ON ITS “Conversations” area of its Web site, big mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is asking its community to help design the next smartphone:

This isn’t just about creating the next-gen smartphone; we want you to think beyond that. To avoid creating some kind of unweildy beast, we’ve created a six-step process where you get to vote for the features and functions you think are most important. Every week we’ll tally up the votes and display the defined spec.

Is Nokia crowdsourcing its next smartphone design? Or is it just creating the illusion of interaction with its customers?

This is not true crowdsourcing. This is a popularity contest, an echo chamber in which people relate what they think they want, not what would actually work for a design that sets out to break the mold and create something new. Think about it: Can you imagine a “crowd” coming up with the iPhone three or four years ago, based on what was available in smartphones then? I don’t think so.

True crowdsourcing would use the crowd to tell you how people actually use smartphones and how they want to use smartphones. Not by asking them, because real designers know that people notoriously say they want things they don’t truly want, or they confuse features with the underlying needs that could be better met by features they haven’t even thought of before.

My guess is that this design effort won’t net Nokia much more than they already think they know.

For example, how many people in the “crowd” know the difference between capacitative and resistive screens? I don’t off the top of my head. And does knowing the difference mean I automatically know what the pros and cons of each are. And if I have to Google it to fill out a simple poll, you’re diluting your “crowd” into a self-selected subset of engineering nerds (and we all know what design geniuses they are).

And screen size? Most people in the “crowd” wil likely think bigger is better without knowing what the ergonomic and weight tradeoffs of such a choice would be. These are considerations designers would take into account. A “crowd”? Not so much.

And can you imagine what the “crowd” would’ve told Apple four years ago about keypads? Apple struck out on its own here, convinced it could offer a different type of keypad that wouldn’t have won a popularity contest back then but would work, and would allow other design features that contributed to an overall, cohesive design masterpiece, rather than something created from a checklist generated by random polling. Same with secondary buttons. How are regular people expected to know enough to weigh these options?

I’m disturbed by the ways in which the term crowdsourcing is being bandied about these days. Crowds can process or give you data that can help you discover patterns you might not otherwise have seen. But to impute expertise for a very specific task (i.e., product design) stretches crowdsourcing’s promise beyond what it can deliver.

I showed a friend the the Nokia survey and his response was, “You want to know all this? Let me grab my iPhone and I’ll tell you.” ‘Nuff said.

CONNECTIONS What connects these disparate pieces of information?

Here are the stories up for today’s Connections. See what you think links them.

BAD JOURNOS First up, The Atlantic’s columnist, Michael Kinsley complains that newspaper articles, as opposed to Internet news, are too long and a big part of the reason readers are jumping the paper-journalism ship.

DON’T LET FACTS INTERFERE WITH MY THEORY Second, The New Yorker travels to a remote tribe in the Amazon, the Pirahã, to report on their confounding language, a tongue so confounding — and sung as much as spoken — that it has called into question Noam Chomsky’s prevailing theory about how human language evolved.

WHITE PEOPLE ARE UNIQUELY TUNED TO BE SAVIORS Finally, New York Times columnist David Brooks jumps on the anti-Avatar bandwagon to bewail the Great White Messiah myth that drives the story so many popular films. Popular with white people, that is.

First a quick précis of each.

Cut This Story!

In “Cut This Story!“ Kinsley argues that technology is not the only reason people prefer their news from the Web over newspapers. Newspaper articles are too long, while Internet news gets right to the point. Newspaper writers themselves are not to blame, though. Crusty old news writing conventions add verbiage with little more understanding.

Kinsley points to a typical New York Times story, “Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House,” (1,456 words long!) as an example. Here’s the lead:

Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.

Fewer than half these 36 words explain what actually happened; the rest, Kinsley notes, are what journalists call “context”:

Once upon a time, this unnecessary stuff was considered an advance over dry news reporting: don’t just tell the story; tell the reader what it means. But providing “context” … has become an invitation to hype. In this case, it’s the lowest form of hype—it’s horse-race hype—which actually diminishes a story rather than enhancing it.

Readers who care about health reform already have the context, Kinsley argues. He also cites newspapers for a reliance on experts whose quotes “magically turn an opinionated story into an objective one.”

The New York Times, Kinsley asserts, should rely on its own trustworthiness to tell the news rather than relying on a middleman (A.K.A, expert) to make its case.

Whoa! Really, Mr. Kinsley? That’s a pretty ludicrous — and dangerous — assertion, but we’ll get back to that.

Next: Why a confounding primitive tribe threatens the leading theory of human language »

From a bulletin board for the Communication and Media program at the University of Minnesota. The funny part is that the “B.S.” bit was taped onto the Scientific & Technical Communication label — someone went out of their way to let you know.

The folks at Bonnier, publisher of Popular Science and other magazines, are working with Berg on prototypes for digital magazines to be displayed on tablet computers of the future (are you paying attention, Apple? — actually, I’m sure they are).

The project, called Mag+, attempts to “marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-readers sure to arrive in 2010.”

Take a look at the prototype video and more photos:

One of the most useful iPhone apps ever is free today only as a holiday gift from the developers. Ping! [iTunes download] works exactly like the iPhone’s native SMS app except your text messages are free. Ping! [Web site] basically uses your iPhone’s push notification system to simulate SMS msgs.

PROS

• You can send texts to iPod Touches (touché!) as well as iPhones.
• Integrates with your Address Book.
• Works with any iPhone/iPod touch, even internationally. For free.
• Did I mention you can download it for free today only?

CONS

• Works only with iPhones and iPod Touches. Any friends using other types of phones or devices are beyond your reach.
• You have to sign up with Ping for a user ID and exchange IDs with all your ping-able friends.
• Occasional jankiness with its stability; it crashes from time to time.

C|NET is sponsoring a contest in which people can vote for their favorite Web 2.0 applications. While the voting aspect is nice, the big value to me of the Webware 100 Awards is that all these applications — the best on the Web — are gathered and categorized in one place.

For someone like me who doesn’t have enough time to search out all the best stuff on my own, this filters out the noise and gives me the strongest signal.

Web-based application services like Amazon’s storage (S3) and cloud computing (EC2) are fantastic. But their failure can be crippling on a wide scale.

Despite all the hoo-hah about applications moving from the desktop to the browser, I remain old-school about the hype. I don’t like being held hostage to Web apps, no matter their utility —in fact, especially because of their increased utility — because you can lose Web connectivity at any time. Or be stuck in places without wireless access. And the recent failure of Amazon’s S3 Web services only underscores that fear.

In any case, here are the award categories. If I find anything of note, I’ll note it in future posts.

Audio
Music, podcasts, audiobooks

Browsing
Browsers, start pages, RSS readers, widgets, runtime engines

Commerce and events
Retail, auctions, travel, real estate, concerts, conferences

Communication
E-mail, chat, voice

Productivity
Application suites, to-do lists, groupware

Publishing and photography
Blogging, content management, photo sites

Search and reference
Search engines, encyclopedias, mapping

Social
Social networking, family sites, recommendations, online worlds, contests

Utility and security
Infrastructure providers, storage, online protection

Video
Video storage, playback, streaming, editing, and animation