Kiran Patel's Blog

Hi,

We witnessed a new benchmark in the Camera technology a few days ago at Mobile World Congress 2012. Undoubtedly, this benchmark was set by none other than Nokia. And the result was, we saw Nokia 808 PureView. The first ever mobile device to have a HUGE 41 Megapixel sensor camera.

I believe that everyone wants to have that Nokia 808 PureView device, don't you? Now you have a chance to win one.

We have a competition running on Nokia Developer Wiki where you can win a Nokia 808 PureView device.

See this page for more details about the competition: Symbian Qt Quick Components Competition 2012Q1

Should you have any question, please ask it on the comment page of that article.

Please spread the word among your developer friends!

Hope to see you as a winner of this Nokia 808 PureView device!

Thanks,
Kiran. (On behalf of the Nokia Wiki Administration team)

PS: As said by Jarkko in the comment, mutiple Nokia 808 PureView devices will be given out, though each winner will get only one device. Just go for it!

Hello friends,

You can win a Nokia N8 which has 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, HD-quality video recording, film editing software and Dolby surround sound. All in a beautiful, aluminium design.

We have launched a fresh contest on Forum Nokia Wiki. Qt Article contest.

The rules are simple, contribute quality or topical articles about Qt application or User Interface development. Some suggestions but not limited to: examples utilizing the Qt mobile application templates (additional templates, improved templates, customized templates), examples utilizing QML library and other Qt UI assets, such as mobile optimizing exiting Qt assets and creating new one as white papers, How to’s or code examples. All articles submitted during the time period will be subjectively judged on how well they are presented, what the content is and the number of quality entries. The top contributors will win a Nokia N8 device. Only entries during the contest period 00:01 GMT November 1, 2010 to 23:59 November 30, 2010 will be accepted for this contest.


See the Rules of Participation for complete rules and requirements.

 

 

What are you waiting for! Start submitting cool Qt articles on Forum Nokia Wiki.

 

- Kiran. (On behalf of the Forum Nokia Wiki Administration team)

I have been engaged with the Forum Nokia community since 2006. The same year, I started to learn Symbian C++ from other community members. It was the same year, I started helping out my peers on the Forum Nokia community. With all my surprise, on September-2006, I received an e-mail invitation from Forum Nokia to become a Forum Nokia Champion. I was amazed and so much happy on that day. And it started my journey as an elite member, Forum Nokia Champion.

 

Time went by and years came one after another. On 2007, in the same month of September, I received an e-mail that for my contribution to the community in that year, I have been reselected as a Forum Nokia Champion. And it became my habit to become a Forum Nokia Champion. Same thing happened in the year 2008, 2009 and 2010. 

 

Yes, this is my 5th year in a row as a Forum Nokia Champion.  The day before yesterday, I received an e-mail invitation from Forum Nokia for my re-selection as a Forum Nokia Champion. I am really delighted and happy to be part of this fantastic Forum Nokia community.

 

I have been engaged with Forum Nokia community on Forum Nokia Discussion boards with only (around 7700 posts as of now) and on Forum Nokia Wiki with only 2368 edits as of now. On each Monday on Forum Nokia Wiki, you see a new Featured Article and Featured Video, we write them along with the great help of our Forum Nokia Wiki administration team. We write them on Sunday so that you can see a fresh Featured Article and Featured Video on Monday.

 

In these precious years, Forum Nokia put great faith on me and asked me to be a part of the Forum Nokia Wiki administration team. I promptly accepted it with all my commitments towards the community. I have been serving as a Forum Nokia Wiki administrator for last more than 2 years since the Forum Nokia Wiki came into existence.

 

Last year, I was honored to be Forum Nokia Discussion boards moderator. Just imagine, it is a big thing, indeed. One outsider who is not an employee of Forum Nokia, is given such a big role. This is all because Forum Nokia has put lots of faith on me. It all came out from my last five years of contributions and commitment towards the Forum Nokia community.

 

On this 5th year as a Forum Nokia Champion, I would like to thank the gentle people I have been working with on routine basis. Ron Liechty(Manager, Forum Nokia Community) has been a source of inspiration to many of us. He puts a lot of faith on me and presumes my availability for any sort of community task. He is the only person who comes to meet whenever he comes to Helsinki. Then comes Anne Houtari(Management, Forum Nokia Champion program) who looks after Forum Nokia Champions. I really like her stand for champions. She always fights for us and gives best of the world to us. She arranges Forum Nokia Champions' day along with Pirkko and takes great care of us.

 

Moving to Forum Nokia Wiki, I would really like to thank Jarkko Aura(Manager, Forum Nokia Documentation). He has been guiding us on Forum Nokia Wiki design and process. He is a fun loving person and committed to his work with all his hardwork. Moving to Forum Nokia Discussion boards, I would like to thank Lucian Tomuta(Chief engineer, Forum Nokia), Csúcs Gergely(popularly known as Wizard_hu_), Jukka Silvennoinen(popularly known as SymbianYucca), my Forum Nokia Wiki administration team, Forum Nokia Discussion boards moderation team and all my Forum Nokia Champion members. They have been inspiration to me for all my contribution to the community.

Last but not the least, I am really thankful to the Forum Nokia for caring developers on a priority. 

Thanks for reading till the end. 

- Kiran.

Ever since Nokia decided to start their own Ovi store, people out there were checking on the possibilities to publish their contents as an individual. Time went by and it is now knocking your doors. Welcome it without fail! Don't miss the train.

It was a tough call for the individuals who do not own a company to publish on Ovi store. To publish Symbian based contents, one has to get the application siged either via Expressed signed or Certified signed Symbian Signed options. In both the cases, one has to purchase a Publisher ID and sign the content before submitting to the Symbian Signed options. But the problem with the individual developer is that, they cannot aquire a Published ID unless s/he has a company, which in turn becomes impossible to get the application signed through Symbian Signed and hence individual cannot publish content on the Ovi Store. But wait, there is a light of the hope. Now an indiviual can submit content on Ovi publishing. Let me narrate my story.

Since being an individual developer, I had many ideas but as I could not submit on Ovi store as an individual, publishing on Ovi store was just a dream for me. But about a month ago, Nokia rolled out the possibilities for individual developers to submit their applications on Ovi store. You do not have to be a company, nor you require a Publisher ID. It was very simple and easy process for me.

Publishing on Ovi store was a foreign land to me as I never imagined I could submit my application on Ovi as an individual. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone's genuine efforts from Ovi Support team. I participated in the Public beta of Nokia signing Symbian apps for free. It all started with the intiative from Bill Perry (mobileperry) who helped me in pushing my content further. Eventually, I received confirmation e-mail from Ovi support team and the journey started on Ovi road. As everyone knows by now that one can register as an individual on Ovi store by just paying €50 as a one time regisrtration fee, I was bit hesitant in paying that €50 as I did not know whether everything would go fine or not. But I just registered on it to experience this new beta program. Believe me, I did not pay any extra cent after that one time €50. I did not have to pay for those $200 for Publisher ID, I did not have to pay for setting up my own company, I did not have to pay for getting my application Symbian Signed. Finally, it was worth paying just €50 to save all these extra expenses. I, then, followed all the subsequent steps as follows:

1. Ovi Publisher emails support and requests more details
2. Ovi Publish support asks publisher to review and accept new T&Cs
3. Ovi Publisher accepts new T&Cs and provides IMEI numbers for up to 5 devices
4. Ovi Publish support sends publisher UIDs, a cert installer, and developer cert/key pair for testing their app
5. Ovi Publisher packages their unsigned SIS file using the UID provided and tests on their device making sure it is tested against Symbian’s signing criteria
6. Ovi Publisher submits their app (unsigned SIS file with the UID provided) to the intake tool
7. QA and moderation will test the app and if it passes it will be express signed by Nokia and put into Ovi Store

( Courtesy: Reusing information from Bill Perry's blog: http://mobileperry.com/?p=319 )

I would like to thank Ovi publishing support team. They politely replied me promptly on my many questions. They are even colored with the Ovi spirit as they adapted Ovi as a prefix in their names. You may know them as OviAndrew, OviBecaa, OviPen, OviEmma, OviGwen and so on. I would also like to thank Ovi QA team(Kevin Lu, Luga and many others). Lesson I learnt from Ovi publishing support team is how to keep calm and gentle when you are receiving hundreds of email requests and answering them genuinely on a daily bases. Hats off!

Ovi store is improving day by day. It is a tough job to maintain such a big service for hundreds of millions of phones already out in the market and the same numbers are coming in the market every day. Since the introduction of publishing as an individual on Ovi store, it has broaden the horizon and there are plenty of opportunities to earn from a huge mobile base in the market.

I would keep the context of this blog post and won't be selfish to use it to promote my application.

Please let me know if you want to know anything more about my experience on publishing on Ovi store as an individual. I would like to help you in whatever way I can.

Note: Ovi Publishers who are interested in participating in this public beta, please send an email to publishtoovi.support@nokia.com with your Ovi Publish username and you’ll receive more details.

Cheers,

Kiran.

Hi all,

It is with great pleasure to announce the much awaited Qt Mobility contest winners!

 

The results of the Qt mobility contest are finally here. There were over 100 entries for the competition, from around 50 developers. The participants have certainly stepped up to meet the challenge, and the results have been great.

Forum Nokia and Wiki admin teams are proud to present the results and congratulate the winners!

First prize: Axel Jäger
Axel’s applications (httpremote, abusing publish and subscribe, contactcube, keyboard, orientationtest and mobileassistant) were overall the best quality entries in the contest. All the applications were well-developed to promote usefulness of Mobility though some platform dependent code was also needed to implement certain use cases (mediacontrol, keyboard). The projects were well-productised with high-quality, reusable code. We received in practice no negative feedback on Axel’s entries from the reviewers. Of the 6 entries by Axel, Keyboard was considered the most interesting by the reviewers.

* QtKeyboard

* Mobile Assistant

* Contactcube

* HttpRemote

* Abusing Publish and Subscribe

* Qt Orientation Test

As the grand prize winner Axel can attend the next Nokia Developer Summit for free (also travelling and accommodation will be paid for), and will get a Nokia N900 or N97 mini device. Congratulations Axel!

Second prize: Hendy Irawan
Two of Hendy’s applications (MessageMerge, GeoTweet) were dealing with compelling use case ideas and he had provided the best documentation and good quality, well-structured code with good reusability; for example, the UI and engine were nicely separated. The applications could be a bit more productised and optimised for mobile (for example, with a more appealing and better functioning UI). The third application (SysinfoDump) was based on the existing SysInfo example application of the Mobility API package with some new features, for example, sending phone details to Twitter.

http://gitorious.org/messagemerge
http://gitorious.org/geotweet
http://gitorious.org/sysinfodump

Hendy’s prize will be Nokia N900 and N97 mini devices. Congratulations Hendy!

Other prize winners:

Antti Luoma:
Nice YouTube videoplayer – cool. YouPlayer is a small mediaplayer to use YouTube API to search, fetch music and stream media directly from YouTube. This entry is, unfortunately, YouTube specific, but it would not be too difficult to tweak and extend it to utilize also other media sources.

* QtMobilityYouPlayer

Antti will get a Nokia N900 or N97 mini device. Congratulations Antti!

Rainhard Findling and Sebastian Höbarth:
Rainhard’s and Sebastians’s applications (CellMapBuilder and Seismograph) both were good demo applications utilising network, location, and messaging APIs.  There is some room for improvement in the code to ease re-usability by other developers. The applications could also use the Mobility APIs more effectively: Bearer Management API would resolve networking and capability problems in CellMapBuilder, and Seismograph should migrate to the Sensor API once available.

Sources of these applications have not yet been made publicly available.

Rainhard and Sebastian will get a Nokia N900 or N97 mini device. Congratulations Rainhard and Sebastian!

Dominik Gusenbauer and Daniel Rothbauer:
Dominik Gusenbauer and Daniel Rothbauer have implemented a functional sensors framework with cool demo applications. The actual usage of mobility APIs is not significant, which is why their entry didn’t score higher in this specific competition.

* Qt Mobility Usage Scenario: The mSense middleware

Dominik and Daniel will get a Nokia N900 or N97 mini. Congratulations Dominik and Daniel.

Sunil Kumar:

A set of 15 basic examples, e.g. Qt Call Alert, Qt SMS Preview, Qt AntiTheft, Qt IAmHere, Qt Forward SMS and many more.

* Qt Mobility API Basic Examples Part 1

Sunil will get a N900 or N97 mini device. Congratulations Sunil!

------------

Join us on congratulating the winners...

We would also like to thank everyone else who submitted entries to the contest, and hope to see those contributions further developed and made public as well. We look forward to seeing you all contributing to the community also in the future!

Thank you,
On behalf of the Forum Nokia and Wiki Admin teams

 

Hello,

After a long break, Accredited Symbian Developer (ASD) programme has started again.

 

After a rather long holiday, we're back in our new Symbian Foundation livery. The ASD exam programme has now been restarted and we are ready to welcome new members on board.

Source: http://www.majinate.com

 

So stay tuned on Majinate for more information about the ASD exam.

 

Cheers,

Kiran.

Who are we talking about! Champions?! Nope. We are talking about Stars here. Yes, Forum Nokia Champions were star of the event and we were truly treated the same. It was an unforgettable event for champions who were part of this, I bet. The champions are big asset for Forum Nokia and they again proved it as they always did.

I left my home for airport with all the suspense about flight cancellation and delays in mind. As always, flight journeys are not pleasant and with some connection flights, it makes it even more hard but I could successfully fly at last. Finally, I arrived at the Bengaluru airport and was thinking about how to reach the hotel where our stay was arranged by Forum Nokia. When I came out from the airport, I saw people were waiting for their guests by holding some signboards. I started moving ahead and thinking to rent a car but I stopped at one place. Why!? I saw someone was holding a signboard with my name. I could not believe that and thought that I might be daydreaming. I was wrong, that person came for me and it was arranged by Forum Nokia Champion program. I was really happy. In real sense, it started the real journey of a star.

 

Sunday - 6th December

We reached at the hotel(Taj Residence - one of the leading hotel chain in India) where I was warmly welcomed by Hotel staff with Indian traditions which was really a great experience. I met fellow Forum Nokia Champions and Forum Nokia Experts who were already arrived at the hotel. We had a short visit to the venues for the following days. And then we were invited for a delicious dinner. It was a "Beach theme" with some beach outfits. I could meet other fellow Forum Nokia Champions and Forum Nokia people at the dinner. It was fabulous and memorable, both dinner and meeting.

 

 

Monday - 7th December

It was a day for Forum Nokia Developer Conference '09. Developers from all over the India and from other countries were part of this great event. Forum Nokia Champions were showcased as the stars and we were recognized in nearly thousand people. Wow! it was an unforgettable event for us. We were overwhelmed with so much care and attension. The conference hall was fully packed with lot many people and of course with lots of energy. We witnessed great insights from great speakers from Forum Nokia. We were really inspired with their vision and their successful life career. After the great event, we were invited for dinner with surprised dinner theme. It was Rajasthani theme with some traditional Rajashthani outfits. We met Forum Nokia Management persons at the dinner and seized the opportunity to know the secrets of how to become successful in the life. It was really great meeting with Purnima Kochikar, Vice President, Forum Nokia and Developer Community.

 

 

 

 Tuesday - 8th December

It was a Champions' day, we were eagerly waiting for. There were around 95% Forum Nokia Champions who were part of this event from India. It was really great opportunity to meet the faces behind the Forum Nokia profile names.  It was a day where we were addressed directly by Forum Nokia Management experts. The whole day was fully scheduled with different areas for different technologies. Srikanth Raju who is the Director and Head of Marketing for Forum Nokia, shared feelings of Forum Nokia for Forum Nokia Champions and how much they care for us. It was greatly appreciated, I must confess. After the event, we were invited for a grand dinner with South Indian theme where men wore "Dhoti" and women wore "Sari". We saw South Indian dances and they were fabulous. We further chatted with fellow Forum Nokia Champions and Forum Nokia experts. How could I miss the opportunity to meet one of the "100 most influential people in technology"! Yes, I am talking about David Wood who is Catalyst and Futurist. He was involved in preparations and planning for the independent open source Symbian Foundation. Another great night, I must add in the list.

 

 

Wednesday - 9th December

It was the final day for whole agenda. It was a one day Qt Training which was conducted by Forum Nokia Chief engineer, Lucian Tomuta. Other developers with Forum Nokia Champions filled whole training room. Lucian demonstrated how to start with Qt and the role of Qt in the market for S60 and maemo devices. He resolved lot many problems of developers by approaching them personally. It was a last day going back to home. 

Simply magnificent and unforgettable events I have ever be part of so far. 

Stars returned to the Universe!

 

 

 

Some great experiences

On Sunday(6th December), I had a connection flight from Delhi to Bangalore. I was roaming in the airport and I saw Ron Liechty(Manager, Forum Nokia developer communities) who was also roaming around. We exchanged our experiences of flight journey. Fortunately we were in the same flight from Delhi to Bangalore. Rajiv Sharma, a Forum Nokia Champion was also in the same flight. 

I am really thankful to my friend Bala Gopal who put a great efforts to make this whole event a great success along with Shiraz Datta, Prakash Sayini, Sunil Rao and Nitin Shrivastava. They are the real stars of this event.

We had a meeting of Forum Nokia Wiki administrators where we discussed about how to improve our Wiki to make it more useful to whole community. Me(FN Champion), Jarkko Aura(FN Expert), Ron Leitchty(FN Expert), Pankaj Nathani(FN Champion), Manikantan K(FN Champion) and Mayank Kedia(FN Champion) who are part of the Forum Nokia Wiki Administrator team, proposed and discussed various topics to make our Wiki a best place of resource.

It was really nice to meet Forum Nokia people Kenny Mathers, Ravi Belwal, Jarno, Eric John and many more.

I am really grateful to Anne Huotari and Pirkko Paananen, nice speaking Finnish ladies who take care of little things for Forum Nokia Champions thoughout the year and throughout the events.

Being a local buddy(not really as it was first visit of Bangalore for me), I took Lucian Tomuta(FN Chief engineer), Jarkko Aura(FN Documentation Manager), Jukka Silvernnoinen(FN Expert) and David Caaberio(FN Champion) to visit great Shiva Temple which is located in the Bangalore. They experienced a thrilling journey of Auto Rickshaw in real huge traffic on India roads. You can ask them more about that.

 

This was an unforgottable event I have ever participated. It was a great success of Forum Nokia Developer Conference '09 as was highlighted in the local media over the city. I wish all the best for the next Forum Nokia Developer Conference.

That's all from the whole journey from my side. I hope my fellow Forum Nokia Champions have also enjoyed this event as much as I did and they are back home carrying wonderful memories which they will ruminate for years and years ahead.

Did you enjoy the journey?

In my last blog, I announced the Mobile Design Challenge - Part 2 contest which has just finished and now time has come to announce the winners of that contest.

It is with a great pleasure to announce the winners of the Mobile Design Challenge - Part 2 contest which was held on Forum Nokia Wiki, last month in June, 2009.

We received a tremendous response to this contest. However the ideas of the contest were quite new, we were surprised on receiving so many quality articles which confront the criteria of the contest very well. We would like to grab this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in this contest.

The winners of brand new, shiny N97 devices are:

* Jappit

Mobile Design Pattern: File Upload
Jappit made a great mobile web pattern, with a great structure of usage on when and how to use it. What really shines about this article is that not only does it talk about the pattern in general, but it also provides concrete information on execution for several different platforms. Furthermore, Jappit contributed a really extensive and highly valuable series of WRT articles, including 7 JavaScript WRT  components, 2 Example Widgets for existing websites (one of which for Forum Nokia), and 13 other highly interesting WRT articles. Check all the mobile design articles by Jappit >>

 

* Kamaljaiswal

Themes:S60 UI Components
Kamaljaiswal did a really great job building on material to be found in the Forum Nokia Library and from Carbide UI documentation and creating a lot of new valuable resources for themes!

 

* Alen Alebic

GridMenu Component for Flash Lite
The Grid Menu component is a great example of mobile specific implementation of a familiar component that can easily be utilized in any application.

 

* JasperJager

Kinetic Scroll Component for Flash Lite
The Kinetic Scroll component displays in a nice way how to utilize the interaction possibilities of the touch screen. Using this component surely will save time.

 

* Mayankkedia

Listbox Usability
Mayankkedia is a very active member of the Forum Nokia community and has written a plethora of articles of which the Listbox Usability is one good example. Also the improvements to many existing articles have been noted, such as Designing usability, and spicing up numerous earlier text only based articles with illustrative visuals, such as Colors in User Interface. 

 

* Aadhar14b

Information Visualization For Mobile Applications
Nice articles with a lot of images and out of the box thinking was what won the N97 for Aadhar14b

 

Come and join us to congratulate the winners here: http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=172663

Forum Nokia Wiki always comes with great innovation of ideas and contests. We will be right back in very near future with some amazing contests. So stay tuned and be prepared for the next round. You never know that you will be the next winner!

Greetings to all!

There is a buzz among the mobile fans. It is everybody's dream phone. It has been described as "the world's most advanced mobile computer". And we are going to give it for free to you. You just need to participate in the contest and come up with the great articles. Even one very good article can win.

On Forum Nokia Wiki, we have just finished with the previous contest in this category: Mobile Design Challenge which was a great success with best quality articles. The winners in the previous challege are:

1) Croozeus

2) Feliperodrigues

3) Prakash.raman

 

This time we are organizing part 2 under the same title, i.e: Mobile Design Challenge part 2

 

 

 

Help us to create the best resource online for creative developers!  Do you have a tip, trick or interesting information to contribute regarding mobile design?  We’ve got a brand new mobile design challenge for the month of June!  Contribute a great article this month regarding mobile design with a focus on the following areas:

• Theming
• Flash Lite UI Components
• Usability
• Surprise us! (anything related to mobile design)

If your articles look great and have good information, we’ll be more than happy to pass along to you a brand new Nokia N97 multimedia computer! Even one very good article can win. We will be handing out (at least) one N97 for each focus area. Please see these categories for some clues: Mobile Design, Themes, Flash Lite Components and Usability

Timeline : This challenge runs between June 3rd and June 30th 2009.

Before posting an article, check the following information:

* Mobile Design Challenge part 2 - Main contest page

* Rules of the Competition

* Instructions on how to create a Wiki articles

TIP! Though '''Mobile Design''' is not yet listed in the "Pick Category" -drop down menu in the Forum Nokia Wiki editing view, you can add it manually by including the following string at the beginning of your page content:
[[Category:Mobile_Design]]

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and claim your Nokia N97 by participating in the contest. Should you have any question, please feel free to ask it right here or in this discussion board thread.

 

All the best.

- Forum Nokia Wiki Administration Team

Edit and Win Wiki competition.

Just imagine how it would feel to stand among your friends, having latest Nokia Mobile Phone in your hand, they have ever dreamt of!!! It is really exciting, isn't it? Indeed, it is.

You would argue that one can imagine anything s/he wishes and such imagination ends up in imagination only. But what I said in first paragraph, it doesn't end in imagination. It can become reality if you wish. Edit and Win.

Forum Nokia Wiki has been evolving day by day. Currently we have more than 6000 resourceful articles on Forum Nokia Wiki. It's a big number of articles at one central place when we think of any programming platform worldwide.

Beginning from the launch of Forum Nokia Wiki, there has been interesting contests being held with exciting  prizes. This time we have come up with innovative idea of creating contest. As we have lot many good articles, we should improve them by editing to meet some standards. This time Wiki contest is all about editing existing articles with your experties and smart work.

Note that you can win latest Nokia device as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 6710 Navigator or an NSeries device of your choice by simply editing existing articles. (See the Rules of Participation)

 

You can edit the existing articles by the means of:

• Adding useful code snippets
• Adding example .zip files
• Additing relavent images
• Adding "code templates"
• Editing articles for grammatical correctness
• Editing exisitng code
• Commenting correctness doubts through comment tab
• etc...

If you other suggestions, then please comment on this blog, we will consider them in judging criteria.

 

 

So what are you waiting for! Just start editing the articles and win latest Nokia device. The contest has been launched by today and will end on March 31, 2009. The contest period is 00:01 GMT March 3, 2009 to 23:59 March 31, 2009.

All the best.

PS: See the complete Rules of Participation here: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Rules_of_Participation

If you have any comment or suggestion then please post it right here. We will try our best to help you find your way.

 

Forum Nokia Wiki Admin Team

I was attending Forum Nokia Developer Day events in Budapest, Hungary. It was a wonderful experience for me being a part of elite group there. I reached at Budapest on 17th Nov on Monday and it was relaxing day.

It was really great experience to meet such truly eligible people from within Forum Nokia and outside Nokia. Anne Huotari, who manages Forum Nokia Champion Program is very gentle and helpful lady I have ever met. On the 17th, it was just a formal get together with co-champions and Forum Nokia Experts. We had a great discussion for different strategies for Forum Nokia Wiki amongst Forum Nokia Wiki Administration group including me(Kiran10182), Ron Liechty(Nokia Ron), Jarkko Aura(Jaaura) and Pankaj Nathani(croozeus). We discussed for couple of hours on various aspects to make Wiki more useful on overall scenario and made Monday evening worth spending.

On the 18th November, we had a Forum Nokia Champion Day where Champions from around the world participated and some of them even presented nice ideas. Event was anchored and participated by many Forum Nokia Experts as Seppo, Harri, Pekka, Riku, Lucian, Jukka and many more. On the completion of the day, we went to sightseeing of Budapest with all chmapions and Forum Nokia experts together. It was wonderful evening, indeed.

On the 19th November, we had a Forum Nokia Developer Day event where we benefited from success stories from speakers from successful companies. At evening, we had networking opportunities to meet giants of various companies and Forum Nokia people. We got insight of different activities being successfully run inside Nokia premises and their clear vision.

Last day on 20th November, there were parallel Forum Nokia Code camps, S60 5th Edition Touch UI and Web Runtime widgets, in Budapest University of Technology and Economics campus. As I am more biased towards Symbian C++ developement, undoubtedly I participated in S60 5th Edition Touch UI code camp. It was presented by Sami J. Viitanen, Senior Technical Consultant from Forum Nokia. We learnt different Touch UI components and even we participated in Touch UI competition in the scheduled session. Being honest, I was happy on losing the contest. My friend, Sunil(SKumar_rao) was one of the three winners and he won an elegant Nokia N85 device.

Story doesn't end here. In these three days, I really had great opportunities to meet my favouties. It was my honor that author of "Multimedia on Symbian OS", Mark Wilcox, personally signed on my copy of his book and I am still feeling that I am in dream. It was indeed a great feeling to meet my local friends Wizard_hu who helps people on Forum Nokia Discussion Boards with his great expertise in Symbian C++ area; and Gabor Torok who is unique in millions of Gabor in Hungary and he is one of the top bloggers on Forum Nokia Blogs. Sitting next and chatting to the author of "Series 60 Programming: A Tutorial Guide", Paul Culton, on a dinner table was a fabulous moment. I felt obliged by receiving secrets of sucess by Harri Salminen and Bernd Wiegmann. I shared good and friendly talks with Lauri Aalto(laa-laa), Ren Tong, Jouni Miettunen(JOM), Brazillian friends, David Caabeiro, Robin Jewsbury and many more.

It was pleasure to meet in person Ron Liechty a.k.a Nokia Ron, who manages Forum Nokia Community which has more than 200,000 members around the world.

And at last but not the least, while returning back to Helsinki, I was in the same Taxi with Lucian Tomuta(ltomuta) who is a Cheif Engineer at Forum Nokia and Jarkko Aura(Jaaura) who is a Documentation Manager at Forum Nokia(also he is an exception among Finns because he talks a lot but at the same time gurantees that you will like to hear him on and on...and on) ;-). Moreover we shared the same flight and It was great time I spent with both of them talking and waiting for the flight in the lobby, which got delayed for one hour. :-)

It was an unforgottable tour I have ever been to.

This is my first blog even after being in the community for a long time. There has been a buzz in the air right from the entry of Symbian signed(mandatory one). I have always supported its existence and its benefits because in nature it is nice idea to get good quality applications while preventing malwares application from the market.

Everything is all set. Sales team is trying hard to get good lead from the market. Once the lead is finalized, managers are working hard to allocate resources, time lines, developers, etc... Then developers come into picture. Developers know that if anything goes wrong then they are the people who will be interrogated for the failure reasons. So apparently they are the key persons who transforms the virtual idea in the existence and eventually they work hard to achieve this. Finally Quality Assurance comes into scene to investigate bugs in the application developed by developers. QA tries to cope up with the frequently changing test criteria from Symbian Signed. But no worries, they accept the truth and without complaining anything they just do their job. Perhaps they want to achieve dynamic virtue in their life as like dynamic test criteria. There is a say that QA and developers cannot be good friends, one wants to reveal bugs even if it is minor one whereas one doesn't want to see any bug. Application goes back and forth between them. And finally green signal comes from QA and application is ready for submission to "Certified" Test House governed by Symbian signed. Everyone is happy "so far".

General consideration for choosing "Certified" test house is the availability and immediate follow up. From aspects of quality and competency all the test house should be same. After considering all these aspects, a test house is selected to get application symbian signed. Everything is so good so far. Application is scheduled for testing by "Certified" test house. All of a sudden you get a reply from "Certified" test house that your application is failed. You are shocked but then you find Test report and you find test cases which are marked as "failed". You take a deep look into those failed cases and words come from your mouth without any efforts, "Hey, what the hack!!! They cannot fail application for theses causes". Eventually your counter action would be to ask about these failures to "Certified" test house. And after few hours/day you get a reply from them "Yes, this should not cause the failure", "Thanks for confirming, we will remove this", "We are able to reproduce it but if you are not able to reproduce then we will remove this", "You have to submit waivers for this" etc... So where is consistency? Where is Quality?

After fixing bugs, you are all set with so called "waivers" to submit your application again. You are more confident this time. Your customer is forcing you to deliver application to them as soon as possible and you are confined with the "deadline". You lost your weight and nights become nightmares. Finally you send your application again to "Certified" test house. But eventually you get reply that "Waivers are not accepted". Ok, but why? Please provide complete results. There is no hard feelings but please let us know the reasons for not accepting waivers. No reply..... wait....No reply.

Whom to ask? Why there is so much coupling in whole process? Are these "Certified" test house really "Certified"? Are they competent enough? Is there any quality inspection carried out by any neutral third party?

I am not against with Symbian Signing process but there should be transparent process. If you are expecting quality from application then there must be quality process in the Symbian Signed Test houses.

Finally i would say that Symbian signed criteria should not be that much stringent that prevents developers to program on Symbian OS. They should be motivated in nature rather than discouraging. Support from Test house should be friendly and even they should guide in getting your application signed.

Again, whom to ask? You are lost in the dark.

Kiran.