Ideas You Can Use

A Conversation with Ed Hodges, Head of Mobile at Touchnote

JasonBlack — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:23:25 +0200

I recently had a chance to interview Ed Hodges, Head of Mobile at UK-based Touchnote. During our conversation, Ed described the unique challenges of delivering a digital service (their mobile app for use on Nokia devices) that includes a physical product (printed photo cards) to consumers worldwide. The mobile version of the service allows people to easily create and send printed postcards using the photos they take with their Nokia S60 3rd Edition mobile devices.

In the case of Touchnote, in a matter of a few short months, the app has been downloaded from Ovi Store by consumers in more than 130 countries - more than doubling the reach of their service from the Internet-only version. The impact of this truly global scale is not lost on Touchnote. Putting it quite plainly, Ed noted:

"If you want that kind of reach, you have to be with Nokia."

Ed also talks about how Touchnote achieves a 40% conversion rate of consumers who download their app and ultimately order a printed photocard directly from their Nokia device.

Listen to the entire conversation in this Forum Nokia podcast now.

For more about Touchnote, watch this video:

You can also take a look at this recent post in the Ovi Daily App blog.

A conversation with Robin Jewsbury, co-founder of Mippin, on WRT, Ovi Store, and more

JasonBlack — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:31:31 +0200

Long-time Forum Nokia Champion, and co-founder of Mippin, Robin Jewsbury recently spoke with us about his experience developing Web Runtime (WRT) widgets for use on Nokia S60 devices.

"We love web technology now – we're building on top of the Mippin platform and WRT widgets are an ideal technology compliment to our server-side software. So where we can, we use WRT for S60 phones," Robin said. "It’s all about making the app look good, be clear and simple, and have as few clicks as possible."

For new developers, his advice is very straightforward: "Try just one app first. If you have a choice available to you choose Web Runtime – it’s the fastest way to get a good looking app developed."

He also shares his experience publishing WRT content to Nokia's Ovi Store, and he provides several tips and tricks for developers that should help when they are navigating the publish to Ovi process. He notes that WRT widgets can typically get through the QA process more quickly than other content, noting that: "I think it’s easier for the testers to test the WRT widgets – there's fewer handsets to test them on and there's fewer things to go wrong."

On a related note for publishers, when it comes to time to signing for mobile Java applications, he recommends the use of Thawte certificates for your content.

Finally, Robin gave us an exclusive preview about a new start-up project that he is working on called "EyeMags." He notes: "This is a service which allows anyone to create their own content applications … Currently the apps produced are all mobile Java, but you can guess that WRT is just around the corner – it will appear soon. That's just the beginning of course. The apps produced are currently little magazines with text and pictures and they will become a lot more functional – WRT makes this easy."

We'll stay tuned for more details … In the meanwhile, you can hear the entire conversation in this Forum Nokia podcast.

A conversation with Bernd Wiegmann, and his Ovi Store successes

JasonBlack — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:00:38 +0300

Bernd Wiegmann is a Forum Nokia Champion who has been developing for Symbian C++ since 2004, and now the CTO of the German company MojosMobile.

His company produces a handy application named "CallRecorder" that uses rules-based functionality to make recording phone conversations on Nokia S60 devices easier than you ever thought possible.

We recently had a call with Bernd to learn more about CallRecorder, and his pleasant surprise at the success of the app - and its download totals - within Ovi Store by Nokia. He noted that the app has been available since this past July, and that the total number of downloads has been much higher than in other online app stores, with customers coming from 35 countries worldwide.

And without giving away exact numbers, Bernd noted that if the total number of downloads for CallRecorder had only been one-fifth of the actual results, he would have been satisfied with the results.

In other words: the actual number of downloads for the CallRecorder app has been five times (5X) greater than expected.

To hear the entire interview with Bernd, and to learn about his recommendations for developers publishing content to Ovi Store, listen to this Forum Nokia podcast.

A Conversation with Jan Ole Suhr, the Driving Force Behind Gravity

JasonBlack — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:52:27 +0300

Jan Ole Suhr, from Mobileways.de in Berlin, Germany, is the developer behind the smash-hit Twitter app called Gravity. If you have not heard of Gravity before, it is likely that you work for a company that does not develop Symbian applications ... And if you Tweet from your Nokia S60-based device, Gravity has quickly become the app of choice for those in the know.

We recently had a chance to catch up with Jan, and learn more about his experience creating – and now continually refining – Gravity. His story demonstrates the potential that many of us see in "apps" for Nokia mobile devices, and serves to inspire developers around the world. Read the Q&A below to learn about his experience; discover his sources for inspiration; and learn what he suggests other developers working in the mobile space should try to do. His answers might surprise you!

Q: Why did you decide to create Gravity? What was your inspiration?

A: I was using Twitter for quite a while before starting with Gravity.

Once I got more and more friends on Twitter, I figured that I needed a good client on my phone. With all the buzz around mobile Twitter clients for the iPhone, I thought there must be something similar or even better for S60, too. At the same time, a couple of friends asked me to write a native Twitter client for S60. I decided that Gravity could become a showcase product of what you can do with S60 and Symbian if you just tried hard - and at the same time I was programming it for my personal needs.

Q: How long did it take to finish the original version of the app?

A: I started working on Gravity around the end of January 2009 and released the first version on 30 March of 2009. I was reusing a lot of code from earlier projects, though. A lot of time went into designing the user interface and version 1.0 was lacking quite a lot of features I initially wanted to have in the first release. I still decided to publish early because of the tremendous feedback and interest spurred by the beta testers.

Q. Tell us about your ongoing efforts to improve/refine the app – we read recently that you are regularly working to fix minor bugs and add new features … Does it ever end?

A: Right after I released the first version of Gravity, I was flooded with feature requests and bug reports. At the same time, I received a lot of positive feedback and comments praising Gravity, so I realised I couldn't just stop with version 1.0. And, of course, there really were a lot of features missing that I needed myself. Luckily, the bug reports concentrated on three or four major flaws which I was able to fix pretty quickly. Fixing bugs isn't much fun, but adding new features is great!

And then a mutual process started which is still in place: users of Gravity were asking for features, and once some of the features were released, I received a lot of postive feedback and also, new feature requests. So the process started again: adding and releasing features, lots of positive comments, and new feature requests. This has become very encouraging and almost addictive.

Q. What helped you to decide that this needed to be a Symbian application – instead of Java, or other technology?

A: I've been programming in Symbian C++ for the past six years, so for me, there was never really a decision to be made about which platform to choose.

Q: Were there any particular problems that you encountered along the way? If so, how did you resolve those issues?

A: The biggest obstacle I'm still facing is the network connectivity.

In theory, it's pretty easy to write good wrappers for HTTP-based APIs in Symbian. But in practise, making an application "compatible" with all the wireless networks in the world seems to be very complex. Add some misconfigurations and inconsistencies with the Access Point / Network Destinations user interface to this, and you've got support work for years to come!

The other big issue was – and is – Symbian Signed. Some features are still missing or not working 100% correctly, because Gravity is self-signed and not Symbian Signed. I have chosen to avoid Symbian Signed for the moment because of my current pace releasing beta and “final” versions of Gravity. There's no solution to this right now, but I've heard that the Symbian Foundation is working on it.

One more issue is the user interface (UI) for Gravity. This is the most important part of the application, because the UI is what makes Gravity so exciting. It wanted it to look as polished as the UI of an iPhone application. But there are two problems: first, I am just a developer and "designing" a UI and picking colours just takes ages for me. Second, we've got dozens of different LCDs to design for, and also keypad and touch-based phones. As an example, a gradient might look great on the N95, but on the E61i, you barely see any difference between the dark and the light colours. Creating a UI that works on both keypad and touch-screen phones, that can be compiled from the same source, and still give the best user experience, was another tricky thing to overcome.

Q: Has the popularity of Gravity helped to expose consumers to other apps you have created?

A: That's very difficult to say. I'm currently not doing any statistics that could prove an increase of sales for the other main product I'm offering. The other application is a tool for remote controlling S60 phones, so maybe it's just a completely different group of potential users than people being interested in Gravity. On the other hand, my website did see an enormous increase in traffic after the release of Gravity.

Q. And, does work on Gravity mean less time for other projects? How do you balance that out?

A: I'm currently working 100% on Gravity because of its success and because it's so much pleasure to get the positive feedback when releasing new features.

Q: Tell me about your design decisions and the reasoning behind them. What did you want Gravity to do that you won’t find in other Twitter apps?

A: I wanted Gravity to become the best mobile Twitter client - not just on S60, but for all platforms; and I especially wanted it to be better than what you find on the iPhone. The iPhone has a superb UI/UX, so that's why I spent so much time on the user interface of Gravity. There's still a way to go to achieving this goal, but I think I'm on the right track. It's great to see so much interest in a Symbian/S60 application, because nowadays the iPhone platform tends to dominate so much of the tech news we see.

I also wanted Gravity to run in the background and notify me of new tweets or direct messages - a feature that was impossible to have on the iPhone (before v 3.0).

Feature-wise, when it came to releasing Gravity, there were no mobile Twitter clients with support for Groups and multiple saved searches. These two features are very important to me, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep up with the news on Twitter.

Q: Did you get advice or feedback from other developers in the Forum Nokia community - or through Nokia employees - as you worked on this app?

I regularly visit the Wiki at forum.nokia.com, because it's such a great repository of code examples. Of course, there was also feedback from Nokia employees, but this was more on a personal basis.

Q: What advice would you give to other developers - particularly those who are just starting out - when it comes to creating mobile apps for Nokia devices?

A: I would suggest several things:

Buy yourself an iPod Touch. Seriously! It is a great investment to check out the UI and UX. Then go create something similar or better on S60, please!
If you've got a networking application, the first thing to implement is an auto-update feature to check for the latest release of your app. Never, never ever release a version without this. Never! Especially if you're part of a small development company. You'll lose a lot of customers, because they will still manage to find version 1.0 from three years ago, even though you've already released version 4.x.
Programme the application for yourself and try to make money with it. Granted, that's not always possible, but try to use the application as long and as often as possible. Use all of the features to get an idea of how your app works – is it easy to use? What's missing and what's not working at all?
Think of how to make money with your app first (only if you need to make money with it, of course.) Do not postpone this decision. It's not going to be easier to release a "Pro" version after some time than to think about making money right from the start.
Try to get some beta testers that are as enthusiastic about your app as you are! The feedback will help a lot if you get yourself into a dead end or just feel frustrated by bugs, and whatnot.

Now, some ideas you can use:

Learn more about Mobileways.de
Take a look at Gravity in Ovi Store
Follow Jan Ole Suhr on Twitter

Update (17 September): As noted in the first comment below, Gravity is one of the apps up for the CTIA 2009 Hot for the Holidays web vote award, for the Best Mobile Consumer Application. Show your support for Gravity by marking the app as a Favorite. Vote Now.

Update (18 September): 10-Day Free Trial of Gravity is now available in Ovi Store. Try before you buy.

A conversation with Hannu Viitala, developer of Pen and Paper app

JasonBlack — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:34:37 +0300

Hannu Viitala is a software developer who has been working with Nokia for more than 10 years. Recently, he released his first mobile app, called "Pen and Paper" for drawing on Nokia S60 5th Edition devices, such as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic or Nokia N97.

On the technology side, Hannu is interested in low-level graphics, 3D graphics, retro-games, emulators, C++, and Python. Prior to the release of "Pen and Paper", he was involved in several projects for Symbian phones, including Frodo S60 (a C64 emulator for 9210, S80, S60). This Q&A interview will introduce you to Hannu, and the work that went into creating his new app.

Q: Why did you decide to create Pen and Paper? What was your inspiration?

A: When I got a touch phone in my hands, I instantly started to think about creating my own drawing application. Drawing has been my hobby since I was a kid, and I have always wanted to make that kind of application. For a PC with a mouse it is not so interesting, but a touch screen is as close as you can get to the real thing -- except the real thing has no undo button! ;-)

I also have small kids (4 and 7 years old), and I wanted the application to be as easy for them as drawing with a real paper and pen. So it does not use any text in the app – there are just big friendly icons and pictures. I am lucky to have two very eager and free-spoken, if sometimes a bit restless, app testers at home!

The application is well-suited to grown-ups, too. Now the first version is ready for purchasing from my web page, including screenshots and a video clip. But my inspiration has not drained yet, and I have some great new features in mind to implement in the future!

Q: How long did it take to finish the app?

A: This is a very tough question as I have implemented this as a free time hobby during half a year. As a father of two kids, "free time" is quite an abstract thing! I really have not counted the hours that I spent on this project.

Q: Is this your first application for S60 5th Edition devices?

A: No, I have implemented small applications for S60 5th edition at work and for myself, but this is the first application that I am releasing in public for touch phones.

Q: Were there any particular problems that you encountered along the way? If so, how did you resolve those issues?

A: To start there are the UI graphics. I first drew everything by hand, but I was not happy with the result. Then I tried Gimp and I was surprised to find out that it can even do 3D rendering, though it is quite limited. I studied Gimp via tutorials and examples. I ended up making all the graphics for the application with Gimp except the actual icon images, which I drew by hand, using the Pen and Paper app, of course!

SDL blitting routines are well optimized for a cross-platform library, but documentation of the features is not the strongest area of open source projects. After furious tracing, I found a bug in a certain blitting functions. Later, I found that it was mentioned as a "feature" in a comment, in the middle of the blitting algorithm. A place where nobody would find it easily!

The application has been coded in C++, but I decided to implement the image thumbnail browser in Python. I have done Python programming on S60 before, but the new thing was embedding Python in C++. PyS60 C++ API is quite original and takes time to get know how to do it.

Q: Tell me about your design decisions and the reasoning behind them.

A: I wanted to use my own UI look-and-feel with optimal performance, and that was the main reasons to use SDL. I could have used S60 or other exiting UI framework as those can easily be used at a low level, for example, using off-screen bitmaps and whatnot. However, I have done a lot of open source projects, and I have learned that there is an enormous code base that can be used. There are a lot of LGPL libraries built over SDL. If I need some new functionality, it might already be available in some open source library. In many cases porting to Symbian is a snap. I have used SDL and SDL Gfx for this project.

Another major benefit of SDL is cross-platform code. I prepared for that by separating Symbian and cross-platform source codes in my source tree, and keeping the Symbian codes as small as possible.

Q: Did you get advice or feedback from other developers in the FN community - or through fellow Nokia employees - as you worked on this app?

A: The Python Discussion Board at Forum Nokia is quite active and I got a lot of good advice there. I am quite experienced in C++ programming, so that part was just hard work.

Q: What advice would you give to other developers - particularly those who are just starting out - when it comes to creating apps for Nokia devices?

A: Think about the tools to use. For small, non-speed critical applications, consider Python or other scripting languages. You can get quick tests ready in minutes! For bigger applications, C++ projects are more manageable and organized, and you can use every feature and the full processing power of the device. Or, you can always use a mixture of both C++ and Python to get the best of both worlds.

Think about cross-platform ability. Maybe you want to port the application in the future. Cross-platform libraries also tend to have more applications … and more open source code to use and to learn from. If you are providing a public API, think about the environment that will give you the most users.

Finally, there is no reason to avoid free tools or open source libraries. Many of them are surprisingly mature and good quality! Just be sure to check the licensing issues before you use them.

To find out more about Pen and Paper, please visit: www.mbnet.fi/~haviital