring it the best product for European Mobile Photo Achievement 2012-2013.

This is a prestigious and notable award because EISA represents more than 50 specialist consumer electronics magazines in 20 European countries.

In its citation, EISA said PureView technology was:

“A major leap forward in mobile devices and brings high-quality photo features to the masses.”

This EISA achievement follows the 808 PureView’s award for Best Imaging Innovation from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA).

Reviews round up

Reviewers have been just as enthralled by the Nokia 808 PureView as the award committees.

Since our first reviews round up in late June there have been plenty more that have showered the device with effusive notices. Here are some more that have caught our eye.

dpreview.com

We have briefly mentioned the Gold Award from dpreview.com before, but it’s worth looking at the review in more detail. 

As you would expect of a website that specialises in digital SLR cameras, the review is wholly concerned with the 808 PureView’s capabilities as a camera.

The reviewer, Barney Britton, says:

“As a cameraphone, the Nokia blows its competition out of the water, and significantly narrows the gap between dedicated cameras and portable communications devices to the point where ultimate convergence seems all but inevitable.”

He concludes that PureView technology is arguably most ‘important innovation in mobile photography since the dawn of the smartphone era.’

A few days after this review was posted, Damien Dinning, the lead program manager for Imaging Experience at Nokia, responded to some of the points that were raised. Read that article here.

WSJ.com

Ben Rooney on the Wall Street Journal website tested the 808 PureView during a family holiday. He found:

“This is an incredible cameraphone… After 10 days of intensive use, shooting video and stills on a family holiday, it will be hard to hand the phone back.”

Noting that the video and sound quality was excellent, Ben says that the 808 PureView could be ‘the ultimate tool’ for journalists and also speculates ahead to PureView technology coming to Nokia’s Windows Phone smartphones. It would even make him consider dumping his existing phone.

“A Windows Phone powered PureView would be a heck of a device for those who want just a bit more from their photography.”

ITProPortal

In a wide-ranging on ITProPortal, Rob Kerr considers the 808 PureView as a phone as well as a camera. He praises the screen, build quality and says that it was ‘nippy’ to use.

The wide-range of customisable widgets is also granted a positive mention, as are the Nokia Maps and Nokia Transport apps and Microsoft Office Mobile.

However, there is no getting away from its unique selling point.

“Undoubtedly one of the best cameraphones out there – good enough even to replace some compact cameras… As a cameraphone, Nokia has raised the bar massively.”

techradar.com

In the opening paragraph of his review on techradar.com, Martyn Brett declares the 808 PureView a ‘game changer’ device with a killer camera.

It is an extremely comprehensive review looking at many different aspects of the phone, its hardware, connectivity options and the apps. In particular there is high praise for the Nokia Maps Suite of apps, which is cited as ‘arguably the best Mobile Sat Nav available.’

The 808 PureView’s media experience is also given due credit with the DLNA and HDMI output options, plus the ‘loud and powerful built in speaker.

phoneArena.com

If you have 30 minutes to spare, there is an exhaustive video review by phoneArena.com that you can watch in this video.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

You can also read the review by Daniel P. on phoneArena.com, which opens with well-deserved plaudits for Nokia’s research and development work on PureView.

The phone’s bulk, because of the enormous 41-megapixel sensor, comes under close scrutiny but Daniel swiftly concludes (just I as did) that it all makes ‘for a comfortable grip in your palm.’

“We admit that we paid the bulk of our attention in the review to the camera on the Nokia 808 PureView, because we were mesmerized by what the 41MP module is capable of.”

The 808 PureView is hailed as offering the ‘best photography a mobile device can deliver’ and as with other technology commentators, Daniel cannot resist speculating on what it could mean for future Nokia handsets.

“Here’s to hoping Nokia will popularize this amazing camera technology further by bringing it to a flagship Windows Phone 8 device, that might very well start a new smartphone era.”

For now though, he says, the Nokia 808 PureView is in ‘a league of its own.’