Nokia Developing Apps That "Think"

The Finland-based company's new application, called "Situations," lets a phone owner manually set what they would like their phone to do in certain situations.

For example, a person could set their phone to always go silent during a business meeting, save power when the phone owner is asleep, or change to a more traditional ringtone when at the office.

Other setting changes can include turning vibrate on or off, answering all missed calls with a text message, changing the look or wallpaper or a contacts list, and having certain items pop up at certain times or in certain places, such as the weather or calendar items.

The trick to Situations is that not only does it know how to behave in certain situations based on users' demands, it knows when they're in those situations automatically based on what time of day it is, what day of the week it is, and where they are, thanks to GPS.

The phone owner manually enters when this information will correlate to a situation, such as work time, sleep time, or time spent with kids phone-free.

"It's just like we act with our friends. We know when it's right to be discreet or silent when to provide valuable information, when to tell a joke or when to tell others that we are not available for them," said Roope Taasberg, Nokia's Product Manager.

Another application called Jigsaw, this one created at Nokia's Palo Alto, Calif.-based research center, goes one step further by sensing a person's movement based on whether the phone is in a trouser or jacket pocket, and can relay information about how active users are to social networking sites.

Nokia is seeking input on Situations so it can fine tune the system, which is the latest in a series of new customization tools launched by Nokia. It also recently released Nokia Feel, which suggests activities when users tell it how they're feeling, and Nokia Bots, which customizes features based on personal preferences.