The Finnish Government (or to be precise the Prime Minister’s Office) just hopped on the crowdsourcing bandwagon with their ideoikasvua.fi -site that aims to crowdsource ideas for sustainable economic growth. Cool, right? Wrong. Unfortunately.
It’s a nice step to the right direction I’ll give them that but why won’t you go all the way and do it right? Why have a two month submission window with a very strict step-by-step Q&A structure that will put most people off at the start? And if you want to start a dialogue like you claim why force visitors to submit their answers to your questions before letting them view the thoughts other people have submitted?
While you are at it why not create something more open and inviting that would get us non-academics hyped and excited as well about helping our dear country take the next step beyond Nokia-land? An environment that would facilitate an ongoing open and inspiring dialogue between the people running the country and the folks down in the trenches. From now ’til we reach that great new future and beyond.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this is not a great step to the right direction. I just hate it when the opportunity for something ground-braking is wasted because of the paralyzing fear that dramatic change inflicts in people. The fear of leaving your comfort zone and just boldly going where no man has been before.
Bottom line: They are looking for game changing ideas but are afraid to lead the way. I just feel sad for all the crazy interesting ideas we could have shared that will now never see the light of day.
Connected mobile music is getting more interesting by the minute. iPhone and Nokia users (to name a few) have already enjoyed the ability to purchase & download music directly on their mobiles. Last FM has also treated it’s users to a mobile version of the Last FM radio and most radio channels have created mobile streams of their programming. What mobile users have been lacking is a on-demand / streaming music service that let’s you freely choose the music you want to listen to.
Enter Spotify – the ground breaking Swedish streaming music service that has spread like wildfire on people’s PC’s and Mac’s.
(In case you have lived in a tree for the past year: Spotify is a music service that let’s you stream and listen to pretty much all the music in the world for free (with ads) or for a 10€ / month fixed price (without ads – my choice). At the moment you need to have an invite from another Spotify user to get in but a simple Google search for “Spotify invites” should help you with that.)
Spotify have finally released some more information of the long-awaited mobile version of the service. The video below demos the service on Google’s Android. The good news is that Android will not be the only supported mobile platform and that yes – it will support offline listening…sweeeet. Can’t wait!
But: If I was Nokia or even Apple…I’d take this sucker pretty damn seriously.
p.s. Message to the folks at Spotify: If you need someone to beta test the mobile version on Nokia or iPhone…feel free to drop me a note.
I feel very nostalgic. I worked with Nokia’s N-Gage the first time around and have obviously followed the progress of Nokia’s ill-fated gaming venture ever since.
A year back Nokia relaunched the revamped N-Gage. As a service, not a gaming phone. Smart move I thought. And it seems that I was right and so was Nokia. The service has now hit one million subscribers and is growing pretty rapidly thanks to the pre-installed N-Gage applications in most new Nokia smart phones.
Ok Nokia. Here’s the plan: Keep the faith even though the times are tough. Get more quality games out, keep on developing the service and trust your staff that have believed and worked hard to make this happen. You NEED to be in mobile gaming and now it seems like you might finally have a fighting chance.
