Getting Over Ovi

Image from Wikipedia

In a press release yesterday, Nokia informed its customers that its Ovi services would be folded back into the Nokia brand.  Is this simply an admission of brand evangelism failure, or the prelude to further, more significant business changes?

The Public Trial of Eldar Murtazin

Device reviewers are an interesting bunch.  They form a fairly tight-knit community yet individually can be as competitive as any triathlon participant.  The reviewer who gets his or her hands on some heretofore unknown prototype is treated with both admiration and jealousy– and often a rallying defense by the community when one gets busted.

Such has been the case recently now that Nokia has reached its limit of patience with gonzo blogger Eldar Murtazin.  The name should be familiar to most readers but for the sake of others, Eldar is the hard-hitting Russian Mobile-Review editor-in-chief known for a knack of getting access to devices so far in advance of production they sometimes seem like homebuilt projects.  Many maemo.org members have long wondered about this ability, as well as the lack of a strong response from Nokia to previous incidents.