An unexpected holiday surprise #MakeItHappen

When Microsoft Lumia heard Lani’s family hadn’t celebrated Christmas together in over 13 years, they devised a top-secret plan to help #MakeItHappen. Flying both Lani and her little girl Evolet home to the US, Microsoft Lumia orchestrated a surprise reunion with a twist, sothat the entire family could enjoy the Holidays together for the first time. 

This month, Microsoft Lumia are helping people around the world to #MakeItHappen, by fulfilling 31 resolutions in 31 days. 

Share your resolution now and Microsoft Lumia could hellp #MakeItHappen http://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/make-things-happen/

About Lani
36 year-old Lani O'Brien, an American living in Lancashire, has never managed to make it home to see her family at Christmas since moving to the UK 13 years ago. 
Lani’s husband Dean is also an expat, living away from his family based in New Zealand, so the tight-knit family rely on regular Skype conversations to stay connected. 

Lani and Dean had their first child Evolet three years ago, but financial circumstances have meant Lani’s family in Chicago, Illinois, have only met Evolet twice and have never spent the Holiday season with her.  
A nutritious by trade, Lani is now a full-time mum but also works supporting her husband Dean who his building a child entertainment business after unexpectedly losing his job when Evolet was just six months old. 
With Dean travelling throughout December for work, Lani hoped she might make it home to see her family in the US so she and Evolet were not alone during the Holiday season. Unfortunately, the family were simply unable to afford the costly travel expenses. 

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Lani submitted her resolution to the #MakeItHappen campaign and Microsoft Lumia was so touched by her story they decided to #MakeItHappen. 
The film itself follows Lani and Evolet’s journey home to Chicago to surprise their unsuspecting family for the Holidays. 

About the soundtrack
“Footprints in the Snow” is a new track from singer/songwriter Scott McFarnon.

A Grammy Award and Golden Globe nominee, Scott has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the music industry including Beyoncé and Mark Ronson and in 2007 Daniel Merriweather had a global hit with his version of Scott’s song ‘Red’. Now launching a solo career, Scott’s incredible voice and unique sound will be available to the world in early 2015 with release of his debut album, Crazy Heart. 

Listen: www.soundcloud.com/scottmcfarnon

Website: www.scottmcfarnon.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/scottmcfarnonmusic

Credits

Campaign: Microsoft Lumia #MakeItHappen http://www.microsoft.com/en/mobile/make-things-happen/

Agency: Mission Media http://www.thisismission.com/

Film Production: We Are Films http://wearefilmsny.com/

Directors: Alex and Aaron Craig http://wearefilmsny.com/

Music: Scott McFarnon ‘Footprints in the Snow’ www.scottmcfarnon.com

Love, Language and Lumia #MakeItHappen

When Microsoft discovered that Ed, a 28 year-old accountant from London, wanted to learn Spanish to deliver the groom’s speech at his wedding in Mexico, they came straight to his rescue. Track Ed’s journey as he embarks on a crash course in Spanish; all to surprise his family and friends in a heart-warming video.

Every day this December we’re helping people #MakeItHappen, so share your resolution with us to get involved http://lumia.ms/makeithappen

Nokia teases new phone with Lumia colour, Qwerty keys

Time to put the 'key' in 'Nokia'. The Finnish company has revealed a glimpse of a new phone with a Qwerty keyboard, but it's unlikely to be a Lumia smart phone.

In a mysterious teaser image, Nokia shows what appears to be a phone with bright Lumia-style colours but Asha-style keys.

The teaser reveals rounded corners for the prospective device, showing a Z key and contoured Shift key.

The phone is apparently decked out in the vibrant primary colours that are the signature of Nokia's Windows Phone-powered Lumia smart phone range. But a Qwerty Lumia is unlikely, and with Nokia's mobile devices making the announcement it appears this will be a feature phone, perhaps an Asha phone.

Asha phones are Nokia's wallet-friendly feature phones, which now feature basic apps but lack the power and features of a smart phone. They're aimed largely at developing markets low-cost pay as you go customers.

Qwerty keyboards have disappeared from smart phones as touchscreens become ubiquitous in a post-iPhone world. Even BlackBerry is drifting away from its signature clicky keyboard, promoting the all-touchshcreen BlackBerry Z10 ahead of the forthcoming, keyboard-packingBlackBerry Q10.

Nokia's latest Lumia lineup includes the Nokia Lumia 520 and Lumia 720. Rumoured future devices for the struggling company include a new hero phone, a possible oversized rival to the Galaxy Note 2, and a 'new season' of new devices.

Nokia's announcement is scheduled for 7am on Wednesday. That's a bit early for a UK launch, but we'll set our alarms anyway and bring you the news.

[Source: CNET]

Nokia Music+ downloads playlists to your Lumia, for a fee

Nokia has a new music streaming service aimed at giving Lumia owners happier ears, while fighting services like Spotify or Last.fm.

The Nokia Music+ app is an extension of Nokia's Mix Radio app, which streams a list of tunes hand-chosen by Nokia, depending on which playlist you choose.

Mix Radio is free, but is rather limited in what it offers. Coughing up an extra €3.99 per month however gets you Music+, which brings treats like the ability to skip tracks as many times as you like, as well as downloading entire playlists for offline listening.

You can't hoard as much music as you want -- Nokia explains on its blog that you're limited to four "mixes", each of which contains a tonne of tracks. Signing up to the service also nabs you downloads at "eight times" the quality, as well as scrolling lyrics for impromptu blasts of karaoke and desktop mode, which lets you stream music through a Web app or smart TV.

The service is due in a few weeks. There's no confirmed UK pricing, but £4 is a good bet. Those in the US will be forking over one cent shy of $4.

Downloading and unlimited skips are tempting features, but I'd wager many smart phone owners considering paying for a music service would rather have the opportunity to search for songs and craft their own playlists, rather than jigging about to whatever Nokia prescribes.

Incredibly, despite being present on Windows Phone 7, Spotify is still to bring its own streaming service to Windows Phone 8. If you're desperate for streaming music and are sick of waiting for Spotify (which costs £10 per month) to gets its rear in gear, Nokia's new service could tide you over.

[Source: CNET]

Range of 4G smartphones makes it a network for everyone

Autumn saw the introduction of a new service in the UK that promised us mobile web speeds up to five times faster than what had previously been available. As Britain’s first 4G network provider, EE offered a great way to get the most out of the next generation of smartphones – and even came with a range tailored to all tastes.

Arguably the most notable of these devices will be the iPhone 5, which managed to grab all the technology headlines in the run up to the 4G launch in October. The fifth generation model of the Cupertino gadget giant’s game-changing mobile phone improved on its predecessor with a new operating system, a bigger screen and a faster processor. This was great news for many, but was hailed as a disappointment by some people who had already set their sights on The Samsung Galaxy S III.

One of the biggest critics of the device was Samsung itself, which is of course locked in a pretty high profile on-going legal debate with Apple. The South Korean manufacturer has highlighted its slick design, Android operating system, 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and super-fast processor as being superior to what the iPhone 5 can offer, as well as features like picture in picture display and the S Voice vocal command system. Of course, both are absolutely brilliant and each can claim to be better than the other in different fields – but what if you don’t want either of them?

Well, luckily there are other options from EE that may be of interest. The HTC One XL, for example, not only comes with a brilliant 4.7-inch (which is again bigger than the one on the iPhone), but it also boasts Beats Audio Integration – which could be a big deal for those who use their handset for music. 

Not to be outdone, the Finnish have also been keen to stake their claim on 4G with smartphones like the Nokia Lumia 920 Windows phone. This model has a Puremotion HD 4.5-inch touchscreen display and an eight megapixel camera with Optical image Stabilisation. This handset also has a lower price point than its rivals, as does its sister device the Lumia 820.

It has been another big year for smartphones and all the major companies have been busy preparing for the 2013 market that will undoubtedly see more of us take up 4G services. It will certainly be interesting to see what the mobile landscape looks like this time next year. [spon]

Nokia Lumia 710 Launched

The purposely built, no-nonsense Nokia Lumia 710 has finally been launched today. It can be personalised with exchangeable back covers and thousands of apps to bring the Lumia experience to more people around the world. The Nokia Lumia 710 is designed for instant social & image sharing, and the best browsing experience with IE9. It is available in black and white with black, white, cyan, fuchsia and yellow back covers. With the same 1.4 GHz processor, hardware acceleration and graphics processor as the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 delivers high performance at an affordable price.

Nokia Lumia 800 - now available for Pre-order

The stunningly social Nokia Lumia 800 is finally available for pre-order and features head-turning design, vivid colours (cyan, magenta and black) and the best social and Internet performance, with one-touch social network access, easy grouping of contacts, integrated communication threads and Internet Explorer 9. It features a 3.7 inch AMOLED ClearBlack curved display blending seamlessly into the reduced body design, and a 1.4 GHz processor with hardware acceleration and a graphics processor. The Nokia Lumia 800 contains an instant-share camera experience based on leading Carl Zeiss optics, HD video playback, 16GB of internal user memory and 25GB of free SkyDrive storage for storing images and music.