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Nokia’s Ovi Store offers the world’s most popular apps and games on their summer of football channel.

Nokia today announced the launch of the Ovi Store football channel featuring exclusive Pepsi content as well as entertainment, apps and information from the world’s most recognized football content providers. The channel leverages Ovi Store’s global reach to offer Nokia football fans around the globe the easiest place to shop for the most popular and most refreshing mobile football content.

Launching today, Nokia’s Ovi Store football channel is the ultimate football fan destination featuring highly popular apps, games, and the ability to quickly personalize and refresh your Nokia.

As part of Ovi’s football offering, Pepsi’s charity football anthem ‘Oh Africa’ will be featured for sale on Ovi Music Store. The charity single performed by six-time Grammy nominee, Akon, featuring Keri Hilson, the Soweto Gospel choir and sixteen youth from around the world is the soundtrack to Pepsi’s 2010 football campaign. In addition, Pepsi’s football athlete themes and wallpapers will be available for free on the Pepsi home page at www.ovi.com

“Pepsi’s unique content combined with Nokia’s unparalleled global reach offers football fans around the world the chance to get involved with this year’s great Football summer no matter where they are,” said Marco Argenti, VP and Global Head of Media, Nokia. “The Ovi Store football promotion offers passionate football fans instant access to news, apps, games and a growing selection of personalization content from some of the world’s top teams.”

Claudia Lagunas, Digital and New Media Director at PepsiCo International commented: “Working with Nokia allows us to connect and communicate with the worldwide mobile community. Nokia’s Ovi Store offers an exciting new channel through which to share our football content with millions of football fans around the globe.”

Also launching today is the Nokia Skill Dribbler competition giving mobile gamers the opportunity to win a Football trip of a lifetime for two to see ‘El Clasico’ in Barcelona. To win, skill dribblers have to show off their silky football game skills, avoiding tackles and keeping control of the ball for as long as they can to accumulate points. The highest weekly scorers will receive a shirt signed by a one of the worlds’ top footballers and Nokia N97 mini. The top scorer of the competition will be on their way to Barcelona. To enter and play Skill Dribbler visit www.ovi.com.

In addition to PepsiCo’s content Nokia’s Ovi Store football channel will also host a long list of further content dedicated to 2010′s summer of football. From competitions and tournament updates to personalizing your device, football is a lot more fun when you are part of the action. Some of the key content and features to get you involved include:

Great goals
If you are supporting Brazil, England, or just great football, Great Goals will whet your appetite for what’s to come with a series of free audio and video downloads dedicated to great goals scored by great players.

Football updates and news
No matter where you are in the world, you can’t catch every game of the tournament but you can still get live updates. 2010′s summer of football news and update applications are available from the largest football websites in the world. Livemobile Football, ESPN Soccernet, and Goal.com are all available as free applications to keep you up to date with breaking news from around the world, previews and recaps of games for all major leagues in the world and more.

Games
Experience the latest in mobile football gaming and battle to win the cup for your country. Games available include Gameloft’s Real Football 2010 and Real Football Manager 2010, and beat the rest in the next generation of sports radar built for speed shooting, Speedhero Multisport, and the latest football games from EA SPORTS.

Touchnote
A picture is worth a thousand words, but reminding everyone your country beat their country with a postcard is priceless. This app takes digital pictures and makes them into physical postcards in a matter of clicks.

Social networking
Whether heading to South Africa or just down the street to your local bar, stay in touch with your friends and family to let them know where you are watching the game. Share your football experience with fans back home, comment on games, post media, and find out where the nearby parties are. Social networks like Nimbuzz and Buddycloud make sharing easy from your Nokia device.

Ovi Maps
Don’t miss the Game because you got lost, Use new Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation available on Nokia smartphones to find your way to stadium, bar, park, or wherever you choose to watch the game. After the game, find the best sights, restaurants, hotels and events wherever you are through the Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides that come free with the new Ovi Maps. To download Ovi Maps, visit www.store.ovi.com.

AT&T call center representatives in the GoPhone divison have confirmed to PhoneNews.com that the current $19.99 unlimited GoPhone data option on Pay As You Go service would be discontinued on November 12th, stating that the offering was meant as a trial exercise and that the company is exploring other options for prepaid data offerings.

Speculation and criticism abounded that the offering has led to abuse of network resources, and that many sites including PhoneNews.com encouraged people to drop more profitable data plans in order to take advantage of the much lower rate, compared to current rates offered as postpaid add-ons.

PhoneNews.com has been at the forefront of this situation ever since we were the first news organization to break the news on an unlimited prepaid data offering thanks to our savvy readership in May, and combined with our promotion in the Sony Ericsson Z750, made the idea of cheap 3G data access appealing to thousands of people, especially those fortunate to live in markets with full HSPA access, as the $19.99 rate made AT&T the least expensive provider of 3G data in the world.

Now with the imminent discontinuation of the offering and no other immediate alternatives available, savvy users will once again be left with other more mainstream and expensive options for no contract data access such as Verizon, unless one chooses to take advantage of a longstanding loophole in AT&T’s GoPhone Pick Your Plan Rollover program.

News reported by phonenews.com

School children have been using their mobile phones and iPods to make the news as part of a BBC project to engage students with journalism.

A class of 12 and 13-year-olds from Lilian Baylis Technology School in Lambeth, London transformed their personal gadgets into news-gathering devices.

Year 8 students snapped photographs using their mobile phones and combined them with radio reports, which they recorded using an iPod or a traditional microphone.

The result was a series of multi-media news reports available to download from the internet.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

Lambeth City Learning Centre (CLC) manager Abigail Norton, was at the school to assist students with the technology and upload their news to the CLC website.

She said: “Using mobile phones, and other technology, in the classroom makes students feel professional and encourages them to value their work.”

She added: “Lilian Baylis has rules about when students can and can’t use their mobile phones, but some schools won’t allow phones under any circumstances. It’s great to be working with people who are keen to investigate the educational potential of hand-held devices.”

Making the news

After researching the news using a collection of daily newspapers and news websites, students gathered interviews on their mobile phones. This information was used to inform their radio scripts.

Amy, 13, writes her news script.

Thabo, 12, said: “Normally in class, we record information in writing. Today, we wrote scripts and used technology, so it was a good balance.”

BBC News Interactive journalist, Lucie Mclean, who specialises in mobile phones, added: “Using phones meant students could gather news quickly as they were already familiar with the technology.”

Students also captured and listened to their own voices on their phones in preparation for the final recording.

Teacher and head of citizenship at the school, Abi Kendall, said: “Using mobile phones to rehearse in this way means students are more confident when it comes to standing up in front of a class.”

Gary, 12, added: “If you keep practising, you are less nervous about making a mistake.”

The recording deadline was scheduled for 1400 and Hassan, 13, was the last of 28 students to present his report – about gun crime in south London.

He explained: “I lost my script and had to write it out again from memory. It was a bit of a rush at the end and I felt under pressure because of the deadline but I managed to keep my cool.”

Ivan, 12, records his news report.

The final news reports were recorded using a traditional microphone to ensure a high-quality recording.

During future workshops, CLC manager Abigail Norton plans to boost sound recorded using a mobile phone in an editing package, before making it available to download from the internet.

She also plans to transfer students’ reports back to their mobile phones, enabling those without internet access to show their friends and relatives their work at the end of the school day.

Technology

Lambeth CLC technician George Belfield edits the students’ work

Students’ photographs were transferred to a computer using Bluetooth technology.

They were added to their radio report to create an audio/video file (mpeg4) using a software package called GarageBand from Apple.

BBC News journalist Chris Moore, who passed on his news-making tips to the students, said: “There were several budding journalists buzzing with boisterous creativity. They were good at writing short reports, which is a valuable skill to have in radio journalism.”

As well as encouraging other students to make the news with the help of the BBC, teacher Abi Kendall, is planning to organise an after-school journalism club.

She said: “There is so much to be gained from an activity like this. The students improved their literacy skills, without even realising it, but what was particularly interesting for me was to see them working as a team.

“There was a great deal of camaraderie and a real desire to help one another to succeed.”

Education consultant, Liz Abbensetts, added: “It encouraged students to pool their experience – of news and technology – to help one another. It’s an incredibly motivating experience.”

School news project

Uryas, 12, and Ivan, 12, research their news story.

The Year 8 pupils made news as part of BBC News School Report, which encourages students to make TV, radio and online news in their schools and publish it on a school website.

Sixty UK schools, including Lilian Baylis, are involved in the 2006/7 pilot stage of the project which the BBC hopes to extend to all secondary schools in the future.

School Report culminates in a national School Report News Day when all participating schools simultaneously make and publish their news on the internet.

News reported by The BBC