Plazes AG was a Berlin, Germany-based geosocial networking site. Plazes allowed users to post their location and current activities and share this information with other Plazes users via computers or mobile telephones. On 23 June 2008, Nokia Corporation announced plans to acquire Plazes. [1] Plazes was subsequently integrated to Nokia Maps which itself was integrated to HERE Maps.
Plazes AG introduced the beta version of the Plazes service on 16 August 2004. [2] The service was continually updated and began to attract attention on technology blogs. [3] [4] In October 2004, Plazes introduced two APIs: a Web-based API that advised users of the current location of other Plazes users; and a launcher API that allowed users to create their own Plazes launchers. [5] In January 2005, Plazes introduced a Movable Type plugin that allowed users to automatically include or add their location to blog postings. [6] In June 2005, Plazes created an API that allowed users to access photos from their Flickr accounts and to add those photos to their Plazes accounts. [7] A Flickr group of Plazes users quickly sprang up. [8] In 2006, Plazes was awarded the LeadAward in Bronze in the Category "WebLeader 2006″. [9]
The Plazes Web interface allows users to post a location, the time of day they will be at the location and the activity they will be engaged in at the location. This information can be shared with people selected by the user, Plazes contacts or all members of the Plazes community. In addition to the Web interface, users can update their location using Plazer (see below), via text message or via m.plazes.com [ permanent dead link ], the mobile Plazes Web site. Plazes users are able to publish their Plazes location on Fire Eagle, Twitter, Google Maps, MySpace and on the user's blog.
The Web interface allows users to invite others to join Plazes. Plazes can search a user's Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail or Microsoft Outlook contacts and send invitations to these contacts.
Plazes allows users to create groups or to join an existing group of Plazes users. Under the Groups tab, Plazes suggests groups that the user may wish to join, as well as offer the user the opportunity to search for existing groups. If the user wants to create a group, the user will need to select a group name and a draft a brief description of the group. The user may add an image to the group to help differentiate it from other groups.
Plazes has a radar function that allows users to discover other Plazes users that are located near the user's current location. The Plazes Radar generates a list of the locations close to the user's current location and lists the number of Plazes users that have previously stated they were at that location. When the user clicks on the location name, information about the user that was at that location is displayed along with a description of the user's activity at the location.
The Plazes Launcher was a client application that allowed Plazes users to update their location and current activities without having to log onto plazes.com. The launcher would detect the MAC address of the user's current router, and query the Plazes database to see if the router already had a "plaze" associated with it. If no existing plaze was found, the user would be prompted to enter details about the plaze, including a name and its physical location. [10]
In March 2006, the Plazes Launcher was rebranded as Plazer. [11] Plazer is integrated with Skype; Skype users are able to publish their location on Skype via Plazer. [12] Plazer is available for Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone and iPod touch, and Symbian. [13] [14] There was also a third-party Plazer available for Nokia's Maemo devices. [15]
In August 2007, Nokia announced that it was moving into the services field with the introduction of Ovi. [16] Nokia Maps became part of the Ovi service offering. On 23 June 2008, Nokia Corporation announced plans to acquire Plazes. As part of the acquisition, Plazes gained access to the millions of users that own a Nokia device. [17] At the same time, Nokia gained technology and a research team that was on the cutting edge of the geosocial networking trend. [18] The acquisition closed on 15 July 2008. [19] Post acquisition, Plazes became part of Nokia's Services business unit. [18]
On 4 May 2012 the Plazes team sent an email message for their users informing that on the next week will go out of service. Users could export their Plazes history to Nokia Maps which itself was integrated to HERE Maps.
Pidgin is a free and open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to simultaneously log in to various services from a single application, with a single interface for both popular and obsolete protocols, thus avoiding the hassle of having to deal with new software for each device and protocol.
Skype is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debit-based calls to landline and mobile telephones, and other features. It is available on various desktop, mobile, and video game console platforms.
Maemo is a Linux-based software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's failed strategy to compete with Apple and Android; the only retail devices that shipped with Maemo were the Nokia Internet tablet line released in 2005 and the Nokia N900 smartphone in 2009.
Geosocial networking is a type of social networking in which geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics. User-submitted location data or geolocation techniques can allow social networks to connect and coordinate users with local people or events that match their interests. Geolocation on web-based social network services can be IP-based or use hotspot trilateration. For mobile social networks, texted location information or mobile phone tracking can enable location-based services to enrich social networking.
Ovi was the brand for Nokia's Internet services from 2007 to 2012. It was designed to be an umbrella brand as Nokia attempted to expand into software and Internet services instead of just mobile hardware. Ovi focused on five key service areas offered by Nokia: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music.
The Nokia N810 Internet tablet is an Internet appliance from Nokia, announced on 17 October 2007 at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Despite Nokia's strong association with cellular products, the N810, like preceding tablets produced by Nokia, was not a phone, but instead allowed the user to browse the Internet and communicate using Wi-Fi networks or with a mobile phone via Bluetooth. It built on the hardware and software of the Nokia N800 with some features added and some removed.
MicroB was a mobile web browser developed by Nokia for use in smartphones and mobile devices that run the Maemo operating system. The browser is Mozilla-based and uses the Gecko layout engine.
MSN Messenger, later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the now-discontinued Microsoft Messenger service and, in later versions, was compatible with Yahoo! Messenger and Facebook Messenger. The service was discontinued in 2013 and was replaced by Skype.
Here Technologies is a Dutch multinational group specialized in mapping technologies, location data, and related automotive services to individuals and companies. It is majority-owned by a consortium of German automotive companies and American semiconductor company Intel whilst other companies also own minority stakes. Its roots date back to U.S.-based Navteq in 1985, which was acquired by Finland-based Nokia in 2007. Here is currently based in The Netherlands.
The W3C Geolocation API is an effort by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardize an interface to retrieve the geographical location information for a client-side device. It defines a set of objects, ECMAScript standard compliant, that executing in the client application give the client's device location through the consulting of Location Information Servers, which are transparent for the application programming interface (API). The most common sources of location information are IP address, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth MAC address, radio-frequency identification (RFID), Wi-Fi connection location, or device Global Positioning System (GPS) and GSM/CDMA cell IDs. The location is returned with a given accuracy depending on the best location information source available.
The Nokia N900 is a smartphone made by Nokia, launched at Nokia World on 2 September 2009 and released in November. Superseding the Nokia N810, the N900's default operating system, Maemo 5, is a Linux-based OS originally developed for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is the first Nokia device based upon the Texas Instruments OMAP3 microprocessor with the ARM Cortex-A8 core. Unlike the three Nokia Internet tablets preceding it, the Nokia N900 is the first Maemo device to include telephony functionality.
Symbian was a mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS is a descendant of Psion's EPOC, and was released exclusively on ARM processors, although an unreleased x86 port existed. Symbian was used by many major mobile phone brands, like Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and above all by Nokia. It was also prevalent in Japan by brands including Fujitsu, Sharp and Mitsubishi. As a pioneer that established the smartphone industry, it was the most popular smartphone OS on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, at a time when smartphones were in limited use, when it was overtaken by iOS and Android. It was notably less popular in North America.
MeeGo is a discontinued Linux distribution hosted by the Linux Foundation, using source code from the operating systems Moblin and Maemo. MeeGo was primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market. It was designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet computers, mobile computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, SmartTV / ConnectedTV, IPTV-boxes, smart phones, and other embedded systems.
The Nokia N8 is a touchscreen-based smartphone developed by Nokia. Announced on 27 April 2010, the Nokia N8 was the first device to run on the Symbian^3 mobile operating system and it was the company's flagship device for the year. It was released on 30 September 2010 at the Nokia Online Store before being released in markets around the world on 1 October 2010. There were two versions made, the N8 and the N8-00. The N8 was made for Vodafone and locked to its networks, and the N8-00 was made by Microsoft and open network.
The Nokia N9 is a flagship smartphone developed by Nokia, running on the Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system. Announced in June 2011 and released in September, it was the first and only device from Nokia with MeeGo, partly because of the company's partnership with Microsoft announced that year. It was initially released in three colors: black, cyan and magenta, before a white version was announced at Nokia World 2011.
Dooble is a free and open-source web browser that was created to offer improved privacy for users. Currently, Dooble is available for FreeBSD, Haiku, Linux, macOS, OS/2, and Windows. Dooble uses Qt for its user interface and abstraction from the operating system and processor architecture. As a result, Dooble should be portable to any system that supports OpenSSL, POSIX threads, Qt, SQLite, and other libraries.
Microsoft mobile services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices; they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone platforms, BREW, and Java. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.
Accounts & SSO, accounts-sso, or lately gSSO is a single sign-on framework for computers.
Here WeGo is a web mapping and satellite navigation software, operated by HERE Technologies and available on the Web and mobile platforms. It is based on HERE's location data platform, providing its in-house data, which includes satellite views, traffic data, and other location services. Maps are updated every two or three months.
MicroEmulator — is a free and open-source platform independent J2ME emulator allowing to run MIDlets on any device with compatible JVM. It is written in pure Java as an implementation of J2ME in J2SE.
