Yesterday was a fairly busy day, if you’re a tech-head like me at least; Google+ rolled out their brand pages, the Nokia N9 started updating to the much-heralded mega-fix firmware and, for those that needed it, Spotify dropped onto the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Google+ I’ve covered already (no really, what is it for?), the N9 update I am yet to apply and as for Spotify? Well, what can I say?

Choosing Windows Phone as the last, great, mobile operating system to support, Spotify prepped itself for the promised masses yesterday afternoon (after a preview some six months ago) and boy, is it a beautiful app to use.

First, some caveats:

• Spotify mobile is only available to premium subscribers
• Premium is £9.99 a month. A small price to pay to NEVER PAY FOR ANY MUSIC EVER AGAIN.
• I’ve tried Zune* and, until Spotify dropped, that was fine (if a little alien).

So, to the app itself.

The good stuff:

• WP7 app design: oh my God this app is gorgeous.
• Scrolling, sharing, syncing: all of it rocks my face off.
• It’s Spotify, on my mobile.

The stuff needed in the next update:

• Background colour options
  Windows Phone offers either ‘dark’ or ‘light’, white on black or black on white respectively. Spotify should either match its app’s skin accordingly or at least offer it up as an in-app option. Strangely, while the app offers the light variation, the desktop client offers dark.
• Last.fm integration please
  Syncing tracks listened to in online mode and remembering then uploading my tracks listened to in offline mode.
• Offline playlist filters
  Yeah, love that but, any chance that you filter the playlists by DOWNLOADED FIRST? Having to scroll through all of them in order is a pain.
• Album art on lockscreen
  I mentioned I was on Zune before, one thing that the WP music player does nicely is show album covers on the lock screen while playing music. It’s a nice touch and adds to the overall experience. Spotify should do this too. See below.

 Florence playing through Zune

 Florence playing through Spotify

Overall, great work guys, it’s an awesome service and I’m a big fan. Having it running on my Lumia makes me a very happy bunny indeed. Good job.

Please, continue to iterate, improve and impress.

Danke,
James.

*I signed up for a Zune Pass about a day after first getting my Windows Phone. I like that it covers my Xbox too, but I already have Last.fm there. So it was only really the mobile music angle I needed to cover. Now Spotify is here, I just don’t need it.

That is all.

[Private post - made public Dec 14th, 2011]

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

This beautiful video is being blogged all over the place at the moment, and for good reason. Splitscreen is the winner of the recent Nokia Shorts competition (disclaimer – 1000heads worked on this project for the big N) and, work associations aside, the video itself is gorgeous.

The winners (along with the other finalists) should be proud; it’s a great project and the output has been fantastic.

Well done to all involved.

Nokia and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership that will see Nokia hardware running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software. It’s about eco-systems and, with Google’s Android growing ever-larger, it’s also about a stronger – much more strategic – industry play.

The Nokia community, one that I’ve been a part of for many years (and now spend my days helping to manage), is obviously still in shock. The announcement has been out for 20mins and between ‘MURDER!’, ‘I told you so!‘ and ‘What have you done?!‘ – there are many out there still waiting for their questions to be answered:

- What about Meego?
- Where does this leave Symbian?
- What about the current roadmap?
- When can we expect the first Nokia/WP7 device to ship?

I imagine, over the course of today all of these questions, and more, will slowly be answered; the actual speech from Elop himself isn’t scheduled for another couple of hours and I’m fairly certain that what we’re seeing is just the start of major disruption both internally [for both Microsoft & Nokia employees] and externally for the market as a whole.

For now, I’ve got a couple of Social Media Week events to attend this morning so, I’m going to re-read my WP7 review from last year and spend my tube journey wondering if the bad points I highlighted could quite easily be ticked off by an awesome piece of Nokia hardware…

We are living in interesting times.

Are we over water now? I think so. At least, we should be. I guess we’ve been up for an hour now, maybe longer. My toes hurt.

Damn shoes.

I love my job. Six seats to my right a couple of competition winners sit happily drinking beer, looking forward to their prize; two VIP red blue carpet tickets to the Tron: Legacy ‘World Premiere’ in Hollywood.

I was at the London one last weekend. That was cool. Although Patrick probably nailed it best when he said “Premieres are fun but it’s essentially like going to the cinema with a suit on” – Yes Pat, just like that (if you ignore the Hollywood superstars arriving around you and of course the free popcorn.. that’s always a winner. Let’s not forget that).

LA. Again.

I’ve been there before y’see, although last time was a holiday, this time it’s for work. I think I’ve managed to wangle some down time over the coming week, with both Sunday evening and Monday daytime currently cleared for catching up with some of my favourite Californians. Matt & Jen namely and probably Jeb too, if there’s time.

I love the internetz for stuff like this. Having such a large global network means that more often than not there is always someone to see or meet. Some might see that as an annoyance (and to an extent, I can understand why), however if I ever want to completely escape… utterly switch off… then I know how to do that too.

Obviously you wouldn’t know when those times happen because I don’t actually talk about them. But they are there. Gently. Flowing back and forth.  Slowly. Like a soft breath on the wind…

But I like people. I love people. Even the inconsiderate German chap in front of me on this flight (seat thrown back, feet pushing against the wall in front) I love them all.

Well, I try…

First, the Nokia C7 Social Challenge is now live – good stuff

Second, N8Producers is out there too…

Oh and last but by no means least, I met Jeff last night…

That was at the Tron: Legacy premiere in London’s Leicester Square. This tweet made me smile a lot, but I think the best thing of all was being able to spring two tickets on a couple of lucky members of the cheering crowd.

I’m still editing that video but I’ll share it when it’s done; trust me, they were very happy

I love making people smile.

So much.

Whatley out.

Moleskine entry: Dec 15th, 2009

What day is it today? 15th? I think so. That’s right, ten days ’til Christmas, I remember.

It’s been a fair while since I emptied my thoughts into this moleskine of mine, but excuses I have none. Instead I have nearly three months of hard work to look back on. 1000heads is treating me well, very well.

It’s hard work, challenging even, but in the best of ways.

I can’t talk about any of of the stuff I’ve working on, obviously. However, let’s just say I am in exactly the right place at the exactly the right time; I’ve seen the future, and it’s very bright indeed.

It strikes me that it might be some months until this entry makes it out onto my blog. So apologies in advance if this seems out of time at all.

I wonder if, in time, I will be able to talk about what I’ve actually worked on, i.e.: projects of the past. I’m finally getting to grips with how fast this place moves; last Wednesday I helped out with creating an invitation for the Ovi Daily App Awards. Between us we nailed the copy, design, look and feel and just for good measure, a comedy QR code to boot.

They were signed off, printed and sent out within 24hrs and, by Friday, blog posts were already springing up. Amazing.

I understand that this might just be par for the course for some of you but, coming from a veritable behemoth of an organisation, this is not how it’s done ‘client side’.

I’m yawning as I write, I must be boring myself.

Writing from a plane (again), we’re headed for Helsinki. There’s a man two seats away who spoke at OpenLabs. Remember that?

Seems like such a long time ago now…

Shot on the N8, edited in iMovie’09 – turn it up to 720p

First Wolverine, now Spidey. I’m detecting a theme…

Here we are nearly a full week on from all the fun of the fair that was Nokia World 2010 and there is still so much kicking around in my head.

Many internet peeps have already written up their thoughts so far (some were there, some weren’t), all giving their opinions on what was and was not a success for the Finnish giants this time ’round. On top of this, a couple of them have even called me out asking for what I thought about this year’s Nokia World. Well, I’ll tell you…

Before I go on, this post is here – on my personal blog – for a reason. The following thoughts and opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer, clients or blogging pals – past, present or future.

First and foremost I think the event as a whole was broadly positive and I’ll get to the main thinking behind this shortly but first, some background.

Believe it or not, this was in fact my first Nokia World and I really, thoroughly enjoyed it. On the first day I sat through the first set of keynotes and was thoroughly impressed by both Niklas Savander AND the departing Anssi Vanjoki. The former proving to be both witty and charming while the latter gave a barnstorming presentation worthy of any outgoing EVP.

After that, I was working.

My agency, 1000heads, runs Nokia’s global community programme WOMWorld/Nokia and as such (amongst other things at least) facilitates a large part of Nokia’s blogger engagements all around the world. The WW/N team were on the ground making sure our guys were happy while I kept an eye on the overall feeling within (and without) the group. All in all, the outlook was positive.

Later on in the day, when Nokia decided to give away nearly 1000 brand new Nokia N8s to the assembled developer community, all of us shared an equal level of surprise but also happiness. Of course we were gutted we didn’t ALL get one (not all of us made the first developer keynote where the gifting took place), but knowing that the ones that did get given away went to developers? None of us complained.

“Nokia did a Google – at last” they said. They were right too.

But 1000 free phones does not a successful conference make. Onwards then, to the true source of my positivity -

The following day, when I sat down to record some thoughts with Dan McGrath from Nokia Conversations, I was honest – “Let’s face it,” I said “it could’ve been a LOT worse.” and I meant it. The CEO gone, the EVP of Mobile Solutions on his way out, no MeeGo announcements… Nokia World really could have been a mess.

But it wasn’t.

Being there, on the floor, meeting the workforce, feeling the vibe in the air… There were no crappy devices announced, no shoddy services, no great white hopes… They didn’t deliver their [insert name of device and add the word ‘killer’ to the end] sure, but they never said they would. What they did was make a very clear and very firm step forward. It may’ve been a small (near-baby) step forward, but nevertheless, a step in the RIGHT direction.

I didn’t see Stephen Elop make his special guest star appearance at the end of day two nor did I see any of the hoo-hah about the whole HTC v Nokia debacle. Nokia held an all agency briefing day on the afternoon of day two which I left feeling not only super fired up about the future of my favourite Finnish phone manufacturer but also just so INSPIRED. OPK and Anssi V aren’t the only changes Nokia have made internally, there’s been a lot of restructuring below too and amongst the newcomers there is a real sense of change AND – more importantly – determination.

I have a different view to most, this I know. I have the privilege of working close with those that matter and also get to see that little bit further down the road (albeit under strict NDA – so don’t even think about asking), so trust me when I say; there really are great things ahead.

James Whatley – Sept 20th, 2010

Appendix -

1. Twitter won’t hold them for long but, while you have the chance, go read Jonathan MacDonald’s tweets from September 15th. He gave a fantastic talk at one point during day two’s all agency session and managed to live-tweet the rest of the day’s presentations.
2. This is the podcast I gave with the Nokia Conversations guys. It’s only seven minutes long and well worth a listen for Rafe Blandford’s and Matt Miller’s contributions alone.

Finally, if you’ve made it this far, please do leave a comment. Even if to say hi.
It’s not often I unload like this and any and all thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers.
…

T-minus 2hrs until take off. I’ve never been to Canada before, this time last year I was just packing my bags to head of to Wyoming and still a little bit unsure of my future. Amazing to think how far and how much things can change in a year.

Why Canada? Work, naturally.

1000heads have been signed on to do some work for Nokia Canada and since the start of July we’ve been executing our first kick off activity; the N97minitour.

Driving from Vancouver to Toronto (with stops along the way) and timed with the Canadian N97mini launch, our team on the ground over there have been organising meet ups, competitions and generally blogging and tweeting their little hearts out.

I’m flying over for leg two; Montreal to Toronto. What with Mobile Geeks this coming Friday and a whole host of other events lined up for the ten days following, it should be pretty awesome.

As I type, the team are en route to Montreal and I’m already grinning at the thought of the RV pictured above pulling up at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International and my team waiting to greet me. Amazing.

Like I said, I’ve never been to Canada before. What a way to see it first hand?