A nice article by Business Week on Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia. “Market share dwindling, stock cratering, persistent takeover talk. How the CEO is trying to lead Nokia past its epic fail”.

Worth a read =)

Much of what Elop had to say wasn’t news to his audience, but it was still distressing. In his measured telling, Apple and Google (GOOG) had changed the industry from handset-focused to software-focused. Symbian had fallen too far behind to have any hope of catching up. Worse, the company’s great hope for the future—a software platform created with chipmaker Intel (INTC), called MeeGo—wasn’t ready to pick up the slack. He tried to negotiate a deal with Google to run Android, but Google refused to give the world’s biggest phonemaker any advantages over its smaller partners, meaning Nokia’s corps of 11,600 engineers would have next to no ability to add their own innovations to Google’s software. “It just didn’t feel right,” Elop says to the crowd. “We’d be just another company distributing Android. That’s not Nokia! We need to fight!”

Silence.

For a moment, Elop, 47, lays into the complacency he sees settling over the company. When he asks how many people in the crowd use an iPhone or Android device, few hands go up. “That upsets me—not because some of you are using iPhones, but because only a small number of people are using iPhones. I’d rather people have the intellectual curiosity to understand what we’re up against.”

Full Article: Stephen Elop’s Nokia Adventure

Google +1 reminds me of Hardware Zone Forums where sometimes people will just post “+1″ to increase their post count!

What is +1

The +1 button is shorthand for “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out.”

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

See +1′s

Sometimes it’s easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when someone you know already found it. Get recommendations for the things that interest you, right when you want them, in your search results.

The next time you’re trying to remember that bed and breakfast your buddy was raving about, or find a great charity to support, a +1 could help you out. Just make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account.

Show +1′s

In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile. This helps people see who recommended that tasty recipe or great campsite. When you create a profile, it’s visible to anyone and connections with your email address can easily find it.

Your +1′s are stored in a new tab on your Google profile. You can show your +1′s tab to the world, or keep it private and just use it to personally manage the ever-expanding record of things you love around the web.

Trying Google +1: Google Labs
Learn More: Google +1 Button

kaypo.me is an interesting service created by my fellow NUS SoC graduate, Kent Nguyen. It allows you to update your Facebook status via SMS. Not many people are on smart phones with data plan but almost everyone has a mobile plan that comes with at least 300 free SMSes per month. Even feature phones will work with this service as well.

Currently receiving or replying status’ comments via SMS is in beta, hopefully it will be available for the public soon.

KPo /kay po/ is a service to bridge the existing gap that allow Facebook users to update their status via SMS. The service is not only meant for non-smartphone users, it does benefit smartphone users as it offers a very quick way to update status without having to wait for the Facebook app to launch. Not only the service will do updating from mobile to Facebook, the receiving and replying to status comment feature is soon to be released.

What’s different between KPo and many other services is that KPo’s philosophy is to keep it simple, we want to give mobile users the most intuitive experience via the primitive yet effective SMS channel. On top of that KPo runs on very low cost yet stable systems and we do have a sustainable business model in place for the long run.

This reminds me of TweetSG some time back where you can send a tweet via SMS. But unfortunately due to the high traffic (and thus high cost), they couldn’t survive as a free service and eventually they sort of become inactive. Let’s hope kaypo.me will be more successful than TweetSG.

Cool, didn’t know Edelman is the PR agency for Facebook Singapore. Personally I prefer Facebook Check-In than Foursquare for unknown reasons.

Singapore, 16 February 2011 – Facebook today announced the launch of Facebook Places in Singapore. Already available in some countries, Facebook Places allows you to “check-in” and share with your friends where you are and who you’re with, find friends who are nearby and discover new places your friends like – all in real time.

Facebook Places is available to users in Singapore with mobile access to the Facebook application for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, HP webOS, and Windows Phone 7, or to touch.facebook.com. When you use Places, you’ll be able to see if any of your friends are currently checked in nearby and connect with them easily. You can also check into nearby Places to tell your friends where you are, tag your friends in the Places you visit together, and view comments your friends have made about the Places you visit.

How to use Facebook Places?

• Go to the “Places” icon within the Facebook mobile applications or touch.facebook.com, then tap the “Check In” button, which will pull up a list of places near you.
• Choose the place that matches where you are. If there isn’t one already in the list, users can search for it or create a new one.
• Tap the “Check in” button to share that you are at the place. Users can also add comments and tag friends.

With Places, users are in control of what they share and with whom they share. They choose whether or not to share their location when they check in at a place, and only friends can see when they do, unless users choose to set their privacy setting otherwise. When users check in, they can tag friends who are with them but only if their settings allow it. When they are tagged, they are always notified.

Places is currently available in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

For more information, check out: http://www.facebook.com/places/

In May 2010, Facebook launches Fast and Free Facebook Mobile Access with 0.facebook.com by partnering mobile operators. Singapore was not on the list back then.

Today, SingTel has announced partnership with Facebook to provide free access to 0.facebook.com on your mobile phone.

Snippet

• SingTel and Facebook Launch New Mobile Site 0.facebook.com, a free way to access Facebook on Your Mobile Phone
• 0.facebook.com is lightweight, featuring only text and is optimized for speed
• Ideal for mobile users to conveniently and quickly access Facebook directly from a mobile phone
• SingTel waives standard data charges for browsing the site

Press Release

SINGAPORE and PALO ALTO, Calif. – July 20, 2010 – SingTel today announced that it is the first and only operator in Singapore to offer customers free mobile browsing on the new and lightweight 0.facebook.com site. With 0.facebook.com, SingTel is enabling their customers, especially non smartphone users to stay connected faster through this text-only version of Facebook with their friends and family from any mobile Web browser without incurring any data charges.

Facebook’s 0.facebook.com site is optimized for speed – it is a new faster, lightweight version of Facebook’s mobile site m.facebook.com. The text-only site does not have graphics or photos and 0.facebook.com’s pages have been designed for high-speed performance on SingTel’s network. Photos posted on Facebook are only one click away from 0.facebook.com. To view a photo, a user only needs to click on a link to the photo and they will be prompted that they are leaving 0.facebook.com. Standard data charges will apply when a person leaves 0.facebook.com to view photos.

Ms Sarah Chua, Vice President, Consumer Marketing, SingTel said: “With 0.facebook.com, SingTel offers mobile customers a faster and more affordable way to use Facebook. Non smartphone users will find the text-only site an excellent alternative to quickly access and update their Facebook accounts from their phones, without worrying about data charges. Coupled with SingTel’s high-speed mobile network, the site offers users peace-of-mind to stay in touch with their wide community of Facebook contacts 24/7, anywhere.

We are always looking to work with innovative companies to provide simple and fast mobile access to Facebook across the world,” said Mr Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business, Facebook. “Thanks to our collaboration with SingTel, people will now be able to access Facebook faster and for free through 0.facebook.com.”

SingTel Mobile customers can access the service through their mobile phone browser by keying in 0.facebook.com.