What happens when 10 mobile technology geeks get together in London for a surprise visit? Well, in this case you get a fair bit of blogging, loads of social book marking, a ton of mobile geotagging of photos and videos, and you get a first look at the World's largest suspended signpost, designed to encourage mobile device users to share details of their favorite places and things to do... enter the Ovi Good Things tour 2009.

Yes indeed, I was one of the fortunate 10 bloggers/journos invited to take part in a social location experiment designed to enlighten and inform on the merits of mobile geo technology and social location. Armed with Nokia N97 smartphones, the ten of us (most all from Europe, with the exception of yours truly) spent 2 days in London discussing, sharing, Twittering, blogging, and yabbering about mobile technology, S60, the Nokia N97, Ovi maps, and other topics centered around mobile technology, social media, and social location (SoLo as i like to call it).

And so our journey began on Thursday, October 23 as we were paired up in teams of 2 (5 teams in total) and each presented with a loaner Nokia N97 (yes we gave them back) along with the all-important O2 pre-paid SIM card - When in Europe you can secure a SIM card for one month for a mere 5 pounds! Equipped with N97s loaded with Ovi Maps 3, we proceeded to setup the devices with all our favorite tools and apps (I promptly loaded Gravity for Twitter, Shozu, Nokia Sports Tracker, screen capture utility, and a few others that escape me at this time) - I also ran the way-useful Nokia Switch application [via Bluetooth] designed to easily import your important data (contacts, bookmarks, notes, calendar) from another Nokia device. 

The Task - Find those Good Things

We were then informed that we had a first clue, a set of Lat/Long coordinates, which were our first hot spot to locate. Once we arrived at the destination we were to grab a screen shot of Ovi Maps showing our position, Twitpic a photo, and SMS in to HQ for our next clue. The objective was to put our mobile mapping skills and knowledge of Ovi Maps to the test (luckily I was paired with Jay Montano who did a fine job running his N97 and Ovi Maps). My job was to Tweet and photograph the journey and also tag images to be loaded with a Sports Track of our journey... sad to say at this time I'm still having difficulties getting my tracks uploaded to the Sports Tracker server - in hindsight I should have carved up my trips into segments rather than storing one 3 hour long journey with about 60 associated images - a bad idea!  

Our task was simple in concept, receive a set of coordinates, proceed to that location, record the find, get a clue, then proceed to the next location. We set out on foot with a few dollars [UK pounds] in our pockets, our N97s (and backup devices) and one clue - a set of geographic coordinates. Indeed it was a fun, albeit a tiring excercise as we walked about 7 miles in total although during that time we had a fantastic tour of the sites of London and managed to observe and record numerous "Good Things" along the way. And so we get to the objective of our 2 day visit to London, Ovi maps Good Things. At the end of our scavenger hunt we found ourselves near the Tower Bridge along the River Thames where a massive signpost was illuminated and hanging, suspended from a large crane... the sign (and bright arrow) was pointing to a "Good Thing" and displayed a custom message.

It was then that we learned that Nokia was encouraging users of the latest Nokia smartphones (N97 and N97 mini) to share details of their good things (See official PR at http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/6558/) - this could be done via mobile messaging or via the Ovi Maps service. You can upload and share details of your good Things at this location.

It was at that time that we found out that our journey was arranged to coincide with the release of the Nokia N97 mini - I'm still a little unsure why Nokia didn't elect to have us use the New "minis" loaded with the latest Ovi Maps. Nokia was using the release to hype details that  Ovi Maps 3.0 on the Nokia N97 mini shows you where you are with best ever street maps, satellite, terrain maps, and 2D and 3D views for pedestrians in unfamiliar surroundings. It allows you to find your position, search an address or location and explore local services to get to good things in over 180 countries worldwide. Ovi Maps 3.0 is free to download or is pre-installed. The company is asking people to send in their 'Good Things' to http://www.nokia.co.uk/maps or text 62010 to have it displayed above London's skyline. From an end-user's perspective, the Ovi Maps data (think NAVTEQ), feature-rich POIs, and pleasant UI (be sure to use maps in 3D mode) are a real treat to use and offer what i would consider a high-end or "premium" mapping experience - i.e. something you would easily be willing to pay for!

Care to add your own Good things? Simply locate the position of the “Good Thing” on the map, drag a pin to placemark the location, then simply enter details, a description etc... Save to your favorites (add categories as well) and share with the World. Good things are available to all users via an RSS feed of recent additions and you can also contribute your Good Thing to appear on the World’s largest sign post! You can start building you Good Things collection on Ovi Maps at http://maps.ovi.com/goodthings (details from this blog post http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=5188)

About the excursion and the technology

Pitfalls of such an excercise... Like any challenge, there's always obstacles to overcome and this was no exception. From the get go, some of our crew seemed to have various difficulties including getting the pre-paid SIM card inserted, configured, and connected. Once online, the next hurdle was having all the required software loaded (yes, this meant navigating and trying to get what you need from the Ovi store... yes, I know, that is a little scary but then again, it is Halloween!). To critique Ovi Store, really, if I enter an application name in the search I would expect to be able to quickly and easily access and download that application!

The biggest technical issue was likely establishing and maintaining GPS connectivity. We never really nailed down if these issues resulted from urban canyons, device failure, device OS firmware, or ?? but it did seem that maintaining a constant, quality GPS signal while being connected for data throughput was a huge challenge. A few other device specific usability issues did creep up along the way as well including the never ending battery life dilemma. I elected to tote along a second device (n95) with 2 batteries, and i needed them! For myself, memory issues seemed to constantly put a damper on my use of the N97... I'm still baffled by that one as I really had no software installed on it and only had a need to run the following: web browser, Gravity, camera, Ovi maps, mobile gMail, and text messaging - yet I was constantly presented with memory related conflict messages that demanded I close an application... totally frustrating. Now keep in mind, the N97 firmware 2.0 update had not been released yet so we were using devices with "dated" and trouble-plagued firmware.

For many of us, a standard solution was implemented... we all took advantage of using 2 (or more) devices to get through the day! Myself, I came prepared and in addition to using the N97 loaned to me for the trip, I also used my trusty N95 8GB (show me any N95 user that can part with his/her old faithful workhorse) and had a spare battery as well. This proved to be indespensible as I used the N95 to run sports tracker for the scavenger hunt - lucky for me as the N97 battery lasted until about 4 PM as a result of heavy camera, video, and twitter usage during the day. My team-mate Jay had a second N97 and a digital camera with him in addition to the loaner N97.

Any long time Nokia (S60) device user will likely be able to relate as to just what you have to go through when you put your regular, FT device on the shelf for a few days, get handed a new device, and try to get up and running "as usual" in a hurry... its sometimes enough to keep you awake at night! 

On the upside, Ovi Maps (3.0 in this case) is always a pleasure to use. Sporting excellent data (NAVTEQ), the data viewed in 2D or 3D mode along with handing POI data and places of interest displayed on the map - standard map and satellite views are available. If I could make a suggestion regarding the sharing of good things, functionality I would love to see included in future Ovi Maps is a simple and quick way to add POIs or "good things"... perhaps pre-configurable to assign a hot-key for input and also including the ever popular ability to share the location (and associated media) with my favorite social networks, particularly Twitter, facebook, and Ovi share. I'd have to think that with Nokia already posessing similar technology via their Sports Tracker application and the recently acquired Dopplr (social location sharing) that these technologies could be integrated with Maps. If the end user is to use these capabilities though it HAS to be simple and it HAS to work.
 

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