sie
7
One of the many great features about Nokia Drive is the ability to have a complete offline experience – so you can get to where you want, even without a data connection.
Offline functionality has always been very important for Nokia Drive on several of our platforms and it is something we love.
In our opinion, it is superior to others because it offers a great experience such as search and route planning all completely offline. And, it seems, we are not the only ones who love it.
A comprehensive review and hands on test in Engadget has concluded that:
Nokia Drive is the best purely offline navigational tool on the market, on any mobile platform.
Driving cross country
Engadget’s Darren Murph used Nokia Drive, on a Lumia 900, in its offline mode for a trip of 1,800 miles across the United States and says he was ‘downright shocked at just how fast everything operated.’
“Nokia Drive is a beautiful app to look at. The icons are big, bold and polished, with fonts that are pleasing and easy to view from afar. You aren’t inundated with useless information, and in my humble opinion, Nokia provides the perfect amount of data – it’s just enough to take advantage of at a glance.”
In an effusive review, Darren praised Nokia Drive’s simplicity, comprehensive mapping and even the nice voice of the navigational assistant.
He also shared a useful tip about the ability to set up a speed alert (go to Settings), so that you know you are always driving on the right side of the law.
As someone with an ‘unnatural adoration of travel’ it seems that Darren has used his fair share of navigational devices, so it makes his enthusiasm for Nokia Drive all the sweeter.
“If you’re an avid traveller, and you haven’t given Windows Phone a chance, you should. Nokia Drive is honestly reason enough to consider switching if you use your phone for navigating as much as you do texting or calling, and I’ve reason to believe that it’ll only get better with age.”
Offline Maps on Nokia Drive
Download your maps by going to Settings > Manage Maps > Add New Maps within Nokia Drive. As well guiding you to your destination, the offline experience will also let you search for known places of interest and even reroute during your journey.
Nokia Drive and the full offline experience is available for all Lumia devices, the Nokia N9 and Nokia Belle smartphones.
Have you had a chance to use Nokia Drive with an offline map yet? Let us know how you got on.
Tags: None
sie
7
After testing the magnificent Nokia 808 PureView, I concluded that it had made my digital compact camera redundant.
Why carry two things around when you have a phone that takes arguably better photos than a standalone camera anyway?
This got me thinking: what else has the smartphone replaced and what could it replace in the near future?
With the constant development of new apps and new hardware the potential of the smartphone is limitless. Take NFC for example. It’s a feature that is still relatively new to the market, and whose uses are still being explored.
It won’t happen today, and probably not tomorrow either, but eventually we could find ourselves living with less clutter and a single super device that serves all of our daily needs.
Would this be a good thing? If you a lost a smartphone that you are overly dependent on then it could spell disaster. History shows, though, that you cannot stop the relentless march of technology.
So, here are 10 common household items that have been replaced already by the smartphone or, potentially, could be replaced by them in the future.
The home phone
Let’s start with the obvious. I haven’t had a landline connected to my house for a few years now, and even then I only needed it for a broadband connection.
Increasingly, everyone was calling me on my mobile phone and if the home phone rang, then I could be sure that it was a marketing call. The installation of cable broadband meant I could say goodbye to my home phone forever.
Growing up, asking someone if they had a home phone number was tantamount to asking them if they had an indoor toilet. Now, strangely, not having a landline is also a sign of progress.
Stereo player & CDS
This will never be case for music fans that insist vinyl is superior to digital, but my smartphone is now my principle music player. It’s certainly true when I am commuting or travelling, but increasingly so at home also.
Play To is a fantastic way of playing music from your Lumia to any DLNA-enabled device. Plus, who needs a large CD collection when you have Mix Radio?
Photo albums
Remember your embarrassment as your parents showed your friends your childhood photos?
The dawn of digital photography has largely banished the glossy photo albums into the dustbin of history, but that doesn’t mean you are safe just yet; the photo albums stored on a phone have merely replaced them.
The advantages are legion. You don’t have to worry about taking up lots of shelf space and the number of images you can save and edit is practically limitless. Who needs a magnifying glass when you can pinch the screen and zoom in?
Remote controls
On my coffee table are remote controls for my TV, DVD player and games console. I’m sure that some of you will have even more than three.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could operate all these multimedia appliances with your smartphone?
There are, in fact, many apps already within the Windows Phone Marketplace that transform your Lumia into a remote control for various programmes or pieces of kit.
It’s clearly possible for your smartphone to replace all your remote controls but that’s not the same as saying it’s going to happen.
Wallet
The cashless society has been spoken about for many years, but has yet to really materialise. Could it be the smartphone that finally ushers in the digital wallet?
Banks have already started exploring NFC for contactless payments and new apps and services are making it easier all the time to buy and pay for things through our phones.
I think this would make life more convenient, but it would be tough to let go of handling crisp, new banknotes!
Calendars
A former staple of everyone’s festive gift list, the calendar now only exists as an app on my smartphone.
I see the appeal of having a calendar with nice photos displayed on a wall, but it can’t compete with the ability to add alerts, synchronise across multiple devices, create invites and all the other things that a good calendar app can do.
Keys
This one might take a greater leap of imagination.
If there are three things you’ll always carry with you when leaving the house, it’s your house keys, smartphone and wallet, right? I just think it would make life easier if you only needed to carry one item.
If we are prepared to pay for things with our smartphones – trusting it with our hard earned cash – then I don’t see why using our smartphones to lock and open our front doors would be so frightening.
I’ll be the first thing to say that I don’t know how, technically, it would work; perhaps using NFC or through an app with facial recognition software. If we’ve put man on the moon…
Calculator
Is anyone going to seriously argue that they prefer carrying around a standalone calculator?
OK, if you’re an accountant, then you’re exempt but for everyone else the smartphone will do just fine.
Passport
Isn’t the smartphone, with all our contacts, photos and calendar appointments just as crucial to our identities as our passports?
I am envisaging some kind of digital fingerprint with your crucial details being stored on your smartphone and then easily read whenever you pass through an airport. Obviously, this file can be transferred every time you get a new device.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. A security risk? Maybe? Modern passports though are merely booklets with all the information stored on a chip as well.
Filing cabinets
I have a confession to make: I am a hoarder. I have utility bills and miscellaneous paper work going back years and years. I still have instruction manuals for things I threw out a long time ago.
Thanks to the advent of PDFs, digital storage and cloud services such as SkyDrive, I can now start to tidy up a little. The smartphone has made accessing these files easier and faster and I can do it whenever and wherever I am.
Am I putting more weight on the smartphone than it can bear, or do you think it can help replace many other things in our daily lives?
Image credits: JD Hancock, redjar, empirical_perception and jma.work.
Tags: None
sie
7
The school holidays were always my favourite time of year when I was growing up but for my parents it was probably a different matter.
After all, keeping a young child occupied for the best part of a month is no easy task. It can also be an expensive time, especially if you are looking after more than one child. Going to theme parks was not cheap, even in the 1980s!
Thankfully, the world has moved on considerably since I was young, and there are now more things to keep young people occupied in addition to marbles and spinning tops.
Fresh air and outdoor activities is an important part of the mix, but your Nokia Lumia smartphone can also play a helping hand.
Here are 10 free apps that can keep your kids busy and some of them could even be called educational – bonus!
Practical things to do are always a winner. This app provides easy instructions in the ancient Japanese art of paper folding.
There are a whole host of models that you can choose to make and then swipe through each screen for a diagram and step-by-step instructions.
The origami models include a bird, a hat, sail boats and a frog, which looks particularly challenging.
This is a highly amusing and devilishly addictive version of the classic Simon Says memory game.
Like the original, the idea is to repeat the exact sequence of sounds from the different animals on the screen. What starts off really easy, soon becomes a stern test of your memory.
Simon Cow replaces the computer sound effects with farmyard animals. The game can be customised so that you can have more than 4 animals, and if you really want to test yourself, their heads can rotate on the screen.
A leader board keeps the highest score for whoever can remember the longest sequence.
Older children, and perhaps even adults, should enjoy this quiz, which tests their knowledge of over 200 national flags.
There is a practice mode for learning the national flags – get the answer wrong and the game will tell you the correct answer.
When you are feeling confident enough, there is also a timed mode that tests you on either 50 random flags or, if you prefer, 50 from a specific continent. Do well and submit your score to an online scoreboard.
Here are a couple of apps for children who enjoy creating art.
Pixelator lets you colour in one pixel at a time. It might take a little effort, but the reward can be a fun and unique looking piece of art.
The pixel art can be saved on your phone, uploaded to image sharing site imgur and also set as your Lumia’s lock screen.
Draw is a more conventional finger drawing app for your Lumia. You can start from scratch or you can draw over and add effects to an existing photo.
There are also lots of features just for kids, such as colouring in, stamping for adding colourful graphics, noise effects and warping and twisting images.
This free app has adverts, the ad-free version costs £0.79p and also supports more languages.
If the idea of a word game on played on a piece of paper isn’t immediately appealing to today’s generation of children, then how about showing them the same game on your Nokia Lumia?
This version comes in three themes and many different word categories to play from.
Sometimes nothing will do but some a little arcade action, and Breakout is such a game for all ages.
Block the ball as it falls down the screen and use it to smash the bricks as it rebounds back up. Simple and addictive.
This free app has a host of great features, such as 150 levels, different weapons and power-ups, online scoreboards and you can even create your own game screens.
Also known as Connect 4, this is a classic game of strategy and trying to outthink your opponent.
This app is a game for both two players, or one person can play against the phone. Trying not to lose all the coloured discs was a bit of a nightmare, so this game is ideal on your Lumia.
Great apps can make learning fun – even maths!
NumberTap is a competitive maths game where you your arithmetic against other players around the world for the highest scores.
The sums come thick and fast, starting easy and quickly becoming a lot, lot harder. Keeping calm under pressure is also vital as there is a ticking clock.
Sketch Match is not quite a drawing app and not quite a gaming app, but it contains elements of both.
The idea is that you are shown an image, which you need to sketch as well as possible within the allocated time. The better your artistic efforts, the higher your rating.
Another fun way of playing this app is the ‘search by sketch’ feature. Sketch an object and hit the search button to see photos of similar items. That is, of course, if you sketched it well in the first place!
Which apps do you like that could keep kids busy on their holidays?
image credit: Pink Sherbet Photography
Tags: None
sie
7
One of the many great features about Nokia Drive is the ability to have a complete offline experience – so you can get to where you want, even without a data connection.
Offline functionality has always been very important for Nokia Drive on several of our platforms and it is something we love.
In our opinion, it is superior to others because it offers a great experience such as search and route planning all completely offline. And, it seems, we are not the only ones who love it.
A comprehensive review and hands on test in Engadget has concluded that:
Nokia Drive is the best purely offline navigational tool on the market, on any mobile platform.
Driving cross country
Engadget’s Darren Murph used Nokia Drive, on a Lumia 900, in its offline mode for a trip of 1,800 miles across the United States and says he was ‘downright shocked at just how fast everything operated.’
“Nokia Drive is a beautiful app to look at. The icons are big, bold and polished, with fonts that are pleasing and easy to view from afar. You aren’t inundated with useless information, and in my humble opinion, Nokia provides the perfect amount of data – it’s just enough to take advantage of at a glance.”
In an effusive review, Darren praised Nokia Drive’s simplicity, comprehensive mapping and even the nice voice of the navigational assistant.
He also shared a useful tip about the ability to set up a speed alert (go to Settings), so that you know you are always driving on the right side of the law.
As someone with an ‘unnatural adoration of travel’ it seems that Darren has used his fair share of navigational devices, so it makes his enthusiasm for Nokia Drive all the sweeter.
“If you’re an avid traveller, and you haven’t given Windows Phone a chance, you should. Nokia Drive is honestly reason enough to consider switching if you use your phone for navigating as much as you do texting or calling, and I’ve reason to believe that it’ll only get better with age.”
Offline Maps on Nokia Drive
Download your maps by going to Settings > Manage Maps > Add New Maps within Nokia Drive. As well guiding you to your destination, the offline experience will also let you search for known places of interest and even reroute during your journey.
Nokia Drive and the full offline experience is available for all Lumia devices, the Nokia N9 and Nokia Belle smartphones.
Have you had a chance to use Nokia Drive with an offline map yet? Let us know how you got on.
Tags: None
sie
7
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, Total Recall and The Bourne Legacy. All are, or set to be, great 2012 films. But how do you know they will be any good before you purchase that ticket? Watch the trailer first using Nokia Trailers on your Nokia Lumia.
Download Nokia Trailers now
- Press the Search button on your Nokia Lumia and then tap Vision
- Scan the barcode
- Tap on the link when it appears on the screen
- Install the application from the Windows Phone Marketplace
To be honest, I didn’t really want to see Total Recall until I watched the trailer. I didn’t think anybody could make a better version than the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger version. However, the trailer has impressed me and I’ll be buying a ticket when it comes out. I’m sure most of you feel the same way; it’s the trailer that sells a movie. With Nokia Trailers you can either stream them for instant viewing or download them for watching later.
While fast-paced, action-packed cutscenes are important in grabbing people’s attention and therefore their money, Nokia Trailers offers more.
The Trailer is no good without a synopsis to put what you’re seeing into context. There’s extra information about the movie like who’s starring in it, who directed it and how other people are rating the movie. Votes can either make or break a movie. You’ll probably not watch a movie if it’s only received a thumbs up from 25 per cent of people. If you like a movie, or can’t wait to watch it, the voting system is there for you to make your mark.
Nokia Trailers isn’t just about the new movies coming out; it’s about making sure you don’t miss them. You can add films to your watchlist and have your phone remind you when the movie is about to premiere. Be the first amongst your friends to watch the latest movie.
If you want to be kept up to date with news of the latest movies, Nokia Trailers can notify you on any new trailers when they’re announced.
As with any movie, it’s better to share the experience with friends. Within any movie section of the app, you have the option to share the trailer with your friends via SMS, email or by using the Windows Phone Social plugin. This means you can share the trailer with anybody via Windows Live, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. They’ll then receive a link showing the trailer being played on a Nokia Lumia. It’s up to you then to coordinate your friends and get them to the cinema on time.
But which cinema? The Movie Theatres section uses your phone’s GPS to locate you and show the nearest cinemas.
Download Nokia Trailers today and uncover a gem of a movie, right from your Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 900.
Have you used Nokia Trailers yet? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Tags: None
sie
7
After testing the magnificent Nokia 808 PureView, I concluded that it had made my digital compact camera redundant.
Why carry two things around when you have a phone that takes arguably better photos than a standalone camera anyway?
This got me thinking: what else has the smartphone replaced and what could it replace in the near future?
With the constant development of new apps and new hardware the potential of the smartphone is limitless. Take NFC for example. It’s a feature that is still relatively new to the market, and whose uses are still being explored.
It won’t happen today, and probably not tomorrow either, but eventually we could find ourselves living with less clutter and a single super device that serves all of our daily needs.
Would this be a good thing? If you a lost a smartphone that you are overly dependent on then it could spell disaster. History shows, though, that you cannot stop the relentless march of technology.
So, here are 10 common household items that have been replaced already by the smartphone or, potentially, could be replaced by them in the future.
The home phone
Let’s start with the obvious. I haven’t had a landline connected to my house for a few years now, and even then I only needed it for a broadband connection.
Increasingly, everyone was calling me on my mobile phone and if the home phone rang, then I could be sure that it was a marketing call. The installation of cable broadband meant I could say goodbye to my home phone forever.
Growing up, asking someone if they had a home phone number was tantamount to asking them if they had an indoor toilet. Now, strangely, not having a landline is also a sign of progress.
Stereo player & CDS
This will never be case for music fans that insist vinyl is superior to digital, but my smartphone is now my principle music player. It’s certainly true when I am commuting or travelling, but increasingly so at home also.
Play To is a fantastic way of playing music from your Lumia to any DLNA-enabled device. Plus, who needs a large CD collection when you have Mix Radio?
Photo albums
Remember your embarrassment as your parents showed your friends your childhood photos?
The dawn of digital photography has largely banished the glossy photo albums into the dustbin of history, but that doesn’t mean you are safe just yet; the photo albums stored on a phone have merely replaced them.
The advantages are legion. You don’t have to worry about taking up lots of shelf space and the number of images you can save and edit is practically limitless. Who needs a magnifying glass when you can pinch the screen and zoom in?
Remote controls
On my coffee table are remote controls for my TV, DVD player and games console. I’m sure that some of you will have even more than three.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could operate all these multimedia appliances with your smartphone?
There are, in fact, many apps already within the Windows Phone Marketplace that transform your Lumia into a remote control for various programmes or pieces of kit.
It’s clearly possible for your smartphone to replace all your remote controls but that’s not the same as saying it’s going to happen.
Wallet
The cashless society has been spoken about for many years, but has yet to really materialise. Could it be the smartphone that finally ushers in the digital wallet?
Banks have already started exploring NFC for contactless payments and new apps and services are making it easier all the time to buy and pay for things through our phones.
I think this would make life more convenient, but it would be tough to let go of handling crisp, new banknotes!
Calendars
A former staple of everyone’s festive gift list, the calendar now only exists as an app on my smartphone.
I see the appeal of having a calendar with nice photos displayed on a wall, but it can’t compete with the ability to add alerts, synchronise across multiple devices, create invites and all the other things that a good calendar app can do.
Keys
This one might take a greater leap of imagination.
If there are three things you’ll always carry with you when leaving the house, it’s your house keys, smartphone and wallet, right? I just think it would make life easier if you only needed to carry one item.
If we are prepared to pay for things with our smartphones – trusting it with our hard earned cash – then I don’t see why using our smartphones to lock and open our front doors would be so frightening.
I’ll be the first thing to say that I don’t know how, technically, it would work; perhaps using NFC or through an app with facial recognition software. If we’ve put man on the moon…
Calculator
Is anyone going to seriously argue that they prefer carrying around a standalone calculator?
OK, if you’re an accountant, then you’re exempt but for everyone else the smartphone will do just fine.
Passport
Isn’t the smartphone, with all our contacts, photos and calendar appointments just as crucial to our identities as our passports?
I am envisaging some kind of digital fingerprint with your crucial details being stored on your smartphone and then easily read whenever you pass through an airport. Obviously, this file can be transferred every time you get a new device.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. A security risk? Maybe? Modern passports though are merely booklets with all the information stored on a chip as well.
Filing cabinets
I have a confession to make: I am a hoarder. I have utility bills and miscellaneous paper work going back years and years. I still have instruction manuals for things I threw out a long time ago.
Thanks to the advent of PDFs, digital storage and cloud services such as SkyDrive, I can now start to tidy up a little. The smartphone has made accessing these files easier and faster and I can do it whenever and wherever I am.
Am I putting more weight on the smartphone than it can bear, or do you think it can help replace many other things in our daily lives?
Image credits: JD Hancock, redjar, empirical_perception and jma.work.
Tags: None
sie
6
Maps have always provided us with more information than just how to get from A to B. Maps record the whole of human history, charting how our global society has grown and the challenges it has faced. From the exploration of new territories to the ever-shifting boundaries in areas of conflict, maps allow us to understand not just where we are, but also how we got there.
Of course, technology has moved on significantly since the times of explorers such as Magellan, Columbus and Cook, and satellites have allowed us to refine cartography to a precise science.
However, our relationship with maps is changing. Maps are becoming increasingly interactive and key elements in our social lives, allowing us to meet up with friends, plan our holidays and discover new and exciting experiences. As we’ve seen recently, people are beginning to map the landscapes of our imaginations – even including Gotham City. At Nokia, we believe that the map is a user interface through which we live and organise our lives.
Bringing maps alive
Maps should be more than just a collection of locations or a close-to-perfect geographical representation of the world. They should come alive with people and places, stories and activities. They should provide a reflection of how we live our lives today, documenting experiences, conversations, relationships and events.
At Nokia we believe that location is a crucial provider of context for people. We believe maps, in the broadest sense, are a platform to surface, produce and consume information, enabling us to make the most of our lives, from optimizing a journey (with Nokia Transport and Nokia Drive) to discovering our local environment (with Nokia Maps and Nokia City Lens) to sharing experiences.
We believe in experiences that are fluid across contexts and situations so that we don’t have to care about what device we are using but instead concentrate on what we want to achieve.
A hub for everything
This is why we are busy developing maps.nokia.com: to provide a hub for everything relating to when, where and how people live their lives, and allows you to feel like a local wherever you may be.
Already maps.nokia.com helps us to understand where we are, find any place, and the best way to get there through multi-modal directions. It’s enabling richer experiences: we can discover the world in 3D or get the feeling for what’s going on in a particular neighborhood with heat maps. And this is only the beginning of the journey.
Maps throughout history have provided us with an anthropological insight into the world. And now, as technology increasingly shapes how we interact with our environments, we have the opportunity like never before to make maps reflect how we live our lives.
Always local
The mission behind Nokia Maps is to help people understand, navigate and discover the world around them and feel like a local wherever they are. Whether you are traveling or staying in your city, you want to discover things; it is only the dimension of discovery which differs. We all meet friends and then need to agree on a place to go. We all learn things about the city we live in from people visiting and reading guides and articles. We all discuss what is the coolest neighbourhood or place. The city and place pages (London, New York, Beijing and Melbourne, for example) show the first steps in how we want to help people explore and discover their worlds.
Another key area of progress is 3D maps that look beautiful; but are they useful? We launched 3D maps at Where 2.0 last April and received amazing feedback from the industry. Using 3D is one way to represent the world in a more realistic manner and we have focused on leveraging photorealistic 3D to help people explore and navigate their worlds.
We need to think more about how different people relate to maps as well as the types of experiences maps support. Exploring a neighbourhood, discovering places, getting a view of the public transit lines or getting directions all require different views of the map and different people might feel more comfortable with different views for similar usage cases. We will bring new innovations to 3D maps in the future.
Nokia is known for mobile products so, you might ask, why create maps.nokia.com for a desktop browser? The answer is that Nokia Maps has long been synonymous with Nokia Symbian phones and we have years of experience in building a great mapping and navigation experience.
A different experience
We understand that people expect experiences that transcend platforms and screens and can serve their needs irrespective of underlying technology platforms. At home and with larger screens at their disposal, people can experience things differently, while on mobile most usage cases are driven by immediate needs and questions.
We believe there are many ways to explore, navigate and discover the world around you. It’s not only about putting a term in a search box, it is about getting recommendations, about understanding how neighborhoods are alive, and many more things we are working on.
We also believe maps are deeply emotional and we need to revive the personal attachment people have always had with paper maps.
Tags: None
sie
6
One of the magical things about going on holiday is discovering a wonderful neighbourhood café, bar or restaurant with a unique ambience that, in your mind, will remain a treasured secret.
After all, who wants to be among the tourist crowds, when you could be hanging out with the in-crowd?
This is the guiding philosophy behind the Unlike City Guides, whose free app has just been updated and is available to download in the Windows Phone Marketplace for your Nokia Lumia.
“Our editorial focus has always been on highlighting the most unique and inspiring spots, or places that are somehow different,” says Simon Harris, the CEO of Unlike City Guides.
“Our name’s derived from that. It comes from being unlike any other.”
City networks
The Unlike Guides currently cover 18 cities around the world with the usual suspects such as London, New York and Shanghai as well as more up and coming destinations like Cape Town, Sao Paulo and Copenhagen.
The plan is that more cities will be added, whenever and wherever they have enough users and locations that they can recommend. Next on the radar are Istanbul and Moscow.
However, it is not the cities but how the Unlike guides are making it easier to discover the underground and hidden gems that has attracted so much attention. Says Simon:
“We want to be as comprehensive as possible but we also want to sniff out those elusive, under-the-radar locations in each of our cities.”
Where some tourist guides are the work of a single author, or others are a list of places to see, the Unlike guides feels more like reading a glossy magazine where the local hipsters share their favourite spots.
How do they do it?
“We have a good network across our cities. New people are always getting in touch and saying they’d love to do a guide. We look to people from the creative sectors, people whose opinions we respect and feel that our community will benefit from the tips they are giving.”
A social network
Unlike is also taking tentative steps towards becoming a social network. You can make recommendations for other people to see and, likewise, you can follow other people to see the places they enjoy.
“There has been a lot of enthusiasm about our guides and the way we curate them, so we decided to open up and allow our community of users to get involved by recommending places that they think represent the coolest of their cities,” says Simon.
While people will be able to add any place they want, only the best places will be promoted by Unlike in the featured spots so an element of quality control will remain.
The app
Gone are the days when you needed to carry a big paperback travel guide on your holidays. The Unlike Windows Phone app is a free download and makes for an ideal travel companion.
It can use your phone’s location to find recommendations around you, or you can select a particular city to see what’s hot.
Each city is then split into categories to make it easier to find a place for your needs: Nearby, Food, Shop, After Dark, Culture, Escapism and Hotel.
Once you’ve found a place of interest in the app, you can save it within the ‘me’ screen, which also acts as your social network hub.
Perhaps, my favourite of the app’s features is the global feed, which is a constantly updated list of the recommendations from every user around the world.
Even as a long time resident of London, the Unlike Guides is a reminder that there are always exciting places waiting to be discovered.
As Simon says:
“When people are visiting new cities they are always looking for insider tips on the best places to check, but it’s also an extremely useful resource for locals.”
image credit: yee tong
Tags: None
sie
6
Maps have always provided us with more information than just how to get from A to B. Maps record the whole of human history, charting how our global society has grown and the challenges it has faced. From the exploration of new territories to the ever-shifting boundaries in areas of conflict, maps allow us to understand not just where we are, but also how we got there.
Of course, technology has moved on significantly since the times of explorers such as Magellan, Columbus and Cook, and satellites have allowed us to refine cartography to a precise science.
However, our relationship with maps is changing. Maps are becoming increasingly interactive and key elements in our social lives, allowing us to meet up with friends, plan our holidays and discover new and exciting experiences. As we’ve seen recently, people are beginning to map the landscapes of our imaginations – even including Gotham City. At Nokia, we believe that the map is a user interface through which we live and organise our lives.
Bringing maps alive
Maps should be more than just a collection of locations or a close-to-perfect geographical representation of the world. They should come alive with people and places, stories and activities. They should provide a reflection of how we live our lives today, documenting experiences, conversations, relationships and events.
At Nokia we believe that location is a crucial provider of context for people. We believe maps, in the broadest sense, are a platform to surface, produce and consume information, enabling us to make the most of our lives, from optimizing a journey (with Nokia Transport and Nokia Drive) to discovering our local environment (with Nokia Maps and Nokia City Lens) to sharing experiences.
We believe in experiences that are fluid across contexts and situations so that we don’t have to care about what device we are using but instead concentrate on what we want to achieve.
A hub for everything
This is why we are busy developing maps.nokia.com: to provide a hub for everything relating to when, where and how people live their lives, and allows you to feel like a local wherever you may be.
Already maps.nokia.com helps us to understand where we are, find any place, and the best way to get there through multi-modal directions. It’s enabling richer experiences: we can discover the world in 3D or get the feeling for what’s going on in a particular neighborhood with heat maps. And this is only the beginning of the journey.
Maps throughout history have provided us with an anthropological insight into the world. And now, as technology increasingly shapes how we interact with our environments, we have the opportunity like never before to make maps reflect how we live our lives.
Always local
The mission behind Nokia Maps is to help people understand, navigate and discover the world around them and feel like a local wherever they are. Whether you are traveling or staying in your city, you want to discover things; it is only the dimension of discovery which differs. We all meet friends and then need to agree on a place to go. We all learn things about the city we live in from people visiting and reading guides and articles. We all discuss what is the coolest neighbourhood or place. The city and place pages (London, New York, Beijing and Melbourne, for example) show the first steps in how we want to help people explore and discover their worlds.
Another key area of progress is 3D maps that look beautiful; but are they useful? We launched 3D maps at Where 2.0 last April and received amazing feedback from the industry. Using 3D is one way to represent the world in a more realistic manner and we have focused on leveraging photorealistic 3D to help people explore and navigate their worlds.
We need to think more about how different people relate to maps as well as the types of experiences maps support. Exploring a neighbourhood, discovering places, getting a view of the public transit lines or getting directions all require different views of the map and different people might feel more comfortable with different views for similar usage cases. We will bring new innovations to 3D maps in the future.
Nokia is known for mobile products so, you might ask, why create maps.nokia.com for a desktop browser? The answer is that Nokia Maps has long been synonymous with Nokia Symbian phones and we have years of experience in building a great mapping and navigation experience.
A different experience
We understand that people expect experiences that transcend platforms and screens and can serve their needs irrespective of underlying technology platforms. At home and with larger screens at their disposal, people can experience things differently, while on mobile most usage cases are driven by immediate needs and questions.
We believe there are many ways to explore, navigate and discover the world around you. It’s not only about putting a term in a search box, it is about getting recommendations, about understanding how neighborhoods are alive, and many more things we are working on.
We also believe maps are deeply emotional and we need to revive the personal attachment people have always had with paper maps.
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One of the magical things about going on holiday is discovering a wonderful neighbourhood café, bar or restaurant with a unique ambience that, in your mind, will remain a treasured secret.
After all, who wants to be among the tourist crowds, when you could be hanging out with the in-crowd?
This is the guiding philosophy behind the Unlike City Guides, whose free app has just been updated and is available to download in the Windows Phone Marketplace for your Nokia Lumia.
“Our editorial focus has always been on highlighting the most unique and inspiring spots, or places that are somehow different,” says Simon Harris, the CEO of Unlike City Guides.
“Our name’s derived from that. It comes from being unlike any other.”
City networks
The Unlike Guides currently cover 18 cities around the world with the usual suspects such as London, New York and Shanghai as well as more up and coming destinations like Cape Town, Sao Paulo and Copenhagen.
The plan is that more cities will be added, whenever and wherever they have enough users and locations that they can recommend. Next on the radar are Istanbul and Moscow.
However, it is not the cities but how the Unlike guides are making it easier to discover the underground and hidden gems that has attracted so much attention. Says Simon:
“We want to be as comprehensive as possible but we also want to sniff out those elusive, under-the-radar locations in each of our cities.”
Where some tourist guides are the work of a single author, or others are a list of places to see, the Unlike guides feels more like reading a glossy magazine where the local hipsters share their favourite spots.
How do they do it?
“We have a good network across our cities. New people are always getting in touch and saying they’d love to do a guide. We look to people from the creative sectors, people whose opinions we respect and feel that our community will benefit from the tips they are giving.”
A social network
Unlike is also taking tentative steps towards becoming a social network. You can make recommendations for other people to see and, likewise, you can follow other people to see the places they enjoy.
“There has been a lot of enthusiasm about our guides and the way we curate them, so we decided to open up and allow our community of users to get involved by recommending places that they think represent the coolest of their cities,” says Simon.
While people will be able to add any place they want, only the best places will be promoted by Unlike in the featured spots so an element of quality control will remain.
The app
Gone are the days when you needed to carry a big paperback travel guide on your holidays. The Unlike Windows Phone app is a free download and makes for an ideal travel companion.
It can use your phone’s location to find recommendations around you, or you can select a particular city to see what’s hot.
Each city is then split into categories to make it easier to find a place for your needs: Nearby, Food, Shop, After Dark, Culture, Escapism and Hotel.
Once you’ve found a place of interest in the app, you can save it within the ‘me’ screen, which also acts as your social network hub.
Perhaps, my favourite of the app’s features is the global feed, which is a constantly updated list of the recommendations from every user around the world.
Even as a long time resident of London, the Unlike Guides is a reminder that there are always exciting places waiting to be discovered.
As Simon says:
“When people are visiting new cities they are always looking for insider tips on the best places to check, but it’s also an extremely useful resource for locals.”
image credit: yee tong
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