Monthly Archives: June 2011

Nokia Developer Wiki – Rebrand enhancements

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Many of you will have noticed the site-wide rebranding to "Nokia Developer" that came out last week (if not, see here for announcement).
 
In addition to the cosmetic makeover, the Wiki got some real enhancements and defect fixes:
  • Improved commenting: Comments are now appended to the end of the article, and automatically include your name and a timestamp. This makes having a discussion much easier, and means that people reading the article get the benefits of comments without having to go to another page. Under the hood the information is still stored in the article’s talk page, but most users will never need to go there.
  • Better navigation: With the adoption of the new "vector skin" the sidebar now has toggleable sections which make the navigation less overwhelming. We’ve moved most of the tools into the toolbox where you would expect them. In addition, category pages now display their parent categories, making it easier to navigate up throught he category tree.
  • Useful metadata: All articles now include the 30 day view count in addition to last editor information. We’ve also created a new ArticleMetaData template which you can apply to your articles to make it clear what SDKs and devices your information is compatible with. 
All of this makes the wiki much easier to use.
 
We’re still continuing to work on the wiki and fixing minor defects in the appearance. We’d appreciate your feedback, bug reports and enhancment suggestions, in the Community Help and Support forum.
 
 

N9 A 360 Degree Fashion Phone

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Singapore — Nokia just launched the N9 phone at Nokia Connection 2011′s annual event held in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011. The device clearly appeals to women with it’s candy colors, big screen, and almost 3D glass, 3.9 inch curved AMOLED screen. Perfect setup to follow the fashion world with the 360Fashion Social News application. Look-Books, News, and the twitter/weibo conversation surrounding the designers ready for your comments to be added to the discussion.

All it takes is a swipe of your thumb or finger from the extreem edge of the phone to move away an application back to the main screen or switch between applications. Whenever you are in an application, you just swipe from the edge of the screen to go back home. The home key is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe.
"With the Nokia N9, we wanted to design a better way to use a phone. To do this we innovated in the design of the hardware and software together. We reinvented the home key with a simple gesture: a swipe from the edge of the screen. The experience sets a new bar for how natural technology can feel," said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia’s head of Design. "And this is just the beginning. The details that make the Nokia N9 unique – the industrial design, the all-screen user experience, and the expressive Qt framework for developers – will evolve in future Nokia products."
With a super scrollable keypad, the Nokia N9 comes in three colours: black, cyan and magenta and with large storage capacities of 16GB and 64GB on the two variants to be made available. Nokia also launched a hot host of accessories to compliment the device for your ears, eyes, and sharing sound over the air to your friends.
It’s always been a challenge to pair bluetooth handsets, but thanks to NFC (Near Field Communication), you just touch your headphones to the phone and it immediately connects the two of them together. Touch again, and it un-pairs your headset. Come home, and touch your handset to your Nokia Play 360° speakers and immediately, you are live in stereo sound, blasting away your tunes in your room.
The Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-111 is a great little stereo headset that brings music and clear calls to people’s ears. Once charged, users can expect to be able to listen to music for up to six hours, seven hours for talk time and a standby time of 120 hours.



With the Nokia Play 360° sound you can easily create stereo sound by connecting another speaker – wirelessly – to get an even better music experience. You can connect to the Nokia Play 360° in a number of ways, using NFC for easy Bluetooth pairing or a standard 3.5 mm audio connector.

Along with the Nokia Wireless Music Receiver MD-310, which wirelessly pumps music from your phone, laptop or any other Bluetooth device through your home stereo, you’ve got the perfect summer system to browse the 360Fashion Social News application, and preview the fashion weeks using the latest technology. Using something called apt-x, you will still receive the exact same audio quality you’d experience from a wired system, giving perfect CD quality. With support for Bluetooth class 1, you can remain connected to the MD-310 within 100 meters.
Next summer you will be the life of the party with a distinctive style profile. Your friends will be amazed at your witty commentary on twitter/weibo around top fashion news. You’ll be the one telling your friends about the latest trend and others will admire you as a style leader in your own time.

The power of QT was demostrated in that we were able to develop this applciation in 5 weeks. The QT environment makes it also easy to port it to other devices in the future. Even though there were not API’s ready for the device we were able to work with the web API’s of weibo and twitter to bring out the social aspect of the application so as to enable fashion lovers to get into the conversation specifically happening around a brand. Using the QML our UI designers familiar with designing for web, could bring their ideas together with our programmers easily. 

N9 A 360 Degree Fashion Phone

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Singapore — Nokia just launched the N9 phone at Nokia Connection 2011′s annual event held in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011. The device clearly appeals to women with it’s candy colors, big screen, and almost 3D glass, 3.9 inch curved AMOLED screen. Perfect setup to follow the fashion world with the 360Fashion Social News application. Look-Books, News, and the twitter/weibo conversation surrounding the designers ready for your comments to be added to the discussion.

All it takes is a swipe of your thumb or finger from the extreem edge of the phone to move away an application back to the main screen or switch between applications. Whenever you are in an application, you just swipe from the edge of the screen to go back home. The home key is replaced by a simple gesture: a swipe.
"With the Nokia N9, we wanted to design a better way to use a phone. To do this we innovated in the design of the hardware and software together. We reinvented the home key with a simple gesture: a swipe from the edge of the screen. The experience sets a new bar for how natural technology can feel," said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia’s head of Design. "And this is just the beginning. The details that make the Nokia N9 unique – the industrial design, the all-screen user experience, and the expressive Qt framework for developers – will evolve in future Nokia products."
With a super scrollable keypad, the Nokia N9 comes in three colours: black, cyan and magenta and with large storage capacities of 16GB and 64GB on the two variants to be made available. Nokia also launched a hot host of accessories to compliment the device for your ears, eyes, and sharing sound over the air to your friends.
It’s always been a challenge to pair bluetooth handsets, but thanks to NFC (Near Field Communication), you just touch your headphones to the phone and it immediately connects the two of them together. Touch again, and it un-pairs your headset. Come home, and touch your handset to your Nokia Play 360° speakers and immediately, you are live in stereo sound, blasting away your tunes in your room.
The Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-111 is a great little stereo headset that brings music and clear calls to people’s ears. Once charged, users can expect to be able to listen to music for up to six hours, seven hours for talk time and a standby time of 120 hours.



With the Nokia Play 360° sound you can easily create stereo sound by connecting another speaker – wirelessly – to get an even better music experience. You can connect to the Nokia Play 360° in a number of ways, using NFC for easy Bluetooth pairing or a standard 3.5 mm audio connector.

Along with the Nokia Wireless Music Receiver MD-310, which wirelessly pumps music from your phone, laptop or any other Bluetooth device through your home stereo, you’ve got the perfect summer system to browse the 360Fashion Social News application, and preview the fashion weeks using the latest technology. Using something called apt-x, you will still receive the exact same audio quality you’d experience from a wired system, giving perfect CD quality. With support for Bluetooth class 1, you can remain connected to the MD-310 within 100 meters.
Next summer you will be the life of the party with a distinctive style profile. Your friends will be amazed at your witty commentary on twitter/weibo around top fashion news. You’ll be the one telling your friends about the latest trend and others will admire you as a style leader in your own time.

The power of QT was demostrated in that we were able to develop this applciation in 5 weeks. The QT environment makes it also easy to port it to other devices in the future. Even though there were not API’s ready for the device we were able to work with the web API’s of weibo and twitter to bring out the social aspect of the application so as to enable fashion lovers to get into the conversation specifically happening around a brand. Using the QML our UI designers familiar with designing for web, could bring their ideas together with our programmers easily. 

Mail&Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans

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Every year the Mail&Guardian in South Africa compiles a list of the Top 200 Young South Africans. The candidates are chosen “for their impact, their creativity and the resonance of their values with the project of building the South Africa that we all want to live in: vibrant, prosperous, equitable, diverse and hungry for the challenges of growth and change.”

I am happy to say that I made the list this year, and am honoured to be among the Top 200 Young South Africans in 2011. In fact. it’s great to still be viewed as young.  Sometimes working in the tech space and seeing just how young some of the other guys are, you start to feel really old ;-)

Making the list would not have been possible without the support and efforts of all of my family and friends, this includes everyone at Forum Nokia who encouraged me to follow my dream and who helped and guided me with development training to make sure that porting my idea’s from paper to mobile platforms has been relatively easy. To everyone who supported me during the last few years and ultimately made this possible a HUGE thank you.

If you have not yet taken some of AppCRAFT’s mobile apps for a spin, I invite you to grab a supported Nokia handset and head over to this link: http://store.ovi.com/publisher/AppCRAFT/ At AppCRAFT we invite you to see the future of mobile education today!

Calling All Innovators – Morse Code

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In 1836, Samuel Morse, and a few other developers introduced an electrical telegraph system. Morse code as it later became known has been in use for more than 160 years.

What is Morse Code?

“Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment.”

Histroy has taught us that no matter how high tech we think we are getting, some things are totally beyond our control and at times forces beyond our control can render even the most state of the art equipment useless in the blink of an eye.

For this reason, AppCRAFT has introduced a series of MorseCode early learning educational apps available freely in Ovi Store. Our thinking is that if we start by teaching the basics of morse code to users around the world, we can equip people with potentially life saving knowledge.

“For emergency signals, Morse code can be sent by way of improvised sources that can be easily “keyed” on and off, making it one of the simplest and most versatile methods of telecommunication.” This basically means that if you are trapped under rubble after say a Tsunami, you can tap messages using morse code that can be understood by rescue teams above ground. Instead of just randomly banging, you could be sending & receiving clear messages using morse code. You could use the same language to transmit signals using lights to mountain rescue teams etc etc.

The AppCRAFT MorseCode series has been live in Nokia Ovi since March 2011 and has already seen over 28000 downloads from 190 countries, proving that MorseCode is far from dead and that people world wide are eager to learn this most basic form of communication.

Please take our new MorseCode educational app for a spin and let us know what you think.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

or open this link in your mobile browser: http://store.ovi.mobi/content/113853

In this version:

Sound issues resolved, a working close button, The app works in both landscape and portrait mode and many other new features as requested. We do hope you will enjoy this new version.

This app works on all Symbian S60 5th and Symbian3 touch screen devices.