In All About Symbian Insight 80 (AAS Podcast 142), we discuss Nokia's Q2 results and the announcement of the Nokia Surge. We follow up with news of Symbian's Horizon program, before talking about the latest set of software updates for the N97. Finally we answer some questions from our listeners. You can listen to AAS Insight 80 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Last Friday, Nokia and Accenture announced that they had entered in to an agreement for Accenture to acquire Nokia's Symbian Professional Services unit, which is 'responsible for Symbian OS customer engineering and customer support'. Effectively, the unit provides technical expertise, in the form of a service consultancy, to companies from across the ecosystem: mobile operators, silicon vendors and device manufacturers. Read on for more.
Following a successful event in 2008 (see our report here), Vodafone's Betavine labs have announced another Over The Air event, to take place on the 25th and 26th of September at Imperial College, London. Betavine will be joined by Lonely Planet and OMTP to present the 24 hour hacking and coding event, where new ideas are presented in the first few sessions and everyone else starts a single day burst of coding to present their ideas and hacks.
With announcements from many platforms on new developer studios being commissioned, success stories for independent coders, and huge download numbers being related in the media on what seems a daily basis, where is Nokia? Why is the Ovi Store not getting written about? Because unless the Ovi Story is told, developers are not going to want to take part in a software warehouse that appears to be a ghost town. Read on for my take...
Haptic feedback is rapidly becoming an integral part of the touch screen experience. Immersion Corporation, a leading supplier of haptic technology, has recently joined the Symbian Foundation and its technology is expected to become available to developers in the near future. This article looks at the technology, what can be achieved, and its impact on battery life.
The Symbian Foundation today announced the first details of Symbian Horizon, an application-publishing program, which aims to reduce the barriers developers face when taking their products to market and thus increase the profitability of creating Symbian applications. Symbian Horizon will place applications in a number of partner app stores including Nokia's Ovi Store, Samsung's Application Store and AT&T's MEdia Mall, effectively acting as an application publisher on behalf of developers.
The Symbian Foundation today announced it is establishing a new office in Japan. The aim is to improve its support for it Japanese members (who include the operators NTT DOCOMO and Softbank Mobile and the manufacturers Sharp and Fujitsu) and bolster engagement with the developer community. The Symbian Foundation also have offices in London, San Fransisco and Helsinki.
In All About Symbian Insight 79 (AAS Podcast 141), we share news of Symbian^2's release and the first Symbian package to move from SFL to EPL. Then there's a mention of Nokia Android rumours, leading into a discussion about Maemo positioning and Qt. Finally we talk about a recent post from Robert Scoble. You can listen to AAS Insight 79 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Eric Pfeifer, Content Acquisition Director at Handmark provides insight into the world of application shops post Apple App Store and Ovi Store, with some interesting indication of applications and content demand from future stores.
On Monday Vodafone launched its Summer of Widgets competition. Every week through out July and August Vodafone will be giving away three prize bundles (consisting of Samsung NC20 netbook and a Nokia N96) to the developers submitting the best widgets. Widgets must be developed using the Opera widget runtime for S60 and be uploaded to the Vodafone Widget Developer Platform. Read on for more.
Forum Nokia has released a beta of Nokia Platform Services 2.0, which provides a much simplified JavaScript API with which WRT widgets can use the features of Nokia S60 devices. In addition, support for use of a device’s camera has also been introduced.
In All About Symbian Podcast 138, Rafe talks to Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation. The interview covers a wide range of topics, including the Symbian Foundation's planned application arena, the universal web runtime, the forthcoming Symbian Exchange and Exposition, Qt and the Symbian Foundation, the challenges of openness and open governance, and more.
In All About Symbian Insight 77 (AAS Podcast 137), there is news of Truphone's extended support for Nokia and the 5800 continues its best selling streak. Rafe talks about Nokia and Intel's strategic tie up and reports back from the launch of the HTC Hero. Ewan shares news of AdSense for applications, which leads to a general monetisation discussion. You can listen to AAS Insight 77 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
AAS reader, (ex-)OPL programmer and now Python developer, Martin Dehler, has released a couple of applications that have effectively made it from the Psion Series 3a (circa 1995) to modern S60 3rd Edition phones. FuelLog is shareware and is a fuel consumption tracker that records, stores, calculates and exports fueling data and fuel consumption of vehicles. Birthdays is freeware and lists birthdays from the Contacts application in chronological order. For each birthday name, date of birth, age and remaining time until the next birthday are shown.
