Despite the ubiquity of technology in our lives, and our increasing familiarity with it, there is still a disconnect that exists between human and machine. Short of the Transhumanist version of the future that imagines the eventual merging of the two, CIID students Kevin Cannon and Tobias Toft have envisioned a conceptual user interface that attempts to bridge that gap by designing a more user- friendly experience.

Yesterday, we were invited to the launch of PUSH N900 at the One Dot Zero event in London, a design, hacking and modding competition organized by Nokia.

PSFK’s next Good Ideas Salon in New York will be on October 1 with Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase. Chipchase will present his thoughts on ‘Pattern Recognition’ at the salon followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Using the mobile financial service provider Obopay, Nokia is poised to revolutionize the world of banking through its new service Nokia Money.

Nokia has announced their first foray into the PC market. Yesterday, the mobile phone giant revealed their Windows based Booklet 3G. Aimed at the growing numbers of netbook users, the Booklet offers a robust design, and a host of convenient features.
Besides a solid 12 hours of battery life and 3 modes of wireless connectivity, Nokia’s device has an integrated GPS system which can quickly find your position and work with the built-in maps program to offer easy to use location-based services. Price, and other details will be revealed on September 2nd at Nokia World.
[via Engadget and Yahoo]
Yahoo

Ikea has become known for innovative digital campaigns: Open Kitchen was one of their most recent successes, a site that allowed users to upload images of their kitchens with the chance to win back the cost of their Ikea kitchen. Their latest one is Bedroom Secrets, where apart from winning a similar prize for uploading pictures of their bedrooms, users can look into the bedrooms of three characters: Lonne, Sven and Manette, live. Reminds us of Nokia’s Somebody Else’s Phone campaign, as well as Diesel’s hijacking campaign from not too long ago, though user-generated content is something the other two [...]

While GPS and cellular tracking systems have opened up new ways to navigate our daily environments, the viability of the technology is often less than stellar when we find ourselves indoors or in dense urban areas—which is a lot of the time. Nokia has released a trial technology that allows users to pinpoint their location indoors inside the Kamppi Shopping Center in Helsinki. The service will present shoppers with their location inside the mall along with supplementary information about its stores, coupons, and the ability to share locations with friends via SMS. The service is currently limited to the Kamppi [...]

On his blog, Jeff Jarvis has three videos that explain his thoughts on the idea of advertising as failure, or in other words, why advertising is only required when a product does not connect with the consumer on its own. He first spoke about this with the Nokia Ideas Project and then expanded on the idea at the BRITE Conference at Columbia University. We like what he says about the direct relationship between the customer and the company being more important than the role of the ‘middleman’, which is what he refers to advertising as.
Watch the first video below, and [...]

At a time when the worldwide economy could sorely use a boost, we were excited to learn of a recent announcement made by Nokia that they will start freely sharing their unused research and development to companies across Finland. The initiative called The Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill is a three-year joint venture that also involves Technopolis, one of Europe’s largest science and technology park chains, Tekes, a Finnish agency for funding technology and innovation and several Finnish cities hoping to add jobs to their economies.
Given the fact that each year companies like Nokia come up with hundreds or even thousands of [...]

The Nokia Pulse, a concept by Miika Mahonen, is similar to the soon to be released Microvision Mobile Projector. They’re both designed to be powerful mobile display systems that can use a mobile phone as the source of video and as a remote control. The Nokia Pulse also combines an NXT-speaker with Dolby sound processing into the compact device, which can (theoretically) project images up to 60-inches on any wall.
While the Pulse is still just an idea, Microvision is currently working with other companies to incorporate their light engine into other devices such as phones and laptops. Is screen size [...]

Visa in collaboration with Nokia have launched a new service using NFC (Near Field Communication).
The Visa PayWave service is being tested in Malaysia and allows users to make payments by just waving their phone in front a contact-free reader. The transaction will then appear on the next cell phone bill.
Currently, 1800 shops accept the system in Malaysia. Users can also take advantage of the payment method when using public transport, and at highway toll gates and car park facilities.
The image shows the Nokia 6212, the world’s first NFC approved phone.
[via PCWorld]

Here are PSFK’s top five articles from Mar. 23 – Mar. 29, 2009.  Results are based on Google Analytics and in order of overall page views.
Stella McCartney Boot-Tights – Orli Sharaby
Nokia Almighty Headsets – Piers Fawkes
Swedish Magazine is Published as a Tattoo – Dan Gould
IKEA to Reveal Concept Car – Dave Pinter
Wieden Kennedy’s Nokia Competition Shows That Crowdsourcing can Suck For the Crowd – Piers Fawkes

The recent headphone competition that was run by Nokia by the London office of the advertising agency Wieden Kennedy highlights how much the odds seem stacked against creatives who participate in crowsdsourcing. After receiving entries from creatives with designs of headphones inspired by a favorite track, one of the top prizes was awarded to a designer that works both for Nokia and Wieden Kennedy – an action that specifically goes against the rules of the competition.
There is big discussion going on across the web where creative minds are wondering if crowdsourcing has gone too far. A recent Wired magazine article [...]

We’ve always wondered why Nokia has persisted in making its phone-users use the telecom company’s own proprietary content sharing services like Mosh when there were plenty of good and popular sites already being used by their subscriber base. Nevertheless, with Sony-like determination, with every new music or photo phone comes some walled-garden service.
Mosh was one such service – a place you could upload, store and share your content. The problem Nokia didn’t expect was that by offering such a service you have to manage it – and they were shocked to discover people were using it for things they [...]

We’ve been thinking about ways handsets could be more sustainable, and it turns out that Nokia has too. Their latest idea: Make less stuff.
As part of its new “we:” strategy to save energy and reduce waste, Nokia’s N79 Eco will ship sans charger (the idea is to use your old one) and come in a smaller box. According to AllAboutSymbian:
The smaller box may not sound terribly significant, but when you operate on the scale of Nokia the little things really do add up. For example between February 2006 and the end of 2007, Nokia shipped 250 million phones in smaller [...]