Nokia Publisher Successes

Some say that music is more than a hobby; it’s a lifestyle. That’s what Italian entrepreneurs Massimo Ciociola and Gianluca Delli Carri and developers Giuseppe Costantino, Francesco Delfino and Valerio Paolini had in mind when they created musiXmatch, the first fully licensed provider of global lyrics solutions that enables developers the ability to build music applications through their API and music fans around the world to quickly and easily harness the power of online lyrics. Frustrated by slow search engines, incorrect sites and pop-up advertisements, the musiXmatch team created the largest lyrics database in the world.

MusiXmatch is the first and only comprehensive solution for international lyric rights management and their comprehensive lyrics API allows anyone to easily plugin and distribute authorized lyrics. The API is ideal for radio streaming platforms, video services, mobile audio devices, tablet apps, and OEM manufacturers: thousands of developers are currently subscribed to the evaluation plan and several of them have released application prototypes during the past Music Hack Day editions (http://musichackday.org/). End users can enjoy this huge high quality catalogue through both musiXmatch branded applications and several third party apps like Soundtracker Radio.

“Searching for lyrics has always been a very frustrating activity for a music lover,” said Francesco. “We made the lyrics search experience sophisticated and fun, providing three simple tools: a localized trending chart, a super-fast search experience and a direct link to the lyrics of the songs available in the user’s media library."

Developing musiXmatch

When it came time to develop and launch the application, the developers were looking for a platform that had great potential exposure and a programming platform that allowed them to continuously build fast and fluid apps. After investigation, they settled on Symbian (both for 5.0 devices and S^3 devices) as the perfect fit, Using Nokia’s Qt Quick module, the developers were able to get their application up and running within a few short weeks.

Imagine this common SMS scenario:

Joey:            "Where are you?"
Alex:            "At the laundromat."
Joey:            "Which one - the one on 15th and Jersey?"
Alex:            "No, the small one near campus"
Joey:            "I'm right around the corner. Wanna meet for lunch?"
Alex:             "I’ve just eaten"

               Joey:             "Ok, coffee?

Alex:             "Sure."
Joey:            "How about Starbucks?"
Alex:            "Which Starbucks?"
Joey:            "The one by the cinema."
Alex:            "OK See you there."

With echoecho, Joey and Alex could meet up with 2 clicks instead of the above long series of text messages. In fact, Alex doesn’t even have to be an echoecho user before Joey can connect – it’s not a new social network.

Founder Nick Bicanic notes, “We firmly believe that if you present people with tools that will solve their real problems – such as meeting up with their friends and family – they will use them again and again.”

Nick continues, “I love seeing new users first use echoecho. Their faces light up with the realization of what has just happened – they’ve seen their friend's location with one click – that’s when we know we’ve done something right."

App Development:  
echoecho helps people to find, meet and chat with their friends, quickly and easily (regardless of the smartphone they’re using). They can share a meeting place for food, coffee or drinks – anywhere in the world, with just one touch of a screen. echoecho features a sleek, intuitive UI with transparent overlays on dynamically created maps. Push notifications alert users to requests from friends.

The application was developed using the latest Qt APIs including Qt notification (push notifications), Qt mobility (GPS, Wifi, Cell ID positioning) and advanced graphics (dynamic multiple layer alpha channels on maps). According to Bicanic, “initial development was extremely fast since Qt is easy to use. It took us 10 days of work for the basic port and another few days of testing and adding new functionalities.” Bicanic and his development team were able to re-use logic built for other platforms including Symbian, iOS, Android and Blackberry in developing the new app. 

For Bicanic, the most useful advantage of Qt was realized when dealing with device fragmentation across multiple handsets. For cross-platform developers, dealing with multiple hardware specifications, multiple screen resolutions and orientations and acquiring devices for testing and QA can be a nightmare. Bicanic continued, “With Qt, this was an amazing experience. We created the app using Nokia N8 devices during testing and initial development. When we tried running the software on any other Qt compatible phone, it just worked. No bugs. No recompiling.”

For echoecho, developing on the Qt platform was an exceptional solution to dealing with the complicated problem of multi-handset development. It completely eliminated fragmentation. As the company looks to broaden its scope, Bicanic adds, “we’re already committed to creating the echoecho app for Windows Phone 7 to take advantage of yet another popular platform."

In this latest Nokia Developer video, the founders of echoecho talk more about their app, and the development process:

In Summary:

Echoecho is a simple way to find and meet your friends anywhere in the world, whether they’re on a Symbian smartphone, iPhone, Android, Blackberry or soon, Windows Phone. With echoecho, it’s fast and easy to arrange meeting up with your friends for coffee, food or drinks through an elegant user interface, transparent map overlays and push notifications. 

The echoecho app is a development feat in that it’s a cross-platform, carrier agnostic, free, global location sharing system. Bicanic concluded, “It's great to see the kind of enthusiasm and support for developers and their aggressive application goals on the part of key team members of the Nokia team.”

echoecho is available for free worldwide. The application is compatible with the E7, C7 Astound, N8, C6, N97, N97mini, C6-01, C5, 5800 XpressMusic and more. Check here for compatibility.

In late 2008, Piotr Bitner began researching everything from flash documentation to code examples for an upcoming book project called “Flash for Teenagers.” After pouring over technical examples and specifics, Piotr discovered the Analog Clock example. Frustrated by the boring coding process, he was convinced he could create something different. That’s when Piotr decided to put his book on hold and develop his own method of displaying time, inventing something called “The Shape Clock”.

Over the course of the next six months, Piotr registered for copyrights to his invention, established his own company, Obrębalski Design, and began writing shape clocks for Sony-Ericcson in Java. Now, as the founder of the only shape clock publishing company in the world, his collection is experiencing rapid growth, with 39 shape clocks published in the Nokia store.

Reading Shape Clocks

At first glance, Piotr’s designs may appear complicated—digitizing and recreating a process that has been standardized for years. However, their unique and modern designs challenge the simplicity of traditional clocks, creating a more thought-provoking vehicle for conveying time.

“There was once a time when every phone had the same ringtone, and every clock looked the same,” said Piotr, CEO of Obrębalski Design. “My Shape Clocks are an interesting perspective on a traditional model, and appeal to those individuals who like to think outside the box.”  Piotr has found the Nokia Developer website and developer community to have the best support of any device manufacturer. According to Piotr, “without support, one can do nothing,” which is why he decided to house his applications at the Nokia Store. His original Shape Clock design is a Flash Lite application that can be applied as wallpaper to the series 40 and a screen saver on Nokia S60 3^rd edition phones.

Results

With the dramatic reach and popularity of Nokia Store, Piotr’s download results are astonishing for his one-man company. Starting at 100 downloads within the first month and growing to 1,000 downloads in the second month, Obrębalski Design now remains stable at 40,000 downloads per month. Since launching on the Nokia Store, Piotr’s Shape Clocks have been downloaded by more than 1.5 million people across 175 countries – that’s a lot of shape clock enthusiasts who like to “think outside the box.”

“My company would not be where it is today without the Nokia Store’s global reach and the developer team’s support,” said Piotr. “Leveraging Nokia’s developer channels has enabled me to get feedback from my customers, test my apps with remote devices, and follow my passion to spread unique designs across the world.”

Nokia’s channel enables Piotr to see where the app is getting downloaded, and what customers are saying about their experience, enabling the developer to revise and create new versions. He plans to launch 3D Shape Clocks in the near future and will use the Nokia Store, and new platforms like the Windows Phone, to drive download and interest.  With Piotr’s success with Nokia is another example of a simple idea and a personal passion turning into a surprising international sensation with a loyal group of followers. Nokia enables Piotr to fuel his passion and engage a lively community, regardless of his comparative size as an app development shop.  

The Background:

Analysts at Gartner predict that by 2015, more people will access the Internet via feature phones rather than from their personal computers. So why are internet users still relying on the slow, clumsy and expensive browser-based connection of their feature phone to access all their favorite content?

Seeing this as both a problem and an opportunity, two serial internet entrepreneurs based in Australia decided to create a solution. In 2008, Gour Lentell and Dave Turner developed biNu, a software platform that enables mobile phones to access Internet applications and services with near instant response times—even on slow or congested networks. For developers, the biNu platform enables mobile Internet applications to be developed quickly and easily using existing development tools and methods. For consumers, the free mobile biNu platform provides quick and easy access to a world of biNu performance-optimized apps.  

If they are using biNu’s mobile platform, any of the five billion individuals across the globe with access to a mobile phone can now get immediate access to the economic, educational and social benefit of the Internet without owning a computer.

The biNu Mobile Application Platform:

biNu has key advantages that differentiate it from its competitors:

·      biNu uses the cloud – Full use of the cloud for application processing with minimal dependency on the processing capacity of a mobile phone means that even low-end mobile phones can benefit from biNu optimized performance.

·      biNu is optimized – The applications available on biNu’s platform are specifically optimized for each type of phone downloading content. The platform recognizes everything from screen size to memory capacity to deliver the fastest user experience as possible.

·      biNu is open – biNu’s open development platform means that apps are optimized quickly and easily, benefitting app providers and creating an ever-increasing pool of apps for biNu users.

·      biNu is simple – Developers do not need any knowledge of mobile device platforms such as Series 40, Android, or Blackberry to develop apps on the biNu platform since each type of software is provided by biNu.

biNu in Action:

Offering lightning-fast speed in any language, the biNu mobile platform gives users access to a range of web-based services including SMS and messaging, social applications like Facebook, Google and Bing search, Google Translate, Wikipedia, Wordnik English Dictionary, a wide range of news and blogs, weather, live sports scores, exchange rates, job listings, health, business, entertainment, technology, lifestyle and science channels.

Results

Since launching in December, 2010, the Nokia Store has helped drive 16 million biNu mobile app downloads, with over 1.6 million unique visitors per month from 180 countries. The biNu site has also experienced rapid traffic increases, with over 154 million page views per month and a growth rate of over 20 per cent month on month.

“Leveraging Nokia’s global reach is a key factor in our success,” said Lentell, “helping us to develop products that allow mobile phones to access Internet services rapidly, efficiently and at very low cost. Nokia has helped us reach the millions of consumers who are craving access to mobile apps, regardless of their location, language or mobile handset device.”

Today, the biNu mobile platform delivers over 100 application services with new apps and improvements being added daily, recently announcing the release of version 3.2 of the biNu mobile platform for Series 40 (Java), Symbian (Java), Android,  and Blackberry, delivering a smartphone-like user interface and a blistering fast experience even on otherwise congested networks.

Developers continue to show their support proactively, stating that the biNu mobile platform is “reliable, affordable, and all in all the cheapest and fastest out there!”

For a complete overview of all biNu apps, visit the  Nokia Store:

http://store.ovi.com/publisher/biNu/

Want to distribute your applications globally to millions of people using Nokia Store worldwide?  Visit our Nokia Publish page to get started.

For more information about biNu:

www.binu.com