Planet Mobile

All About Symbian: Flickr ups free photo storage to 1TB each

2013-05-21T07:51:02+00:00

Flickr is the oldest photo sharing service on the Internet and remains a favourite of many tech-literate people, not least because there's more emphasis placed on quality, resolution and general re-usability. Yahoo!, which has owned Flickr for a while now, has announced that free personal accounts can now store up to 1 Terabyte of images - quite astonishing. That's 1000GB, just to be clear.

You can still pay Flickr for a premium account ($49.99 per year), which removes ads from the desktop browsing experience, and there's also an option to double storage space to 2TB ($499 per year). With decent clients for both Symbian and Windows Phones, it might be time to take another look at Flickr as your photo storage service of choice?

Previously the free level of the Flickr limited uploads to the 300MB per month and only the last 200 uploaded photos were visible on the site. Flickr's previous premium membership level ("Pro"), which cost $24.99 a year, is no longer available. The "Pro" account removed upload and viewing limits altogether; it also supported stats (how many people had viewed your photos). This last feature is no longer available at any any account level.

Existing "Pro" accounts are being grandfathered until they expire, or can be swapped to a free account until 20th August, in which case any remaining membership period will be refunded on a pro rata basis.

From the Flickr blog:

"At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life's moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We're giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.

And yep, you heard us. It's free."

Flickr is also unveiled a new design for its website, which moves away from the minamalist, white-space-centric, ethos of the previous design that uses as much of the screen as possible to display photos.

We want Flickr to be the most amazing community and place for you to share your photos. So, we’re also revealing a beautiful new design that puts photos at the heart of your Flickr experience, where they should always be. Whether it’s a sweeping landscape or a family portrait, we want every photo to be at its most spectacular.

Your homepage is now a gateway to everything you care about, and all the photos Flickr has to offer. Our new Activity Feed combines your friends’ recent uploads with activity on your own photos, and all in a beautiful design that lets you share and interact right on the page.

On Symbian, I either use Gravity (which includes Flickr in its list of upload destinations) or the dedicated client, FlickrUp, shown below:

Setting upload resolution to be 'original size' - as it should be; (right) searching and browsing the full Flickr photo data set....

FlickrUp's main menu and (right) default homescreen (which would be more populated if I had more contacts on the service!)

FlickrUp is £1.50 in the Nokia Store.

On Windows Phone, Yahoo! has produced its own dedicated, eponymous client:

The Windows Phone client is rarely space efficient, in terms of screen real estate, but is pleasant enough. Uploads are always at full resolution, too, so you can start making use of all that cloud image space.

You can grab Flickr for Windows Phone here, it's free.

Either way, there's now no chance you'll fill your Flickr storage anytime soon....!

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 20)

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-21T07:00:02+00:00

Confusing: The New Flickr: What it Means for Flickr Pro Users. thauv.in/117SOyu #
Just completed a 4.26 mi walk with @RunKeeper. Check it out! rnkpr.com/a317g41 #RunKeeper #
Dell's Tiny, Cheap "Project Ophelia" Computer thauv.in/1173opE #
Food Serving Sizes Are Ridiculous thauv.in/117246b #
R.I.P. JavaBlogs thauv.in/16K7lsK #
Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Amazon vs. Skydrive: Which One Is Fastest? thauv.in/115dBc9 #
RT @dalmaer: "Apple, I don't freaking remember if this is an existing contact, work it out for me!" Anyone else run into this? medium.com/ios-android-an… #
iPhone & Android App Design: Developers Cheat Sheet [Infographic] thauv.in/13FTssl #

All About Symbian: Xenon shown off in latest ads - who knew it was so good?

2013-05-21T06:56:12+00:00

Ah yes, these All About sites, where a certain writer has been shouting about the benefits of a proper Xenon flash for the last six YEARS. Well, the last 24 hours have seen a couple of ads for Nokia's latest Lumia 928, in which it brings a Xenon flash to its new platform and... hey, the ability to freeze moments in time is apparently cool, fresh and desirable after all. Who knew? Old-timers on All About Symbian will point, of course, to the Nokia N82, N8, 6220 classic, 808 and even Sony Ericsson Satio, but hey, let's not be too bitter - at least a decent* flash is making it now in the world of Windows Phone too.

* Yes, yes, there was the HTC 7 Mozart, whose 'Xenon' flash was so appalling that I rated it as worse than LED!

Here then are the two ads about the new Lumia 928, firstly one from the Windows Phone team itself:

The tagline is " You've never seen the night like this", followed by "Meet the best low light smartphone camera. Better than iPhone. Better than Galaxy", with plenty of Xenon-frozen examples throughout. Of course, Nokia 808 owners might well contest the "meet" line, with the 808 having a double-brightness Xenon bulb of its own, but hey...

Here's the second ad, from Verizon, the carrier which commissioned the Luma 928 in the first place ("Our customers would like a proper Xenon flash, thank you very much"):

The narrative here runs: "Shouldn't the photos you share from your smartphone be photos actually worth sharing? Introducing the Nokia Lumia 928 - easily capture vibrant photos in near darkness, even without the flash". Well, if you were shooting a static building then yes, you could leave the Xenon flash off and use the OIS for a long shutter time, but the examples in the ad all seem to show the Xenon flash very much on.

Great to see the Lumia 928 and Xenon being promoted though, and for the importance of being able to photograph living, moving people after dark being finally recognised.

All About Symbian: "Nice weather for the time of year" - WeatherTalk on Symbian

2013-05-20T10:19:03+00:00

Maybe it's just us Brits, but most of us do like to chat about the weather - which is where WeatherTalk Qt arguably comes in, providing a basic (Foreca-powered) weather forecasting utility, with built-in Facebook sharing. There's not that much more to the app, but hey, it's free, it's fast, it's pretty and, for Facebook users at least, might jusy get the day's social sharing off to a flying start? Screens and link below.

Here's a walkthrough of WeatherTalk in action:

A pretty interface, with location look-up and all weather data from Foreca. The 'Today' tile animates to also show the 'Now' weather. The green dots indicate (I presume) lack of rain?

Tapping to log into Facebook brings up the usual password and authorisation screens, along with (right) this slightly disconcerting error - ignore it and log in proceeds as expected!

Back in Settings, your 60 day login authorisation is confirmed, along with imperial/metric units choice and the option to run WeatherTalk without the earth photo in the background... (right) tapping on the share icon besides a day later in the week gives the ability to share this forecast data point with your Facebook friends.

And on Facebook (here viewed in Gravity), here are my two test posts. Note that the graphic shared is the correct one for the day you selected to share; (right) once logged in, the interface is complete - the look ahead forecast is for five days - the four shown scroll up to reveal the fifth.

You can download WeatherTalk Qt for free here in the Nokia Store. It's a nice little utility, though Twitter and (now) Google+ sharing would be nicer to have, from my point of view.

All About Symbian: What's your homescreen layout? Dazzle us!

2013-05-20T09:41:27+00:00

Your site needs YOU! Preparing for a feature on homescreen philosophies here on All About Symbian, I show below my own homescreen arrangement, but I suspect that there are some far more ambitious layouts on reader phones. See below for how you can get involved and share your Symbian homescreens with the world...

There's a lot to a set of homescreens, of course:

Do you max them out (six) or keep them simple (or even single)?
Do you go for garish or plain?
Mainly active content or mainly shortcuts?
Do you try for any artistic look?
What about wallpaper? Same for all homescreens, or geekily set to mimic panning? Or dramatically different for each, perhaps themed?
Any widgets that you use which aren't well known and deserve wider dissemination?

Here's my own layout, a somewhat minimalist pair of screens, just to get the ball rolling:

I'm sure you can do better. If you'd like to share your own homescreen layout with the rest of the Symbian world then here's what to do:

Install Best Screensnap (or similar) and run it, assigning a key shortcut of your choice (I use a light press of the shutter key)
Screen grab each of your homescreens (so up to six separate shots)
Compose an email to me at slitchfield@gmail.com, attaching your screen grabs, along with any notes on your philosophy and links to any wierd and wonderful items

If any of your screen grabs contain confidential information, you might like to edit them first to blur out the photo, name or details (as I did above, for my daughter)?

Once I have enough submissions, I'll put all of them up in a special feature, for the world to admire and learn from.

Thanks in advance. Feel free to comment here, textually, but please save graphics for your email to me and for the eventual feature!

All About Symbian: Ow Kah Leong's Nokia 808 PureView: One year on

2013-05-20T07:00:31+00:00

In this feature, guest writer Ow Kah Leong rounds up a year of the Nokia 808 PureView as his principal phone, smartphone, camera and travel companion. While acknowledging areas in which Symbian may have slipped behind, it seems as if the 808's build quality, camera and yes, even, the applications available, have kept it as the top of Ow Kah Leong's tree. Here's his report from Singapore...

Ow Kah Leong writes:

Almost 12 months ago, it was time to renew my contract because SingTel (my mobile operator) was reducing the data cap drastically. For SGD40 (around £20) a month, it would go from 12GB to 2GB. My N8 was starting to show its age, so I was shopping around for the next plaything. Then the Nokia 808 miraculously appeared and I shelled out SGD400 (around £200) for a spanking new unit, recontracting perhaps for the last time to keep my 12GB data plan.

Thus in June 2012, the white Nokia 808 Pureview appeared like a white knight to save my day.

The N8 was then the king, so how much better would the 808 be? I wrote 2 articles for AAS detailing my initial thoughts on the new king on top of the mobile photography hill:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/15002_Unboxing_the_Nokia_808_PureVie.php

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/15082_Two_week_report_on_the_Nokia_8.php

So, what is the Nokia 808 PureView like, one year on?

For me, it is the best smartphone, despite the competition since its release. “Raving mad!”, “Nokia fanboy!” I hear the rants. What justifies my claim? Let me run through my laundry list…

1. Hardware quality

The camera is the obvious standout, the raison d'etre for purchasing the phone. Plus how many phones can boast HAAC microphones, Xenon and LED flash, NFC, FM transmitter, HDMI, AV out, removable battery and microSD card, all in one body? Throw in shutter, hardware call/end, home buttons, and the list dwindles quickly.

The build quality is top-notch too. While not the lightest, the heft of the phone feels balanced especially when using as a camera. While not metal, the polycarbonate body feels premium. The HTC One and iPhone 5 easily beat the 808 in terms of luxurious feel with all the metal and glass, though. (Shame on Samsung that their £500 flagship feels clammy and cheap.)

2. Ecosystem

Surely it’s a no brainer here – Android and iOS squash whatever feeble attempt Symbian can offer. However, while there are many more apps in the two leading ecosystems, Symbian is certainly no slouch. At least, for me as a user, all the bases are covered:

Gravity - what else needs to be said about Jan Ole’s masterpiece? Hub? Integrated notification? I have my Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, YouTube, Foursquare and Flickr uploads all in one place.
Sleeping Screen – one of Symbian’s best and prettiest additions. And there is the Gravity notification at the bottom right.
Situations – a must-have for me to manage all the Profiles, ringtones, mobile data, 3G, screen brightness, etc.
Poddi – I was using Podcatcher for a long time until Poddi came along. This handles disrupted downloads really well and gathers all my podcasts without any fuss.
Whatsapp – it’s still free since I started using it. Not sure why, but you don’t complain when people give you a present.
Spotify – a real latecomer to the game. Not with full features but it does the job. I wrote a little piece on it too: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/17335_Spotify_in_Asia.php
Games – I hear you say Symbian only has Java games? Now lets see: Sparkle, Flow XXL, Saving Private Sheep, Cut The Rope, Tennis In The Face … Need I say more? Not the cutting edge, but solid gameplay for many hours.

Another crown jewel would be Nokia Maps. This is really a live saver on trips, whether locally or overseas.

3. Media

Photos are obviously great with this mobile photography king. I was in Australia last year and the 808 almost replaced the Nikon 9200 completely. I always have the 808 in my pocket, ready to snap anything. Below are a couple of shots of Gold Coast:

I also took a video of The Tower of Terror. The car goes from 0 to 160km/h in 7 seconds, which generates ear-splitting sound that resembles a plane taking off. You can view the short clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et3_9qsMPNQ and embedded here:

Wrap up

So where does that leave me after a year? I still think the Nokia 808 PureView satisfies all my needs as a user and more. What’s more, I’m still receiving updates to the OS as well as apps in 2013. What if I lose the 808? Will I purchase another one? I just might, if I can find one to buy in the first place. Even if I have to purchase another phone I will keep the 808 as a reminder of what fabulous engineering Nokia can manage and how a supposedly dead mobile OS keeps it going strong in 2013.

As to what I may purchase to use in the 808’s place (mind you, I didn’t say replace), that is another story…

Ow Kah Leong, May 2013.

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 19)

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-20T07:00:03+00:00

LG to demo 5-inch unbreakable and flexible plastic OLED panel at SID 2013 thauv.in/18aYiPk #
Google Hangouts upgrade removes ability to host Google Voice calls on your computer thauv.in/YTO6bd #
Why we are going to be like our parents, and why that's ok thauv.in/10OID38 #
Just completed a 4.50 mi walk - Walk to Costco. rnkpr.com/a30xdzu #RunKeeper #
Much ado about nothing: Oracle updates Java version numbering in light of recent security vulnerabilities. thauv.in/12EQT8Q #
RT @dalmaer: OH: Did you see that StackOverflow PHP programmers keyboard? It has two keys: "Copy" and "Paste". #

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 18)

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-19T07:00:03+00:00

One of the Basic Math Rules You Learned In School Is Wrong. 6 ÷ 2(1+2) = ? thauv.in/10d2ix7 #
Found a fleece jacket that will do until I am done dropping weight. (@ Everett South Goodwill - @SeattleGoodwill) 4sq.com/14C7r1u #
Dropping more clothes off... (@ Goodwill Everett Outlet - @SeattleGoodwill) 4sq.com/12kd6Ye #
Where's The Best Place To Get Drugs For Your Pet? The Human Pharmacy. thauv.in/10MeeT1 #
McDonald's Is Cutting Fat From the Menu (Not the Food) thauv.in/13Ci9pE #

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Makers' Mercantile

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-18T23:26:10+00:00

Last one for us...

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Country Yarns

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-18T22:05:10+00:00

Day 2

All About Symbian: EOS, the mysterious Nokia camera flagship that's yet to come?

2013-05-18T19:06:03+00:00

The ink's still not dry on the Lumia 925 press releases and already we're hearing renewed rumours about the mysterious Nokia EOS (codename, of course), thanks to a 'sighting' by a reader of WMPoweruser, quoted below. We don't comment on most rumours we hear, but when they ring true sometimes even us staffers at the All About offices can't resist adding a note or two...

From the WMPoweruser piece:

An observant reader managed to sneak a peek at the Nokia EOS and was able to give us a pretty good description of the handset.

The device is made of polycarbonate, and is about as thick as the Nokia Lumia 920 in the middle, but is highly tapered at both ends, giving the impression of a much slimmer device.

The lens housing is round in shape and does not protrude much. The flash is Xenon, and the flash and lens are both smaller than the Nokia 808 Pureview. Next to the flash is a small red LED which may be a focus assist light.

The lens also has an automatic cover that opens when the camera app is started.

The number of megapixels were not marked on the prototype, with “XX megapixels” only being written on the lens housing.

There is a new camera app called “Nokia Pro Camera”with a completely new interface. There is also manual focus available through the app. The regular photo app is also available.

The screen size and resolution is same as 920, and appears to be AMOLED. The speaker holes are at the bottom as the handset.

The handset was much lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920

Ever since the Nokia 808 PureView was launched in Spring 2012 - on Symbian, because Windows Phone wasn't yet ready to support the advanced PureView processing from a high megapixel sensor - fans of Nokia camera hardware have been willing the company on to produce a second device with the same photographic excellence and flexibility. Symbian is now ruled out as an OS for new hardware, but it does seem as though my original guesses about Windows Phone's development timescale were right. I said when the 808 PureView was launched that Windows Phone was a good 18 months away from being ready to handle similar camera performance - and here we are looking at a possible Autumn announcement of whatever the EOS turns out to be.

The 'reader' observations above do ring true with what I believe will be possible. Think of a teardrop-profiled device, not unlike the current Lumia 720, but slightly thicker in the centre, and with a reported slight 'protrusion', allowing enough room for a 23 (or so) megapixel 1/2.3" PureView sensor with 1.1 micron BSI pixels and wide angle F2.2 optics. It's not clear whether this unit would be too big to use the Optical Image Stabilisation technology used for the 1/3" sensor camera in the Lumia 920 and 925, but I'd hope it makes the 'cut'.

As on the Nokia 808, the high megapixel count could be used to perform PureView 'phase 1' oversampling and produce 'pure' 5 megapixel photos, with optional 'lossless' zoom of around 2x in stills mode.

That the Xenon flash is reported as smaller than that on the 808 isn't totally surprising - with Back Side Illuminated pixels and a larger aperture, the flash wouldn't need to be quite so powerful. Certainly, there wouldn't be need for two large capacitors, as on the 808 - one would do. The 'automatic cover' is probably just the mechanical shutter mechanism, all hidden behind the exterior Gorilla Glass, as on the 808 - I doubt there's a physical camera glass protective slider, since this really would add too much bulk.

A mock-up image which may or may not bear any likeness to any possible smartphone that may or may not appear...

All of the above seems quite believable then. And if OIS makes it into the mix, to give us a Nokia camera flagship with both 'phase 1' and 'phase 2' PureView on board (plus Xenon), I suspect that a lot of Nokia imaging fans may at last consider a move from Symbian onto Windows Phone 8 - which by then will have had the big 'enabling' GDR2 update and will be a lot more capable.

Take all of this with a pinch of salt, of course. It wasn't long ago that we didn't comment on unofficial reports at all - but it's been a while since I broke out my Carl Zeiss crystal ball and took a wild swing at the future, so thank you for indulging me...!

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 17)

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-18T07:00:03+00:00

Vicki really liked it. (Yellow Brick Road @ The Rock Wood-fired Pizza & Spirits) foodspotting.com/reviews/3565371 #
Not the best I've had here, but still pretty darn good. (Bad To The Bone Pizza @ The Rock Wood-fired Pizza & Spirits) foodspotting.com/reviews/3565346 #
Not the best we've had here. (Day Trippers (Mini-Calzones) @ The Rock Wood-fired Pizza & Spirits) foodspotting.com/reviews/3565271 #
30 minutes wait is really not bad for a Friday night... (@ The Rock Wood Fired Pizza - @TheRockWFP) 4sq.com/19HXbpq #
A cold coffee for the road... (@ Starbucks) 4sq.com/10KQte4 #
Quick bite to eat before hitting the road again. (@ Jack in the Box - @JackBox) 4sq.com/19G1Ms5 #
18 Cheap Stain Removers You Can Make at Home thauv.in/13suzgg #
Pizza Pot Pies Recipe thauv.in/13ssbGs #
The ChargeCard Charges Your Phone, Fits In Your Wallet thauv.in/13srXz4 #

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: PinchKnitter

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-18T00:17:24+00:00

Sixth and last stop.

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Crafters Co-Op

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-18T00:11:54+00:00

Fifth stop.

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Knot Just Yarn

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-17T21:19:55+00:00

Fourth stop.

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: apple yarns

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-17T19:01:39+00:00

Third stop.

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Mrs Hudson's Yarn and Teas

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-17T18:31:16+00:00

Second stop.

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Wear on Earth

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-17T17:26:45+00:00

I'm chauffeuring Vicki & Marilyn on the Yarn Tour.

All About Symbian: How much CO2 is a typical Nokia phone responsible for in its life time?

2013-05-17T16:57:18+00:00

Ever wondered how much energy a Nokia phone consumes during its lifetime? What about the amount of CO₂ emissions? Nokia's recently released sustainability report provides an answer for "a typical mobile device". The answer? 210 megajoules (MJs) of energy and 12kg of CO₂ emissions. Given the components and energy profile of a typical smartphone, and the proportion of mobile phones in Nokia's shipment breakdowns, we would expect the company's smartphone products to be a little above that typical average.

Nokia says that the CO₂ emissions are equivalent to driving 71km in an average family car. To put this further in context the average plane passenger, flying from London to New York, is reponsible for around 580kg CO₂ emissions. Do note that these figures are estimates and the results depend on the calculation method, scope and assumptions used.

So how does this CO₂ emission breakdown over the lifetime of the phone? Well 74% of the emissions occur before you even get your hands on the phone (54% in production, 4% in Nokia operations in the factory, and 16% in transport), 25% during your ownership of the device, and 1% during the recycling and recovery of the device.

Image credit: Nokia

But, in terms of environmental impact, it's not so much about the CO₂ emissions that come from running a phone, but rather the CO₂ emissions that come from making a phone.

Of course, you might also want to consider the savings in CO₂ emissions that comes from using a smartphone. The chances are, thanks to convergence, a typical smartphone will eliminate one or more other gadget from your life, or the need-to-buy list. Using the phone can save on CO₂ emissions too. For example, drivers using a satnav solution, like Nokia Drive, are estimated to use 5%-10% less fuel (not getting lost, route optimisation, and regulating speed) and the communications and collaboration abilities of a phone should cut down on the amount of journeys you need to take.

All About Symbian: Nokia publishes corporate social responsibility and sustainability report for 2012

2013-05-17T15:17:42+00:00

This week Nokia published its annual corporate social responsibility and sustainability report ("Nokia People & Planet Report 2012"). Covering a wide range of issues it offers an insight into the broad range of initiatives that makes Nokia a leader in the technology sector for ethical and environmental issues. The report also discusses the impact of Nokia's 2011 and 2012 strategy changes on its employees and the communities in which it operates.

Here's how Nokia describe the report:

Since 2002, we’ve consistently reported on corporate responsibility, and each year we build upon our transparency and coverage of issues. Today, our report covers the ethical, socio-economic and environmental areas most relevant to Nokia’s business and its stakeholders.

The Nokia People & Planet Report 2012 is split into Nokia’s efforts for people and the planet. The People section discusses how mobile technology can be harnessed for the good of individuals and communities, but it also covers challenges we faced in 2012 as well as how this impacted our employees and the communities in which we operate. The Planet part reports on our initiatives to minimize the potential negative impacts on the environment and the positive contributions mobile devices can make to the planet. The report is only available in digital format, as we want to print less.

The reports talks in detail about the positive and negative aspects of Nokia's business operations, and details the company's overall performance, whether it met its targets, and plans for the future.

Here are some selected highlights from the report:

Corporate taxation

Nokia says that, "as a good corporate citizen Nokia pays the amount of tax legally due and observes all applicable rules and regulations in each country where it operates". The report notes that the company has followed the same centralised business model in the allocation of taxable income since the early 1990s. In essence, the majority of profit (and loss) is carried by the business in Finland, with a smaller portion carried in the countries in which Nokia operates. Although it's not specifically mentioned in the report for obvious reasons, this is in sharp contrast to a number of other technology companies who have been in the headlines for offshoring profits in low corporate tax jurisdictions.

Employees

As a result of Nokia's new strategy (switch to Windows Phone) there were a large number of job losses. In order to help employees affected by the reductions Nokia established a support program call Bridge. By the end of 2012 17,000 employees had participated in the program, and almost 1,000 new businesses have been set up by former employees.

Environmental design

A dedicated design for environment (DFfE) specialists work actively throughout every product development project at Nokia, verifying legal and voluntary target compliance, as well as promoting sustainable alternatives for materials and other design considerations.
Over the last decade Nokia has reduced the greenhouse gas footprint of their phones by 50%.

Materials

In 2012 Nokia banned the used of radioactive substances in all products, packaging, and internal production processes. This in the latest in a long line of substance nad material management policies. For example, the use of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) was restricted, and in 2010 all Nokia products were free from bromine and chlorine compounds related to flame retardants.
In 2012 Nokia retail packaging material used 18,875 tonnes of paper (on average 52% recycled) and a futher 9,569 tonnes of paper (on average 89% recycled) in transport packaging material.

Chargers

Over the last 10 years Nokia has reduced the no-load consumption of its chargers by 73% (i.e. charger plugged in, but not being actively used for charging). The best-in-class chargers have seen a 90% reduction.
The average no-load power consumption on Nokia chargers shipped in 2012 was 0.098W, a reduction of 13% from the previous year.
In 2012 all new Nokia devices are being shipped with four or five star charger.

Emissions

40% of the electricity used by Nokia comes from renewable sources
Nokia aims to reduce CO2 emissions by a minimum of 30% by 2020 (from a 2006 baseline). The 2013 emissions figure was down 29% from 2006.
Nokia reduced CO2 emissions from air travel by 54% from 2011 to 2012 in total, and by 39% when calculating reductions per employee. In part this was due to the installation and greater use of new video conferencing facilities.

The full report can be downloaded here [PDF].

All About Symbian: MeeBible adds new translations, plus social and direct sharing options

2013-05-17T14:45:58+00:00

Updated in the Nokia Store is the open source (free) MeeBible front end to numerous Bible translations, along with the facility to download any for offline reading. You may remember my original review of MeeBible? This new version 3.0 (3.05[4], to be precise) adds new translations (The Message, New King James, Basic English, Amplified), plus social sharing functions and hooks.

From the developer's description:

With MeeBible you can read God's Word everywhere with your phone. Bible texts are downloaded on the fly from the web and cached for further reading. You can also download whole Bible translation via Wi-Fi network and read it offline.

MeeBible supports following Bible translations:

New World Translation in 42 languages

King James Bible

New International Bible

English Standard Version

New King James Bible

Bible in Basic English

The Message translation

Russian Synodal Translation

French Louis Segond Translation

German Luther 1912 and Schlachter 1951 translations

Italian Versione Diodati Riveduta

Portuguese Almeida Corrigida e Revisada Translation

Spanish Reina Valera Translation

Latvian Revised Bible

Svenska Folkbibeln (Swedish People's Bible)

Finnish Bible 1912

Ukranian translation by І. Огієнко

Polish translations: Biblia Tysiąclecia, Biblia Warszawska, Biblia Warszawsko-Praska

Bulgarian “Протестантски (1940)”

Romanian translation by Dumitru Cornilescu

Arabic Smith & Van Dyke Version

Indinesian Alkitab Terjemahan Baru

In addition to the extra Bible translations now supported, the number of languages handled also seems to have grown, see the screens below:

The two column options menu (how come other Qt developers haven't used this yet?), with new 'Donate' option, if you want to support the developer's mission;(right) picking a book to read...

When highlighting a verse in this version, there's now a 'share' option on the pop-up, showing a pretty full list of social options (right) - don't get too excited though, there's no authorisation or sign-in, you're simply handed over to the appropriate service's mobile site with the verse's text pre-loaded.

In-app purchasing donating done here through the Nokia Store - it's neatly done and a model some other freeware and shareware authors might like to try? (right) The number of Bible versions in each language has grown a lot since my first review, with no less than eight in English, my chosen language in MeeBible's settings.

There are comprehensive settings, including going black-on-white, and full-screen; (right) just some of the dozens of languages supported - impressive.

Regardless of your own beliefs, there's no doubting that MeeBible is immaculately programmed, fully functionned and available at the perfect price. You can download MeeBible for free here in the Nokia Store.

All About Symbian: RubiBox (Box.com client) gets a major v2.0 update, multiple account support

2013-05-17T11:50:00+00:00

Box.com (née Box.net) rarely gets the same press that DropBox or Google Drive get, but it's arguably just as useful. And you may not have remembered that there's a fairly fully featured Symbian client for this cloud storage service in the free (well, donation-ware) client RubiBox. There's now a big v2.0 update available in the Nokia Store, bringing multiple account support and more advanced file uploading and downloading.

The official changelog from v1.0 is:

Added multiple accounts support
Added multi download/upload files
Added copy/move actions
Fixed enterprise account login
Other minor bugs fixed

After updating, I found I had to re-enter my Box.com credentials, but this is a one-time thing. Here's RubiBox in action:

Updating to v2.0 via the Nokia Store; (right) got to love the cute splash screen!

Logged into Box.com and viewing my folder and files; (right) using the new multiselect on a bunch of my songs...

Selecting a file for uploading to the current Box.com folder; (right) Logged in as me, but with the new multi-account support I can now log in as someone else too, without losing my details. Obviously, only one account can be 'active' in the app at any one time.

RubiBox is nicely customisable, here's one of the five panes of Settings; (right) my essential Box.com stats, summarised by RubiBox.

Good to see this free cloud file management tool updated again, and with so big a changelog. I've not been a huge Box.com user in the past, but now that the maximum file upload size has been increased, I think I might give it another try.

You can download RubiBox for free here in the Nokia Store. Why not drop the developer a line to say thanks?

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 16)

Erik C. Thauvin — 2013-05-17T07:00:03+00:00

Analyze java source with "Yasca" and detecting security vulnerabilities thauv.in/10UmlBK #
Gaelyk 2.0. A lightweight toolkit for developing applications on Google App Engine with Groovy. thauv.in/11IAtjd #
IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio FAQ thauv.in/11IAa7R #
Slim fast: Google's Blink team pulls 8.8 million lines of WebKit code in one month. thauv.in/12F4lZj #
30 Unconventional Business Cards thauv.in/12yuA4G #
Misheard Song Lyrics 90s Edition thauv.in/12ysn9j #
Android Studio first impressions. I like it too. thauv.in/10ZkAxe #

All About Symbian: Shooting for the stars with the Nokia 808

2013-05-16T18:16:51+00:00

Fresh from my (and others) attempts to capture the moon with the Nokia 808 PureView, I was interested to see that 808 photographer extraordinaire Richard Dorman has been going one step further and trying to capture the stars. See below for the proof. Essentially the trick is to take lots of photos (with the 808 on a tripod, of course) and stack them together for a final render. Yes, this can be done more easily on a standalone camera perhaps, but isn't it still cool that it's being done on a Symbian-powered phone?

From Richard's notes:

Right let’s get down to business, firstly find your location. You will need a tripod for this, otherwise the background will not match in each image and the trails will have kinks in them.

Do some test shots of the scene to make sure you are happy with the location and the frame you have chosen.

Settings

use infinity focus (if you have it). The Nokia 808 does.

Set the ISO to 100 and take a shot, can you see the background and the stars, if not then reset ISO to 200 and test again. Continue this until you get an image you are happy with

Time lapse setting, every 5 seconds take an image, with the Nokia 808 you can set it to take a maximum of 1500 images. This is plenty to achieve star trails. In fact 400+ is enough.

Flash off of course

I also suggest you take something to drink and maybe read, you will be at location for an hour or two. Plus you might need a backup charger, I made sure I had a Nokia DC-16 attached just in case it was needed. The last thing you want is for the phone to run out of battery.

What a great idea. Read his post in full for details on how to stack the images together at the end of the day, and for a few pointers on what else might go wrong.

Comments welcome if you've ever tried something like this, or indeed if you've found a particular 808-compatible tripod that works well - Nokia's HH-23 is now apparently unavailable and never used to hold the phone that securely in the first place, so presumably most of you will be using a third party tripod attachment. care to share any success stories? I used this one for ages until I broke it(!)

What next? Trying to photograph galaxies?

(hat tip to PureView Club)

All About Symbian: PhotProc brings professional image processing, but patience needed

2013-05-16T13:26:14+00:00

Jaw-droppingly impressive. And jaw-droppingly impractical at the same time. But that's what you get for doing some incredibly maths-intensive work on a smartphone, even the 1.3GHz Nokia 808 PureView. The somewhat unimaginatively named PhotProc (I imagine the developer would jump at a decent alternative, if suggested) is brand new and brings de-noising, sharpening and many other operations to your 5 and 8 megapixel images, all handled on the phone. But, as the headline suggests, patience is needed, since PhotProc needs to do a lot of work to accomplish all this. So much so, that it implements its own 'job queue', reminding me of setting off batch processes on my mainframe overnight in the 1980s. See below for more.

Here's the official description of PhotProc, from its sourceforge home page:

This is a photo editing application for Symbian, written in Qt. It's especially designed for the Pureview 808 smartphone. It lets you edit photographs up to very high resolutions. The editing tools are primarily aimed at amateur photographers, so: filtering for different light levels, colours etc. You can't do things like paint on top of photographs or combine 2 photographs together.

As you'll see from my walkthrough below, this is a very different beast to the onboard Symbian photo editing functions, though there is some overlap - brightness, saturation, contrast, resizing, and so on. But most of PhotProc's functions are new to Symbian.

Although most of the photo adjustments on offer are previewed fairly quickly (a few seconds), so that you can see their effect, actually rendering all your changes into a finished JPG can take up to ten minutes, which is why the processing is hived off to a background thread, with the progress off the current thread indicated by a small blue bar at the top left of the main interface.

The idea is that you carry on editing other images as needed, perhaps queueing other changes to be rendered, and then you get on with your life. Symbian's multitasking and can handle this sort of behaviour well. Later, you check Gallery on the phone and there are your new renders, to be admired.

Starting up...

Handily, PhotProc comes with a demo image pre-loaded, so that you can play around with the functions even if you haven't got any suitable images of your own...

Loading up one of my own photos...

'About' info and some details on my image....

Starting to make changes, here bumping up the contrast and saturation...

Getting advanced now, let's de-noise it a little and also apply some sharpening (hey, got to match that Samsung Galaxy S4!)...

I'm not too sure how this bit works, but you can select colours you want to 'emphasise'. Any pointers welcomed from readers...

If you know what the 'light map threshold' is then you're a better man than I - suffice to say, plenty to fiddle with here. Everything you change does get previewed on screen (i.e. at nHD resolution) and you can also zoom in using multi-touch if you want to see the effect on a particular part of your image...

Finally, tap on 'Save' and a new processing job is kicked off. Note that you can carry on using the phone, even editing other images, while the processing takes place...

Viewing the finished result in Symbian Gallery. Too sharp? Yes, perhaps. Ah well, back PhotProc I go....

File PhotProc under 'for photo geeks only', I think, but its mere existence is to be applauded. The developer freely admits that PhotProc is perhaps too slow in its current implementation, but I know he'd love feedback on this (maybe add to this thread?) and other aspects of this new application. You can download the latest installer for PhotProc here. Note that it's open source (and therefore, by definition, free).

All About Symbian: Symbian and Windows Phone-powered Nokias in Phones Show 200

2013-05-16T08:14:00+00:00

We haven't plugged my cross-platform Phones Show for ages here on the All About... sites, but I couldn't resist the video below. Not only is it my 200th Phones Show (FX: pops champagne cork!), there are plenty of relevant appearances of Symbian and Windows Phone-powered devices, listed below, with relevant links. And hey, there's also a big review of the Samsung Galaxy S4, which is, in some ways, the benchmark for all of 2013's new releases - it's certainly going to be the biggest selling smartphone - so hopefully worth watching too. If you want to skip straight to the Nokia bits, move to around the 11 minute mark.

In the 'User Stories' segment, then, there are appearances by the:

(Windows Phone 7) Nokia Lumia 800
(Windows Phone 8) Nokia Lumia 920
(Windows Phone 8) Nokia Lumia 720
(Symbian) Nokia 808 PureView
(Symbian/S60) Nokia 5800
(Symbian/S60) Nokia E71
(Meego Harmattan) Nokia N9

Here's Phones Show 200, anyway - enjoy! (As usual, maximise the window and 'up' the quality, up to 1080p)

All About Symbian: Symbian Belle platform variants all get Email, Calendar and Music updates

2013-05-15T19:37:46+00:00

The OS that just won't die? Two years and three months after Symbian was publicly put on life support, the platform updates keep coming, with the rollout today for all Belle Refresh and Feature Pack 2 smartphones of a 6MB Email and Calendar update, incorporating better attachment and event handling, plus a new compatibility update for Nokia Music for Belle Feature Pack 2 devices. Whatever modern Symbian device you own, head for SW Update on the device, or plug into Nokia Suite.

Here are the updates appearing on the editorial Nokia 700 (also seen on the 808, by the way):

6MB of this is the Email and Calendar update, 2MB is the Nokia Music client update...

Note the Belle Feature Pack 2-specific version number (see below); (right) Nokia Music was v16.40.2 up until today, so this looks like a minor update to maintain compatibility with changes at the server end.

Note that a reboot is needed. Also, when restarting email after the reboot, the application clears its previous cache of email headers, so be patient the first time, while all your headers and most recent messages are retrieved.

And comments welcome if this fixes attachment or calendar issues that you have been having.

Getting started with the update for the Nokia Music client

_______________

And below is the Email and Calendar update appearing on the Belle Refresh-powered editorial Nokia E7. Note the different version numbering and file size, this is because the update has had to be slightly tweaked for each Symbian platform. This version should also appear for the likes of the C7, N8, and so on:

Belle Refresh devices still getting updates as they approach their third birthday - impressive!

Great work by Nokia and Accenture again, I wonder what's next from their programming teams for Symbian?

All About Symbian: By popular demand... the 808 rematched with the SGS4, with no holds barred

2013-05-15T15:26:32+00:00

My 5-camera 7-scene test, earlier this week, provoked a lot of comment along the lines of "ah, but you left the Nokia 808 on default settings for almost all of that, if you'd have used Creative mode properly, the 808 would have fared a lot better!" Maybe. In the two examples below, I just show the two main contenders tackling a distant detail and an extreme macro. Seems I was right about the Galaxy S4, you know. And I was right about the Nokia 808 PureView (if the critics had read through all my text)...

The two main contentions from the critics were around distant detail and macro shots, so I did one of each. And in each case I put the Nokia 808 up to 'Superfine' (in terms of detail and JPG compression) and also ramped up the colours to 'Vivid'. And I then ran the 808 at full 2x PureView zoom (it's 3x in 5MP mode, remember).

Distant detail

In overcast, dull light (UK weather, but hey, it gives the phone cameras more of a challenge), I shot a small sign across the road. Here's the full scene:

And here are the crops from the Nokia 808 (left) and Samsung Galaxy S4 (right):

As before, in my zoom test in the previous article, the Nokia 808 PureView was born to do this sort of thing and the detail on offer is natural and impressive. More than before (2 pts behind), the Galaxy S4 is quite a way further back, merely doing its best to interpolate detail. In fact, were I scoring this comparison out of 10, I'd give the 808 9 pts and the S4 5 pts (i.e. 2 pts less), which just goes to show that results of these comparisons will naturally vary slightly according to the subject and conditions. With the light being less than perfect, the Nokia 808's larger sensor and optics come into play in a big way. In bright sunlight, the Galaxy S4 does a bit better, but will always still be a few rungs behind.

Extreme macro

Again in overcast, dull light, I shot a similar dandelion as in the first test. Here's the full scene:

And here are the crops from the Nokia 808 (left) and Samsung Galaxy S4 (right):

Again I stand by my original comments about the Samsung Galaxy S4 being stunning for macro photographs, as here. Even at full sensor resolution (2x zoom/8MP, equivalent to using the 34MP mode), the Nokia 808 simply can't focus close enough to match the Galaxy. Both shots above were taken as close as I could reliably get a focus lock.

My overall conclusions remain the same though, in regards these two very different smartphones. The Nokia 808 PureView will always produce more natural, 'purer', more detailed photos, and will produce them with more flexibility for those who know what they are doing - as long as the subject isn't closer than about 40cm.

Under 30cm, the edge goes to the Samsung Galaxy S4, which can accurately focus down to about 7cm and with the full sensor resolution available across quite a narrow field of view.

With such different conclusions based on what the subject matter is, it's perhaps no wonder that my 7-scene test caused a stir with its results - every single one of us would devise a different set of test scenes/subjects! Seven landscapes and general subjects would produce a landslide win for the 808, while seven macro shots of flowers, food and small pets would produce a big win for the Galaxy S4.

All About Symbian: Nokia Suite gets another big new stable release, v3.8 is a 'go'

2013-05-15T14:26:36+00:00

Available now is a new release on the 'non-beta' track of Nokia Suite, v3.8.30, following the release of a 3.8 beta a month or two ago, with the main changes over the previous stable release, 3.7.22, being better SkyDrive migration and a mountain of 'reliability' fixes. Screenshot proof below - v3.8.30 installed fine in place over my previous stable version on my Windows 7 laptop.

Here's the summarised changelog (from the stable v3.7.x):

Improved reliability with a number of important error corrections, especially in maps view, messaging view and in backup and restore.

Fix for calendar sync issue with S40 phones, when phone and PC is located in timezone, where Daylight Saving Time (DST) is applied in winter (for example Australia).

Several improvements for content migration to Microsoft SkyDrive. We have fixed several issues related to Microsoft SkyDrive migration, this improves overall reliability of migrating data from Symbian, Meego and S40 phones to Microsoft SkyDrive..

Good to see Nokia Suite continuing to be maintained, and straddling the world of local connectivity and cloud storage, too.

Comments welcome - I'd love to know how many readers still use Nokia Suite and how many are now 'all cloud'? I have to confess that the only time I really touch Nokia Suite now is when trying to find a particular maps or app update that proves elusive 'over the air'!

All About Symbian: SkyDrive uploader rolls out for the Nokia 808 and other Belle FP2 devices

2013-05-14T17:34:05+00:00

You may remember that Nokia issued a rather primitive SkyDrive uploader for Symbian to Belle Refresh devices last year, followed up by a more polished version two months ago? The idea was to ease the uploading of contacts and photos to Microsoft's live.com, with a view to users one day making a move to Windows Phone. Although many, including me, had sourced the .SIS file and had this installed on Belle Feature Pack 1 & 2 phones, I'm not sure there was a big formal rollout. This changed today with the SkyDrive tool now available through SW Update for all Belle FP1/2 devices, including the Nokia 808 PureView.

The previous installed SkyDrive uploader (from last year) was a mere 115k and was listed as v1.07. This new version is 381k and is listed as v10.2(17), so a much more sizeable piece of code. This now handles the uploading of all photos and contacts (so be careful about bandwidth if you have a lot of photos and/or you choose to upload at original resolution).

Here's the update appearing on my Nokia 808:

Checking and updating...

A rather monochrome splash screen! And signing into my live.com account...

A somewhat scary lst of permissions need to be granted, but they're necessary because of the contacts sync, of course; A friendly warning - I headed straight for Settings...

...and always plump for 'Actual size', since I may actually need to access the photos from the cloud at a later date and don't want to find that they're all down at VGA or similar! Tap 'Upload' to start the whole process, if you're brave enough!

As with the Belle Refresh version of this tool, note that it can take a long time to upload both contacts and photos. You may want to set it going overnight and on Wifi?

You can get the update on your 808, 701 or 700 by going into SW Update on the device and letting the update list refresh. No restart is needed.

Comments welcome if you installed and ran this - did all your contacts make it across to your new live.com account?

All About Symbian: Meanwhile, over on Windows Phone... the 6-element, ISO3200 camera in the Lumia 925

2013-05-14T11:38:28+00:00

Purely as a link of interest for All About Symbian readers, who will be only too aware that I've compared the Lumia 920 to the best camera-centric smartphones from the Symbian world many times (usually unfavourably), worth noting that Nokia has just announced an improved smartphone camera in the new Lumia 925, with six different lens elements (a world first, Nokia claims) and the ability to shoot up to ISO3200.

Just as interestingly, the Nokia team on stage mentioned several times about the Lumia 925 shooting 'crisper' and 'sharper' images than the existing 920. Let's hope so.

Here's the lens assembly, artistically broken down:

No mention, even as a comparison, was made at the Lumia 925 launch event of the Nokia 808 or PureView phase 1 - which was disappointing, if not entirely surprising. And the next camera phone head to head I do will of course be the Symbian-powered 808 vs the Windows Phone-powered 925 - place your bets on an outcome? Note that, as usual, I'll be trying a diverse set of test shots and use cases. Can a F/2.0 OIS camera shooting at ISO3200 match Xenon flash? This should be rather intresting!

Other relevant highlights (for Symbian users eyeing up an upgrade) are that there are also the twin HAAC mikes, hopefully used in stereo by Windows Phone GDR2, plus the same 808-grade loudspeaker. Downsides of the 925 are the continued use of sealed memory (a paltry 16GB for everything - very 2010) for most models, plus a sealed battery, one of my pet hates.

See the full AAWP story for photos and impressions, etc.

All About Symbian: Smartphone camera super-test: Nokia 808 vs Samsung GS4 vs Lumia 920

2013-05-13T15:04:00+00:00

In fact, ignore the title, because I've included no less than five top camera-toting smartphones in this group test. In addition to the big three, the Nokia 808 PureView (still reckoned to be champion by most people), the Nokia Lumia 920 (the flagship Windows Phone until tomorrow!) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 (brand new and top-rated), I also wanted to include the 2010 Nokia N8, since its sensor's megapixel count and performance should be a close match for the SGS4, plus last year's Galaxy S III, so we can see how much of a difference Samsung have made in terms of their camera tech. Let the fight rage!

Minor notes

As usual, I've cropped in to each photo so that we can see differences more clearly. For a detailed explanation of my testing methodology, see here.
The various smartphone cameras have very different angles of view, i.e. some cover a much smaller arc in front of the lens. This, in part, explains why the subjects - all cropped to the same degree - appear different sizes in the comparisons. The other factor is, of course, the resolution the photos were taken in.
The Nokia 808 was set at 8 megapixels (in its PureView Creative mode), to better match the resolutions of the other camera phones here (9MP, 6MP, 7MP and 9MP respectively)
All phones were left on default/auto throughout, apart from manually controlling flash on/off for the low light test.
The Lumia 920 photo in the 'pub' test was taken with the generally excellent third party app CameraPro for logistical reasons (in that the Windows Phone app is feature-light and doesn't have a 'self-timer' option!)
Other smartphones considered for inclusion included the Sony Xperia Z, rejected because of its appalling noise reduction blur (see here) and the HTC One, rejected because it would produce images with not enough detail (see here).

Major notes

The whole point of this test is to look at the quality of colour and amount of resolved detail that a new user would experience. There is zero allowance for fiddling with settings (ISO, exposure, sharpening, contrast, and so on) - all the phone cameras here can produce better results with knowledgeable fiddling, the Nokia 808 more than most, of course, since it's a more powerful sensor and there are more settings to fiddle with.
I also only allowed the Nokia 808 to use its PureView zoom in one test, so as not to bias the article too much in favour of this technology. In addition, I did have to use this zoom implicitly to even achieve the macro photos in tests 4 and 5.
In answer to some of the criticism to this feature, there's now a companion mini-test, with the 808 being allowed to run custom settings, for your interest.

Test 1: Full sunlight, medium distance

The Herald from the BMA, looking at the rather faded BEA logo on its paintwork from 20 metres away.

I took the exact same shot with all five smartphones and then present here the central crop, to show the level (and quality) of detail captured. Clockwise from top left: Nokia 808 PureView, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy S III, Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia N8:

This crop comparison instantly shows why you have to be a little careful in scoring camera tests. At first glance, the crop from the Galaxy S4 looks dramatically better, but then you realise that this is because of the extreme (though very clever) noise reduction and sharpening algorithms that have been applied by Samsung. Images treated like this do look better for general users, mind you, so this shouldn't be discounted.

You can tell where the algorithms have been by looking at the artificial dark border around each letter and the artificially pure blocks of solid colour. The Nokia 808's image is most close to reality (faded paint etc.) but I'll acknowledge that it looks a bit 'soft' here by comparison. The SGS III's version is much the same as the GS4, but at lower resolution, while the N8 produces a generally accurate image, spoilt only by some noisy artefacts. The 920 doesn't fare too badly - again noise and digital artefacts spoil the effect.

Nokia 808 PureView: 8 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 7 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 6 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 6 pts; Nokia N8 7 pts

Test 2: Hazy sunlight, distance detail

The Lands End pub from the end of its gravel overflow car park, looking at signage on the building:

It's a similar story here, though looking at more extreme detail in the distance, pushing the resolution of these camera phones to the limit (see also the zoom test below). It's a choice between the natural looking N8 and 808 shots and the processed versions in the two Samsung Galaxy phones. The casual user would probably look at these crops and give the win to the Galaxy S4, and in truth it's impressive how much detail is coaxed out of the relatively tiny sensor, even you can't overlook the over-sharpening. All five phone cameras did quite well here, mind you, and scoring is going to be subjective.

Nokia 808 PureView: 8 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 9 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 8 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 7 pts; Nokia N8 9 pts

Test 3: Full sunlight, zoom allowed

Looking out my window at distant roof detail. Note that digital zoom in most cameras is normally frowned upon, but the artefacts aren't as ugly as they used to be, with extra resolution now being used to smooth out jaggies in the detail. Plus, general users tend to use zoom anyway, not knowing it's supposed to be a bad idea, so I think this is a valid test case.

The Nokia 808 PureView was born to do this sort of thing, of course, boasting lossless software zoom from its 41 megapixel sensor, so it's not surprising that its image is almost perfect, with zero artefacts. What's surprising here is that the Galaxy S4's camera gets close - its crop is obviously 'enhanced' but again a general user would pick it as looking clear and detailed - you have to look at brick and leaf detail to really appreciate that you're not looking strictly at reality.

The other phone cameras struggle slightly more, with the N8 next and the noisy Lumia 920 and the blown out SGS III crops bringing up the rear.

Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 7 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 4 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 4 pts; Nokia N8 6 pts

Test 4: Full sunlight, tricky macro shot

A very tricky macro shot, here, with a pair of tiny flowers, lit strongly against a shady background, one reflecting sunlight back and the other not:

All the phone cameras struggled with getting the exposure right here. In each case, I could have fiddled with exposure manually and gotten better results, but we're explicitly comparing like with like here, and using full auto settings. The Nokia 808 PureView is particularly weak on extreme macro shots, since its optics don't allow focussing closer than 15cm or so. The shot above is with some PureView zoom added in and it still doesn't get anywhere near as 'close' as the other phones.

The two Samsung Galaxy devices best the best showing in terms of capturing the blue flower, with the Lumia 920 managing only a weak violet and the N8 hardly managing any colour at all. As I say, a very tricky shot to get and my fingers were itching to reach for those exposure icons!

Nokia 808 PureView: 5 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 8 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 6 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 5 pts; Nokia N8 4 pts

Test 5: Another macro, easier lighting, looking at detail

Much easier lighting this time, and with a subject which should reward a camera with an eye for detail:

All five devices did a much better job here, with the Nokia 808 again being hampered by not being able to get as close as the other smartphones. Striking though the Lumia 920 and N8 images are, the crops from the two Galaxy phones are simply stunning, perhaps because the sharpening algorithms really, really like dandelions!...

Nokia 808 PureView: 5 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 10 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 9 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 8 pts; Nokia N8 7 pts

Test 6: Low light, static indoor scene (no flash)

I set up a low light environment in controlled conditions at home, with flash disabled on each device. In each I focussed on the 'i' in the word 'family':

As you perhaps might expect, low light conditions start to favour the phone cameras with biggest sensors, able to gather more light, plus the Nokia devices also have the Carl Zeiss optics, which do help keep things clear when the going gets tough. The Nokia 808 crop is perfect, with the white backdrop coloured by incandescent light from the table lamp, and all the tiny blue detail visible. Stunning. The N8 and Lumia 920 also do their best, but end up with a backdrop that is 'too' white - in the 920's case losing blue leaf detail too. Both the Samsung Galaxy smartphones fare badly here, with a reddish cast where there was none in reality, though again you have to admire the sheer detail in the GS4's version.

Nokia 808 PureView: 10 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 7 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 5 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 5 pts; Nokia N8 8 pts

Test 7: Low light, dynamic (people moving) scene

I set up a simulated 'pub' scene, with flash allowed on each device. I tried to keep moving in the same realistic fashion for each shot - think typical pub/party. And yes, I know the top's still on the bottle - you wouldn't want me drunk in charge of a camera test, would you?!

Xenon flash, of course, rules wherever there are moving people, and the Nokia 808 crop is, again, perfect - look at the writing on the bottle, look at the bottle top detail. The N8 doesn't fare quite as well, but the bottle is still fairly crisp. The LED-lit alternatives are blurrier, though again I was surprised by how close the Galaxy S4 camera got in terms of being 'acceptable' to most people in the context of an overall scene. Also note that the 'red' shifted backdrop isn't anywhere near as intrusive on the Galaxy phones with flash employed. The less said about the Lumia 920 crop the better - the one thing Nokia's 'PureView phase 2' tech isn't good at is shooting moving people indoors....

Nokia 808 PureView: 10 pts; Samsung Galaxy S4 7 pts; Samsung Galaxy S III 5 pts; Nokia Lumia 920 3 pts; Nokia N8 8 pts

______________

In summary

Adding up the points give us a rough idea of overall ranking here:

Nokia 808 PureView: 55/70
Samsung Galaxy S4: 55/70
Nokia N8: 49/70
Samsung Galaxy S III: 43/70
Nokia Lumia 920: 38/70

It's at this point that I swear, I honestly swear that the result wasn't fixed in any way. I always leave the points totting up to the very end and that ways it's a nice surprise for me too.... You all know how much of a fan of Nokia camera hardware I am, and so it should be strongly noted that:

this is the first time anything other than the 808 has trounced the 2010 N8
this is the first time anything's even got close to the 808 PureView, let alone equalled its overall score

It's very impressive what Samsung has eked out of the tiny 1/3.2" sensor in the Galaxy S4 and shows what modern BSI tech and superlative image processing algorithms can do. In fact, it's also a slightly damning condemnation of the Nokia Lumia 920's image processing - with an ostensibly identical sensor and superior optics, it manages to produce dramatically less detailed images at every turn. I think we all expected more from that device and I haven't given up hope that its firmware can still improve matters.

Of course, saying the Galaxy S4 has as good a camera as the Nokia 808 PureView is a little misleading. Ultimately, the latter is more flexible and powerful, especially in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing with the Creative settings, but the point is that casual, every day users will probably find that the Galaxy S4 exceeds their expectations in terms of imaging at every turn*.

* The one possible fly in the ointment is that there's a fraction of a second 'shutter lag' in the launch Galaxy S4 firmware, but reports from testers of the next firmware version are that this lag has gone, so I'm giving Samsung the benefit of the doubt here.

Credit to Samsung then, who have just raised the bar in terms of 1/3.2" camera performance for the rest of the industry.

_{(Thanks to Clove for the Galaxy S4 loan)}

All About Symbian: How to: watch live TV on your Symbian smartphone

2013-05-12T08:06:00+00:00

Now I know what you're going to ask: "What's the point? If you're at home then you can use a real TV or a desktop/laptop, and if you're mobile then you probably don't want hours of mobile TV swallowing up your cellular bandwidth!" All very true, but say you're mobile, some breaking news is happening and you're frustrated that all you can see are headlines and textual reports. Wouldn't it be nice to see what's going on by tapping into a live TV stream? With, admittedly, a UK focus, I investigate a few options. I'm sure readers from around the world can chip in with links to solutions for Symbian that work in other areas?

Getting 'live TV' on your smartphone isn't really about watching your soap operas on the bus, it's about short bursts of 'live' in the place where you are. Two particular examples for me recently were:

watching the last ten minutes of qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix while out and about in the car (don't worry, I pulled over!)
dipping into live world news a few times a day around the house, perhaps while doing chores - the smartphone becomes the mini TV that goes into every room, etc.

With that in mind, what exactly are the options on Symbian? Do bear in mind that I'm talking from a UK perspective, mind you - I can't try out native TV stations/streams from other lands for obvious reasons, just as people outside the UK shouldn't be able to get hold of UK TV streams.

SPB TV

This longstanding application ties into (in practice) a few dozen open TV streams from around the world, and uses a network of servers across the world to maximise throughput to its client software on all platforms. The interface is fairly slick, the buffering delays of the order of only about ten seconds when starting to play a channel, and you can even browse the channel guide during playback.

In recent years the channel selection has got more and more culturally diverse, with fewer English language channels, presumably due to licensing issues. You can still stream France 24 (in English, despite the name) and Euronews though, plus niche streams like 'NASA TV'.

Browsing through available channels in SPB TV...

Typical playback quality, quoted at 350kbps.

You can tap to change channels while playback continues, adjust volume, mute or return to the channel browser full-screen.

TV Catchup

This 're-broadcast' service for terrestrial UK TV has been in trouble with the law in the past, but that seems to be a thing of the past now, thankfully. You have to register with the site and it does check which ISP or mobile network you seem to be 'coming in from', all of which helped TV Catchup achieve its current respectable status.

The main attraction here is that it's very mobile friendly, with a choice of high (wi-fi) and low (cellular) quality streams of over 50 'free to air' UK channels, served up by its mobile web site, m.tvcatchup.com. The only (very minor) snag is that the code used seems to conflict with Symbian Web - you'll have to switch over to Opera mobile in order to be able to stream video seamlessly. It does all work rather brilliantly though.

...and then browse the channels and pick one.

Typical playback quality over wi-fi. Probably only QVGA, upscaled, like SPB TV, but it's watchable if you're desperate to see... err... this rather dreadful game show!

CNN International

I'm cheating with this one slightly, in that it's not 'live TV', but it's almost as good as, for news anyway, in that you can dive into this every day or two and get potted TV highlights from the world news, picking and choosing from the various categories. The icon you want is the little video playback one on the main toolbar, leading to all the CNN video content.

The home page, with textual stories. Tap the videos icon...

...and get a similar carousel, this time with movie clips in the category of your choice (see the pick list, top-right).

As with SPB TV, each video is accompanied by a five second static ad, in this case an offline one promoting a Sky TV cable show.

Typical playback quality. Again, think QVGA up-scaled.

Royalty on my smartphone....!

__________________________

Compared to a few years ago, coming up with only two (and a half) options for UK residents left me feeling rather short-changed. Are things better in your part of the world? Do please chip in with the comments, add links to relevant apps, etc. Thanks.

Andrew Grill: Using a broadway show to explain the differences between social media and social business

Andrew Grill — 2013-03-17T13:58:29+00:00

Andrew Grill: London Calling gets a fresh new look

Andrew Grill — 2013-03-17T13:29:27+00:00

blogs

Back in May 2008, I updated the look and the name of my blog, moving from andrewgrill.com/blog to LondonCalling.co on WordPress and a new theme.

After 5 years I’ve decided it is time to give LondonCalling.co a fresh new look, and a responsive and mobile friendly theme.

After many auditions, I have chosen the very clean Slate WordPress theme from Okay Themes, written by Mike McAlister.

The theme is “responsive” in that it will adapt for any screen size, including mobile.

It also has a bunch of neat widgets that you will see on the right hand side which allow me to present other posts, comments, my social presence and also my tweets.

It is a very flexible theme and I highly recommend Okay Themes – they are well written and good value – Slate cost me just $45.

I’d welcome any comments on the new look below – what do you think?

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Andrew Grill: The evolution of social business report from Altimeter group – part 1

Andrew Grill — 2013-03-12T14:42:17+00:00

Andrew Grill: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty believes big data and social will change everything – how about other CEOs?

Andrew Grill — 2013-03-11T06:30:49+00:00

Andrew Grill: Using archive.org to see your first blog post

Andrew Grill — 2013-03-04T14:59:10+00:00

Andrew Grill: How to ensure I won’t blog your press release – case study

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-25T19:39:35+00:00

Andrew Grill: This disruptive decade – global CEO survey by PwC shows that social has a place at the top table

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-25T08:52:09+00:00

Andrew Grill: Simple customer feedback idea seen at Heathrow Airport

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-24T21:04:25+00:00

Andrew Grill: NFC business cards from Moo.com – first look

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-24T13:39:08+00:00

Andrew Grill: Business Leadership Exchange Dinner at the Royal Institute – review

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-22T17:53:31+00:00

digital,digital disruption,leadership

I was invited to a very interesting dinner on Thursday night at the Royal Institution by Nimbus Ninety as part of their Business Leadership Exchange program.

The event was held under Chatham House Rule (although none of us signed anything), so I am not sure how much I can say.

Here is a picture of some very eminent people around the table.

The BLE looks at the effect of digital disruption, and on this particular night brought together an amazing group of people – from companies as diverse as Harvey Nichols, The Bank of England, BP and Deutche Bank.

The main ideal of the group is to develop an intimate network of C-Level executives with a shared aim to “explore the opportunities and understand the impact of digital disruption.

The discussion was very lively, and drew on the amazing experience of the 16 or so of us around the table.

One of the first themes of our discussion was around the fact that many of today’s chief executives don’t even know what there are being asked to approve when it comes to digital marketing.

The group discussed how the role of the “Chief Digital Officer” was on the rise, to help both the CIO and CEO navigate these new disrupted times.

One of the group mentioned that they had been asked to sign off on a multi-million pound PPC campaign (and they thankfully know what a PPC campaign is), without the requestor being able to articulate how the campaign would be measured, or what the objectives were.

I would argue (as did the group) that there a great many CEOs that are being disrupted themselves as they aren’t able to clearly understand how digital disruption is affecting their business.

We also spent some time discussing how the current era would be remembered.

Our host for the night was Professor Frank James, who is the Professor of the History of Science and Head of Collections, and also took us on a guided tour of the extensive collection in the basement before dinner.

Professor James commented that the period from 1830 – 1860 in Great Britain would be remembered as one of incredible change. The group also looked at how fast technology has changed over just the last decade.

The question of innovation and risk was raised. One interesting comment was that both Google and Facebook both have a very aggressive approach to innovation, and in many ways Google still takes risks in the same way a start-up does even though it is a multi-billiondollar company.

It is these risks taken by just a few companies that is helping to drive other companies to develop new platforms and products.

It was fair to say that many around the table represented some very conservative companies, and in their industries taking the sorts of risks that Google does is not an option.

The discussion lasted well over 2 hours, during which a fabulous meal was served, and I know everyone left the dinner feeling that the first event had been very worthwhile.

I was delighted to have been invited, met some very smart people and participated in one of the most interesting debates for some time about digital disruption.

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Andrew Grill: Embedding photos in tweets with Twitter cards

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-17T17:21:20+00:00

Andrew Grill: One of the better reasons to join Twitter

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-12T14:12:48+00:00

Andrew Grill: Some SEO agencies are illiterate

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-11T15:16:16+00:00

Andrew Grill: Gamifying the enterprise – how to get your employees using social media

Andrew Grill — 2013-02-01T11:28:31+00:00

social business,social media

I see many companies that are trying to get on the social media bandwagon, so they can say they are “doing social”.

I’m not not talking about companies just setting up a Twitter feed, or a Facebook page – instead those companies that want to encourage their workforce to start to really use social media, and better engage with customers, an collaborate internally.

While you cannot mandate that people use social media, you can encourage them to use it so they can see the benefits first-hand.

In my experience, this is much easier to say than to do.

Short of putting it in your contract, a company cannot “force you to be social”.

Imagine if you worked for a sports marketing agency, but you didn’t do a lot of sports. It would be strange to tell you that you HAVE to play lots of sports. If it wasn’t your thing then it would just be seen as a chore, you might do it for a while, then leave the company.

Back in 2010, one of my clients in Australia was trying to set up an “eminence program” to make their consultants more “googleable” (their words not mine).

The intent was sound – have their star consultants be known and famous for the area the worked in, so that when you googled a particular topic, their name came up as someone knowledgable in this space.

What we did was to find articles and tweets for them to share (in effect working as specialised researchers for them). The onus was then on the consultants to share and tweet.

I can even remember meetings in Melbourne where I was literally getting them to sign up to twitter in the conference room, helping them write their bio and send their first tweet.

The program worked well for those already comfortable with social media – and those stars really stood out.

The other 98% of people we worked with were really not that comfortable with social, so it took a lot longer – and some didn’t do anything all with the information we provided them.

I am on record as saying that back in 2007 when I first signed up to Twiter, I thought that it was “the biggest waste of time”. I was proven wrong and now even my Wife pulls me up for always being on Twitter. You really have to use these platforms as a natural extension of what you do to truly understand the benefits.

In order to drive social media adoption (for the benefit of the company as well as an employee’s own brand), you need to make it fun, and then they will be encouraged to use it and adopt it at their own rate.

Here the saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” is entirely appropriate.

One real world example of this is with the smart folks at Ogilvy in London.

Around 12 months ago, I spoke with Leo Ryan (@LeoTwit), head of social for Ogilvy London about how we could use our Kred leaderboards to get the Ogilvy staff more interested in social media.

What was important was giving them a reason to use social networks, make it fun and gamify the experience.

So what we did was build a leaderboard (it is live at london.kred.com and added the @names of Ogilvy staff to the board, ranking each of them by their Kred score.

What Leo did to gamify it was offer the person who was the most improved each month a Kindle.

The grand prize, at the end of 12 months, goes to the person with the most improved Kred score and they receive an all expenses paid trip to the South by Southwest event (SXSW) in March in Austin, Texas.

Leo spoke about the reasons behind the move back on his blog in March last year.

You can see below how the board looked in February 2013 and below February 2012.

As outlined on Leo’s blog post

The leader board uses Kred’s algorithm to assess the Influence and Outreach of the participating Ogilvy staffers relative to the rest of the participants. The person who improves their score the most over the year will attend SXSW Interactive 2013 as the social correspondent for Ogilvy London. Along the way we’ll be giving out monthly prizes for new entrants, high scores and epic acts of outreach.

At 61 participants as of Sunday March 4th we’re at about 5% penetration of the Ogilvy Group UK after only 2 weeks. My goal is to get it to 25% of the entire agency by the end of the year with an even spread across the operating companies and roles. I’ll post quarterly updates and let you know what strategies we’ve been using to drive involvement. I’d be delighted to hear of success you’ve had in your organisation, especially if I can share it here.

This is such a simple way of making it fun to go social, and I have seen much competition from the London Ogilvy folks as the competition progressed.

The upshot is now more of their staff are on twitter, and externally, Ogilvy can show the calibre of people in the agency listed by their Kred score.

We have provided this for a number of large agencies in the UK and the US and the reaction has been fantastic – it makes social fun!

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Andrew Grill: Dealing with negative feedback on social media – case study

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-31T09:20:27+00:00

Andrew Grill: Humans still crave recognition

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-30T12:11:43+00:00

influence,kred

A number of people woke to the news this morning that they were in the top 1% of Kred influencers either globally or in a particular community.

I know this because I was responsible for an email telling them so, as the CEO of Kred.

To calculate who is a top influencers, we went through our Kred database of registered users and looked at the distribution of scores to come up with those in the top 10%, 5% and 1% of Kred users. We have also looked at those in the top percentiles in particular communities.

You can read more about Kred on our Kred Rules page where you will find a distribution curve, and also a distribution of scores. Click on the charts for a better view.

Kred works on a double logarithmic scale, so to be in the top 1% of users is a great achievement.

To be in the top 0.1% of users (scores generally > 800) then this is remarkable and these people truly have online influence.

So what can you do with this new found fame as a top Kred influencer?

As far as how your top influencer score can be translated from the gold badge and used in the real world, Sally Falkow @sallyfalkow, the CEO of Meritus Media explains:

Having a good influence score makes it easier for Falkow and her team to interact with other influencers as bloggers respond to someone who they can see has a digital presence and has been active on social networks for some time. “We’re delighted with this recognition from Kred and we will display the Top 1% Influencer badge on our website, our blog and our Twitter feed,” says Falkow.

Top influencers can caim Kred Rewards

As a top Kred Influencer you are likely to be eligible for various Kred Rewards. Everything from free Pantene products to invites to our exclusive VIP New York Influencers Summit. At the NY Summit next Wednesday February 6, two Kred Stars will also be awarded a free trip to our London Summit on March 27, 2013.

Shortly we will be releasing code for a widget to have the badge appear on your website, and some Kred Stars such as @zacharyjeasns have already changed their Twitter avatar to show off their new status.

What was really interesting was the reaction to the email we sent.

I have had literally hundreds of replies to my email, with pretty much everyone saying thank you.

As a courtesy I have also personally replied to a good number of them.

What this shows me is that a little bit of recognition goes a long way on social.

Our email awarding people something as simple as a badge showing their ranking group on Kred has generated an amazing response – people want to feel appreciated.

Thanks for all the messages – I personally appreciate every one of them as does the team at Kred.

Update: I received a lovely email from Hollis Thomases this evening, as a result of the elite Kred influencer email – quoted with her permission below:

Hi Andrew,

Ironically, I read your LinkedIn article about “Humans still crave recognition” before even receiving this email from you. So now what to do? I feel like my response will be tainted either way I react! ;-)

That said, if I’m being honest with myself, I probably would not be emailing you this thank you had I not read your article, but I would likely click-thru, view my score and share it…so I guess I help make your case! (I do think it’s pretty cool that I have this influence because I’ve never bought, gamed or done anything but be authentic to earn it. I also feel way better about my Kred score than my Klout score, the latter of which I could give a darn-toot about.)

I was really touched by Hollis’ note, and I wrote back to tell her so. It makes the time I spend blogging in the wee-small hours and on the weekend worth it, to know that people are reading my blog and and making decisions about my brand (both Kred brand, and my personal brand), and taking action.

How are you going to share your new found Kred fame? Leave me a comment below or reply to the email I sent – I’d love to hear from you.

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Andrew Grill: Building Digital Maturity – your company’s Digital DNA

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-28T09:34:29+00:00

Andrew Grill: Finding influencers for your next event

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-24T12:33:41+00:00

Andrew Grill: Mobile operators are starting to respond to social feedback

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-24T11:31:02+00:00

Andrew Grill: Which industries are the most digital? How the digital leaders are already winning the digital race

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-23T09:52:34+00:00

Andrew Grill: The digital advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers – Capgemini report

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-22T10:16:49+00:00

Andrew Grill: The ROI of social media – are we looking in the wrong place?

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-15T10:41:30+00:00

social business

I was on a very interesting briefing call last night with Frost and Sullivan. They are putting together some research around social media listening tools as part of an annual study on the industry.

What was refreshing during the 90+minute call, was that the Frost & Sullivan analysts asked some really interesting questions beyond the normal “so how are you different from Radian 6″?

One question that stuck out was “what percentage of companies are using social media for product feedback and improvement?”.

My response was probably that it was in single digit figures.

And here’s the thing. Social media is “the best piece of research you never commissioned”.

I use this line at conferences when speaking about social business and it remains my most tweeted quote of all time. The social signals you get from social media are amazing – if used properly.

The problem is that for many companies, they have been scared in the initial stages when they turn on a Twitter feed and set up a Facebook page and people realise they can complain on social media! What happens here is a company pays the “Twitter Tax” because all of the process that are fundamentally broken are exposed for all to see on social media.

What I see happen next is instead of actually looking at the great (sometime very raw) product and process feedback, they just throw more community managers at the problem (and in the process add more headcount and increase costs), meaning that the C-suite get very nervous about social and see the costs rising.

In a board meeting, someone then says “what is the ROI of our social media expenditure?”. This can be self-defeating, as the social team may be simply fire-fighting the issues caused by years of broken processes.

What is the alternative?

I think we may be looking in the wrong place for an ROI value on social media if we just focus on customer service and marketing campaigns and chasing likes and followers.

Instead, if we channel the feedback gleaned from people talking about our brand on social media into our product development and research teams, then perhaps companies will build better products, more tied to what their customers actually want.

At the moment though, I don’t even think that those charged with providing the social media listening function in organisations even know that the product teams would like this feedback, or how to present it in a meaningful way rather than lots of “your product really sucks”.

Years ago in Australia when I worked for number 2 telco Optus, I was in the product development team, and later lead a strategic review of the whole product creation process at the carrier in conjunction with Bain consulting. If I had access to the rich feedback available now via social, we would have built much better products.

When working with John Lewis when they were a client of mine in 2010, my regular interaction was with the small customer research team of 3. Back then, they were making good use of the social signals being provided, mixing them with their traditional research to make better informed business decisions.

The John Lewis team told me at the time that for them, social had become an “early warning tool” as what they saw on social played out in their traditional research weeks later. We also worked out that the social research we provided them actually meant that they had a research team of 6 – social listening technology doing the work of 3 researchers.

The bottom line is – instead of looking for an ROI on social media through simple customer service and campaign lead activity, feed the intelligence from social into your product teams, and measure how more profitable your business is as result of fixing broken processes, and making products that your customers want to buy.

That’s the real social ROI – of a social business, not just from social media.

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Andrew Grill: HMV and Jessops demise point to fundamental changes as #digitaldisruption takes hold

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-15T09:56:21+00:00

Andrew Grill: Digital Disruption hits AMEX – forced to cut 5,400 jobs

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-11T09:20:58+00:00

Andrew Grill: Great ad on the tube (Digital Escalator Panels) promoting their 150 years

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-10T12:47:07+00:00

advertising,digital,outdoor

I love this ad because it makes good use of the DEP (Digital Escalator Panel) format in that as you rise up the escalators (this was at Green Park coming up from the Victoria platforms), it shows a different person every few seconds.

The video does not do justice to how well it looks.

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Andrew Grill: Customer service in the age of social media

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-10T00:02:52+00:00

customer service,social business,social media

Many of you know that I no longer deal with organisations the old way – I don’t like waiting in a telephone queue because “my call is important”.

Instead, I tweet.

On Tuesday night, I was out walking and came across a fairly major water leak.

Not knowing which number to call, I remembered that back in 2010, I used the Thames Water Tweet-A-Leak service to report a water leak.

So I simply whipped out my phone, took a picture of the leak so that they could see it was bad, and uploaded it to my own picture sharing service at pic.gs (like instagram, just under my control).

@thameswater #tweetakeak corner oakwood court and addison road W14 big leak water everywhere pic.gs/4w

— Andrew Grill (@AndrewGrill) January 8, 2013

And @ThamesWater replied

@andrewgrill Hi Andrew, Thanks for the #tweetaleak, I’ve reported it. Sarah

— Thames Water(@thameswater) January 9, 2013

Just 24 hours later – it had been fixed.

So if “old school” companies such as Thames Water can rise to the challenge and integrate new media channels such as social media into their workflows, then your company should be able to do this as well.

Some advice for Thames Water: They could make their twitter handle (@thameswater) and #tweetaleak hashtag much more prominent though.

On this page there is no mention of how I report a leak via twitter even though their home page (shown below) says you can tweet them but does not tell you how. Please fix this Sarah..

I will be writing more comprehensively in 2013 about social business, and how it will fundamentally change the way companies deal with customers – for the better.

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Andrew Grill: Facebook has gone all “Joey” on us for no reason

Andrew Grill — 2013-01-09T23:04:26+00:00

Planet Mobile

All About Symbian: Flickr ups free photo storage to 1TB each

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 20)

All About Symbian: Xenon shown off in latest ads - who knew it was so good?

All About Symbian: "Nice weather for the time of year" - WeatherTalk on Symbian

All About Symbian: What's your homescreen layout? Dazzle us!

All About Symbian: Ow Kah Leong's Nokia 808 PureView: One year on

1. Hardware quality

2. Ecosystem

3. Media

Wrap up

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 19)

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 18)

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Makers' Mercantile

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Country Yarns

All About Symbian: EOS, the mysterious Nokia camera flagship that's yet to come?

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 17)

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: PinchKnitter

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Crafters Co-Op

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Knot Just Yarn

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: apple yarns

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Mrs Hudson's Yarn and Teas

Erik Thauvin: Yarn Tour: Wear on Earth

All About Symbian: How much CO2 is a typical Nokia phone responsible for in its life time?

All About Symbian: Nokia publishes corporate social responsibility and sustainability report for 2012

All About Symbian: MeeBible adds new translations, plus social and direct sharing options

All About Symbian: RubiBox (Box.com client) gets a major v2.0 update, multiple account support

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (May 16)

All About Symbian: Shooting for the stars with the Nokia 808

All About Symbian: PhotProc brings professional image processing, but patience needed

All About Symbian: Symbian and Windows Phone-powered Nokias in Phones Show 200

All About Symbian: Symbian Belle platform variants all get Email, Calendar and Music updates

All About Symbian: By popular demand... the 808 rematched with the SGS4, with no holds barred

Distant detail

Extreme macro

All About Symbian: Nokia Suite gets another big new stable release, v3.8 is a 'go'

All About Symbian: SkyDrive uploader rolls out for the Nokia 808 and other Belle FP2 devices

All About Symbian: Meanwhile, over on Windows Phone... the 6-element, ISO3200 camera in the Lumia 925

All About Symbian: Smartphone camera super-test: Nokia 808 vs Samsung GS4 vs Lumia 920

Minor notes

Major notes

Test 1: Full sunlight, medium distance

Test 2: Hazy sunlight, distance detail

Test 3: Full sunlight, zoom allowed

Test 4: Full sunlight, tricky macro shot

Test 5: Another macro, easier lighting, looking at detail

Test 6: Low light, static indoor scene (no flash)

Test 7: Low light, dynamic (people moving) scene

In summary

All About Symbian: How to: watch live TV on your Symbian smartphone

SPB TV

TV Catchup

CNN International

Andrew Grill: Using a broadway show to explain the differences between social media and social business

Andrew Grill: London Calling gets a fresh new look

Related posts

Andrew Grill: The evolution of social business report from Altimeter group – part 1

Andrew Grill: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty believes big data and social will change everything – how about other CEOs?

Andrew Grill: Using archive.org to see your first blog post

Andrew Grill: How to ensure I won’t blog your press release – case study

Andrew Grill: This disruptive decade – global CEO survey by PwC shows that social has a place at the top table

Andrew Grill: Simple customer feedback idea seen at Heathrow Airport

Andrew Grill: NFC business cards from Moo.com – first look

Andrew Grill: Business Leadership Exchange Dinner at the Royal Institute – review

Related posts

Andrew Grill: Embedding photos in tweets with Twitter cards

Andrew Grill: One of the better reasons to join Twitter

Andrew Grill: Some SEO agencies are illiterate

Andrew Grill: Gamifying the enterprise – how to get your employees using social media

Related posts

Andrew Grill: Dealing with negative feedback on social media – case study

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