In AAS Insight #28 Rafe, Ewan and Steve discuss some of the news from the past week including Trolltech, Mail for Exchange 2.5 and the Symbian Smartphone Show before moving on to the general waffle topics: firstly S60's increasing integration with the PC and web, secondly smartphone statistics and definition.
The European Commission has announced unconditional approval of Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech. Nokia can now proceed with the final stages of acquisition, which are expected to be completed quickly. Trolltech's Qt, a cross platform graphics/GUI tookit, is the principal reason for the acquisition and will be an important part of Nokia's cross platform development strategy.
Symbian's annual show, the Smartphone Show will take place later this year, October 21st to 22nd, at Earls Court in London. New this year is the Mobile DevFest a developer focused event from Symbian that runs in parallel to the main show. Symbian has issued a 'call for papers' for developers who are interested in speaking at the event. Fame and glory await.
Just to prove they were listening during all those S60 Summit seminars, Rafe and Ewan focus in this feature on S60's Web Run-Time (WRT), which was heavily promoted at the event. They cover what it is, where it's going and what it will mean for developers and end users. In addition, Rafe recorded this podcast, talking to Ganesh Sivaraman about WRT and all things widgetey.
There's a great post by Daniel Rochas over on Forum Nokia, posted yesterday, discussing the pros and cons of using Python for developing applications for S60, with links, resources, caveats and more. In short, Daniel thinks that Python 'brings back the fun' into development. Also of note on the same site is a new and interactive eLearning tutorial for PyS60. Both highly recommended.
In AAS Insight 27, the latest All About Symbian podcast, we talk about some recent firmware upgrades for a number of devices before moving on to a wide ranging discussion from topics out of last weeks S60 Summit. Areas covered include the future of user experience, Samsung and the S60 platform, the future of software development and widgets and WRT.
According to the Finnish business newspaper Kauppalehti, Nokia's Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones. The article quotes Rick Simonson, Nokia's Chief Financial Officer, as saying "we are definitely moving in the direction (of Linux-based phones)" at a seminar in Boston run by JP Morgan Chase. There was no further detail though, and apparently Simonson refused to be drawn on which kind of Linux would be used. Nokia already makes the Linux-based N800 and N810 internet tablets, which use Nokia's own version of Linux called Maemo, but current tablets have no telephony ability.
Opera has announced the availability of the Opera Widgets SDK. The SDK allows the development of cross device and cross platform applications using standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, DOM, Javascript). Opera Widgets can run, assuming the presence of the Opera browser (9.5), on a PC, mobile phones (e.g. UIQ 3.3 phones), game consoles (Wii) and TVs. Opera Widgets is the widget platform that will be used by future UIQ devices.
DDH Software, developers of HanDBase, the cross-platform (including S60) database solution, have launched a competition, rewarding the best two 'Applets' (i.e. designed databases, such as Pet Health or CD tracker) with full commercial runtime licenses, 'enabling the winners to turn their entries into commercially-available standalone mobile applications'. Importantly, the 30 day trial version is fine for creating the applets. Press release below the break.
Nokia today announced the next stage of its Widget (Web Run Time) platform for S60. The new version will allow widgets to access information and services on the phone (such as location through GPS) in order to enable context sensitive widgets. Also significant is a brief mention of Open C++ which will further extend the number of standard, platform-independent, programming libraries available on the S60 platform. Read on for more.
Dublin based Developer BitRabbit has released v2.0 of RabbitFactory, their middleware for PDA and smartphone game developers. Included are a number of C++ API's that will allow the same title to be easily ported over a variety of devices, including Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian OS; alongside a universal C++, desktop based, emulator. RabbitFactory will power the upcoming multi-platform release of Platypus from Astraware.
Symbian announced two new OS technologies today at CTIA: Symbian SQL and an advanced Location Based Services (LBS) architecture. The first will allow the use of much larger data sets by smartphone applications and the second will simplify the development of genuine location-sensitive apps and services. The full press release is below.
The UK High Court has over-ruled a decision by the UK Intellectual Property Office in regards to their application for a patent for their method of indexing library functions (reports IT Pro). The UK-IPO had turned down this application, although the European Patent Office had granted it (the UK office does not recognise patents which are 'nothing more than a computer program,' where Europe does), hence their appeal to the High Court. While the case is concluded, the UK-IPO office has indicated that it will appeal the judgement.
Only Rafe and I this time round, here's AAS podcast 64, a.k.a. Insight 16, in which we talk about the new Nokia S60 devices for Vodafone and T-Mobile, the recent announcement of Silverlight Mobile for S60 and the issues surrounding the changes at Symbian Signed - how can the current debacle be resolved?
Ewan's been at Mix08 and took the opportunity to chat to Microsoft's Brad Becker, Group Product Manager (for the User Experience Platform and Tools Marketing Group) about the recent announcement about Silverlight Mobile. He also spent a little time with the developer of WeatherBug, talking about their rapid development under Silverlight Mobile. Watch the interviews here in AAS Video podcast 28.