N900 has been on the market for more then a month now…Time flies…
The buzz is continuing and sales seem to have started very, very, very well…
I am obviously happy about all this…But actually something else is making my day.
For months and months, we have been designing a ground-breaking product for Nokia in a completely closed environment.
Off course, designers have designed, architects have "architected", developers have developed, and managers have managed. We have done feasibility studies, we have done usability studies, we know more or less where we succeeded, and we know more or less where we still need to improve. And we have been endlessly testing the device and doing endless amount of modifications with customer satisfaction in mind.
But all this is no substitute for reality that is to say: real people using the device in their real environment
The fact remains: when you are designing such a product, you need to have an intuition for what the customer wants and this intuition drives every single one of your actions for months.
There are tools, methods and process that you can use to measure how good you are doing along the way, but in the end it is all about the intuition and the strength of the confidence that you put behind it to drive the work…and eventually it all boils down to the time when the device gets in the hands of the customer.
Are they going to like the browser? The multiple home-screen? What about the conversation views? Are they going to notice this and that feature? All this gets resolved magically within couple of weeks.
I was not the only one starving for this. Last week-end, some of our guys from our application testing team went to do a couple of days of internship at our flagship store. They actually sold our device during a whole day and got confronted to customers themselves. The feedback we got from the guys was quite outstanding; some said the experience was simply tremendous.
With the huge coverage the N900 has been getting, no need to say that we have on our hand a unique opportunity to grow our knowledge and experience on the matter. We need to leverage this.
I myself will probably see you around at the Nokia Flagship store somewhere in the winter.
Wishing you a happy new year.
Planet maemo: category "feed:d573028622e777551a22558b061985bf"
There are a lot of positions opened now in Maemo. Just click here, and this should take you to a search engine which has all our opened positions. Uuse the obvious "maemo" keyword, and you will find everything from engineering to marketing positions.
In the Application team, we are looking for architects, project managers, programmers, etc... covering a lot of different areas: browsing, location, real time communication, productivity, testing, program management, services, etc...and there are openings in Finland, US (Mountain View) and Bangalore.
I -in particular - am looking for somebody to drive our development in Bangalore - if you feel up to it , don't hesitate to contact me.
In the Application team, we are looking for architects, project managers, programmers, etc... covering a lot of different areas: browsing, location, real time communication, productivity, testing, program management, services, etc...and there are openings in Finland, US (Mountain View) and Bangalore.
I -in particular - am looking for somebody to drive our development in Bangalore - if you feel up to it , don't hesitate to contact me.
N900 public launch and announcement...that went all right...Bloggers blogged. Twitters tweetted. People got excited... a dozen millions hits on the maemo5 website within 24 hours...Genuine interest all around.
Then came Nokia world....And the first opportunity for hands-on reviews...What was the result?. Reviews were mostly positive and the buzz was remarkable on the floor of Nokia world.
So far, so good.
But it's not over until it´s over.Until the device is in the hands of customers and people start loving the device, all of this means very little-The only thing that can be said at that point is that people understand what this device is about and what we tried to do.
So, let's keep up the good work, let's stay focus...We are on the right path.
Yannick
PS: a few reviews were the N900 was mentioned. techradar, pocket-lint, mobile-ent, business24
Then came Nokia world....And the first opportunity for hands-on reviews...What was the result?. Reviews were mostly positive and the buzz was remarkable on the floor of Nokia world.
So far, so good.
But it's not over until it´s over.Until the device is in the hands of customers and people start loving the device, all of this means very little-The only thing that can be said at that point is that people understand what this device is about and what we tried to do.
So, let's keep up the good work, let's stay focus...We are on the right path.
Yannick
PS: a few reviews were the N900 was mentioned. techradar, pocket-lint, mobile-ent, business24
Apart from the promo video - which everybody has probably already seen - , there has been a couple of extra interesting post on youtube
The first one is a small presentation from our friends from marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP5R-5NX1BE&feature=PlayList&p=32A4BB8E620CF809&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19
....But my favorite would have to be this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WhyrhWsMFk
It only has a couple of hundred hits on youtube so far but it is building a cult following which should rank it right up there with the productions of Andy Warhol and Luis Bunuel in a matter of months...and will also probably trigger a long series of such alternative weird videos to my greatest pleasure...
The first one is a small presentation from our friends from marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP5R-5NX1BE&feature=PlayList&p=32A4BB8E620CF809&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19
....But my favorite would have to be this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WhyrhWsMFk
It only has a couple of hundred hits on youtube so far but it is building a cult following which should rank it right up there with the productions of Andy Warhol and Luis Bunuel in a matter of months...and will also probably trigger a long series of such alternative weird videos to my greatest pleasure...
The N900 has been announced, it is based on Maemo 5.
Here is the N900 official press release about it:
http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1337594
And here is the maemo site about it:
http://maemo.nokia.com/.
Check it out.
Here is the N900 official press release about it:
http://www.nokia.com/press/press-releases/showpressrelease?newsid=1337594
And here is the maemo site about it:
http://maemo.nokia.com/.
Check it out.
Maemo SW is setting up a site in Mountain View - which means that there are some positions currently opened that might be of interest to some of you. This site will deal with third-party and partner management with a special focus on the Internet services and technologies. We are looking for people with very different background- some product management and UI positions for instance. I am in particular looking for somebody to manage the site. (go to the careers link on http://www.nokia.com/ site and search for the "Maemo SW, US site manager and Head of third-party and partner development" position). This is a quite interesting position, and we are looking for somebody who would have both the technical and open source background as well as some insight on product management and partnering
As far as RD is concerned, there are several positions available: architect, project manager, lead developer. Hope to hear from you.
As far as RD is concerned, there are several positions available: architect, project manager, lead developer. Hope to hear from you.
N810 is out. One step further. It has the slide/in-slide/out keyboard everybody was asking. It has integrated GPS. Plus lost of others HW goodies. The Browser is Mozilla based - which is the result of the effort that we put on N800. The device is thiner better, more optimzed and has got a brand new revamped look.
After a lot of community ground work and hard development, we can now announce the development version of a new Mozilla based browser engine for maemo.
It is a XULRunner configuration of Mozilla trunk targeted to Firefox 3.0 and Gecko 1.9. It does not include XUL and SVG because of performance optimization and uses GTK/XLIB/XFT instead of Cairo
I could not attend Guadec this year for private reasons but some of you who are there have probably checked out Ari Jaaksi´s and Leonid´s talk on the subject.
This is something that has been asked by the community for a long time, and that I have been asked for many times at Guadec. Let´s see now if you guys like it.
It is a XULRunner configuration of Mozilla trunk targeted to Firefox 3.0 and Gecko 1.9. It does not include XUL and SVG because of performance optimization and uses GTK/XLIB/XFT instead of Cairo
I could not attend Guadec this year for private reasons but some of you who are there have probably checked out Ari Jaaksi´s and Leonid´s talk on the subject.
This is something that has been asked by the community for a long time, and that I have been asked for many times at Guadec. Let´s see now if you guys like it.
As far as Skype and Rhapsody is concerned the responsability for development was under the Internt Application that I ramped up about 8 month ago. So special thanks goes to those guys (Sotiris, Ouyang, Vitaly, Zsolt, enkatetc..) . That being said the development needed effort and coordination from all the teams all over OSSO: Multimedia, RTC, Testing, etc... The list of people to thank is endless: Mikko and Makoto from Multimedia, Sasha, Andrei, Simone, Naba from RTC, Alexandru and all the people from testing, Rami and Shalinder from project, Lee from localization, Brad from legal, Erkko and Sami from product, Sasha and Misha from integration...and I am probably forgetting some names, here, etc...
As far as flash9 work is concerned: Mikko, Matti, Erkko and Leonid and the Adobe guys should be the one receiving our gratitude. I would like also to extend my thanks to the CP management, with specific thanks to Ari Jaaksi who has been given us great support during our trials and tribulation.
As far as flash9 work is concerned: Mikko, Matti, Erkko and Leonid and the Adobe guys should be the one receiving our gratitude. I would like also to extend my thanks to the CP management, with specific thanks to Ari Jaaksi who has been given us great support during our trials and tribulation.
The new SW upgraded for the N800 is out! Apart from the Enhancement in terms of performance, usability and memory card support, the two main application feature are Flash9 support and Skype (Flash9 comes with the SW package, Skype is installable through a pre-install icon on the device)
A lot of coordination were needed between the different OSSO teams in order to make this happen and - even thought the road was bumpy - overall we did manage to deliver everything in close to 4 month of development.
A lot can be siad about the Skype effort in particular in relation to the Real Rhapsody release of march 2007. One can obviously note from those 2 projects, tha some part of our development - specially in the Application area under my responsibility - is concentrating on enabling major Internet services on our device. A lot of work still needs to be done and will be done on the Application infrastructures. The basic Sw offering will definitely improve (new apps will appear, some apps will be redesigned and more open source work will definitely be done). But Partnering with Internet players and enabling those SW at the platform level is also a strong trend in our development as Ari Virtanen pointed out. We cannot make our customer wait for the Internet services they like to use, while we continue to work on the infrastructures, UI, and other Apps. We cannot tell Skype or Rhapsody users, please wait another 12 month to use your favorite application. Otherwise those customers might just turn to another device that does support their favorite application. So basically it means that our development needs to be split in two and go in parallel toward 2 different trends: one that follows the long-term approach focusing on the maturity and features of the platform (performance, UI, extra application, design, connectivity, HW support, etc...) and another trend that focuses on delivering the Internet favorite services - wherever they might come from - on top of the platform at any given time. Those projects are generally extremely complex as they combined business and development and they of course cause a lot of synchronization issues witht eh platform and product work.
A lot of coordination were needed between the different OSSO teams in order to make this happen and - even thought the road was bumpy - overall we did manage to deliver everything in close to 4 month of development.
A lot can be siad about the Skype effort in particular in relation to the Real Rhapsody release of march 2007. One can obviously note from those 2 projects, tha some part of our development - specially in the Application area under my responsibility - is concentrating on enabling major Internet services on our device. A lot of work still needs to be done and will be done on the Application infrastructures. The basic Sw offering will definitely improve (new apps will appear, some apps will be redesigned and more open source work will definitely be done). But Partnering with Internet players and enabling those SW at the platform level is also a strong trend in our development as Ari Virtanen pointed out. We cannot make our customer wait for the Internet services they like to use, while we continue to work on the infrastructures, UI, and other Apps. We cannot tell Skype or Rhapsody users, please wait another 12 month to use your favorite application. Otherwise those customers might just turn to another device that does support their favorite application. So basically it means that our development needs to be split in two and go in parallel toward 2 different trends: one that follows the long-term approach focusing on the maturity and features of the platform (performance, UI, extra application, design, connectivity, HW support, etc...) and another trend that focuses on delivering the Internet favorite services - wherever they might come from - on top of the platform at any given time. Those projects are generally extremely complex as they combined business and development and they of course cause a lot of synchronization issues witht eh platform and product work.
Now that the N800 has been out for a month and things are settling down, I would like to take the time and opportunity to openly acknowledge and thank the open source work that has been done in 2006 inside OSSO Application - particularly in the domain of real time communication.
In October 2006, we started the work to enable the OSSO platform with voice and video. Now, in february 2007, the team working together with the Open source has managed to deliver on-time for 2 different HW (770 and N800).
The first thanks I would like to extend is to our in-house team. Nothing would have been achieved without the hard work and competence of those guys. So Sasha, Jussi, Andrei, Simone, Naba (as well the newly arrived): thanks to all of you!
On the Open source front, I would like to take my hats off to the Telepathy community, and specially to Robert McQueen, Philip Kallaf and Robert Taylor.
We had to find a viable open source architecture that would allow us to enable the platform with both voice and video inside a six month time-window. Those guys made it happen with the utmost professionalism.
Thanks to all of you
In October 2006, we started the work to enable the OSSO platform with voice and video. Now, in february 2007, the team working together with the Open source has managed to deliver on-time for 2 different HW (770 and N800).
The first thanks I would like to extend is to our in-house team. Nothing would have been achieved without the hard work and competence of those guys. So Sasha, Jussi, Andrei, Simone, Naba (as well the newly arrived): thanks to all of you!
On the Open source front, I would like to take my hats off to the Telepathy community, and specially to Robert McQueen, Philip Kallaf and Robert Taylor.
We had to find a viable open source architecture that would allow us to enable the platform with both voice and video inside a six month time-window. Those guys made it happen with the utmost professionalism.
Thanks to all of you
Hello all!,
We are currentely recruiting. Bellow you will find a small description of what those position are about as well as a link to them on the nokia career site. I think there is definately something for everyone - from developper to manager. Check the position bellow some of them might be interesting. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
1/R&D Manager. This is an extremelly interesting position for anybody who is also interested in the business aspect of things. But don't go for this one if you are want to focus on pure software!!
2/Project Manager Project management position: scheduling responsability for deliverables, etc...
3/Senior Software Engineer Coding, prtotyping, solution finder, architecture proposal.
4/ Senior Software Engineer: 4 developpers position on Open source VoIP, IM and Realtime communication. Any experience on existing open source VoIP/IM solutions is welcome i.e. telepathy for instance.
5/Browser Specialist any experience on browser development is welcome.
6/ Sw developper. General software development and architecting on applications.
7/Project Manager. Scheduling, deliverables, responsability
Hope to hear from you.
Yannick
We are currentely recruiting. Bellow you will find a small description of what those position are about as well as a link to them on the nokia career site. I think there is definately something for everyone - from developper to manager. Check the position bellow some of them might be interesting. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
1/R&D Manager. This is an extremelly interesting position for anybody who is also interested in the business aspect of things. But don't go for this one if you are want to focus on pure software!!
2/Project Manager Project management position: scheduling responsability for deliverables, etc...
3/Senior Software Engineer Coding, prtotyping, solution finder, architecture proposal.
4/ Senior Software Engineer: 4 developpers position on Open source VoIP, IM and Realtime communication. Any experience on existing open source VoIP/IM solutions is welcome i.e. telepathy for instance.
5/Browser Specialist any experience on browser development is welcome.
6/ Sw developper. General software development and architecting on applications.
7/Project Manager. Scheduling, deliverables, responsability
Hope to hear from you.
Yannick