N-Gage Launch Party!

Nice thing to be a part of being in SF office is that we can free ride on N-Gage events on top of our cool SNAP Mobile activities!

You can see SNAP Mobile team members are very happy here. But if you listen carefully to their conversation...

QA: "Free beer, go N-Gage!"
Tech Writer: "Can we do cool thing like this?"
Java Engineer: "Ya, hire vendor for our BBQ! No more Safeway!"
Game launch mgr: "Ya, I don wanna go to Trader Joe's again for our BBQ food and drinks!"
Testing: "Ya, me neither. No sitting alone in the morning at Golden Gate Park to secure BBQ pit!"
R&D/Operations mgr: "Be real, man! No budget. Go surf, it's free!"
All: "Oh, crap!"

We get along well...
**********
"Where is our party? Where is our luxury suite?"

**********

R&D/Operations mgr brought complete SF baseball night game set (jacket, hat, globes for chilly SF night game). He did not know we had a box room!

"What? We have a box room? Really? Order Dom Pérignon!"

**********

Game launch mgr: "Hey man, we should do this more often! I enjoy being served..."

**********

Night fell and Giants won...

Hey, if you have a chance to vist SF, please contact us. We will take care of you! Surfing, baseball, bring it on!

Let's look around SF!

Hi, sorry for lazy update during April. As you might know, our team published SDK2.0 on May 2nd and all of us were very busy to meet this deadline. Thanks to all the effort from our team members and partners and special thanks to Forum Nokia friends, we could publish our very important SDK on time! Well, not much team activities yet (our special BBQ was canceled due to tight deliverable timeline and budget...) but we never stop cruzing around SF area! Here are some pics.

This is our hanging-out place next to our team's home beach "half moon bay". The name is "Half Moon Bay Brewery" and it is one of popular micro breweries in San Francisco area. You see the harbor out there and 1.6 mile outside, that world-famous "Mervericks" point is fascinating local and world surfers.

**********
After checking jetty point (unfortunately no good waves and just had bergers and beer at brewery), we headed north to the other side of Golden Gate bridge. This is looking at east side of bay. You can see Alcatras island toward right side and UC Berkeley (Go Bears!) on the other side of bay.

**********

This is looking at south side. You can see our city (SF!) throuhg the nice read Golden Gate Bridge. Though the bridge is fun to walk across and nice to look at, if you want to know creepy side of this bridge, check out the DVD "The Bridge" in the renal store. It is creepy...

**********

Looking west side, the pacific ocean. It was such a beautiful day and all of us had good time hanging out.

**********

Here is our money man. Our game launch manager is handling all the Java game deployment globally so that we have consistent/streamlined process of delivering Java games through Nokia channels. He does not surf but soon all the surfers in the office will drag him out...
*********

SNAP Mobile in Lapland

Here is another Finish tradition. Key meetings are held in the snow-covered forest far away from the city. The temperture outside was minus 7 degree. Kittila is 2 hours by air from Helsinki, located within the arctic circle. SNAP Mobile is meeting up with collegues in Games.
*************
We stayed and had many strategy discussions in this cottage. The place "Levi" is Finish famous ski resourt. 2 minutes away from slope. While seeing skiers walking by through the window, we spent a lot of time in team discussion to form a next new direction in operations.

*************

Here is the team. After heated discussion in various topics, time for appetite! We visited a beautiful cottage/restaurant for lunch. The grilled fish served in this restaurant was excellent. A man from the land of Sushi was very impressed;-). This farm(?) seems very old (150 years old?) and even had Santa Clause post office!

*************

OK. First time I see a raindeer besides the one on a plate. None of them had horns. They looked very gentle and nice. Probably I should focus on fish from now on in the restaurant...

*************

Fortunately, we had a chance to do some team activities. The organizer knows what to do to make the team as one...intellectual/active discussion, dine, wine and exercise! Bunch of us went to a snowmobile trip across forests. Traveled 65 kilo meters in 3 hours...reaching over 70 mph/110 kmh in speed (seriously, it was fast...maybe too fast...). At the end of trip, we reached the top of Levi ski resort. Quiet and pleasant moment.

SNAP Mobile in Taiwan

OK. The manager who was absent in previous blog was in fact in Taipe Taiwan to meet up with local partners. Here is Nokia Taiwan office building. The office was very cozy. Small but very efficient teams were present there.
*************
After lunch, we have visited 7-11. I have been wondering why they sell so many CDs in 7-11. It turned out that actually they are not CDs but they are online computer games. Since credic card is not that common especially for younger customers, these retailers are selling "pre-paid" access code to these online games. Mobile online games should be using similar sales strategy soon...

*************

I have visited our partner's office. Very cozy and pepople were working pretty hard.

*************

Lunch time in Thai food restaurant. They are checking out yummy desert.

*************

Of course, we had to vist KTV (Karaoke Room) at least once! The food (and beer) served there was amazingly good. I am picky about rice but the rice served there was yummy as well. I heard that the food was so popular among KTV customers, the owner decided to open a restaurant. With that taste, I agree. It was nice and relaxing night before flying back to US.

While the manager is away the employee will play

So our manager was out for a week, it was awesome! We just mostly hung around and watch tv, played Wii and most of us went home at 3pm. Oneday Heidi had this awesome idea to throw a party, it was sooo much fun. We will have to do this again next time the manager is out :)

Web Dude is feeling a little down because the manager will be back tomorrow.

There goes the part

Peter partied waaay to much this week and barely got any work done!

Is Kicking back or past out?

When the SNAPmobile is manager, other manger can let down their hair -Cheers!

Capt'n Morgan it's my favorite!

Some game publisher heard that the manager was out so they stopped by to party with us.

GDC -> Let's hit beach!

Yes. All of our friends are here in SF for GDC. Mirai from Tokyo visiting us to represent our publisher partner and Krys is from Vancouver representing N-Gage dev support. We decided to hit Lindamar beach on Sunday morning. We had a bit cloudy (almost sunnty) day. The shape of wave was very good along with fair size (4-6 ft).

They paddled really hard...I saw them catching many waves. We had a great time!

Hey, if you have a chance to vist our team, we will take you there, no problem.

Erik Farewell

Our Product Manager is up to new challenge in NY. Bunch of us got together to celebrate his departure to new adventure. This Thai restaurant is good for lunch and drinks! We got to start having more of these beer bust again! (we usuall have more in summer time...)

Helsinki Visit

First time this year, I had a chance to visit our headquarter to join R&D meeting. It started snowing the day I arrived.
**********
I learned so much to be in the meeting. It is always benefitial to learn new field.

**********

Is this typical or what? After long day of discussion and information sharing, Finish tradition kicks in. Yes, we went to "real" wood burn Sauna next to ocean.

*********

And, lots of beeeeerrrrrr.
**********

Storm Hit San Francisco

The weather that once inspired the song "California Dreamin' " was closer to a nightmare across the Golden State Friday as the latest in a series of winter storms brought dangerous amounts of rain and snow to the region. Power was out for an estimated 5,300 PG&E customers in the North Bay; Thankfully SNAPMobile's office in San Francisco continued to have Power.

I wonder if this down powerline has anything to do with it.

Power outages and fallen trees were the biggest problems during Friday's storm, trees are down near the SNAPMobile's office in San Francisco. Winds reached 55 miles per hour (90 kph)>, can you say Gail Force?

A friend visit from Dubai!

Our friend, Gregory, has been visiting us in SF to tell us what's happening in Middle East and Africa regions. We were planning to hit beach together today but gave up due to his cold. Well, let's at least take a pic with our board!