NFC Apps Store category available

jures33 | 26 October, 2011 16:55

Besides educating Nokia customers of the benefits of NFC technology out of the box, we also ensure that Nokia NFC phone customers can take advantage of a growing number of apps that leverage NFC in an easily accessible way.

The Nokia Store NFC Apps Collection

Instead of customers having to look for different applications where they can put this technology to use, we've made the work for them... We are constantly on the lookout in our publishing system for apps utilising NFC and make sure they are all accessible in the Nokia store at an arms lenght - the "NFC Apps" collection. Users can find all the latest and greatest apps using NFC by simply going into the Categories section of their Nokia Store client using their NFC enabled phone, or browse the content from the Store web front.

Incentive for developers

Not only is this good news to consumers, I beleive it's a really good incentive for developers. The NFC Apps collection gives NFC applications much sought visibility in the storefront, making it more likely for users to discover it.

Nokia NFC Apps Collection is available on the following devices: Nokia C7 Astound, Nokia C7-00, Nokia 600, Nokia 603, Nokia 700, Nokia 701 and N9

How to get your app featured?

For Apps to be featured in the NFC Apps collection, publishers need to make sure that our system can identify that the application published is using NFC. To do that they need to include the keyword "NFC" in at least one of the following metadata areas before submitting the Content Item to Nokia Publish Quality Assurance:

  • Application Name
  • Application Description
  • Keyword metadata

 

Business Opportunities/Services , Connectivity , MeeGo , Ovi , Qt Mobility , NFC , Near Field Communication | Permalink | Add comment | Trackbacks (0)

NFC tags turned inside out – parse tag contents with the open source Nfc Info app

ajakl | 06 October, 2011 17:35

As a developer or interested end-user, you often want to take a closer look at the contents of NFC tags. The new Nfc Info app is here to provide the corresponding knowledge, given that you have an NFC capable Symbian (Nokia C7 [Astound], 600, 700, 701) or MeeGo phone (Nokia N9). Simply touch a tag and the app will show you plenty of data about the Nfc tag contents. You will see:

  • Generic NFC tag information (e.g., NFC Forum Tag Type 1, its UID and version)
  • The records contained in the NDEF message plus its size (e.g., a custom record + a URL record)
  • For most standardized records also a nice textual overview of the parsed contents (e.g., URI, title, action for a Smart Poster)
     

Internally, this is done using convenience classes that hide the complexity and bit/byte-encodings of the records. Luckily, Qt Mobility already provides those for the most common record type definitions (RTD): text and URI. In the Nfc Info source code, you will now find additional ready-made classes that parse Smart Poster, Mime/Image and vCard (for storing business cards) RTDs.

Best of all, you can easily plug those classes into your own project. It's so simple that I've embedded them into the Nfc Corkboard example within a few minutes, so that also that app now handles Smart Posters and business cards.

Usage of the new classes is simple: first, convert the generic record class into the corresponding derived, specialized class. From now on, you have access to methods that return the individual components of the record, or you can assign components for writing.

A short example, which parses a Smart Poster and adds textual information to a string called tagContents:

QString tagContents;     
if (record.isRecordType<NdefNfcSpRecord>())
    {
        // Convert to a Smart Poster record type class (urn:nfc:wkt:Sp)
        NdefNfcSpRecord spRecord = NdefNfcSpRecord(record);
        // Uri
        tagContents.append("Uri: " + spRecord.uri().toString() + "\n");
        // Title
        tagContents.append("Title count: " + QString::number(spRecord.titleCount()) + "\n");
        if (spRecord.titleCount() > 0) {
            foreach (QNdefNfcTextRecord curTitle, spRecord.titles()) {
                tagContents.append(curTitle.text());
            }
        }
        // Image
        if (spRecord.imageInUse()) {
            QByteArray imgFormat = spRecord.image().format();
            if (!imgFormat.isEmpty()) {
                tagContents.append("Image format: " + imgFormat + "\n");
            }
        }    
    }


The features of the new classes — including read and write support for all listed properties:

  • Smart Poster (urn:nfc:wkt:Sp): Uri, title(s) & their languages, action, size, type and image. (Note however that most phones currently on the market do not process the last three details listed here in their default phone tag handling UI)
  • Image (MIME, image/[png,gif,jpg,…]): en/decode all image formats supported by Qt (includes png, gif, jpg) or use raw image data. Automatically sets the correct mime type.
  • vCard (MIME, text/x-vCard): parse the versit document and get a list of all contained contacts, already provided in a convenient QContact instance. You can query all details through that class, or go ahead and add it to the phone's address book.
     

To get started, just download the binary of the example (.sis for Symbian, .deb for MeeGo Harmattan). If you're using the C7 [Astound], make sure that you update the device firmware to Symbian Anna in order to enable NFC support. You will also need to install Qt Quick Components, Qt 4.7.4 and the Qt Mobility 1.2 package and from the Qt SDK. See the Nfc Info release notes for more details, or read the "Start NFC Development with the Qt SDK today" blog post for full details. If you should be lucky enough to have Symbian Belle on an NFC phone, you only need to install Qt Quick Components from the Qt SDK (the Smart Installer isn't used in the Nfc Info app at the moment). On the N9, you're good to go with the standard firmware — everything is in place by default.

Happy tag-reading!

Nfc Info on the Nokia N9

Connectivity , MeeGo , Qt , Symbian , Qt Mobility , Qt Quick , NFC , Near Field Communication | Permalink | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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