Forum Nokia Innovation Seminar Highlights the Practical Application of Innovation

Novel ideas and cutting-edge research defined the Forum Nokia Innovation Seminar on May 26, 2008, in Barcelona, Spain. A year after the creation of the Forum Nokia Innovation Network, academics and industry representatives used the seminar to highlight new thinking around some of the hottest topics in mobile technology, from location-based services (LBS) to social networking.

The Forum Nokia Innovation Network is a dedicated cluster of selected Forum Nokia University members who research, develop, and deploy innovative mobile solutions in cooperation with developer companies and other industry players. The network fosters innovation by focusing on applied research, proof-of-concept development, real-world testing, rapid prototyping, and training and education in mobile systems and applications.

The seminar's morning sessions belonged to the universities. First up was Frank Fitzek of Denmark's Aalborg University, who described the theory and benefits of cooperative mobile networks. Fitzek outlined a key performance challenge in mobile communications today: the rise in power consumption by mobile devices.

With the availability of 3G and the growing number of new services, power consumption by devices has increased significantly, yet battery development has not kept pace. The consequence, of course, is shorter battery life. "If we keep building services and networks the way we have been, we are doomed," said Fitzek.

The solution, he says, lies in cooperative networking, in which short-range radio, such as Bluetooth or WLAN connectivity, is used to link mobile devices. Research shows that as the number of cooperative devices rises, their energy consumption decreases, processing and data transmission are faster, and costs to the user can decrease.

Generation C takes part

Building on the theme of social cooperation, Paul Coulton of Lancaster University delivered a speech titled "Mobile Experiences for Generation C." Unlike the Generation X and Generation Y populations, members of Generation C are defined not by an age demographic but by their strong motivation to create and share various types of content.

Mobile technology fits the needs of this group, adding value through context, such as location and interactivity. Coulton outlined several innovative mobile projects that his team has developed, mashing up services to create new user experiences. He also handed out 3D glasses to the audience and showed an application that enables users to upload pictures from their camera phones to a Web site that combines pairs of pictures to create 3D images. The site, which is drawing interest from around the world, has received thousands of uploads in few months and up to 500 images each week.

Supporting social networking

The seminar's afternoon session saw presentations from industry. Tom Tierney, developer alliance manager in the Partner and Developer Program at NAVTEQ, described his company’s thinking on and developments in LBS.

The most recent NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, now in its fifth year, reveals an interesting trend: Some 70 percent of the applications submitted had a social networking theme and only 20 percent focused on navigation. "When we first started, all applications were about navigation," reported Tierney. "In the future, LBS will become pervasive and as a term will disappear. LBS will become a characteristic that defines a mobile application."

Then, Knut Yrvin, Trolltech open source community manager, gave insight into the evolution and advantages of the Qt cross-platform application development framework and highlighted Qt's abilities to help developers create applications quickly and easily.

Forum Nokia Recognizes Academic Contributors

Forum Nokia also acknowledged academics at the Forum Nokia Innovation Seminar in Barcelona, Spain. The following scholars were acknowledged by Forum Nokia:

• Dr. Frank H.P. Fitzek (Aalborg University, Denmark) for his extraordinary research and development work on the areas of wireless and mobile communication networks, mobile phone programming and cooperative networking.
• Dr. Paul Coulton, Dr. Reuben Edwards and M.Sc. Will Bamford (Lancaster University, U.K) for their extraordinary achievements on innovative mobile application research and development in the areas of web 2.0 and NFC during 2008.

Good showing at S60 Summit

CoopLoc, a mobile application developed by a student team from Aalborg University, and NaviSpeech, by a student team from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, were featured at the end of the day when they won the Forum Nokia Mobile Innovation Competition. Both applications joined a dozen of other applications by Forum Nokia university members in the expo at the S60 Summit, held later in the week.

The expo gave university developers a great chance to showcase their applications to a wide range of industry influencers, as well as to find new contacts for cooperation. For example, Lecturer Jari Mikkolainen of Tampere Polytechnic University of Applied Sciences was at the expo to demonstrate the Bus Tracker application, and discovered a potential teaching aid in the form of a mobile-device-usability application from Digia, also at the expo.

Code Camps test delegates' skills

The day after the Forum Nokia Innovation Seminar, developers attended Forum Nokia Code Camps. One, run by Forum Nokia Business Development Manager Jure Sustersic, focused on the key LBS issues. The other, headed by Forum Nokia Senior Consultant Riku Salminen, delved into Flash Lite 3.0. In addition, the Forum Nokia Quality Afternoon, presented by Risto Helin, Forum Nokia manager of Application Testing Services, gave delegates the chance to learn more about how to ensure that their mobile applications provide good user experiences and about certification processes.

The Forum Nokia Innovation Seminar is just one of a number of events organized by the Forum Nokia Innovation Network. Find out more about Forum Nokia and universities by visiting Forum Nokia for Universities.

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