Nokia Developer Web Talks

For you, as web developers and web service providers, you can use the plug-in to create widgets that offers you the ability to connect with your consumers more regularly and in rich interactive ways that are simply not possible on the desktop. The Internet has been revolutioning our lives since its inception, now Nokia invites you to write the next chapter of that revolution.

And if that’s not enough, Forum Nokia also announced the launch of the next round of its Calling All Innovators competition. Details are available in the press release that was distributed yesterday. This global contest for developers to submit mobile applications for use on Nokia devices includes “Internet Innovation” as one of the key categories, challenging developers to create WRT widgets that enhance the use of mobile devices in real-world scenarios.   With these two announcements, there is no better time than right now for web developers to start using the new Nokia WRT plug-in to start creating widgets, both for the Calling All Innovators contest, and for global distribution to consumers via the Ovi Store.

Following a public beta trial in December 2008, we release of the commercial version of the free Nokia WRT Plug-In for Aptana Studio on Feb 16 2008, which helps developers create, edit, test and deploy WRT widgets for Nokia S60 devices, using either Aptana Studio or Aptana Studio Pro.

During the beta period at the end of last year, many developers tried the plug-in and provided valuable feedback to us about the features and functionality of this new tool.  Mobile application expert Marian Dholkawala recently wrote in a blog post: "The coolest thing about [the Nokia WRT Plug-In for Aptana Studio] is the ease with which it allows widgets to be created and tested. It not only cuts down the development time but also saves us the trouble of continuously packaging our files for testing within the S60 emulator and for debugging." 

Matthew Miller, author of the “Nokia Experts” blog, tried the new plug-in for himself, and concluded: “It is pretty cool to see how you can create these widgets in just a few steps and then have something you created appear on your device. I deployed the [RSS] widget to my Nokia E71 via Bluetooth and just used the default RSS setup to create my widget. There are even some basic settings in the widget, including when to check for updates.” Developers can also choose to use other Ajax libraries, as well; Aptana Studio makes these readily available. And for rapid testing during development, applications can be deployed to a mobile device via a Bluetooth connection.

We have received many other valuable inputs for the community and will continue to work in enhancing the plug-in(s). Hope this plug-in will help you in wigetizing your web content. Feel free to send your working widget to us at widgets@nokia.com. we are constantly looking out for good quality widgets.

First happy (lunar) new year!

Story: This morning I wanted to send some Chinese SMS msgs from my phone, because today was the Lunar New Year. However, I couldn't find a way to give me easy translated strings... I searched a bit on the Internet; there were some S60 WRTs already, but none seemed to let me cut and paste the results... I was suprised no one (at least I couldn't find) had created a Google Translate version for S60. So I had done the engineer's way, write it myself; here I go... I wrote the whole thing in less then 20 min. Believe me, it took more time to upload the widget to MOSH, create the preview pictures, and write this post to tell you about it.

Comments and suggestions are welcome. If there are updates, I will post the links in this post or my personal blog here.

Some tips:

1) If you interested in reading more about Google AJAX Lanaguage API, here is the link: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Examples

2) If your favorite language(s), are not there you can change the code your self. Go into the widget index.html and change this section

    <select id="tlang">
      <option value="zh-TW">Chinese Trad</option>
      <option value="zh-CN">Chinese Simpl</option>
      <option value="en">English</option>
      <option value="fi">Finish</option>
      <option value="fr">French</option>
      <option value="de">German</option>
      <option value="it">Italian</option>
      <option value="ja">Japanese</option>
      <option value="ko">Korean</option>
      <option value="pt">Portuguese</option>
      <option value="es">Spanish</option>
    </select><br/>

 (there are other resources about widget development, for example here, so I am not going into that here.)

That is really, now here is the link in to download and install the widget:

Here is the first (0.1) version: GoogleTranslator0.1.wgz

Update 01:
I have put the index.html on my web, you can use any browser to use this web app (S40 and others):
http://camelot.net/stage/gtranslator/

Update 02, 2009.02.01:
Symbian Freak site has reported this widget, thanks guys! link

Update 03, 2009.02.25:
This widget has made top 10 freeware for Samsung over at AllAboutSymbian.com, thanks Steve! link

Update 04, 2009.04.06:
Since MOSH will be closing shortly, I have moved the widget file to this site. The link above is updated. Unforunately, I will not have the capability to track how many people have downloaded the widget... My last count of user download from MOSH is...

Update 05: 2009.04.18
If you are a developer and enjoy reading this, you might also be interested in my new article on Turn my S60 WRT into an iPhone app: http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/forum-nokia-web-talks/2009/04/19/turn-my-s60-wrt-widget-to-an-iphone-app

Update 06: 2009.08.28 

I suddenly decided to make a demo video... for no reason... kinda fun 

- Wai Seto

I have been doing desktop research for the past week on web browsing on mobile. Come across this recent report about China's mobile web user rise by 113% in 2008. 39.5% of Chinese Internet users  or More than 117 millions chinese users have gone online from their mobile. 

Neilsen Mobile has reported that in their News Release that Mobile Internet Extends the Reach of Leading Internet sites by 13%

There is another recent article on Wall Street Journal that talked about using cellphones to surf the Internet is booming in emerging market like Indonesia.

These are positive signs leading to the trend that web is becoming more integrated with mobile technology. The improvement in handsets technology as well as the robust/high speed mobile network with affordable bundled/flat rate data pricing has helped in the moving the trend. 

Browsers on Nokia S60 (3.1, 3.2, 5th edition) and Series 40 6th edition devices support full web browsing. From our consumer research, Smartphone 360 in UK, Nokia web browser is one of the popular applications used by consumers and its usage increased over the years 2005 - 2008.

Dont you agree that it is increasingly difficult to talk about Internet, without the conversation quickly turning to mobile phones?

Year 2008 has been a 'happening' year for Nokia Web Technologies.  Web Runtime handsets (e.g. N95 8GB, N78, 6220 classic, 5320 XpressMusic..etc) started shipping in consumer hands in mass quantity at the beginning of 2008. All the latest S60 3.2 onwards handsets are WRT compatible. Some of the latest S60 3.1 handsets (e.g. E66, E71..etc) are supporting WRT. We are putting up a filter on the forum.nokia.com device page for you to easily to find out which are the WRT compatible handset. Stay tuned for that...

For consumer, they can find the library of widgets here, http://widsets.mobi/library. From the library, you can find widgets related to news, weather, blogs, travel, tool and etc.. This is one of the steps for Nokia to educate consumers on widgets. Not only finding widgets, users can also share their favourite widgtets with their friends via sms.

In April, Nokia announced that the new version WRT widget (WRT 1.1) which can access to S60 phone's Platform Services like calendar, location, contacts..etc The first handset with this capability is Nokia 5800 which started shipping in Nov. This open up an existing opportunity for web developers to provide a better web experience to their customers. For example, when an user search for restaurant, he will get the list of restaurant according to his location without entering the location. The widget is able to provide a seamless experience by detecting his location and provide the list of restaurant near his location. Here is an example from the lastminute.com fonefood widget

In regards to WRT tool, we have released the public beta version of WRT plug-in for Aptana Studio. This is the first WRT plug-in release for an existing web IDE tool. We want to allow the Aptana tool users to use the familiar Aptana studio environment to build their first widgets. We have been receiving lots of valuable feedback on this tool and the tool team is continuously working to make the WRT tools offer better. You are encouraged to provide feedback at the discussion board and also sign up the coming webinars to learn more about the WRT plug-in.

Not only on the S60 phones, the new Series 40 6th edition handsets (Nokia 6260 slide, 7510 Supernova) has the WebKit browser which allow users to browse full web. This gives web developers to have direct access to the huge market represented by these users. Many of them could be from emerging markets who have their first Internet experience via mobile. see this recent article from the Wall Street Journal, Poorer Nation go online on Cellphone.

Last but not least, the N97 with widgets on its home screen is the latest kids on the block. The personalised homescreen (with widgets) provides users an 'always open' window to social networking sites and Internet destinations. Stay tuned for more info about the home screen widget. Meanwhile, you can study the current Web Runtime Widgets materials at forum.nokia.com/widgets. The widgets on N97 homescreen is based on the same technology but with more advanced features...

Wish all of you have a happy holidays. See you all in 2009!

Have you been thinking about creating Web Runtime (WRT) widgets, but you have not had an easy development platform to use?

We have just released the public beta version of the WRT plug-in for Aptana Studio. The private beta has been running for 1.5 month and the feedback has been valuable for us to release this public beta version. Do download the plug-in here, http://www.forum.nokia.com/Resources_and_Information/Tools/Runtimes/Web_Runtime/Aptana_Plugin/, and tell us what you think at the discussion board, http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153523

I am curious to know if you guys like the plug-in and if that helps in your WRT development...

cheers!

Ung-Ping 

During the Symbian Smartphone Conference in London back in Oct, I came across Lastminute.com widget and have been following up with them on their works.

They have created a widget for Nokia 5800 (http://m.lastminute.com/fonefood/fonefood.wgz). I tried it on my 5800 and it is working pretty well..:) You can search restaurant deals/offers and do the booking on the widget. This is one good example where the existing web service providers leverage on widget technology to extend their content to Nokia users...

If you have a 5800, give me a try and let me know your thoughts.

cheers!

Greetings...

I am working as a Web Technology Marketing Manager for Forum Nokia. As part of the effort to get you guys the latest news and info on the Nokia's Browser, Web Runtime technologies. I will be sharing news, development on our web technologies in this blog. Also, providing my own thoughts and views on the web technologies landscape which hopefully make sense...:) Look forward to 'connecting' with you.....

A little note on the Adobe Max conference in San Francisco this week. There was lots of buzz and news on mobile. Quite a fair bit of airtime given to mobile during the day one keynote session by Adobe CTO, Kevin Lynch. In my opinions, smartphone is getting more userfriendly and powerful today and it probably ready for 'prime' time in the coming years...

During the Adobe Max, I did a session on Nokia Browser, Flash Lite technologies. You can download the deck here, MobileBrowserFlash-AdobeMax final.pdf .Feel free to drop me your feedback and comments...

cheers!

Ung-Ping

ung-ping.tian (at) nokia.com

iGoogle recently has launched a feature to allow gadgets to show in canvas view. I have tried a few canvas view enable gadgets and really like them. Then I remember a while back, using the sample Feeds/Tabs sample, I have modified it to read rss feeds from Forum Nokia and made a iGoogle gadget. And tonight, I have made a few modifications to enable canvas view. It looks quite okay. Quickly, I've written another one with iframe to access Ovi.com.

Okay, so the URLs to add these two gadgets are:

Forum Nokia Feeds: http://camelot.net/stage/google/fn_feeds_tabs_ig_01.xml

MyOviGadget: http://camelot.net/stage/google/myovigadget_01.xml

Steps to add them to iGoogle

1) Login to iGoogle... (hum... if you don't know how to do this, you probably should move on... )

2) Find "Add Stuff" link, it should be on the top right somewhere, click it.

3) Now at the left hand side, find "Add feed or gadget".

4) Copy and paste one of the xml link above to the dialog box, click "add".

5) That's it. Go back to your iGoogle home page and observer the Home and Canvas view.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to download the xml files and improve them yourself. If I have more time, I will look into what OpenSocial things I can do with these gadgets.

Bye Bye!

- Wai Seto

P.S. I have also experimented a similar FN feeds app on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=22623363472 Let's get social

Like many tech people, I carry multiple devices with me... I have my Nokia 95, Nokia N810 and iPhone in my bag most of the time. I too want one "swiss amy" phone, but it is never going to happen and each does something better in its own way. Anyway, this post if not to compare them. I just want to put down how I use them to access my Internet Services... I think I have the major ones covered, but if you know something fun I've missed please tell me...

JoikuSpot

Technically this is not an Internet services, anyway. 1st, the N95 8G is my only 3G phone, because my iPhone is first gen. (since I mostly use it to check out apps, and the 1st gen seems to give me everyone I need so far). Now to share my 3G connection, I've installed JoikuSpot. The software that allow any WIFI enabled devices to share my 3G network. JoikuSpot has been availabe for a while, so nothing new here. Now good, my N810 and iPhone can have 3G (or sometime 3.5G) speed. Only issue is I have to manually turn on JoikuSpot every time.

Twitter (link to my Twitter)

I have not installed any twitter app on my N95. I only use the Twitter mobile web. Please let me know some good apps to try. On my N810, I have an app called Mauku. It supports Twitter and Jaiku, It works pretty good. On my iPhone there are many options and variants. I have tried Twittelator, Twitterific, Twinkle. They are all good and all location enabled.

Friendfeed (link to my Friendfeed)
Okay, I like Friendfeed. I can almost share all my online activities there, almost... I don't think they have any app out there, but the site is mobile friendly enough to render on all my devices, okay they do have an iPhone web page.

Facebook
On my N95, I use the mobile Facebook page, and on N810 I access the full page... The mobile web versions are reasonably okay...On the other hand the iPhone Facebook app is really nice to use, friendly, quick and well-thought out.

Last.fm (link to my Last.fm profile)
Let me see... This one also has a lot of different clients on many platform. Usually when that happens, it means it is a really good service. And I agree in this case. :-) On my N95, I used a free application called Mobbler. It does the job very well! On N810 I use Vagalume and Canola2's Last.fm plug-ins, which is a bit limited compare to other clients. One iPhone, there is an official Last.fm client. again it does a good job... Now here is the issue... I cannot do anything else on iPhone while listening to Last.fm, because there is no multitasking... :-(

Pandora
So far I only know of iPhone app for this service. If someone knows better, please let me know.

EverNote
EverNote is a very popular iPhone app, which allows taking notes and sync with web site and Mac and WinXP clients. On N95 and N810, I can only use a mobile version of the web site. It's okay but limited.

YouTube
My N95 8G with updated firmware support Flash. I can use my browser to view the movies. Now YouTube also has a mobile J2ME app which offers streaming. It is usually a bit faster then looking at the web site with my S60 browser, since the app doesn't load the extra stuff from the site. I have also emTube installed, just in case I want to download a keep a movie. On the N810, the browser can handle flash no problem, but I have also use Canola2's YouTube plugin and mYTube application to search and download YouTube movies. On the iPhone, the default YouTube application does an okay job, but the fact that I cannot login to my own account and watch my favorites is a disappointment. There is also a jailbroken app name mxtube on iPhone. MxTube let me download the movies as mp4 files onto my iPhone also.

Gmail
Gmail has a mobile J2ME client which works every good on mobile phones. That is what I have on my N95. Their mobile web site for Gmail does a reasonably good job also. On N810, I just go straight to Gmail website with the browser, no different then on my computer... iPhone native email app works well with Gmail. The only think I don't like to that I cannot flag/star my messages from the native email program... (or have I just missed it?)

IMs
I have been using IM plus on my N95 for IMs. It is a good app. N810 has Pidgin, which is everything you need to IM. I believe they have now also a Facebook plugin already. On iPhone IM plus is actually free. There are other can do the job too, including Fring (which is also available on N95, as many of us know already). Once again, IM is one of those thing that is much more useful if it can run in the background, which in the case of iPhone...

Company email
Well technically this is not Internet Services, but it is quite important. Mail for Exchange is available on my N95 and Exchange is also available for iPhone. Honestly, it is better to have a bigger screen and HTML support... N810 is not going to have the Exchange client blessing, but I was able to set up Secure IMAP. It works okay, a bit slow and not quite push email...

Ovi
N95 is the only winner here. There is a share on ovi client which plug right into the Gallery and enable sharing of pictures and video. And now, with the SyncML feature on Ovi, calendar and contacts can be sync up too. It is really no reason why other SyncML enabled devices cannot use Ovi, but let see about that.

Update1:

Map
How can i forget about this one? On N95 Nokia Map 2.0 and Google Map are head to head. For simple routing and quick driving, I just fire up Google map... The fact that my location is shown as a dot and I just following the mapped route is good enough, and fast... Nokia Map nagivation is more traditional looking nagivation UI, once you have started nagivation, it hard to look back at the overview map. I use it when I have a long trip, so that I only listen to the voice nagivation, but not looking at the screen. N810 has a built in map software and Maemo Mapper for free. I have tried them, but the device still have a long TTF... very long... Usually, I am almost arrive at the place I want to be already when it has fixed the location. iPhone has Goolge Map... Nothing more to add... It is just good... I don't have the 3G model so cannot say anything about the time to fix. I imagine it should be reasonably well.

That's all I can think of right now. If you feel something important is missing, drop me a line.

I am running skyfire browser and watching video from Hulu.com on my N95 8GB. The sound and picture quality is pretty good. (okay the picture is small). So far this is the only solution on mobile device I can actually watch streaming from Hulu.com.

For those who don't know. Skyfire browser is a thin client browser running on S60 and Window mobile platforms. It is now in public beta. So you can try it too. Hulu.com is high quality video/tv/movie streaming site, a joint venture by News Corp-NBC Universal. Now I am not sure if non-US IP address can stream or not, but the site has lot of good video. Try it!! (You can let me know if non-US IP can stream or not!)

S60 Browser, iPhone browser (of course there is not even flv support), and N810 browser all fail my hulu.com test. :-) While many companies are investing in thier own mobile browsers, (Nokia, Apple, Google...), a thin client come out on top...Well at least in my use case.

These are the articles related to iPhone as (open) platform in the pass few days, and all seems to be sparked by Podcaster application...

Apple Rep says: Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.

Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Why iPhone is an ureliable platform — I wouldn't invest in or develop an iPhone app because Apple could decide not to approve it, and if they don't approve it you can't sell it. You can't even give it away. You don't find out if you've been approved until the last step …

Fraser Speirs:
App Store: I'm out. — I will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted*. — Writing software is a serious investment of time and energy. It also carries the opportunity cost of the other things you could have built. We live in a capitalist economy.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Apple 2.0:
iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store — Last month, Apple triggered a minor rebellion among iPhone developers when it was revealed that the company was rejecting submissions to its App Store retail outlet without explaining why. — This week the company faces a full-scale revolt

Charles Arthur / Technology blog:
Blockage on iPhone apps begins to properly annoy developers

what are they trying to say?

updated: 2nd video