An N8 Charm

Anyone ever watch the 1990 movie Crazy People?  An advertisement executive (played with nutty magnificence by the late great Dudley Moore) cracks up under the stress of lying to people for a living and ends up in a mental institution.  At some point he enlists the aid of residents to help him create marketing campaigns after the bluntly-honest-but-hilarious ads that landed him there become popular.  You can read the wiki article to get an idea of the results, but watch the movie if you can to get the full effect.  Other than some bad acting by Darryl Hannah, it’s cute.

Why am I recommending films to you?

Because when I think of Nokia’s flagship N8 smartphone, I think of how well it would fit into one of these crazy campaigns.  I can picture a sharp photo of this beautiful handset on a blank background, accompanied by pithy captions like “The Nokia N8: Quirky But Cool” or “Cover the Logo and Everyone Will Love It”.  

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.