We've had applications to sync into Google Calendar for a while, notably GooSync. But Google just released an official set of Contacts APIs (hooks for programmers to use), meaning that full sync into this part of Google may be on the horizon. But, as the Google OS blog notes, the APIs link into a generic contact store and not necessarily a GMail contact set, meaning that there's probably some tweaking at the Google end set to happen in the future, to simplify contact handling.
NS Basic, the cross-platform Basic programming language that was announced for Symbian OS at last year's Smartphone Show, seems to be finally coming together. NS Basic has now put a page up, listing it as 'coming soon' and with a bullet list of features. It'll work with both S60 and UIQ, too, which is good to see, though it's apparently implemented on top of the StyleTap Palm OS emulator for Symbian. If you've got as many concerns over performance as I had, check out their benchmarks page too.
Thanks to SWB for reminding us that Symbian's Open Signed Online starts next week for those without Publisher IDs, in beta at least and with some throttling limits in place. We haven't been featuring every last 'unsigned' utility that's flooded the blogosphere in the last 3 months because, basically, the self-signing has been too hard for the average user. Will the new system improve matters? Comments welcome.
Michael Mace has written an interesting post on his blog Mobile Opportunity about the fall of (native) Mobile Applications. The basic thesis of the post is that native mobile development is declining because of platform fragmentation, issues around certification, and marketing problems. Michael goes on to suggest that mobile development itself is not dead, but that it will increasingly move to the web as a platform. Read on for more.
As noted by SymbianOne Symbian recently updated P.I.P.S. and version 1.2 now supports the latest UIQ phones. 1.2 also adds a full-featured port of the Open Source zlib compression library. The 1.2 version was made available to S60 through the Novemeber Open C release.
Nokia is calling on mobile developers with new ideas to take part in its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, and at least one winning game will be published by Nokia on its new N-Gage platform (which is based on S60 3rd Edition). Entries will be accepted from the 3rd of April 2008, so if you're interested it might be worth starting work now. Established developers and publishers can already apply to publish commercially on the platform, or find out more on the N-Gage developer site.
Yamake has broken cover, in the latest N-Gage press release. A 'game creating game,' players are able to pick and mix their own games from a range of mini-games, add in their own skins, themes, text, sound clips and movies from their PC. These can then be uploaded and shared with the rest of the Yamake community.
Glad to see the Nokia E90 is not totally forgotten. There's now an official guide (warning: PDF link) to tweaking an S60 application's UI to work effectively on the 800 pixel wide screen of the Communicator. Shows it's not as simple as setting screen width to a bigger number, anyway!
Symbian Signed's Open Signed Online service is now available in limited beta. Open Signed Online allows developers and individuals to sign SIS files via an online service. There are a number of restrictions in place during the beta period, but developers may find it useful to familiarise themselves with the service as it provides a quicker and easier way to sign SIS files during development.
Showing off the power of Python (again) and the usefulness(!) of the S60 accelerometer plug-in, ShakerRacer is a project to control a (model) racing car using just your smartphone. And you can now grab the source code and hardware mod instructions for free, to have a play yourself, if you've got the time and inclination.
ShoZu, the one click solution to uploading media from your smartphone has taken a third full round of funding (reports Business Wire). For this Round C, they've taken on-board $12 million from a number of new and existing partners, and allow the company to expand onto more handsets and continue to work with manufacturers to be bundled with handsets.
Nokia today announced that it would acquire Trolltech a company which provides software development platforms and frameworks. Trolltech is best known for its Qt product, a multi-platform graphical user-interface framework. Qt is used in KDE, the web browser Opera, Skype and Google Earth applications. Nokia intends to use Qt to enable cross platform development environments.
Symbian Press has announced a new developer's title: "Games on Symbian OS", by Jo Stitchbury. Full details here, with availability next month. From the blurb: "...shows the potential for creating mobile games for Symbian smartphones... It covers various aspects of mobile games on Symbian OS, with contributions from a number of experts in the mobile games industry, including Nokia'’s N-Gage team, Ideaworks3D, and ZingMagic, as well as academics leading the field of innovative mobile experiences".
Top Italian theme creator p@sco seems to have gotten so fed up with cheap and nasty themes from others that he's started a new initiative, Symbian Certified Themes . It's early days yet, if you're a theme developer and feel your creation is up to scratch then check it out. Also of note is a 20 year certificate that you can download and use.
In All About Symbian Insight # 7 (AAS Podcast #55) Steve, Ewan and Rafe look back at 2007 and pick out their highlights from the year. We cover the Nokia N95, a resurgent UIQ and Nokia's Ovi announcement. In the second half of the podcast we turn our attention to 2008 and make a few predictions.
