Over the past few days we have received a number of emails and phonecalls from the readers of Ovi each of whom has informed us that Nokia has launched a new Internet service called Ovi. In their press release Nokia helpfully tell the world that 'ovi' means 'door' in Finnish, but all of you already know that! Here at Ovi magazine we wish Nokia all the best with their new venture and are flattered that they also consider Ovi a name worthy to bestow on their new hope. To answer some of your queries concerning the use of the name, Nokia are perfectly entitled to use Ovi, since it is in a different market to us and even we weren't the first to use the name, with a Finnish door company (no surprise) ahead of us - it also explains why obtaining the www.ovi.com domain has been impossible. However, the announcement of Nokia's Ovi service is the perfect opportunity to turn our disgruntled attention back to Jone Nikula and Ari Halttunen, who continue to publish a free glossy magazine in Helsinki that is also called Ovi. We even expect they are bristling with anger that Nokia have taken their name and are too blinded by ego to spot the irony at work here. Meanwhile…back at the real Ovi magazine, established in December 2004 (a mere year and nine months before Mr Nikula published the first edition), we continue to produce a publication dedicated to promoting opinion, encouraging discussion and sharing ideas, and all for no profit. Every day, including Christmas Day, we have published three to four contributions from our dedicated team located across the world and it is thanks to each of contributors that we continue to grow. We admit that the launch of the Ovi imposter sent a few more readers our way, with Googlers finding us instead of them, and we started receiving emails from people thinking we were them, but I guess that's what happens when you christen a magazine with a stolen name. We are looking forward to a few more happy wanderers in search of Nokia's Ovi, but end up walking through the wrong door, if you pardon the pun. We'll take Nokia over Nikula any day, especially since their new service offers a range of Internet services that allows people to access their existing social network, communities and content, so they'll use Ovi to read the original Ovi magazine. Thankfully there are no egos over at the Ovi office, which allows us to spot the irony with ease. There can only be one Ovi magazine and you are reading it now. To read the full story about the birth of a copycat, click here. Ovi_magazine Ovi-lehti Copycat |