I’ve been attending University for 3.5 years. Today was the second time I’ve walked out of a class due to illness. That is how much it hurts.

I literally feel as if my brain is too large for my skull. My tear ducts are fully open, and the brightness of the LCD I’m using right now is painful.

Father is a retired Doctor, hardly speaks English, 100% Romanian. I love him.

His prescription: Hot bath, hot cup of red wine with lots of sugar, aspirin, sleep. Now excuse me while I go pass out and try to recover from this temporary hell.

I would like to know though: what is the home remedy for a cold/headache/migraine in your country?

(There is so much I want to blog but I quite literally can’t, if I’m 100% tomorrow expect quite a few posts.)

In order to truly understand a company you have to get intimate with its history and employees. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is a Finnish based company, and that fact alone has dictated their design, marketing, and business practices from its inception.

What makes Nokia so Finnish, BMW so German, Samsung so Korean, and Sony so Japanese? If these companies were founded in other parts of the world I guarantee you they wouldn’t be as iconic as they are today.

There is a Nokia employee out there, Phil Schwarzmann, who has a great blog called “Finland for Thought”

The byline reads: “I’m an American who’s been living in Finland for four years. I started this blog to address some of the political, cultural, and current event issues in Finland and the United States. I am a strong advocate of liberty, individuality, equality, and tolerance. Enjoy!”

I like that. I like that a lot.

Reading about Finland from the perspective of an American living there has been rather interesting. It’s caused my curiosity level of this Nordic country to peak.

What do they eat? How social are they? What holidays do they celebrate? These are the questions I ended up asking myself, and later looking up on Google (NSDQ: GOOG), to silence that little voice in the back of my head who always wants more input.

I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding Finland and maybe one day I can use, and expand, that knowledge of the region if I ever get to see Nokia HQ in Espoo.

One thing every country has unique to themselves are proverbs. I’ve found a website with a ton of them, from Finland of course, and I’m going to be starting a new segment, every Monday and Thursday of the week.

To put it simply, I’ll share a Finnish proverb with you, twice a week, tell you what I think about it, and see how that little tidbit of information has shaped Nokia today.

Why am I doing this? Like I previously mentioned, you can’t fully appreciate a company until you understand what geographical and social elements contributed to the way we know them as today.

Tomorrow is going to be the first installment, what should I call this little idea of mine?

I’m leaning towards "Nokia: Made in Finland"

Aztecsoft Limited has announced that it has joined Symbian’s Platinum Program, to extend applications and platform solutions for mobile and convergence markets to the Symbian ecosystem.

Read the full article »

Direct link to video

Source and Review: InfoSync

Over at My-Symbian forums, someone posted a screenshot from the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) E90. Apparently, the upcoming device is the successor of the popular Nokia Communicator devices and will sport two displays, one featuring 800×352 resolution, and will use the S60 UI.

The resolution of the picture (click here for the original) definitely matches the rumored specs, so once again, let’s keep our fingers crossed. (via: RingNokia)

Too bad some of the N770’s drawbacks carried through. The new model is designed to access the Web via Wi-Fi connections or a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. But it only pairs up with certain handsets—it didn’t work with my version of Motorola (NYSE: MOT)’s RAZR, and while Nokia (NYSE: NOK) says it will work with other versions of the popular cell phone, the company wouldn’t provide a full list of compatible devices. And its battery life remains low, at a little over two hours when in use. Another flaw: Its touch screen seemed to attract and keep smudges.

The N800 touch screen can be navigated with a stylus or finger, though I found the stylus to be more responsive. Still, I was disappointed that hardware buttons needed firm pressing and I often couldn’t complete a task just with a touch of the stylus. That made certain functions hard to call up easily, or with one hand.

N800’s handwriting recognition needs work. The device kept mistaking my "4" for a comma, for example. My writing isn’t that bad. You can teach the N800 to learn to recognize your handwriting, though, but the process requires you to input each letter the way you write it and takes an awful lot of time. I doubt a lot of users would bother.

Source: Business Week

What have I been saying all this time about the hand writing recognition?

There have been some other N800 reviews floating on the net , I figure I’d touch on those for the Internet Tablet fans out there:

• The Register
• Internet Tablet Talk
• Computer World

I highly recommend you subscribe to Reggie’s website: Internet Tablet Talk. He really does a complete job of covering that device and what everyone has to say about it.

As we’ve already mentioned last year, Fring allows you to make free mobile calls, send instant messages to other fring users, and communicate with PC based VoIP applications such as Skype and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Talk. And now, it is available for latest Nokia (NYSE: NOK) S60 3rd edition smartphones.

However, the application is still in beta (preview) and may not work perfectly. At the moment of this writing only the N80 and N80i have been fully signed by Nokia. I tried to make it work on my N93 and couldn’t do it. On the other hand, it seems that the E61 and N80 users don’t have such problems.

It’s good to know that we can expect the fully working version soon. Skype for Symbian that actually uses WLAN for connection is something we all are waiting for. [picture taken from My Your's & Our E- 70 and E61]

Source: Terminal.hu

We will find out what those cluster of buttons do at 3GSM. If they aren’t programmable then Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has obviously not read this blog!

The cute quota for 2007 has now been filled:

Direct link to video

Source: atmaspheric | endeavors

Best part of this whole thing?

I shot this video on my N93 and then swapped the card over to the N800 where I uploaded the video to YouTube, and wrote this post!

The N800 is pretty damn useful now that I think about it. Way to go Jon!

At a recent investors meeting with Goldman Sachs in Boston, Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s CFO Rick Simonson explained to the investment bank that it plans increase pressure on its closest rival, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Inc (NYSE: MOT). The Finnish cell phone company plans to cut its entry-level phone pricing this quarter in a move aiming on stopping Motorola from narrowing the market-share gap between the two companies.

Source: International Business Times

Olli was right when he said Nokia wasn’t engaged in a price war during 4Q 2006:

Nokia’s CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, told the FT that, "Our latest results are an illustration that if there was a price war, we were not participating."

Source: The Inquirer

However the 1Q of 2007 is looking mighty different right about now. It’s fun watching these two giants fight.

(Picture was found on Nokia’s site)