S60 Open to new features

The results for the Widset Pets campaign are in. Here are our Top 10 "Widset Pet" Ambassadors:

10. Auntiwiv
9. Nikhilchawla
8. domon07
7. Furie
6. jobber99
5. ruslan
4. ritesh
3. gomcoite
2. Zanmato
1. kukalubo

Thank you for sticking with the program and sending in your often amusing reports about turning friends and family on to "Widset Pets". Our rewards for this program are your choice (1) of either Nokia MD-5W BT speakers, the Nokia DT-22 Tripod, the Nokia Wireless Audio Gateway or the iGo stowaway BT keyboards. Please e-mail Raj with your choice. There are a limited supply of the gateways, we'll handle those on 1st come, 1st serve.

For the rest of you aspiring Ambassadors, remember that you have to sign up for a specific campaign to 1) get your welcome kit, and 2) to be eligible to earn rewards. "Always S60" doesn't have specific rewards associated with it. To sign up for a campaign, go to the Ambassador website, log in, and choose "Campaigns" on the left hand side. We'll have new campaigns to join later this month.

Hopefully most of my readers already know that the next "Evening with S60" will be held in New York. New York was the site of our first ever "Evening" way back in March 2007 (was it that long ago??) and we look forward to coming back to reconnect with some of our original Ambassadors as well as put faces to names of our the newest members of the community. If you haven't already signed up please do so soon as we will most likely have to cap registration this time around.

We'll have an even larger contingent of Nokia employees at this event to listen to your feedback and gather ideas about what you'd like and don't like about S60 based products and services.

I acknowledge all of the feedback we got on the "Where Next" post….we are listening to your requests and continue to try to open up the possibility of "Evenings" in new, as-yet-unvisited territories. Hopefully we'll have more news on this in the coming months. This particular "Evening" is happening because it coincides with S60 presence at Web 2.0. We'll have the Nokia employees in the city so we figured we may as well get 'em out into the open where they can meet and greet our fans. Thanks for your feedback and patience as we look into these details.

As one of our favorite Ambassadors, Nikhil Chawla, is fond of saying: All good things must come to an end. And so it is with the Widset Pets campaign. Our final ROTW comes from Zanmato who brought a real workhorse entry. I like it because it has just the facts-- a no frills, good ol' fashioned Ambassador report. Short and sweet:

Okay this time i was queuing at Tokyo DisneySea amusement park to get to the attraction Tower of Terror. The queue was around 1 hour so that gave me a lot of time to do what i always do: Play around with my phone :D I watched a few videos, played a bit on N-Gage and took a look on my pet. So with nothing else to do one local started a conversation with me about my phone so i let him play around with it for a bit while i introduced myself as an ambassador. After that i showed him Widsets and told him about it and showed him Pets. He was interested in Widsets and Pets so i gave him the address so he can download and try if Widsets works with his mobile

Zanmato -- If you can contact Kristina before her leave begins do so! Otherwise we'll figure out another way to get the last loaner N82 to you....

Ambassadors hold tight. We've got a new campaign in the works, and we should be set to announce it on September 17th. Stay tuned and meantime keep the "Always with S60" reports coming!

Poor mini Raj just had no chance up against this fearsome fighter, Kukalubo. Kukalubo left Raj eating dust or maybe worse that porridge. Yuck! Poor Raj gave it his all, but was just no competition for the great Kukalubo.

As the WidSet Campaign is coming up on its last week, we have the ultimate Final Head to head Challenge: Kukalubo vs. our own Mini Ricky. With their meters at full capacity, both contenders have been sporting those “Saturday Night Fever” outfits for weeks. Below they are starting off with almost the same scores, and wearing their black fighting attire:

Come back frequently during the week to check the status of our contenders…. “Let’s get ready to rumble!!!!”
Mini Ricky:

Kukalubo:

This week's winning Ambassador is from the Philippines. domon07 impressed us with this report on how to put the spark into a team-building day:

It was after our work at the office and on the way to our team building destination in a hot spring spot here at the south when I decided to pull out my wireless keyboard from my bag and started browsing my widsets on my phone. My friends from the office noticed what I'm doing and they started giving me questions about it. I explained them how to use it and they gave me a good feedback. One of my officemate at the back shouted out telling them that I'm a s60 Ambassador that's why I know all about it. He told them that I'm like one of the voices of s60. To break the seriousness of the topic, I decided to login my widset pet and showed it to them. And as I expected, they all started laughing after seeing my distorted face in an cartoonish look. I told them that it is part of the s60 campaign and I am responsible for educating people about s60. I explained them how to use it and they easily get the point coz some of them already have a facebook account. They wanted to make a widset pet of their own for a little stress reliever so I told them my facebook account and gave them an instruction on how to do it. It's a very tiring day but a very successful s60 talk for all of us.

Congrats, domon07! Great job there on educating your colleagues while keeping things fun with your Widsets Pet widget. A loaner N82 will be on its way to you soon.

Just one more week to go before the Widset Pets campaign ends. So send in those reports quick!

There is a new ruler in town… Auntiewiv has held the winning title for the last 5 weeks and finally met his demise. Kukalubo has risen as the new WidSet Pet King. Below are the final standings:

Auntiewiv:

Kukalubo:

Can Kukalubo hold on to his title? Next week he will face off with Mini Raj (aka runny from the Ambassador team). Below is Mini Raj’s starting stats, which is not looking too promising at the moment…

Hallelujah! Widset Pets and S60 just found a whole country-load of new fans. All thanks to ILikeMyNok - who's done a fantastic job of not just getting his pet loved, but also in communicating the many benefits of owning an S60-powered device.

Here's ILikeMyNok's winning report:

First when I heard about the Pets app I doubt it would work for me, but after a short conversation with Ricky I thought I would give it a try and maybe tell someone about the Pets app to continue spreading the S60 word.

I had a clue what Pets was about but not completely, after I read the complete description I realised It worked with Facebook!! That is great for me because I love Facebook, recently I moved from my country to USA, I had all my friends in my homeland and the only thing that keeps me connected is Facebook, I thought Pets could enhance the experience. Later I discovered I was right !

I started to tell all my old friends about the Pets app, and most of them started using the Pets app !! It was a THRILLER !! it spread like sand in my Facebook's network. Suddenly I and all my old friends were enjoying the great experience Pets brings!! I felt like if I were hanging out with them and I felt them closer, much closer. I was really happy. And they were also happy.

The pets was a big hit, but now as a S60 Ambassador I had to tell all my Facebook's network about the program and my status as a S60 Ambassador, so I sent messages to all my friends and I wrote in BIG letters '' Im a S60 Ambassador'' Right away my Inbox was full !! All my network and other people were asking me what a S60 Ambassador was, I had a really long session of questions, I was like 4 hours sitting in my desktop answering questions about S60 and its capabilities, people could not believe a phone could do many things, (camera, gps, wi-fi, great browser, dvd quality, 3d n-gage games etc..) I also told to all of them that they could use Pets on the GO with a S60 device. Many of them liked the idea that much they were looking for buying a S60 device. They all congratulate me of my S60 Ambassadors status, and some of them were thinking of getting S60 devices for christmas or birthdays. I recommend a specific device for each friend, knowing their needs.

Now all my old friends know about S60, none of them knowed because when I lived in my country I still didn't know about S60, but now they all know I'm a S60 Ambassador and they all know what a S60 device is capable of. As a S60 Ambassador this was a great success. !!

We like you too, ILikeMyNok! :) A shiny new N82 smartphone loaner is on it's way to you. Thank you for taking all that time to answer your friends' S60 questions. 4 hours! Wow.

Just two more weeks to go before the Widset Pets campaign is over. So get all those pending reports in, quick!

Thanks to all of our S60 Ambassadors, the Share on Ovi campaign was a rousing success. So much so that the Share on Ovi team has maintained our photo of the week theme, with a few tweaks. As you know, we like to get feedback from Ambassadors for the different campaigns, and pass them on to the team responsible. One such piece of feedback that we got on more than one occasion was the request for a Facebook app that would connect with your Share on Ovi account. Well, we're pumped to let everyone know that the Share on Ovi team listened, and they now have a Facebook application!

Once you've set it up, all of your Facebook friends will have direct access to your public files (private ones are still kept private) in your Share on Ovi account! If you're already using the new Facebook look, you can set Share on Ovi as a tab, so that visitors to your profile can quickly access it. All of your public channels show up, along with previews of the first 6 photos/videos on that channel. You can also manually select which of your public channels show up on your Facebook profile, and which ones don't, if you'd prefer.

You can click here to add the Share on Ovi Facebook application to your profile. If you don't already have a Share on Ovi account, don't worry, there's a handy link for you to create one, as well.

If you missed out on the Share on Ovi S60 Ambassador campaign, you can still get in on the Always S60 and Widsets Pets campaigns by signing up here. We're working on a few ways to make submitting your reports even easier, as well, so stay tuned!

Maksim (Mini Max) gave it a good try, but Auntiewiv seems to be unbeatable! But will Auntiewiv be able to prevail over Kukalubo. Kukalubo has already pummeled Kristina a few weeks ago and is now determined to take the winning title away from Auntiewiv. Here is the current status and Kukalubo starts in the lead:

Auntiewiv:

Kukalubo:

This battle might get real ugly… so close your eyes for a second if you can’t bear to watch!

sigma421 sent in this timely reminder that there's so much more to Widsets than just the cute cuddlies (who manage to stay hungry even after loads of burger, beer and steak - arrrgh).

Check out the report:

Although the WidSet pets application is the main focus of this campaign I have also used it as an reason to show people around The WidSets application as a whole.

For example recently while on a delayed train with a friend (a sadly all too common occurrence in this part of the world), I took the time to show off WidSets. Firstly letting her know that I was an S60 ambassador and quickly explaining what the meant (as well as showing off my Bluetooth Headset from The Share on Ovi campaign. First of all I started The WidSets application on my phone and showed her The WidSet pets feature of The WidSets application, she found the idea interesting but to be honest she found the other features of the WidSets application such as the Widgets concerning News and Weather Forecasts more interesting and more relevant to her. She was excited by the idea of widgets on a mobile phone and the ability to take in lots of information very quickly.

Just goes to show there is something for everyone even in S60 even if its not what you expected it to be.

He is so right! The Widset Pets app is just a fun window into the many useful widgets available via the WidSets service. Check out the Widgets Library - its got 6411 widgets available already. Now there's something for everyone!

sigma421 your loaner is going to be in the mail shortly - an N82 ought to complement that Bluetooth Headset nicely. :-)