Nokia 
Nokia Conversations posted yesterday about Consolidating the Ovi experience . Which is awesome because this was something that had been on my mind ever since Ovi’s share service started.
When Share on Ovi began, i didnt think “Wow Nokia’s starting a image and video hosting and sharing site , Yay !“.
Instead i thought “Awww crap here’s another site that i know i’m going to end up joining ,making a seperate username and having to manage that along with all my other hosting sites“.
Mike from Nokia Conversation had posted this :
We’re constantly compartmentalizing our mobile media existences and aren’t used to the concept of throwing our virtual eggs all into one basket. Well at least that’s how I find myself behaving, collecting bite-size services, be it Flickr, YouTube, FaceBook, and then let them all loosely live side-by-side in happy disharmony. So where does Ovi fit into things, with it’s one big basket approach?
Ditto. Just for this blog alone , I’ve had to host images at Yahoo’s Flickr, Google’s Picasa and Nokia’s Ovi. I also have an account at Photobucket which i used to use for my old blog and for random forum imaging posting, and most of my travel pictures are on Facebook because its so easy to upload and share images with your friends there. Then there’s Google’s Youtube where i upload my videos, and the ones i want to keep more private, at Nokia’s Ovi.
But Ovi‘s aiming to change that. They’re approaching a “Keep all your eggs in one basket” approach , which i have to admit , does seem much easier to me. Atleast for me to manage my media.
Mike goes on to say :
It’s something I’d been struggling with for a while, having been using most of the Ovi services for a few months now. Then, last week I began using the PC app Ovi Suite 1.0 for Windows, and it all started to feel a lot more cohesive and natural to have control of all my content under one virtual roof. Before the Ovi Suite arrived you could quite easily browse and upload files from the PC on your Ovi account online or similarly send in your camera phone photos via your handset (great for on-the-spot sharing), but the desktop app brings together all these disparate methods in a smarter and easier to manage interface.
And hes completely right. The Ovi suite does help alot with managing your media.Read the whole article over at Nokia Conversations.
However here’s where the ambuigity starts . Nokia has its own PC Suite software. And now there’s the Ovi Suite Software too. Both seperate applications that more or less do the same thing. Each has its own pros and cons.
For example , one of the things that is shockingly missing from the Ovi Suite is PIM funcationality. The Nokia PC Suite has recently received a number of messaging and PIM integrations,which are absent in the Ovi Suite. Files on Ovi is not integrated into the Suite yet, but that might be added in a future update. The typical sync with Outlook is still present, but the ability to manage your contacts within Ovi Suite, or send messages and that sort of thing, is simply not present.
But on the flip side, the Ovi Suite has better integration with the Ovi service. For example, you can upload files directly to your Share on Ovi account with the Ovi Suite. There’s a gallery area, where you can search through your gallery of media.You can even preview it within the Ovi Suite ,upload it or send it to your device right from there.
So basically Nokia is making you choose between Nokia’s PC Suite or Nokia’s Ovi Suite. It is recommended that you do not install them both on one machine. But if you do , you can expect a couple problems to arise (Like what happened to
Why force users to make a choice ? Nokia should probably discontinue the PC Suite series and replace it with the Ovi Suite , making sure that it does everything that PC Suite was able to. Having two different PC Suites to choose from , both by Nokia , both doing the same basic things , just does not make any sense at all. It just confuses the user.
What
i’m guessing is maybe Nokia has different department teams working on its Ovi Suite and its PC Suite. That do not play nicely with each other. Kind of how there are different teams working on the N-series, the E-series and the standard numbered models .It makes sense but at the same time sounds incredibly stupid. But hey, thats just speculation from me.
Or maybe i’m just a little confused…
But in the end, provided Nokia stops with all the confusion, Ovi looks like it is going to be very useful in media management for people on the move , who do not have the time or bandwidth to upload different files to different places. For example , Flickr requires you to pay for a pro account to upload video. Photobucket allows you to upload video but their execution is rather poor. Share on Ovi‘s got video uploading completely right and for free too. Picasa has a 100mb limit on my Blogger account ,which worries me as i rapidly approach it. But Share on Ovi doesnt have a limit (that i know of) yet. Couple that with its still-to-be-integrated Nokia Music , N-gage Games and Nokia Maps features. Then there’s Files on Ovi and the upcoming Ovi Sync.
Ovi just might just become everyone’s one stop solution.
-Teh Cj
addthis_pub = ‘clintonjeff’;
or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff 
Recent Comments