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Nokia said last week that it was pruning back investments in new services and will slash 450 corresponding jobs. This week, the company is confirming that as part of those changes, it will be closing down an office outside of Seattle, where a year ago it planned to develop a major headquarters for its push into online entertainment and community services.

The closure signifies just how much the handset maker is scaling back plans to become a company that makes money through advertising and content sales, in addition to phone sales. The Kirkland, Wash.-based office was home to Ovi’s Share service, which was a media-sharing site, much like Flickr, YouTube or Picasa.

Nokia picked Kirkland after acquiring Twango, a media-sharing start-up that was based in the area. Last year, it secured a lease to fill two floors, comprising of 25,000 square feet in an office that they were remodeling, so it had a Nordic feel. At the time, the office had 51 employees, but they were hiring up to 125, according to The Seattle Times.

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Continuing yesterday’s collection of videos from the inaugural Nokia Developer Summit, held last week in Monaco, where James Etheridge got to speak to some interesting industry folks involved in creating the software we all use. Forum Nokia has been increasing its role in software development over the past couple of years and Pekka Pohjakallio talks about what it means to developers, and why publishing software to Ovi Store is a good thing for all involved. He highlights having access to 50 million devices from launch, as being a pretty powerful incentive for developers to get involved.

James also caught up with Benoit Schillings and Thiago Macieira from Qt (pronounced ‘cute’) software about the platform that enables developers to create applications for multiple operating systems, without having to redevelop the software each time. We have the first video with these two today, but we’ll be back Monday with the second as these guys have some interesting stuff to reveal.  please Click “Read More” if your viewing the Nokiausers front page to read this article.

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For those looking to preorder the Nokia N97 NAM, today is surely your lucky day. Nokia USA has temporarily dropped the price from $699 to $524 with “Today’s Savings”, and a further $75 can be taken off with coupon code CARTP409N (bringing the total price to $454). Oh, and did we mention they are throwing in a free Nokia BH-703 headset? This probably won’t last through the weekend, so for those hoping to get the N97 at next year’s price you might want to act now.

Link: Nokia USA Coupon: CARTP409N

Update: The coupon no longer works with today’s discount, however you can still get $175 off the phone and a free headset….For now…

Source: Engadget Mobile

Ovi Maps was last week very happy to launch the first Macintosh supported version of maps.ovi.com, and so far the user response has been great.

We have however had some Macintosh users reporting some strange and difficult to reproduce problems with the Safari version of Ovi Maps. This is where YOU come in…

If you are a Macintosh user with Safari 2, 3 or 4 Beta, we would love to hear your feedback on how Ovi Maps is working for you in Safari. In particular, tell us:

• How did you find the plugin installation process? Did everything download and install for you ok?
• How does the map itself perform for you? Is it responsive? Does the map data download correctly?
• Are the favourites working well for you? Can you store and access your favourites easily?
• What happens when you reboot your computer after installing the plugin? Does everything still work ok?

If you do see errors, please be sure to tell us:

• What version of MacOS and Safari you are using
• Exactly what you did to see the problem
• Can you take any steps to correct it? Restart safari, for example?

Post all your testing results here on the Maps Beta Labs discussion forum.

Today, the Nokia N-Gage Application built in to many S60 Nokia handsets has received an update, just launch your N-Gage Application on your Nokia handset, once loaded, press Options, then scroll and click on Check for Updates, (see image below), then follow the on screen prompts to downloading, and installing the latest version of N-Gage to your device.

Once installed, you will be required to reboot your handset, and then when done, you will notice, your N-Gage Application will be relocated to your Applications Folder, and been given a new N-Gage Logo, (See image below).

If you have an N81, or N81 8GB however, this process is not quite as straight forward. When you following the above instructions, and click on Check For Updates within N-Gage, it will let you know there is an update available, however, you will be requested to download the Application to your PC/Laptop, and then transfer across to your Phone via Nokia PC Suite.

This proved quite a tricky procedure in my case, as when trying to transfer the application to my N81 8GB at first it crashed my Laptop, so I tried again, this time transferring the N-Gage .sisx file to my handset via Bluetooth, and this time I was prompted there was not enough phone memory, and that to delete some items. Very odd.   I still have not figured out myself, how to get this new N-Gage Application installed on my N81 8GB.  I successfully installed it on my other Nokia handsets, N95-1, N95-2, and N82.

Please let us know if you expereince anything similar to this with your N81, or N81 8GB, and we will be sure to bring this up the the guys over at All About N-Gage. 

Nokia Conversations today brings us NokiaDeveloper Summit video round up, Part one from the recent event which was held in the beautiful pictoresque resort of Monte Carlo Monaco.

First up James Etheridge gives us an overview of the Summit, before sitting down individually with Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation and Petro Soininen, chief engineer for web technologies at Nokia. Lee gives us an update on the Symbian Foundation, confirming that we’re on track to see the first release of the open source version of Symbian by the middle of next year. Petro takes us through Widgets, what they’re made of, what they do and which one is his current favourite.

Nokia Developer Summit Introduction

Lee Williams speaks to James Etheridge about the Symbian Foundation

James Etheridge explores Widgets with Petro Soininen 

If you have recently Pre-Ordered an N97, or registered an interest in the first Full QWERTY Touch NSeries device, then you may of received this following email. If not, then enjoy this insider information.

With the launch of the Nokia N97 fast upon us, we wanted to share an exclusive film showing behind-the scenes footage from the team involved. Featuring unseen interviews with Nokia designers from the core development team, the film charts the journey from design to production line.

Uncover Nokia’s obsession with perfection which led the team to design the unique slide QWERTY keyboard and tilt screen, or the customisable 16:9 widescreen display, which is frequently updated with the new content from live widgets and feeds.

You can find this short film, here on the NokiaBlog, or here on NokiaBlogs Ovi. Its just over seven minutes in total, so enjoy.  You can also watch the video below by clicking on the Play icon on the video toolbar, not on the video itself. Thanks Ricky The Symbian Guru for the video info.

Late last week Nokia conversations launched a poll to find out which S60 Twitter app put the biggest smile on your beak, and the response has been great, with Gravity currently storming ahead of the pack in the popularity race. Nokia Conversations are going to keep the poll open for a few more weeks as this topic on the ultimate Twitter app for S60 Nokia phones seems to have struck a serious chord -they’ve already clocked up over 300 votes in 6 days, and heaps of you have been commenting with some great suggestions for alternatives to our core list of S60 Twitter apps.

Read on for a full rundown of how all the Twitter apps are measuring up alongside each other in the most-loved stakes, plus find out which Twitter apps many of you have mentioned that weren’t included in our original list of big hitter Twitter apps for your Nokia.

Gravity, from Mobileways, after a month since its launch is still being improved constantly, with the latest implemented feature being Facebook integration. This will be available very soon, as its currently being Beta Tested in ALPHA stage. I’m currently testing out the Facebook integration on a couple of devices, and can say, its a very welcomed addition, and one of which has been requested by many Gravity owners.

In a spurt of generosity, the world’s top Mobile Phone maker Nokia plans to pass on to smaller Finland-based firms some 100 ideas for which it has not found any use in its core business, figuring the move could lead to new business opportunities for others.

“The current economic climate is just right for a critical evaluation of intellectual property portfolios and the release of the innovations that are more suitable for others to exploit,” Esko Aho, Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Corporate Relations and Responsibility and Finland’s former prime minister, said.

Some expect Finland’s economy to sink about 5 percent this year due to its heavy reliance on exports, and the country is looking desperately for new ideas to boost its economy.

Nokia itself is expected to recover from the market slump faster than its rivals, but it reported its first-ever quarterly pretax loss for the January-March quarter.

The new public-private initiative includes opening access to Finnish state investments for companies involved in the program. So far, some 300 firms have said they are interested in participating. Most of these firms are outside the IT industry — even a concrete foundry from Tampere, Finland’s third largest city, has said it would like to get access to Nokia’s bag of ideas.

Nokia’s Aho said it would be easy to see additional value from mobile services for the concrete foundry.

“With location-based services they can make sure the concrete is poured down at the right plot,” he said, adding that if all goes well, some of the ideas could end up with Nokia in the end anyway.

“It would be easy to see this river flowing also in the other direction,” Aho said. “It could well be that some idea lead to the situation where the result can later be added to Nokia’s offering.”

Source: Reuters

Nokia Siemens Networks and EMC have joined forces in a technology and reseller alliance that will bring advanced IP management to service providers worldwide. Core to the deal, the companies are working together on a joint system to improve the management of IP networks. The co-developed system will offer and end-to-end visibility and fault management for both MPLS VPN and IP routing protocol configurations in multi-technology and multi-vendor environments. The system is based on the mobile network management of Nokia Siemens Networks’ NetAct, which will be enhanced with IP domain visibility provided by the EMC Smarts automated IT management system. Nokia Siemens Networks will continue to resell, and provide system integration capabilities for EMC’s line of automated IT management systems, including the EMC Smarts, EMC Application Discovery Manager, EMC VoyenceControl and EMC Infra. The joint system is being demonstrated at the TM Forum Management World.

Source: Telecompaper