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Nokia 2330 Classic Winner and Behind the Scenes Stuff

Using our trusty randomizer web application, we figured out the winner in less than 30 seconds. As agreed in the terms and conditions of the Nokia DiscOVIries competition, the eight previous winners of our two month contest will duke it out in a battle of complete randomness to win a Nokia 2330 Classic phone.

And, our winner, based on the stars, is Lowell Aguirre!

I’d like to thank everyone who joined this series of contests in the past two months. By far this is the biggest mainstream campaign a local company ever invested in with bloggers. Glad to have been a part of it.

But more importantly, a little sincere word on Ovi — from what I’ve seen there has definitely been a big increase in sign ups for the service. Yay, that’s good. But as I’ve said before, this is one of those things that has work successfully in other countries simply because there isn’t much .. ‘conformity’ when it comes to the red tape of public utility (AKA telco services). In the Singapore version of Ovi, the portal gives away unlimited free music for one year every time you buy a new Nokia phone. Difficult here because of licensing issues. In Singapore, software companies have taken advantage of the Maps platform to build really good subscription-based services such as public transportation schedules, routes, locations of diners, etc. Difficult here because too many companies are reinventing the wheel and there isn’t a huge effort to know how important software technology is. Why? Well, the Philippines is “events based.” So many events. So many society pages. So little relevant conversation. And if so, it’s about the same thing (look at the “off topic” or “anything goes” forums in any online group to prove my point). Moving on.

If there’s one thing I’ve observed from the DiscOVIries campaign, it’s this — and this may come as a surprise — as what i observed had nothing to do with Nokia’s campaign per se: when it comes to bringing in the “new” many agencies don’t look at numbers. They look at what their direct and ambient competitors are doing. So when someone executes a really great idea, it waits to get copied. Ironically, there’s a similar article here, but on the gaming industry. Friends have told me that they’ve seen the print ads and videos not just in the movie theaters and papers and television. But as agency pegs from competitor brands. Wow. Interesting.

There are barely any more innovators. And where they exist, they don’t have the financial capacity to drown out the noise of mainstream trends.

Behind the scenes photos after the jump.

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Nokia DiscOVIries Last Week’s Winner: Lowell Aguirre

It’s been a good run, and we’re down to our final winner for Nokia’s DiscOVIries photo competition. For this last contest, the winner is no other than Lowell Aguirre for his most creative wireless hotspot location — the Rotary Centennial Park of Kandaya.

Lowell's Winning Entry

I’d like to thank everyone for joining the series of contests that we’ve been running since October! There’s one more prize up for grabs and that’s going to be between the previous winners of the competition, which will be decided upon randomly through the Randomizer app. I’ll have this up soon!

Again, thank you for participating!

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Nokia DiscOVIries: The Final Contest

It’s been a great run dear readers. As I end the Nokia DiscOVIries promotion with this week’s contest I’d like to thank everyone for biding the time to sign up for your OVI accounts. The winner of the previous contest will be announced very soon, as I made a special request from a friend to act as the guest judge. 🙂 Stay tuned!

As with all promos, I know that not everyone will be diligently using OVI in their day to day lives — but if you do, then that’s great. A tip: I especially find the service for videos useful if you want a sure-fire way to keep your background music inside your home made videos. YouTube and Facebook have been clamping down on copyrighted music lately, and thus far OVI seems to be more friendly with this.

Also, if you own a S60 based phone (all Nokia phones and some LG and Samsung units) you should definitely try syncing your address book online with the OVI contact list tool (click on the Address Book icon on the nav bar) so that if you misplace your phone, your contacts can easily be rebuilt by a simple sync.

On to the contest. We’re playing for a PHP 2,000.00 Ayala eGift Certificate and a chance to win a Nokia phone.

When I started tech blogging, I covered mostly “technology that you could bring with you” because of a conditioning with a magazine I wrote for back in the day. There’s a sample cover below. Since then, portable technology has been my first love as we would cover more than just the gadgets, but the lifestyle behind portability. So we also did restaurant reviews — especially those with WiFi hotspots, which in 2005 was still quite rare.

On the cover were the two Coca Cola girls who garnered instant fame because of their TV ad.

mph-6-ver.-2-Small

For this week’s contest, I’d like you to upload a photo(s) of the restaurants, bars and other hang out places you frequent when you need to work. It can be idle time in your favorite coffee shop while surfing the web, or a quick plugin to the Internet to email that one important document. It matters not really. I just want to know where my readers hang out. Remember to include a short description of the place(s) you frequent, why you enjoy hanging out there, and also please do not forget to include your OVI email.

UPLOAD HERE

Again, I’m going to have a special guest judge for this contest, and you can submit entries till 11:59PM of November 22, 2009. The mechanics for the DiscOVIries promotion can be read here.

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Nokia DiscOVIries Week VII: Cheesy / Romantic SMS Messages

111111111111112222222222222233333333333333
444444444444445555555555555566666666666666
777777777777778888888888888899999999999999
Ad each row with EACH OTHER,what ever the TOTAL comes,
That much HOW I NEED U,I THINK “BOUT U, n I LOVE U…!!!
n HOPE U FEEL THE SAME…!!!

————————————–

*Ehem*

Bring on the cheese, dear friends. Week 7 (timely too as this is the week of the Windows 7 launch!) of the Nokia DiscOVIries contest is upon us and the theme from now till 11:59 PM of Sunday is all about CHEESE! This is not to be confused with Lori’s previous theme. This time we’re looking at cheesy or romantic SMS messages that you’ve saved on your phone. If you don’t have the message, write it down somewhere and take a photo for uploading or type it in your text editor and paste the screen shot.

I will be bringing in a special judge(s) for this contest so please, bring in the raclette and fondue and let’s make some cheese! Remember, the cheesier, the better! You can enter as many entries as you want but make sure each entry has your OVI email address and a short description of your entry.

[UPLOAD HERE]

For more details, please proceed here. The prize for this week is once again, a highly coveted P2,000 eGC from Ayala Malls and a chance to win a Nokia phone in the finals.

I’ll be announcing the winner of last week’s contest in a few hours!

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Nokia DiscOVIries Week VI: Mobile Phone

Before anything else, I’d like to thank everyone who has participated in the past several weeks. Something to note — in terms of criteria for judging entries, unless I say the actual criteria (i.e. “random winner”) the winners are really graded on a bell curve, which means that I compare the winner’s entries with the other submissions. Also, please follow instructions. I had to eliminate several entries to my previous contest for film shots because the top 5 photos I chose didn’t include an OVI email or was submitted after the cut off time. The full mechanics can be found here.

Here is the winner of last week’s film competition. The winner for the playlist competition is Arbet, mostly because of the creative combination of his J Pop collection with old school WinAmp! Thank you for submitting complete details! 🙂

P1070541

[UPLOAD HERE]

For this week, let’s go back to basics. All I’m looking for is a photo of your mobile phone. Upload the photo and indicate the phone model and how long you’ve had it and please don’t forget to put your name and OVI email. The winner will be drawn randomly, so the more photos you put, the better! It doesn’t matter if your phone isn’t a Nokia 🙂

This contest will end 11:59 PM of Sunday night GMT +8.