Futureful has been under rather stealthy development for two years, and the team is backed and mentored by Skype co-founder Janus Friis. It’s a bit like StumbleUpon, in that it’s an app that contains a browser (as opposed to being a browser – you can’t enter a URL) and is designed to help the user find new content.

However, Futureful is all about semantic tagging and artificial intelligence. As you browse, the app presents subject tags in a row at the top – click on a tag, and you get taken to another related page with its own set of tags. So, clicking on a ‘Silicon Valley’ tag may take you to a tech story, with the fresh tags above it including something like ‘Moore’s Law’. It basically provides an intelligent chain of content discovery.

What’s more – and here it really differs from StumbleUpon, in my experience – you never see the same content twice.

“It’s a new way to consume content,” co-founder Marko Anderson said. “We want the interface to be as simple and fluid as possible. Based on my usage of the service, I get very different things coming to me. If I choose ‘Silicon Valley’ and somebody else does too, the content might be different.”

I’ve not yet had a chance to play with the beta extensively, and of course it would take significant usage before it’s possible to evaluate how successful the algorithms are, but – if it works – Futureful could be a great way to kill time and learn new things. If you’re an iPad user, of course.

As Anderson pointed out, “mobile devices aren’t great for typing”. Add to that the need for enough space to show the tag row, and it makes sense that Futureful is launching as a tablet app.

“We started with web development, but the tablet is the ultimate consumption device, where the information finds you,” Anderson told me. “We haven’t ruled out a web version, but the smoothness in terms of the cleanness of the UI has just been better on the tablet.”

And Android? “We have no plans yet, but we have had some of the biggest players in the mobile industry ask us to build for them.” Same goes for the iPhone – maybe in the future, but first things first.

Also, there’s no business model yet. That said, if Futureful takes off I’d imagine there would be many options for making money off it.

Here’s a video:

Formed in Finland late 2010 by Petri Rajha and tested mostly in Scandinavia until recently, the service is a mobile app through which users offer their photos for sale and through which media organisations can post paid photo assignments for users.

User submissions typically sell for around €17 ($22) whilst media entities typically set prices of €10 to €20 for “tasks”; Scoopshot takes a 30 percent cut.

CEO Niko Ruokosuo, an ex LA Times journalist, tells paidContent the service includes authentication that could help news publishers identify fake pictures:

“It works by having control of the image. When the image is captured with Scoopshot it is sent to us and no longer resides on the originating camera. It is impossible to edit those photos and that same exact file exists nowhere else, we guarantee that.

“Second, we know the exact GPS location and time where that photo was taken. It adds a level of security. We know the sender.”

These techniques aren’t necessarily fool-proof — not least because, as #FakeSandy showed, few such images typically come through formalised citizen-news services as much as they do through an array of social accounts and blogs.

“I wouldn’t trust a robot to do the job,” Stephen Sidlo, a breaking news picture editor for rival UGC service Demotix, which was acquired by Corbis this month, tells paidContent.

“Research on UGC verification manually is necessary, the rest can be manipulated.”

Likewise, Associated Press recently named Fergus Bell its social media and UGC editor after he constructed a similar human verification process for UGC atop the AP’s existing checks and balances.

“We can’t verify something unless we speak to the person that created it, in most cases,” Bell told Poynter last week. “When it comes to UGC, we only put stuff out when we can confirm it.”

Even the humans on social networks themselves seemed to do a good job of debunking fake Sandy images.

Still, Ruokosuo says Scoopshot also supports human editor checks on contributors. “Typically, we have their name and phone number. Editorial people in charge can actually contact those people for further information or verification.”

Regardless, Scoopshot’s main business line may not be news after all. Ruokosuo says the outfit has sold on 160,000 photos on its members’ behalf, but the majority are to online directory sites to accompany pages like restaurant reviews.

And already Scoopshot is extending its platform to brands for marketing, as well as editors for news. Fiat recently set Finnish members a Scoopshot task, through an advertising agency, to photograph its Fiat 500 car on city streets, resulting in 1,054 submissions.

But the outfit is also launching Scoopshot Pro, providing news editors with a sub-set of only professional photographer members whom to assign to events around the world.

“You can send assignments to professional photographers all over the world using the same interface in a matter of minutes – for example, in Gaza to cover your content needs,” Ruokosuo says.

News editors are often apprehensive about assigning amateurs and pro-ams on assignment to dangerous jobs. But Scoopshot claims 60 media partners are using the service including Finland’s Sanoma, Metro International, Time Out UK and Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

“We are definitely aware of the risks related to that,” CEO Ruokosuo says. “We would never encourage behavour that puts people at risk.”

What’s next? “We have identified a few key markets and are hoping to make some press releases about that in future. We are in a funding round that is looking good and should be closed soon.”

Scoopshot hired Dave Rickley, a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times, as north America EVP this month for its U.S. expansion.

Both Sanoma Magazines and Sanoma Kaupunkilehdet (its local news publishing division) are undertaking measures “to reorganise their operations and streamline cost structures”, the company said on Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, Sanoma said its Helsingin Sanomat – Finland’s top daily paper – will merge two of its websites and introduce metered subscription charging (“an open pay wall”), because: “Charging a fee ensures high-quality content online

The changes in the magazine division “concern the entire personnel of Sanoma Magazines Finland Oy and Sanoma Tekniikkajulkaisut Oy”. Although “the need for reduction is estimated to be, at most, 95 persons, the total number of personnel affected by the negotiations is 811″, the company says. That suggests all company staff roles are undergoing redefinition.

The local news division is discontinuing the Helsinki edition of its Vartti freesheet because it “has not lived up to expectations”. “We will increasingly focus on developing the Metro free sheet and the local online service for the Helsinki metropolitan area,” Sanoma News CEO Pekka Soini says. The measures concern 69 people, 45 will be made redundant.

Sanoma Magazines MD Clarisse Berggårdh: “The change in our operating environment is challenging the traditional income streams of magazines, and hence our current operating models.

“We are now looking for a new, stable foundation for Sanoma Magazines, one that continues to be based on high-quality content, strong knowledge of target groups and well-known media brands, but also on increasingly multi-channel products and services.”

YLE: “According to the Finnish Newspapers Association, almost every Finn reads one or more newspapers daily, but making money online continues to be a challenge. Over the past year, newspapers in Finland have cut more than 100 journalists from staffs, leading to protests and walk-outs at some papers.”

Although these cuts sound large-scale, they do are not being implemented across some other Sanoma divisions. That leaves room for further reorganisation.

Details of Helsingen Sanomat’s meter pricing remain scant. The company said: “The renewal has also been surveyed thoroughly among HS readers. Based on the results, consumers want to read HS content using different devices, in a way that suits their life style. People are now also more willing to pay for premium content online.”

Release.

Last month, Netflix said better-than-expected losses from its UK and Ireland launch will entice it to launch elsewhere in Europe this year.

Turns out, the new launches will be in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, Netflix announced on Wednesday.

Lovefilm already operates streaming-only movie subscription in three of those countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway). Now the only one of Lovefim’s markets uncontested by Netflix is Germany.

Netflix signed more than a million subscribers in its first six months in the UK and Ireland, where it does not offer DVD rental. That likely overtakes Lovefilm’s own streaming-only service Lovefilm Instant, which it introduced to compete with Netflix in January.

But Lovefilm is not Netflix’s only competition in Scandinavia. Voddler, Bonnier’s SF Anytime, Viasat’s Viaplay and SVT Player are amongst existing Swedish VOD operators.

Netflix’s Wednesday announcement says it will carry “a wide array of Hollywood, local and global TV shows and movies”. That suggests it has succeeded in inking some content deals with Scandinavian broadcasters as well as movie studios.

IHS Screen Digest recently had this analysis:

“Competing with an entrenched array of existing incumbent players will generate additional costs for Netflix, particularly if the service provider decides to ink deals for the best movie and international TV rights.”

“Sweden presents an attractive market for Netflix, with high GDP, developed broadband infrastructure and positive consumer attitudes to using legal online video services.

“Viaplay has deals with all major international and local distributers. Importantly, many of the incumbent Swedish online video providers already distribute premium video content directly to different connected living room devices (TVs, Blu ray players, game consoles, etc) – traditionally Netflix’s strength.”

Same day Netflix announces Scandinavia move, HBO trumpets “HBO Nordic, which will serve Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.”

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) August 15, 2012

DNA Ltd has bought a fifth of Booxmedia, whose BooxTV app is an internet-based DVR for smartphones and tablets.

BooxTV’s mobile app includes a TV guide offering around a dozen Finnish channels whose shows can be recorded in to the cloud for later playback in the app. The app also includes several live free-to-air channels.

Deal terms were not disclosed.

DNA will offer it free for six month to its more than three million customers, it said (release).

In the UK, TVCatchUp once offered a similar cloud DVR service, but took it offline after broadcasters complained. It instead began offering live streams without recording but has similarly attracted their legal complaint.

Booxmedia is also working on Booxmote, a parallel app that will let BooxTV users beam recorded shows to devices like TVs, projectors and laptops.

It is a vision of the smartphone as the centre of an in-home and out-of-home media system.

But, whereas Disney got early hits with Micky Mouse’s Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie and quickly expanded its portfolio to a host of new characters and franchises, Rovio has appeared a one-hit wonder.

It had developed a whopping 51 under-the-radar mobile games and nearly fell bankrupt before finally finding its Angry Birds hit in December 2009.

Now, however, Rovio appears finally to be looking beyond the birds. This video released by the company on Wednesday to mark a billion Angry Birds downloads also promised “more amazing things coming soon”, and a blonde-haired boy who appears to be a new character…

148apps believes that boy to be Casey, star of an existing game, Casey’s Contraptions, a $2.99 puzzler which lacks in-game purchase options but whose players have created and submitted over 325,000 levels themselves…

If Rovio has acquired Casey’s Contraptions from creator Noel Llopis, that means Rovio has not diversified its franchise offering under its own steam.

Oh wow! The cat is starting to get out of the bag! youtube.com/watch?v=tdTZOF… (cc @mysterycoconut)

— Noel Llopis (@noel_llopis) May 9, 2012

Before rumors start flying, Rovio is a perfect gentleman. Not a Zynga at all. Don’t worry, all is well :-)

— Noel Llopis (@noel_llopis) May 9, 2012

But at least it does point to diversficiation – something that investors will demand if Rovio’s IPO bird ever gets off the ground.

“Disney (NYSE: DIS) is worth around $60 billion. That is our goal and there is no reason why we could not build a company that size,” Rovio marketer Peter Vesterbacka told business paper Tekniikka&Talous in Rovio’s native Finland in December.

Rovio’s “archived games” web page lists almost 30 titles it tried making a splash with before Angry Birds.

A Scandinavian pitch contest jury has named iZettle, a Square-like mobile payment gadget, the region’s Digital Champion and given Klarna, a pay-after-delivery facilitator, a Billion Dollar Company award.

The contest was held by tech M&A advisory house GP Bullhound, which judged along with VCs and entrepeneurs, at Stockholm’s Riskkapital 2012 VC event on Thursday.

The call was put out to pitchers earlier this year. The programme named the following as the 25 most interesting companies in the Nordics’ digital economy…

1. Artificial Solutions (natural language interaction)
2. Avito
3. Bambuser (live mobile video capture)
4. Betsson (online gaming)
5. Blocket (classified ads)
6. Brandos (shoe retail)
7. Burt
8. Cint
9. Digital Route (data management)
10. EPiServer (website builder)
11. Garagekoll (parking space rental)
12. Guldbrev (scrap gold buyer)
13. iZettle (mobile payment gadget)
14. Klarna (buy now, pay later facilitator)
15. Livebookings (restaurant booking)
16. Mathem.se (groceries)
17. Neonode (multi-sense interface recognition)
18. Nordnet (savings bank)
19. Orthocone Innovation Technologies (LCD technology)
20. Qliktech (data exploration)
21. Seamless (mobile payments)
22. Soundcloud (audio sharing)
23. Spotify (music access)
24. TocaBoca (mobile learning games)
25. Wrapp (Facebook gift cards)

The plants will remain operational now for “smartphone product customization.” The news comes amidst unconfirmed reports that the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the release of the next model.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) says that the transfer will result in the loss of 4,000 jobs in total, and the reductions will take place through the end of 2012.

Nokia does not outline how much the move to Asia will mean in terms of money saved, but this is a decision that has been some time in the making: these were plants that were spared in the last round of cuts under CEO Stephen Elop.

Since then, Nokia has reported yet more declines in its smartphone shipments, mainly around its legacy Symbian platform. The company is now gradually moving to making more of its smartphone portfolio based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

Now, Nokia says that the move is being made to put the manufacturing bases closer to where the different components are being made for those smartphones. That is a move we have seen from many other companies — and was the subject of a series of stories recently concerning Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in China and the role of Foxconn in that business.

The move to make these plants focused on customization, meanwhile, points to some focus that Nokia does seem to maintain on its software and services for its devices — a crucial part of the company’s differentiation as it moves more and more to a platform being used by its competitors as well. Others that make Windows Phone devices include Samsung and HTC.

The news comes amidst other reports about Nokia that claim the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the next model comes out.

Symbian is gradually being phased out for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, but Nokia had originally said it would support the OS until 2016, and that could still be the case even if it stopped making devices based on it. Nokia transferred the operation of Symbian to Accenture last year.

A spokesperson from Nokia told paidContent that the article was “speculative at best” and would not comment on device rumor or speculation:

“As we have previously said Symbian continues to be an important part of our portfolio and going forward it will play a more focused role as we accelerate our transition to Windows Phone,” he said. “We remain fully committed to the platform through 2016, which means on-going software support as we go forward.”

The company is currently rolling out an update to Symbian, Belle, and the devices remain popular in the Middle East, Russia and India, even as they have lost out to Android-based devices, Apple’s iPhone and even RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) in other markets.

Risto Siilasmaa (pictured), a Nokia board member and the founder and largest individual shareholder of computer security company F-Secure Corporation, is reportedly being lined up for the job currently held by Jorma Ollila.

Olilla’s successor will be voted in on January 26, at the next shareholders’ meeting, according to the Finnish financial publication Helsingen Sanomat (translation here), which cites independent sources for the information.

The news comes on the same day that outspoken and influential Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin — who has put out a mixture of accurate and inaccurate speculation about Nokia in the past — released a stream of predictions on his Twitter stream about what will happen to Nokia.

On the back of Siilasmaa getting appointed (he seems to take this as a certainty), he says Elop will resign this year, and that Microsoft will buy Nokia to better compete against Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in offering integrated smartphones. The ball is in the U.S. company’s court on how and when that deal will happen, and depends on how many assets Microsoft decides to take on board, he claims. Nokia’s brand will be used for lower end devices, while Microsoft will brand the higher-end devices as its own.

Nokia has been pegged for a while as an acquisition target — it’s still the world’s biggest handset maker but its share has been falling — and it does feel like a make or break moment for the company. Regardless of how accurate Murtazin’s predictions are, there is still the matter of a new chairman to appoint now:

The search for a successor to Ollila, once CEO himself during Nokia’s possibly most triumphant phase as a mobile handset maker, has been going on for almost a year now. No other names have come up so far for who else might get put forward for the job. Other board members, in addition to Siilasmaa and Ollila, include MIT economics professor Bengt Holmstrom; the forestry company Stora Enso’s CEO, Jouko Karvinen; and Kari Stadigh, CEO of Sampo.

In addition to already being on Nokia’s board since 2008, Siilasmaa has an interesting background in his own right: he has worked at Finnish operator Elisa, and is the founder of the antivirus and IT security company F-Secure, and, according to the blog Arctic Startup, has served as the head of Vigo, an accelerator program for Finnish tech companies. Both of those give him some insight into local innovation that Nokia could and should tap into as it looks for the next phase of growth in mobile.

On the minus side, Helsingen Sanomat points out that he has virtually no international business nor investor relations experience — although as an investor himself, and a current board member already, that could be something shareholders are willing to let slide.

Nokia had one hell of a year in 2011 and is very much geared up for a fightback in 2012 based around a new line of smartphones running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, in place of Nokia’s old Symbian platform, now outsourced and no longer at the center of the company’s device strategy.

While a lot of Nokia’s strategic moves in the past year have appeared to be geared to improving the company’s dire fortunes in the key market of the U.S., as well as helping retain market share in other places where it is slipping from its dominant position, the company’s foundations and roots in Finland run deep, and keeping a Finn as chairman could be a good way of making sure those stay strong.

Some deals were well telegraphed but not the scope of the announcement, made at the Mipcom TV trade show in Cannes Wednesday. The services vary by country, with the bulk available in the U.S. The partners include UK broadcasters BBC, Channel 4, Channel Five (no ITV); online services like YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), Dailymotion and Lovefilm; Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) through Xfinity and NBC Universal, ESPN (NYSE: DIS) and Verizon in the U.S.. (Full list below.)

Xbox Live users gain access to some services through free registration; Xbox Live Gold is a subscription plan. Initially, Microsoft wanted to limit the new services that would be streamed through the Xbox to the Xbox Live Gold tier but that caused problems for the BBC and some other networks required under their charters to be available to the widest tier on a service. Microsoft bent, we’ve been told: those networks will be on the Xbox Live tier, available in their countries for no additional fee while others in the same country — Channel 4 in the UK, for instance — are only on the pay plan.

All of the partners’ announcements are coordinated to refer only to features and not to strategy.

• The BBC is making no comment about any of this. “The BBC is pleased to confirm the completion of a partnership deal with Microsoft that will enable the BBC to make on-demand services available to all UK users of the Xbox Live platform,” a spokesperson tells paidcontent. “We’re not yet in a position to go into any specifics – or confirm a launch date – but we’ll share more details as soon as we can.”
• Lovefilm, which previously was shut out by Microsoft’s seeking a slice of its subscription revenue, has not responded to our questions.
• Channel Four, whose cross-platform 4oD service can only be used by paid-up Xbox Live gold subscribers, has also not responded.