Amit Kankani's Blog

NewsHunt (www.newshunt.com) from Eterno Infotech won the prestigious NAVTEQ LBS India Challenge, announced about an hour back.

As a developer for NewsHunt, its truely a moment of pride.

Keep following this blog, and more details and links will follow :) 

Hi, i tried to comment on other post saying an update is available, but the anti-spam will just not let me do it :( 

so a new post describing the changelog (not complete yet)... so I i want to update this, or comment on this, will I have to create a new post ? :)

 I am not sure, but some of my observations:

* New music player
* better quality photo from camera (not much noticable)
* Speed increased for overall system
* Kinetic Scrolling menu
* Added application synchronization Ovi
* Hack not working

Hi All,

NAVTEQ's LBS challenge finalists have been announced and the finals are hardly a week away.

NewsHunt from Eterno (www.newshunt.com) is also one amongst the 12 finalist selected, and it feels proud to be one of the developers of NewsHunt.

If you have not yet tried NewsHunt (for Indian news as of now, shortly will be adding Local news for various Regional papers across the GLOBE as well) , then visit www.newshunt.com or visit OVI store and search for "newshunt"

reference: http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/Indian-Finalists-Announced-for-NAVTEQ-LBS-Challenge_a2198.html

Hi All,

The new version of Ovi Suite 2.1 is out. (abt 78 MB to download)

More about it can be read at: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11163_Ovi_Suite_21_released.php

This N900 firmware upgrade brings mostly bug fixes and minor updates to the device.

The official changelog and issues fixed can be found at the following link:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo_5/PR1.1.1

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know about an exciting event siliconindia is organizing on October 31^st (Saturday in Bangalore). This is a full-day conference that will explore the new opportunities that are emerging and ask the larger questions of the industry leaders within mobile space, shedding some light on where the industry is headed and how entrepreneurs and developers can take advantage. 

you can read the complete details about the event at : http://www.siliconindia.com/mobileconference/index.php

Come listen to some of the brightest minds in mobile technology discuss the future of mobile technology. 

SPEAKERS 
Arvind Rao, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder, OnMobile 
Vishnu Sunderam, Co-founder CEO, Interchain Solutions Surinder Saini, President, Sales, Satnav
Raj Oswal, Founder & CEO, O'interface 
Dilip R Mehta, IIM Bangalore, Ex-MD RPG Cellular and HMV Saregama 
Prashant Dogra, Customer Marketing Manager, Navteq 
Shanker Janakiraman, Director & CEO - India, Symbioun Technologies 
Amit Mehta Head,Sales and Marketing, VAS, SDP and Mobility Group, TCS
Taranjit Batra,Vice President, Sales, Kirusa
Prakash Sayini,Forum Nokia India Lead
Bakshish Dutta, General Manager - Startups and Emerging Markets, Sun Microsystems India
Praveen Nallapothula,MD and CEO, TeleDNA
Sanjay Swamy,CEO, Mchek
Shrinath V,GM, Product development, Mapmyindia
Sunil Rao,Developer Relations Manager, Forum Nokia
Mohan Kumar, Executive Director, NVP India
Khamir Bhatia, Head of Sales - South Asia, InMobi 

TOPICS: 
Mobile applications explode. Who wins and who loses? 
Carriers and handset makers want a piece, too: Where will they go? 
LBS Challenge: Maximising Revenue and Engaging the Consumer 
Mobile Payment Services: The Road Ahead 
Mobile Marketing 

Sponsors: Nokia, Sun, Navteq, Satnav , TeleDNA
Exhibiting companies: Eterno, iPath, MapmyIndia, Mobikwik, OnMobile, ObjectSol, Satnav, ShortHand, Symbioun, Tencube, Trakut, Trademarkia, Vassoft, Wirkle, Trignon, Geneva

WHEN: October 31, 2009 (Saturday) 
TIME: 9 AM to 6 PM 
WHERE: NIMHANS Convention Center, Near Diary Circle, Bangalore 

To attend this event, register FREE at http://www.siliconindia.com/mobileconference/register.php   

Hope to see you there,

Amit Kankani 

Ovi Store is out now for the past few months and is indeed doing good.

However from the various reviews from different people, it is very clear that they are not happy about one thing atleast: "Why are demos and trials given under free and only after download you get to know it is not the freeware complete version?"

I too have downloaded over 50 applications from Ovi Store on phones like N95, 5800 and N97 and I too have similar views on this issue...

So I guess there should be more differentiator actually, which clearly differentiates between absolutely Free vs Demos and Trials. Also any Adwares differentiated too would be good.

Any takers for this idea ? I hope Ovi Store keeps improving and becoming better application and Content store...

Nokia N97 indeed is one of the best devices around in terms of the vaious features it provides. It can be easily categorized under Premium Device anyone would want to own. However not matching to its stature is the software built into it, specially the UI.

Nokia has been known for improving the software with newer firmware updates, and has been successfully doing it for all devices including N95, N96, 5800 XpressMusic, and others.

 However, for a device like N97, I truly think it was not the right approach to launch the device with a firmware not so good and then release better firmware. The device software, as most of you would agree has UI not appreciable, in-fact it coming 2 years or more later to iPhone, should have matched if not bettered the UI. I do assume that the future firmware for N97 will have better responsive UI and better RAM utilization, however, the initial launch is what hits me.

My friends to whom I recommended the N97 say that the UI is really bad and the phone keeps hanging, because the firmware was old one, and then finally he returned the device and chose another one. However, after paying more than 33,000 Rs in India (and I am sure the price is equally high in all currencies around the globe), he was not expecting to be told to wait for the right firmware.

So my main worry is that, while it is a great idea to keep updating the firmwares to improve the software on phone for devices, it is not the case with devices which cost so much. Nokia needs to understand the different user bases it has and server the different User types differently. I hope Nokia would in future pay special attention to Premium devices it offers.

P.S. I am a die-hard fan of Nokia and would prefer a Nokia device even with this problem I mentioned earlier, as I am aware of the firmware updates. But I wanted Nokia not to make descisions which could drive users away. 

Hi all,

this is a very trivial issue I have faced....... and its regarding the UID of standby screen, or the phone default screen.

The problem I noticed is that the UIDs are different for different versions, and worse yet, different for different Feature packs too !!! and to add to that, no constants define which could have easily taken care of this....

well let me get into details:

The UID of standby screen (the process is called Phone) on 2nd edition is: 0x100058b3

The UID of standby screen (the process is called Standby Mode) on 3rd edition and 3rd edition FP1 is: 0x101fd64c

The UID of standby screen (the process is called Standby Mode) on 3rd edition FP2 is:0x102750F0

and I don't yet know what it is for 5th Edition.

So now if anyone wants to use the UID of standby screen, then one needs to define these with appropriate macros and use them. May be something like this:

#ifdef __SERIES60_3X__
const TUid KUidStandBy = { 0x101fd64c }; // For 3rd Edition
const TUid KUidStandBy_FP2 = { 0x102750F0 }; // For 3rd edition Emulator and FP2 devices
#else // #ifdef __SERIES60_3X__
const TUid KUidStandBy = { 0x100058b3 }; // For 2nd Edition
#endif // #ifdef __SERIES60_3X__

and then use it... 

It would be much better if there was a constant defined by Symbian headers which could be used, so that there wouldn't be any problems like this .....

Hope Symbian does this from next version of their SDKs, or have already done it on 5th Edition ? I don't know about this on 5th Edition, probably some of you could comment....

We have read a lot on Symbian Platform Capability hacking...

Earlier blogs on similar topic by other authors:

http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/daniel-rochas-forum-nokia-blog/symbian-c/2008/03/27/platsec_jailbroken

http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/daniel-rochas-forum-nokia-blog/s60/2008/04/02/followup 

http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/gabor-toroks-forum-nokia-blog/symbian-c/2007/10/27/symbian-platform-security-hacked 

http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/gabor-toroks-forum-nokia-blog/platform-security/2008/03/09/another-hack-for-symbian-platform-security 

All of the above required a person to do a lot and then the phone was hacked.... Now there are new cracks, that allows installing UNSIGNED applications too (bipinda cracked only)...

And not only that, there is an application, SecMan which can disable Capabilities. Further, there was another tool, which will auto start and disable capabilities too.... I can't give the direct links, but one can search www.ipmart-forum.com for hacking symbian and would get it... So it is like one application now, which can be opened and there we can choose to Enable securitly or Disable security... 

So hacking is not only for tech savy people, but any one.. and based on these hacks, all the softwares (almost all the popular ones) have a cracked version as well ! Though I personally am scared to use them as I don't know what side effect a cracked version can have on my device, I tried a few and they actually worked. 

with all these happening, we have seen these tools upgrade themselves, but is Symbian also planning to upgrade and block these ? 

I have personally tried the tool and I was able to browse, cut, copy, paste, everything from any private folder on the phone, be it c:\sys\bin or c:\private\xxxxxx

Now the main QUESTION : 

Are Symbian, Nokia giving a deaf ear to this ??? This being the situation today, imagine what would happen when SYMBIAN GOES OPEN SOURCE... i guess no one can stop mobile virus/trojans/etc from spreading....

Note: This blog is with respect to Indian market as I understand.

Nokia offlate has jumped into Services field too, because it has started various camps like the current USID to give not only devices to the masses, but also a complete set of services around it, so that it can provice what can be called as a complete solution.

Why is Nokia doing this? 

* One clear reason why Nokia is doing this is to fight out competition, as today in market, there are too many brands and models to choose from.

* The next big market is that of rural India, where mobile plague is at the begining of its emergence. So if anyone can truely capture it, will be a clear winner. 

What are the effects of this:

* It will make the life of farmers, villagers easier, as they can now use applications and services to improve efficiency of lot of work.

* It will create more jobs to create such applications/services.

What are the minimum requirements which Nokia should keep in mind to go ahead successfully:

* It should provide "regional language" support for its application/services, this is because, most of the rural population doesn't understand english, and can only understand their own language.

* The applications/services should be easy to use and understand with minimum complexities. The look and feel could be compromised, if by doing so, the simplicity and usability increases. 

* More over it should provide for support (something like e-choupal ref: http://www.echoupal.com) in say every group of villages/grams. This is important to create the eco system which Nokia dreams of. This need not be computer based, it can even be mobile based.

Though this is a very short blog, I hope I have been able to put across my view points, and my main intentions here are to see Nokia fulfill this dream, and I somewhere, should be a part of this.

Note: I am not a regular blogger, not atleast on techinical stuff, and hope will learn stlyes and rules of blogging here better in time to come :) So please comment, either on the topic or any feedbacks to improve the blogging style.