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Nokia hires the guy who did the interface of the Palm Pre to make MeeGo unstoppable

Categories: MeeGo, Nokia
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 at 10:48 AM

Chalk this bit of news as an awesome sign of what the future of Nokia under Stephen Elop. Peter Skillman, the dude who made the user interface for the Palm Pre, you know, the whole instant search, cards, awesome notification system, synergy, and a boat load of other sweet things that we’re seeing Google throw into every new version of Android and Apple in every new version of iOS, is now working for Nokia. He’s going to be under Marko Ahtisaari, Senior Vice President of Design at Nokia, and will be doing the user interface for MeeGo.

How long until we see an awesome MeeGo device that has the Skillman Touch? At least a year, if not longer. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gives Skillman time to do the things he wanted to do at Palm, but couldn’t due to either a tight budget or lack of resources. Nokia has enough money in the bank, and enough talented engineers, to do things that will make your eyes bleed and your heart pop out of your chest. Trust me, I’ve seen demos internally. Hopefully with Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, set to begin his new job next week, he’ll fast forward the technology demos that have been floating around Nokia for ages and bring them to market.

That’s one thing that really bugs me. When I call out Nokia I purposefully insult the management. The talent is there, and there’s lots of it, but they’ve been given instructions by a bunch of babbling idiots who went to lawyer college and don’t know the first thing about mobile phones. That or they know plenty about mobile phones, but are stuck in the 90s and think that if you make something that does SMS and voice well then the rest will take care of itself.

Update: His official title, if you’d like to know, is “VP Meego Ux and Services at Nokia“.

[Via: Will Park, our man on the ground at Nokia World right now]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.