Cool Hunting

By now, you've most likely heard all the Nokia buzz today—great new phones, the N95 is finally coming stateside and the gaming industry continues to go more mobile. We love the expanded 8G memory in the N81 and N95 which allows us to hold more music, photos, games etc. This brings me to what, in my opinion, is subtly some of the biggest news from Nokia in awhile—the announcement of their new music store and the launch of Ovi, the company's newly-formed internet services brand name.

The pioneering Nokia Music Store allows users to purchase and download songs directly from their phones and synchronizes automatically with PCs or with up to five Nokia devices. The Windows media, DRM-based system will run about €1 per song and €10 per album. PC streaming will also be available for about €10 per month. It will hit Europe before the year's end but should come stateside in 2008. We're also looking forward to a Mac-friendly version.

In addition to the music store, Ovi will bring N-gage services and Nokia's GPS-enabled maps into one single convenient suite. When Ovi launches users will be able to access all their music and games in one place. It will also be open to web communities, enabling people to access their content, communities and contacts, again in one place. It will launch in English by year's end and other languages in the first half of 2008.