Sivan Greenberg's Blog

Sivan Greenberg's Blog http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog A Forum Nokia Blog sivang 2013-05-19T06:04:36Z Why I want to attend Nokia World 2011 http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2011/10/13/why-i-and-you-want-to-attend-nokia-world-2011 It should be a great privilege to attend Nokia World 2011. simply because I want to express my gratitude. Nokia, for me, is more than just a brand. Through the last couple of years, thanks to the Nokia Developer Champion Program, I have come to realize that only outstanding people make an outstanding name - Nokia. It will be ever exciting to meet more of the people behind the world's most innovative and successful mobile firm. I will promote the unbelievable support Nokia Developer provides, and share the love. I'll also attend Developer Champions day! Business Opportunities/Services 2011-10-13T19:50:01Z sivang Important! Before installing any updates on your N950 if you are still in pre Beta2 firmware. http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2011/10/01/important-before-installing-any-updates-on-your-n950-if-you-are-still-in-pre-beta2-firmware. Since package updates for the N950 cannot be installed on the "older" pre - beta2 firmware, one must take the following steps to make sure he is on the new firmware before attempting any upgrades:  1) Go to About Product , check for the "Version". You should see "34-2" somewhere in the version string, if not you need to reflash your device to the latest released firmware (2). 2) Go <a href="https://www.developer.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/db230178-aa63-4c73-ba7f-20930da13cad/Nokia_N950_OneClickFlashers.html">here</a> download the new fimrware flasher that also includes the image (you don't need to worry about this , it comes as a bundle) and flash the new firmware. Make sure you have used the backup software shipped with the N9/950 to backup your device and store the backup on a different medium. For restoration, consult the relevant parts <a href="http://wiki.meego.com/Migrating_from_N900_to_N950#Migrating_from_beta_1_to_beta_2">here</a>. 3) Now accept any upgrades offered, if any and profit.  In the future, make sure that upgrades offered are matched with the Firmware version you have. It could be as easy as reading the release notes, or asking around in #harmattan on freenode. Enjoy your device and develop the next killer app with QtQuick! harmattan N9 N950 upgrades upgrade update 2011-10-01T18:10:24Z sivang Nokia N8 with Symbian^3: Personal doubts about the prospects of Windows Phone 7 standing up to the challenge. http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2011/03/19/nokia-n8-with-symbian-3-personal-doubts-about-the-prospects-of-windows-phone-7-standing-up-to-the-challenge. I unboxed my N8 today (new FN champion gift) , and my friend who's a gadget consultant and freak has gotten his N8 about two weeks ago. We have already done our personal fool, crash, and stress testing of Symbian^3 comparing with iOS and Android- as both users and in deploying test apps written to the device. Our conclusion is that Windows Phone 7 is unlikely to be able to replace S^3 anytime soon. The extent to which S^3 and the Nokia UX in the N8 compliments the (IMHO) amazing hardware periphery, is yet to be seen in any other mobile devices so far! This combined with one of the industry's strongest development frameworks Qt and Quick, the SDKs and tool-chain and improvements in OVI's publishing schemes together with its flexible and empowering monetary channels, position Nokia as a leader in the future mobile world. At least IMHO. If you have given thought to buying a Media Streamer, I urge you to test an N8 connected to a mobile hard-drive or playing media off the web while connected to your full HD TV. You are in for a surprise (and we were!). And this without mentioning it carries a rocking 10.2MP Carl Zeiss lens with true flash and images turn out to compete with dedicated same range or a bit higher digital cameras. I urge my colleagues in Nokia to examine carefully the situation with S^3 before EOLing it! It already has all it got to rock the mobile world and has already risen Nokia sales in Israel with C7 and N8. I would also like to thank them or creating new empowring innovations and making me proud- again and again everytime - see photos attached.<a id="res_2854" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/20110319_012.jpg"><img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/previews-med/20110319_012.jpg" border="0" alt="Made In Finland" /></a> <a id="res_2855" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/otg.jpg"><img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/previews-med/otg.jpg" border="0" /></a> <a id="res_2857" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/properflash.jpg"><img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/300134/previews-med/properflash.jpg" border="0" /></a>  Business Opportunities/Services Design and User Experience Flash Lite Messaging Qt Web Technology 2011-03-19T14:40:20Z sivang The New Nokia Strategy and Adapting to Change http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2011/02/15/the-new-nokia-strategy-and-adopting-to-change After a sleepless weekend, endless reading and sorting my thought I would like to share my view of the current state of affairs. This change might bring some abruptness, but it is not even close to bring Linux within Nokia into a halt. Let alone around the community that sorrunds it. On the contrary, it is more of a wake up call to put our energy into making MeeGo one of the best reference platforms for mobile handsets. For the worried, re-think your grief. Reading <a href="http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/02/nokia-autopsy-on-meego-one-last-look-back-before-we-look-forward-on-the-new-nokia.html" target="_blank">this</a> I beg to agree the decision is not half as bad as people understandably feel (and on Friday I said this is a black day for open source, I know, I was shocked like everybody else and did not really understand where all of this is going). I realize some tend to remind me of the share's value, I don't have an answer to this and I hope this stabilizes once the path is clearer. If we are really serious about it as a community, we will make MeeGo the best show in town on the handsets, but not only. Many successful open source projects in the commercial world had been developed for years without any funding. the Linux kernel being a prominent example. Even still, within the new Nokia strategy MeeGo is still going to receive attention and resources! "Only as a research project...." you may cry. I think this might actually prove as an opportunity. How? Windows Phone 7 is now going to be quite harshly under the microscope. It has to really prove itself for us to really mark the end of Symbian and Linux within Nokia. In view of some conclusion and analysis in the article I cited above, I trust Nokia to protect the immense investment in Linux and the surroindung technologies it has contributed so vastly to not just be shed out as children's toy. If you read between the lines, the new strategy acknowledges that Linux forms the basis for the next generation computing devices there is no doubt about it. Missing the next disruptive phase for Nokia could then really mean the end, so Nokia can't afford it. So until knowing further I believe the future of Qt is safe. As well MeeGo's and the rest of the ecosystem. This is a bump down the road but in the same time an opportunity to perfect while there's less focus on the process which end users and customers don't care much about. In the same time, this might prove as yet another opportunity to gather more community participation without immediate promise for profit. I don't think Linus Torvalds had profit infront of his eyes when he started Linux. However, if we make MeeGo great and attract many application developers, through the research line of funding from research companies, universities and foundations around the world resulting in myraid of applications and paltform improvements, I'm sure we will see many more Nokia MeeGo based device, but also from other major handset vendors who are looking for the next step to shorten time to market through carefuly crafted Linux base as MeeGo.  Having choice is always good, albeit so far from announcements there's not seem to be intentions to make Qt working there. I think this is actually reducing overhead off Qt teams while they perfect the offering on the future platform. I also see an opportunity in showing .NET developers on WP7 the Qt and MeeGo technology showcase and the benefits. I would even not object to promote it, showing QtQuick as the alternative for the future in the same occasion. We might then even create a 'by popular request' trend. The days of OS wars are over. period. Our time is all about choice. Nokia so far provided much more choice on their devices than any other vendor I know or care. Look at some choice enablers that the Nokia ecosystem created (Joikuspot, MicroB, touch + full keyboard, network streaming tunneled through FM transmission, Flash, VoIP, telepathy,  connman and more!). Their contribution are immense. Also, the Linux based community around Nokia has always had very high demands from the process openness, more than in any other mobile vendor community. This is because some processes and the make of the OS in technical terms (Maemo) allowed the room for such high demands, a good sign in my opinion. It is irrelvant if they were answered or not. Fact is that we have a rather amazing operating system  called Maemo (amd *every* N900 owner could vouch for that, albeit the rough spots mentioned often)  and a promising successor MeeGo. Just as Nokia did not stop contributing on MeeGo and Qt (if you check the developr offering bugs and communications today you'll see we are working as usual) I will not stop following Nokia. I may be too optimistic, but living in the middle east is all about embracing change and adaptation for survival as last events prove. At the end, what drives innovation today and will drive it tomorrow is quality, community ,deliverance and choice. Commercial strategies follow suit upon the critical mass.  I'm encouraged, aren't you? Business Opportunities/Services 2011-02-15T15:36:54Z sivang Accessing HTTP authentication protected web services through Qt http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/12/22/accessing-http-authentication-protected-web-services-through-qt A few days ago I checked out how to handle HTTP authentication from a Qt application I'm developing. Apparently this is mostly easy thanks to the QNetworkAccessManager class available in Qt since version 4.4, that follows an asynchronous approach similar to some Python frameworks I know.I've summarized my findings in a Forum Nokia wiki article:<a href="http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/HTTPAuthWithQNetMan">http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/HTTPAuthWithQNetMan</a>.Hope it is useful!  Business Opportunities/Services 2010-12-22T12:40:35Z sivang KDE and Qt/MeeGo syncevolution integration, or some more new stuff to do after the Munich OVI sprint. http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/11/07/kde-ovi-qt-meego-syncml I was privileged to get invited the Munich OVI sprint prior to the Qt Developer Days at the same city, and to cut it short it was quite exciting, fun and very educating event.Through this event I got to know some very nice people from the KDE community, I enjoyed hanging out with every single one of you, made new contacts, exchanged information, learned some interesting stuff about gaming freedom with Leinir and Arjen and more. I also met a rather a very nice and energetic GSoC hacker Dinesh, that works on syncevo part of his GSoC project, and his mentor Sascha Peilicke. Luck wanted and Chani sort of picked me to join their team for PIM, part of the discussion sprint, and I also participated in the Maps discussions during my work at the sprint.<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="content-type" />Having already worked on sorts of synchronization and distributed storage it felt natural to me to try and get involved beyond plain discussions and see where I can contribute. We identified the need for q pure Qt GUI for SyncEvolution, however we recently found out that SyncEvolution developers might already be working with either Nokia/Intel or both about it, so we need to do some mailing list communication to make sure we do not duplicate work or if they already have something usable, to see if we can just port their code onto the KDE desktop.Now,  for the benefit of the interested readers and prospective hackers, and due to popular demand - I'll try and give some overview of how this works based on what was explained to me by Dinesh during and after the sprint.SyncEvolution is basically an a synchronization back-end implementing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncML" target="_blank">SyncML</a> standard, through <a href="http://www.synthesis.ch/indefero/index.php/p/libsynthesis/" target="_blank">libsynthesis</a>  for data synchronization which is platform and storage agnostic. In <a href="http://gitorious.org/~saidinesh5/meego-middleware/saidinesh5-syncevolution" target="_blank">Dinesh's branch for KDE</a>, SyncEvolution deals mostly and implements the PIM data items. It might be that the whole SyncEvolution is only supporting PIM items, I will find out and update about this later. SyncEvolution exposes a dbus service daemon that UI tools can communicate with to offer PIM and PIM sync services to an end user.  Those UI clients can therefor be completely relieved from caring about storage and actual syncing as it is all abstracted for them by SyncEvolution.Currently two transports are supported, obex via Bluetooth and HTTP(s). SyncEvolution can talk to various back-ends, which are the actual data storage engines. Akonadi is one of them. Dinesh and Sascha's work was to add support for the Akonadi storage backend to SyncEvolution. Other supported backends currently in existence are QtMobility, Evolution, AddressBook (or whatever the iphone folks use) and a File backend that saves data to plain file system format.In Akonadi, a PIM item is just an "item" to be stored, and "Collections" are like folders or grouping of items by a common interest or purpose. Following this terminology we can have various "Collections", one for storing work related contacts, one for storing calendar entries. In the general sense following document store speak, these are all "databases". So , if we have one collection for work contacts, and another collection for friends they are 2 different databases, or data-sources that we can query and store items to.So to come back to our branch, we're concerned with the plumbing into the Akonadi storage back-end, since it is the chosen KDE PIM storage. Transports in SyncEvolution are easily specified through the normal URI format, e.g.  obex-bt://AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF for Bluetooth as an example, http://asdf.asdf.com for http transport against a DAV supporting http server as another example. Behind the scenes, SyncEvolution will handle the transport and communication against the target, which is pretty neat.Now a bit more of theory, I know that has been a lot but we're the the end of the puzzle. Each entity supporting SyncML is actually a "peer", which for me was easier to understand coming from a strong CouchDB background. The principle to understand here is that there is not much of distinction between a "server" and a "client" as they both support the same activities through SyncML standard and each can function as either a server (- receive and merge data) and a client (-send and retrieve data). However, for practical distinction, A device like an N900 Nokia Internet Tablet, Symbian smartphone or a netbook running MeeGo initiating the interaction will be the client, and the server, for example OVI.com is the more intelligent peer, catering for merging and backup, or the "server". To sum this up, to access a peer and a specific data-source you specify in SyncEvolution terms the URI that includes the transport and address of a peer be it on a device or an http server. And you also need to specify the remote database name, e.g. the collection/data-source in the form of for example ./Contacts. A look inside "~/.config/syncevolution" would make this much clearer with the back-ends, URIs and data sources listed in.Now if you want to go ahead and get your hands dirty with some hacking, clone Dinesh's branch and roll. If you need help or have more questions don't hesitate to try and find us at #akonadi-syncml on freenode.    Design and User Experience Event Maemo Qt MeeGo SyncEvolution 2010-11-07T12:27:24Z sivang Maemo/MeeGo IVI without an in built IVI system or "How to be in Tel Aviv and feel a bit like you're in Helsinki" http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/09/29/maemo-meego-ivi-without-an-in-built-ivi-system-or-how-to-be-in-tel-aviv-and-feel-a-bit-like-you-re-in-helsinki The N900 surely has lots of uses, as one would suspect from going over the nice number of useful applications.  In my opinion, this device and its successors have strong promise as becoming "The System Administrator's on duty companion and mobile swiss army knife" (Expect more on that in upcoming posts).However, I would like to tell you today how you can use this line of devices for your in vehicle infotainment, without actually owning an IVI enabled car, which actually enables you to experience some sort of IVI in any car you'll use.Last week, I drove back from Haifa to Tel Aviv. I visited Helsinki a while ago,  and really fell in love with the city, the language and its surroundings. I also quite exhausted my current set of CDs (I guess I'm a bit old fashioned. most of my music is in original CD album form) and replaying the same playlist felt like it is going to be a bit boring."I wish I could listen to some Finnish songs and hear the sounds of the language again." I thought. But then, I do have an N900, and the Media Player has a really cool feature that is relayed by a hardware component. The FM Transmitter.Using this feature takes audio and reroutes it to be transmitted in FM radio. You choose the frequency and enable the FM transmitter form the context menu of Internet Radio screen. You tap one of the stations in the list, you set the frequency in your car's radio system and viola! You can listen to your favorite radio station, regardless of where it is broadcasting from or where you are driving.This of course requires that you have strong cellular data coverage and that the radio station will be also streaming through the Internet. Luckily the N900 comes with some preset Finnish internet radio stations that carry nice playlists and stream in high quality. "The Voice" became quite a favorite of mine.This helps to understand why MeeGo, growing on the foundations of Maemo is a natural choice for IVI systems. To improve the UX though, I would just add support to enable the FM transmitter from anywhere in the media player application, and not just from a track being played or from the Internet Radio screen. Also, it'd be nice to define for which sources to enable FM transmission selectively and to allow FM transmission while also playing using Pulse Audio to external or the internal speakers. I also wonder if audio rerouting to FM radio works for Videos as well, to allow someone to watch a movie on the device and have the sound in the car audio system. For a mobile IVI experience it might be interesting to see if audio could be rerouted from a netbook with a wide screen to the car's audio system for a more complete "cinematic" experience, through the N900 device.  Business Opportunities/Services 2010-09-29T15:43:15Z sivang How To Enable more build target after first time project setup in Nokia QT SDK 1.0 http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/07/10/create-target So , as this been a bit of a puzzle this Saturday afternoon I decided to write a quick post about it , for future reference and possibly to help other new comes to the SDK. (Sometimes wandering through the huge docs can be daunting when you want to get something done quick) When you create a new project, you can choose the targets you want to build from, depending on the versions and setups you have for Qt, you will be able to choose among several including but not limited to Maemo, Symbian and Desktop.Suppose you started with a desktop application, or otherwise with a Maemo or Symbian app and you want to start preparing it for distribution on the desktop, you'd need to add your desired target and start building for it as the first porting step.To add a target: <ul> <li>Click on the "Projects" icon on the left pane of the Qt Creator.</li> <li>Make sure you are on the "Targets" top level tab.</li> <li>Click the "+" and add your target.</li></ul>Once the target has been added, click on it from the header targets list (where you can "-" or "+" a target) and modify your target's settings if required.    Design and User Experience Qt 2010-07-10T19:30:09Z sivang Tel Aviv Nokia Developer Workshop, 25-26/05/2010 http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/05/26/tel-aviv-nokia-developer-workshop-25-26-05-2010 Just wanted to drop a quick note I am now attending the Nokia Developer workshop, the green stream, about Qt hands on development. Nice to meet again with Sami Viitanen and Jure Sustersic of Forum Nokia.Kudus to all the organizers, we have a close to 3Mbit net connection this time, and I was able to download the new Nokia Qt SDK (still in beta) in no time!   Business Opportunities/Services 2010-05-26T11:37:37Z sivang That's Not How You Use Python http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/sivan-greenbergs-forum-nokia-blog/2010/03/28/notpython I have dug an old code of mine a friend had to do a while back in a job interview. The interviewer specifically insisted on not using any of python's industry strength constructs to solve this problem. Can you guess what this does and how to make it better given the constraints that are apparent from the code and the use of in place modification of the members of the list? <div>def compress_whitespace(thelist):     my_index = 0     for i in range(len(thelist)):</div><div>          if thelist[my_index-1]==' ' and thelist[my_index] == ' ':</div><div>             for t in range(my_index-1,len(thelist)-1):                    thelist[t] = thelist[t+1]              thelist[t+1] = ''           my_index = my_index-1  my_index += 1   if __name__ == "__main__":  thelist = list(sys.argv[1])  print compress_whitespace(thelist)  print thelist</div><div> </div>  Actually, the code lost any indentation it had .....Let's change the subject, how do you insert code neatly in LifeType ? I googled and tried and did this and that and nothing... can anybody recommend a way ? :)  Python 2010-03-28T10:09:05Z sivang