Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog

Nokia Research Center http://research.nokia.com has fueled the creation and development of the mobile industry we all enjoy today, and has contributed to a wide spectrum of ground-breaking innovations which have shaped the wireless world.

This short video retrospective showcases a few of the contributions coming from Nokia, in a fun narrative with the people Nokia has spent decades connecting and inspiring.

Nokia did very many things first, but they also tend to shove things in the store room a lot. People at Nokia Research Center did good research and innovations, but there was a huge gap from the inventions to the business and product. Nokia has lost a huge number of big opportunities they had in this way.

By the way I have worked many years at Nokia Research Center many years ago.

Sanoma Magazines is to stop Prosessori magazine publishing in the November(English translation). At the same time Sanoma Magazine stopped publishing several other magazines. The last Prosessori issue will be the November 2011 issue. The web pages will be open to the end of 2011 (so now is the time to download if you need something from there).

Prosessori magazine has survived on the market for more than 30 years. The first processor released in 1979, at the same time when the first microprocessors were introduced in Finnish factories. I have been writing articles to Prosessori magazine for more than 10 years. The magazine has published a large number of articles written my me (almost 200 articles). I will be missing that magazine.

There was only one monthly publication that covers high tech on a broad basis. Prosessori was the only professional magazine reaching all the top professionals in Finland. Many people are missing it already.

Goodbye Prosessori.

When I was last night again fixing old Nokia N73 cellular phone (needed a touch of soldering iron to make volume button to work again) I remember this article I saw few days ago.

Are engineers early adopters? article claims that engineers aren’t early adopters of the latest technology. They are more like past the peak of the adoption curve. It’s not because engineers don’t like technology, instead it’s because engineers know how to keep older technology running longer than the general population. We fix and upgrade older technology when others simply replace it.

Me doing some small fixes to my smarphone, PC and some more electronics, is for sure keeping older technology running longer.

One Are engineers early adopters? article comment says: “Engineers are early adopters of truly new technology, but are not early adopters of trendy marketing or technology that is not a significant improvement over technology that already exists.”

I am curious by nature, so new technologies/products are first reviewed on-line, tested in the store, looked at on social networks for word of mouth/experiences then purchased if all checks out. I want to know the pros and cons of the new technology. Usually only the pros get marketed to the end consumer through reviews.

Another interesting article mentioned at Why We Love Things We Build Ourselves Slashdot posting mentions article Unfolding the IKEA Effect: Why We Love the Things We Build. The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else. Research suggests that by asking consumers to do a little legwork, you can increase their belief in the value of the product they have created, even if it would have been better constructed by professionals. Study demonstrates that this sense of personal accomplishment is powerful on its own, without any social influence.

Would the IKEA effect hold in more complex situations? Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so “enthusiastic” about their products while the general market resists them? The proponents of them had a hand in developing them. All interesting questions for future research!

August 12 marks the 30th anniversary of the IBM Personal Computer. IBM released it’s first PC August 12 1981. One of the designers of PC Mark Dean blog that IBM leads the way in the post PC era. Note that IBM decided to leave the personal computer business in 2005, selling our PC division to Lenovo.

Assembly TV has just started the Internet broadcasting from Assembly Summer 2011 Computer Festival. Expect to see lots of interesting material. Again this year they have some interesting ARTtech seminars worth to watch. And I expect the computer demo competitions to be high quality this year.

This year the Assembly TV people have made a nice web page report on their current AV setup on their blog so I might not need to make my own behind the scenes report like I did two years ago.

Japan in 2010 accounted for 13.9% of all global electronic equipment factory revenue, according to a preliminary IHS iSuppli estimate according to Impact of Japanese earthquake on electronics industry article. The article tells also what kind of disruption to the supply chain can be expected. Update on events in Japan page is a compiled a list of information issued by companies that were directly or indirectly affected by last week’s earthquake and subsequent tidal wave in Japan.