I’ve just read an article about the SPV Phone (Orange and Krosoft). It explains why they locked the cell phone so that people cannot run any freeware software, but only software developed by Orange (or under orange license). It’s a shame, and their reasons are quite amazing : they locked it “because they can” and to protect users from malevolent software. The underlying reason is more because they want to earn money (developers have to buy a license :).
By the way, Frogdesign‘s new products are so sexy !!!!
The Aula community in Helsinki is more and more attractive. Being a member of the Aula community (you gotta pay a fee from 35 to 150 euros) allow you to own a share of the Aula cooperative, to use Aula’s infrastructure to organise and advertise your own projects and to access the Aula Web community and its special interests groups. This comunity is involved in various projects concerning wireless/smart mobs activities : a bunch of art/tech mix things really cool to my opinion 🙂
The wide range of aula’s projects concerns awareness of others (hunaja), new types of interactions (Cooltown and so on. Gosh those guys from finland are really innovative, it’s so rocket-science !