Mobile Duo

Flash is dead, all hail HTML5?

2010-04-12T03:06:00.004+03:00

I have never been a fan of Flash. While you can do pretty neat games or cool animations with it, most of the times it seems to be used to create some annoying blinking and flashing ad content. I don't like most of the full Flash sites either because they usually feel graphically bloated or unusable. Majority of full Flash sites are just simply poorly designed. Where credit is due however is YouTube and any other services providing video content.

Then again, HTML5 includes native support for video. Essentially this means that Flash is no longer needed for video. Out of the big players, YouTube was probably the first one to have an experimental HTML5 video support and very soon after Vimeo announced a beta HTML5 video player. In my eyes this indicates a clear willingness to go for more open web with no proprietary add-ons.

There is also a new Canvas element in HTML5 that allows dynamic 2D rendering via JavaScript. For some very good examples of this you can take a look at Canvas Demos or Chrome Experiments.

On top of that, WebGL will enable OpenGL ES 2.0 rendering through the very same Canvas element. Effectively this will mean hardware accelerated 3D graphics on your web page. So, there will be no need for Flash to do any animations. To see what WebGL is capable of doing I suggest you take a look at the WebGL demo running inside Firefox on the Nokia N900. There is even a JavaScript 3D engine using WebGL out there already called CopperLicht.

All the things mentioned above are enablers that allow open standards to close the gap between them and the add-on technologies. On the other hand, getting rid of Flash won't happen overnight. There are several reasons that are still holding back this transformation:

Internet Explorer doesn't support all HTML5 features and is likely to adopt these slower than other browsers.
The browser market will remain highly fragmented and there will be older versions of browsers around for a long time.
HTML5 is still a standard in progress and will take some time to get finished. It really might take several years to get it finished and deployed everywhere. At the same time proprietary technologies evolve all the time and are available now, not tomorrow.
The performance of JavaScript and Canvas doesn't match the performance of Flash and other native proprietary plug-ins.
Mozilla is sticking to their ideals and decided to not include the H.264 support into Firefox because of patent encumbrance issues. Unfortunately H.264 is widely adopted and for example the YouTube HTML5 support is using it.

Despite all these facts, recent news have shown that there is more intent to get rid of Flash. First of all, Apple changed the terms of the iPhone Developer Agreement so that it forbids any usage of third party tools for application development. This essentially is a death strike to Flash on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Not very surprisingly, this really pissed some people off.

Secondly, soon after this Adobe presented a demo showing Flash CS5 exporting Flash content to a HTML5 Canvas. This is a very good move from Adobe and strengthens them where they have already been strong - the authoring tools. I was already hoping, among a lot of other people, for something like this to happen and now it is here!

The great thing about this is that it brings the authoring tools to the HTML5 family. I'm pretty sure some Flash puritans will argue that the exporting won't work properly, the performance will be poor and that the exported content won't be manageable. I'm going to disagree saying that I don't see why Adobe couldn't write all the required functionality in JavaScript. Furthermore, WebGL is going to bring the GPU acceleration for boosting performance.

As you could probably guess, I'm not expecting Flash to just disappear from the web anytime soon but at least here's to hoping now...

Travelling with N96 - pleasure or pain?

2010-03-27T13:45:00.000+02:00

"Is it possible to use a phone as a hardcore travel assistant which does basically everything for you?" This was the question before I went for a short holiday. Before the holiday started I created a quite long list what I could do with my phone when abroad (thanks to Petteri and Jouni for additional suggestions).

When I was driving in Spain and using Ovi Maps as a navigator, I totally lost my mind because N96 rebooted itself numerous times and Ovi Maps failed to give me good directions. I even buzzed about this. After the buzz, I started thinking that I shouldn't make that strong assumption, which is based on few failures. I decided to create a list of pleasures and pains about using N96 (or any device) as a travel assistant. I made this list during my holiday, without any further planning, so the list is authentic and not made up.

Like everybody knows, these things aren't black and white so it is little difficult to make a final decision. I thought that I'll give one point (+1) for each pleasure and one minus point (-1) for each pain and then sum them. If pleasure wins, then it is a pleasure to travel with N96 or if pain wins, then it is a pain travelling with N96. I'll also add some suggestions in the end which could help travelers (or frequent mobile phone users) in the future.

Test equipment

Nokia N96 v.30.333
Ovi Maps v3.01 09wk44 b01 with drive and walk license and downloaded map of Spain.
A car
A 31-year-old male

Pleasure

Downloaded maps to your phone before travel.
Got drive and walk guidance relatively cheaply, only 9,99€ to N96. Although this hasn't been advertised anywhere. I noticed this from AllAboutSymbian.com.
Saved GPS coordinates to some pictures which I took.
Sent an unique postcard with a picture taken with N96 using 3rd party software from Finnish Post Office.
Transferred podcasts and music before the trip to the phone.
Installed 3rd party software during the trip to get information about Alhambra. Download was done using bluetooth in Alhambra. More information about the software.

Picture 1 & 2. Information of Alhambra in your phone

Used Opera Mini to cut down the amount transferred data while browsing abroad.
Recorded my running routes using SportsTracker and didn't use any data connection. Uploaded them to SportsTracker site when I came back from holiday.

Picture 3. One recorded running route, used only GPS, no data connection.

Picture 4. Uploaded route in SportsTracker.

Saved the place to Ovi Maps where I parked the car in Malaga.
Ovi Maps walking guide worked in Malaga and I found the place where I parked the car.
Saved my thoughts about this blog post to Notes on holiday.

Pain

Sometimes Ovi Maps didn't find anything, re-booting helped.
Ovi Maps drive guidance was guiding in Malaga differently than it was showing in the map. Guidance told "turn left" but map showed "turn right". This happened more than once.
GPS signal lost three times during trip from Alhambra to Benalmadena. Phone was all the time in the same place. Restarting of Ovi Maps helped.
While driving to back from Alhambra to Benalmadena, N96 restarted numerous times, something like 5-7. Luckily my wife was able to operate N96, otherwise it would have been really difficult and dangerous.
Ovi Maps didn't find "Calle de Noruega" street in Benalmadena. It seems that Ovi Maps thinks it is "Calle Cinoroega" like seen in picture 5. Also "Calle Italia" should be "Calle de Noruega".
Ovi Maps gave totally wrong driving guidance near where I was staying.

Picture 5. Map from Benalmadena where driving guidance in Ovi Maps didn't work so well.

I noticed after the trip that some of the pictures didn't contain GPS coordinates, although I'm really sure I had that feature on.
There weren't any good place for placing N96 in the car. This makes navigation more difficult.
While I was driving, Ovi Maps showed useless information about roaming charges although I had accepted it previously.

Picture 6. Ovi Maps showing useless information while driving.

While I was driving, Nokia Messaging popped up numerous times. I don't know what initiated this.

Picture 7. Nokia Messaging popped up while using Ovi Maps.

Ovi Maps didn't seem to be accurate enough, if there were two (or more) ramps which were taking you off the highway, it wasn't clear which one to take. I've been using TomTom XL in Finland, and it guides you really clearly which ramp or lane to take.

Thoughts

It would be really helpful if Nokia (or someone else) would be selling "one-size-fits-all-Nokias" car kits where one could place phone while driving. This could be also used for watching videos in the plane.
There are still space to improve Ovi Maps' user experience.
I think navigation using phone is little like comparing taking pictures with phone and taking pictures with "real" camera; it is in a way OK, but not really good.
Search results in Ovi Maps aren't as good as in Google Maps. Biggest two problems with Google Maps is that you cannot download the maps to your phone and you can't get drive guidance to Nokia phones.
As you can see, most of the issues were caused by Ovi Maps. I wasn't using the newest version, so I really hope it works better.
I didn't use Foursquare or Gowalla during my holiday because I was lazy. I checked few times if something could be found from Foursquare, and it was basically empty. After the holiday, I noticed that Gowalla is more popular in Benalmadena area. Also Dopplr were quite empty, although I decided to add few hints there after the trip.
When you are travelling battery consumption is really an issue. Luckily I had my Nokia DC-11 which gave the external push for phone's battery when needed. It would be really useful if one could define which features will be left on when battery is about to die, I mean now some Nokia devices have power saving option which dims the screen light, but it could be used for example shutting down Bluetooth, WiFi discovery, unused open applications, etc. and reserve the rest of the battery for the most important, e.g. sometimes for Ovi Maps.

So, here is my verdict: it is a pleasure to travel with N96 but Ovi Maps can cause you to lose your mind. What do you think? What kinds of experiences you've had with your personal travel assistant?

What will happen to Windows Phone 7 Series?

2010-03-11T13:27:00.014+02:00

I've attended to two seminars where Microsoft representative, Vesku Paananen, has been telling about forthcoming Windows Phone 7 Series. Here is one of the videos available in Youtube, what is your first impression?

Direct UI madness

2010-02-10T02:52:00.007+02:00

Last September I blogged about Direct UI, Orbit and Qt. I drew my own conclusions based on the information publicly available and said that Direct UI will be a bridge between Maemo and Symbian. I'm sorry to say I was wrong. Not because of actually being wrong but because this is actually pretty bad news.

To make the story short, Qt alone is not enough for modern mobile user interfaces. New UI paradigms require new widgets to be built. Essentially these could be built in Qt to be fully cross-platform but unfortunately we are not there yet. The way Qt handles look and feel on different platforms nowadays is done via Qt styles and there should be nothing preventing creating a style for both S60 and Maemo. After all, Qt works seamlessly on different desktop operating systems already.

The first problem is that there shouldn't really be need for any framework on top of Qt. Having a new layer on top of it not only breaks the compatibility to every system not supporting the new layer but also feels like a totally unnecessary layer on top of Qt.

The second and the more severe problem is that somewhere in the middle of process of creating this new layer the paths between S60 and Maemo got separated. This shows that building products is more important to Nokia than getting a decent development platform together. Breaking the compatibility to every other platform but S60 and Maemo I could have somehow accepted even though I wouldn't have liked it. However, not taking the full advantage of Qt between S60 and Maemo seems just extremely stupid and shortsighted.

You'll still be able to create plain Qt applications that work between platforms but you won't be able to take advantage of all the widgets available on the platforms. At least not until (if it will ever happen) Qt actually provides the same functionality.

I stand corrected and remain somewhat disappointed.

What if Nokia would offer an aggregate service which would combine all tracking services?

2010-02-07T19:18:00.007+02:00

I've mentioned multiple times that popular SportsTracker will be introduced way or another in near future. I started thinking what if it would contain a feature which would allow users upload their information from other tracking services also?

I strongly believe that different tracking services will become more and more popular. I've been using SportsTracker for quite some time and report most of my sport activities. It is convinient, if you go jogging, you just carry your phone and it shows distance, your route etc. If you go to play football, you can report the time and date. Phone is always with you, so you don't need to log-in to computer to report these things. If you are using some heart rate monitoring, e.g. from Polar, you could upload this information after you've sent it to Polar's Personal Trainer.

You can ask why would users want to use SportsTracker if they are using Runkeeper on their iPhone? My answer is "their friends". It is common situation that I'm using SportsTracker, some of my friends are using Runkeeper, and some are using Polar's Personal Trainer etc. If there would be an easy way for aggregating this information, I bet that kind of service would have lots of users.

Now you ask why Nokia would do something like that? My answer is "to sell more phones and make profit". If an iPhone user is using already Nokia's popular service, he might choose Nokia phone next time. Services are, after all, one of the main focus area for Nokia.

There is a Finnish start-up called Heiaheia, which tries to aggregate different activities, but does this manually. I mean user needs to login, type his/her activity to service etc. This manual part is quite cumbersome and I keep wondering why would I type these things because they are already in my phone, device, or other service.

This kind of service doesn't need to focused on tracking sports, but it can be used for tracking your everyday life. You could track your holiday route, take pictures and it would be straight-away available for your friends. If you have old parents, you could see where they are at or where they are going. Of course there are lots of security and other issues, but I believe they could be handled.

What do you think, would this kind of service be a hit?

A follow-up of Ovi Maps vs. Google Maps

2010-02-07T14:42:00.011+02:00

I compared Ovi Maps and Google Maps in my last blogpost. I thought give a follow-up regarding it because I borrowed Nokia N97 from my colleague and installed the newest version of Ovi Maps (v3.03 10wk01).

It seems that I was right and basically there isn't any difference between Ovi Maps v3.01 and v3.03 regarding the search results. The only difference was in searching R-Kioski. v3.03 showed only one result when there are almost 30 in Espoo area, v3.01 didn't find anything.

Picture 1. Ovi Maps v3.03 found only one R-Kioski.

Although search results aren't impressive, Nokia managed to improve usability; at least little bit with only one search option which means you can search companies or addresses same time.

Picture 2. Ovi Maps v3.03 improved home screen.

Picture 3. You can now search businesses and addresses using same search.

Nokia has added some sociality to new Ovi Maps, you can share your location to Facebook where it is shown as a normal status update as well a zoomable map.

Picture 4. Facebook status update using Ovi Maps.

Picture 5. Ovi Maps application in Facebook shows your location.

Nokia has also introduced some advertising to the new version, you can see your nearest McDonald's and their ads. These are only shown in Weather and Events categories, not in Lonely Planet and Michelin.

Picture 6. Weather category shows some ads as well as the nearest McD. "Hae lähin McDonald's" means "Search for nearest McDonald's"

Picture 7. You can get weather forecasts from Ovi Maps.

Picture 8. Clicking ad in picture 6 takes you to the landing page and shows more information. Here you can see an ad regarding 1€ cheeseburger.

Picture 9. You can see your nearest McDonald's on map, call there or check their webpage.

Like I mentioned in my previous blogpost, location-based advertising is one of main things in 2010. It seems that all major players are involved in this, e.g. Mashable reported that Apple had said to it's developers that they shouldn't use location-based ads. It indicates that they are planning something by themselves. Mashable also reported that Google Maps is suggesting places you might like.

In my opinion you can see hints that Nokia is soon introducing SportsTracker features to Ovi Maps. When you are travelling somewhere, you can see dashboard regarding the trip.

Picture 10. Dashboard in Ovi Maps which hints that soon SportsTracker features are included to Ovi Maps.

All in all, Ovi Maps v3.03 doesn't include that many new and useful features compared to v3.01. The biggest difference is the free navigation. Time will show how well Nokia can monetize Ovi Maps and it's features.

Ovi Maps vs. Google Maps

2010-01-31T10:00:00.025+02:00

It's been a while since last blog post, or actually even longer than a while. I could give a blog post full of reasons, but I'm not. After all, when we started this blog, we agreed that we write stories that are interesting for us and if we have time.

Now to the real topic: Ovi Maps versus Google Maps. Like you probably know, Nokia announced some time ago that they are offering navigation for free starting right now with limited number of devices. They also promised that they will add the support to some older models as well as to all new phones shipping with Ovi Maps. Google is already offering free navigation to Android phones, and bunch of different location-based services to other phones.

I must agree with most of the people and say this is an interesting decision from Nokia. I'm guessing that they are trying to get some profit from in-device advertising as well as increased phone sales. In-device advertising is a challenge for both Nokia and Google and we (or at least I) haven't seen any good results from this. One could say the winner of this battle is the one who gets more users to the service and offers better search results. Good search results are vital part of the Ovi/Google Maps usage, because why to use a service, even for a navigation, if it doesn't find anything? This gave me an idea of comparing these two map products. I've been using both of them, so in the following tests, I'm re-creating some of my recent searches .

Test equipment:

Nokia N96 (v30.333)
Ovi Maps (v3.01 09wk44) (Not the newest version, v3.03, because it is not available for N96 but I'm assuming that both versions are using the same data.)
Google Maps (v3.3.1 (#0))
Location: Espoo, Finland. Near Helsinki (and Nokia HQ)

Test cases:

R-Kioski (a popular kiosk)
Apteekki (pharmacy)
Nordea (a bank)
Otto (a brand name for ATMs)
K-Rauta (a hardware store)
Rautia (another hardware store)
Bauhaus (another hardware store)

Scoring:

1 point from a good result.
½ point from a result that could be improved.
0 points if there are no results.

1. Search - R-kioski

Picture 1. Ovi Maps doesn't recognize "r-kioski".

Picture 2. Google Maps shows the nearest R-Kioski.

Picture 3. You can all search results a list, nearest place is on top.

Picture 4. Google Maps, you can see search results also in the map.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. It is really disappointing if you cannot find anything.

2. Search: Apteekki

Picture 5. Ovi Maps knows how to suggest search results.

Picture 6. Ovi Maps lists nearest results and also shows them in map (picture missing)

Picture 7. Ovi Maps shows coordinates, phone number and even weather of a search result. Phone number being one to most important.

Picture 8. For some reason Google Maps doesn't show the nearest pharmacies.

Result: Ovi Maps 1 - Google Maps ½. You shouldn't need to choose the nearest place by yourself, especially if you are in unfamiliar place.

3. Search: Nordea

Picture 9. Ovi Maps doesn't find a single Nordea from Finland, only ATMs in Estonia

Picture 10. Google Maps finds some Nordea's but not all, there are also places that doesn't have branches, only offices.

Picture 11. Nordea's listed. Results could be better.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps ½. Really poor results from Ovi Maps, but Google Maps could also improve.

4. Search: Otto

Picture 12. Ovi Maps suggesting results, actually nice and convenient.
Picture 13. Ovi Maps shows search results in map, just like described in picture 6.

Picture 14. Poor results from Google Maps, not even one real hit and others are totally wrong.

Result: Ovi Maps 1 - Google Maps 0. Totally wrong results give bad impression.

5. Search: K-Rauta

Picture 15. Ovi Maps doesn't find anything and suggest wrongly.

Picture 16. Also Google Maps shows phone number.

Picture 17. Google Maps shows sometimes also result's homepage.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. Totally wrong results give bad impression.

6. Search: Rautia

Picture 18. No results when searching Rautia with Ovi Maps.

Picture 19. Google Maps finds "Rautia", but most probably doesn't show the nearest first.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. No results, no points.

7. Search: Bauhaus

Picture 20. Ovi Maps suggest that I should head to Germany...

Picture 21. Google Maps shows reviews in some results.

Result: Ovi Maps 0 - Google Maps 1. Totally wrong results, no points.

Final result: Ovi Maps 2 - Google Maps 5. These result show that Google Maps is better in finding places, which makes sense because Google is so big in search area. This also indicates that Nokia needs to improve it's company database, because companies are usually searched; address, phonenumber, etc. I still keep on using both of them because in some cases Ovi Maps gives better results.

There are lots of areas that makes a difference when these two companies are fighting for the users and their money. Just to name few, these are:

Sociality. Social services are also important in search business, because users want to see where their friends are and if they are suggesting some places. Google Maps has Latitude which shows where your friends are, but that's it. New version of Ovi Maps has Facebook-integration which seems interesting, but there needs to be more to come.
Tracking. Nokia terminated it's successful Nokia Sportstracker but most probably will add similar features to Ovi Maps, or at least I hope so. Tracking is important for users who are exercising and how they are developing.
Sharing data between computer and mobile phone. Most of the users are using Ovi Maps and Google Maps both with their computers and their mobile phones. This is why it important that one can store information using computer and then access the same information with mobile phone. Both companies are supporting this method, as long as you've signed in.
Usability and ability to suggest results. Usability is really important in each service, also in Maps. If you are searching something based on the address, Ovi Maps suggests nicely different street addresses.

Picture 22. In Ovi Maps, you need to decide if you are searhing based on address or place.

Picture 23. Google Maps offers only one Search-possibility which makes searching sometimes easier.

Picture 24. Suggestion works nicely in with Google Maps, but it doesn't suggest street names, only recent searches and some commonly known places, e.g. kensington.

Downloading maps. When you have your maps in your device, usage can be little faster but the data can be old which results as a poor results. Downloading maps beforehand to your device means that you don't need data connection which means your battery last longer. I hope Nokia would introduce a feature which allows downloading maps to your phone without Map Loader.

So there are lots of open questions who will be the winner in in-device advertising, but one thing is for sure; year 2010 will be interesting year in location-based services.

Direct UI, Orbit, Qt

2009-09-20T19:00:00.004+03:00

Edit: at the light of new information parts of this post are outdated, a follow-up on this post can be read from here.

Wow, it looks like our blog was on a very long summer holiday. One that started early and continued longer than expected. There has been a few things I have intended to write about but they are kind of old news already. One of these issues is Qt and the Direct UI framework to be built on top of that on Nokia platforms.

Earlier this year there were rumors that S60 Avkon application framework would be replaced by a Qt based Orbit framework. My first thought on the matter was: "Why not just go plain Qt, why do we need another Avkon like platform specific framework and make cross-platform development more difficult again?" At that point I wasn't aware of Direct UI or the fact that Direct UI will provide new interaction and navigation logic on both Symbian and Maemo platforms in the future.

It appears that Orbit is just an enabler layer for mobile application development and consists of widgets tailored for mobile development. Together, this all will mean a rewrite of the application suite taking advantage of Qt APIs, Orbit widgets and Direct UI. Avkon will however not co-exist with these frameworks and there will be a binary break. This is probably done in order to fully take advantage of new technology at the cost of maintaining compatibility. I think this is a correct choice as the Avkon framework really is over the hill and the burden of it could result in compromises.

All of this is of course still in progress and the road ahead is relatively long. Symbian roadmap has Symbian^3 (which can be considered as just a necessary step towards Symbian^4) complete half way of 2010. Symbian^4, which is supposed to have both Orbit and Direct UI, is proposed to be ready early 2011. This means there will be devices based on Symbian^4 available somewhere in the second or third half of 2011.

The story for Maemo platforms is very similar. Qt and Direct UI will replace GTK+/Hildon based applications in the Harmattan (Maemo 6) platform that will be available somewhere in 2011 according to current information. In the Fremantle platform (Maemo 5, the platform in the forthcoming Nokia N900 release) the applications are still GTK+/Hildon based but the Qt framework is provided by the community.

Apparently both Symbian^4 and Maemo Harmattan will have Qt 4.6. New features in Qt 4.6 include a new animation framework that is coupled with a state machine framework, support for multi touch and gestures. All of these features are enablers for a modern touch based UI. It also seems that there are efforts to create a new suite of Qt APIs for mobile device functionality in the form of Qt Mobility project, which will further make it possible to create applications targeting S60, Windows CE and Maemo.

So, what does this all mean in practice then? Well, first of all Qt and Direct UI will be a bridge between Symbian and Maemo platforms, enabling cross-platform development between the two. This is something that hasn't really happened yet on any platforms. Secondly, all Symbian third party applications need to be totally rewritten. And yes, I mean totally, since Avkon and Qt/Direct UI will have as much in common as George Bush and Malcolm X.

The positive side of rewriting is that it might actually be easier to completely rewrite a Symbian application in Qt than trying to maintain it's S60 equivalent. I'm a strong advocate for Qt and in my experience writing Qt applications is extremely simple. Qt Creator is making this even simpler.

While these improvements are most welcome and needed it remains to be seen what other manufacturers will come up with in the same time frame. One and a half year from now multi touch or kinetic scrolling won't be exactly state of the art so will Nokia come up with some other innovations in their releases?

Mobile browsers - what's going on?

2009-04-30T11:00:00.000+03:00

For some time now there have been multiple players in the mobile browser markets. If you are using some other phone than iPhone (or iTouch), you have the possibility to choose some other browser than the built-in one.

Multiple browsers are based on open-source WebKit engine, these browsers are among the most used ones (S60, Safari on iPhone/iTouch, Android), but there are also other players.

I've tried to list all (at least most common ones) browsers that available at the moment and also share some thoughts about them.

S60 browser

Available in S60 operating system as a default browser. Default browser cannot be changed.
Based on WebKit like mentioned previously.
Proper support for normal web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript)
Decent Flash support, although most of the Flash pages are mostly unusable, e.g. Youtube. I don't use any Flash-based services with this browser.
Supports WML.
Small differences in different S60 platforms / feature packs. Starting from S60 3.2 (3rd edition Feature Pack 2), it should be possible to update only the browser, not whole OS. At the moment there hasn't been these kinds of updates.
I use mostly S60 browser but in some web pages it just doesn't work, in these cases e.g. Opera Mini is a good choice. It is difficult to give good guidelines when to use S60 browser and when Opera Mini, usually web pages that are "complex" work better with Opera Mini.
Nokia is porting S60 browser to some of its S40 devices, but I don't have any experiences about it.

Opera Mini

Opera Mini is a Java-based browser that is available for multiple devices / operating systems.
The browser is fast and doesn't use so much memory. When I was using Nokia E70, S60 browser ran out of memory quite often, but Opera Mini worked fine, even if you were listening music when you were browsing.
Mini uses servers which handle the rendering between your phone and the web site you are accessing. This enables small traffic costs if you don't have unlimited data plan.
Mini enables accessing your favourite bookmarks anywhere, anytime if you are using Opera Link. This is a nice feature if you lose all the information from your phone, you still have your favourite bookmarks with you.
Mini is a stable browser that can handle any kind of web page, excluding Flash pages.
I've had multiple times difficulties using WiFi with Opera Mini.
You can get Opera Mini by visiting the address mini.opera.com using your phone’s default Web browser.
Supports WML.

Skyfire

The only non-Java-based browser that uses server between your phone and the web site you are accessing.
You can download Skyfire by going to get.skyfire.com with your phone's default browser.
Like almost all other browsers, Skyfire supports most used web standards.
Has probably the best Flash support, but still not fully usable.
I haven't used so much, but I've had quite many difficulties getting Skyfire to work properly.
I haven't been able to update Skyfire version 0.9 to my Nokia N96.

Opera Mobile 9.5

When I had Nokia E70, I was mostly using Opera Mobile 8.65 which felt better browser than E70's default S60 browser although Opera Mobile 8.65 wasn't providing full Web rendering.
Opera Mobile 9.5 has full Web rendering
When used with X1, Opera Mobile was much better than IE.
Supports WML.

Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 6.1

I used SonyEricsson X1 Xperia for some time and tried it's default browser, Internet Explorer.
If I would need to describe this browser with one word, it would be lousy.
Although I like browsing with mobile devices, I must say I wasn't feeling like this when I was using IE.
Zoom doesn't work properly.
There are three different rendering possibilities (one column, fit to screen and desktop). Fit to screen is the option.
I wasn't using X1 for so long, but it seemed that it has the same rendering engine than Internet Explorer 6.
I must admit that some part of these lousy experiences can be caused by the device which wasn't so good either.

Bolt browser

Like Opera Mini, Bolt is Java-based browser which uses also server between the phone and the web page you are using.
Still in beta.
Good URL auto-complete, just like in Opera Mini.
Almost identical features when compared to Opera Mini.
One of the biggest difference is magnifier, shown in second picture below.
Seems fast, just like Opera Mini.

S60 browser on S40

Like I mentioned previously, Nokia is porting current S60 browser to some S40 devices.
Unfortunately I don't have any experiences about this browser. If you do, please share them with us.
Nokia is not porting this browser to every S40 devices, because they recently introduced Nokia 6216 which has Opera Mini pre-installed.

Safari on iPhone / iTouch

Like mentioned previously iPhone's Safari is based on the same WebKit engine than S60's and Android's browser.
Another thing that everybody knows is that this version of Safari doesn't have Flash-support.
I haven't compared S60's and iPhone's browser but nowadays it feels that iPhone's browser is faster than Nokia N96's.
Safari supports all the necessary web technologies, like HTML, CSS and JavaScript and this makes it suitable for convenient browsing.
Don't support WML.

Safari on Android

Most probably quite close to S60's and iPhone's Safari because all are based on the same Webkit engine.
I would guess that browsing is convenient.
I haven't used Android-based phones yet, but they should be available in Finland in Autumn.

Netfront

Mostly pre-installed to SonyEricsson phones.
Available for S60 also.
If I remember correctly, newest versions have full Web support.
Used at least to be fast (when I was using Nokia E70).
Doesn't fully support WML.

I left out some older browsers, e.g. Services -browser which can be found from older Nokia S60 devices and Nokia S40's built-in browser that are both developed in-house by Nokia. These browsers use mobile rendering, meaning that they put all the content on the web page to one, long column.

You can divide mobile browsers e.g. to following categories

Full Web (Almost all new browsers)
Java-based (Opera Mini, Bolt Browser)
Server in the middle (Opera Mini, Bolt Browser, Skyfire)
Mobile rendering (Older browsers, but some new browsers have this as an extra feature)

All browsers support normal web technologies, including JavaScript that enables for example AJAX-based services. Some are still supporting also WML. Personally I don't have so much experiences about different implementations of JavaScript but the more complex services you make, the more important is to test with different browsers. "Normal and simple" services that are using basic HTML and CSS works fine with all browsers.

Although Flash is supported in some browsers, you cannot really say that Flash-based services would be usable with mobile device.

In future it is interesting to see will for example Nokia be sued because their default browser cannot be changed or uninstalled in S60. The similar situation is in Windows and Microsoft have sued for multiple times because IE cannot be uninstalled.

I've noticed that few features annoy me in mobile browsers, and unfortunately there isn't any browser that wouldn't have these features. One is URL auto-complete, in Opera Mini and Bolt it works like it should but not in S60 browser. Second is that Java-based browsers open "text editor" when entering text, not like S60 browser which works like PC-browser when entering text, just showing normally text that you are writing to input field.

If you want the best possible user experience, I suggest you learn how to use shortcuts. The problem is that every browser are using them differently.

Opera Mini has lots of shortcuts.

As you can see, at the moment there are multiple good browsers for your mobile and only you can decide what you prefer. My choices are S60 and sometimes Opera Mini and I might start using Bolt as well.

The ways I'm using Twitter and Facebook

2009-04-30T09:00:00.000+03:00

I thought to tell you how I'm using Twitter and Facebook, if you are interested.

Nowadays quite many have combined their Twitter and Facebook updates, but I'm not going to. Reason for this is that I use Twitter as a microblog; I share my "geeky thoughts" there, and not what I'm doing (except geeky things). In Facebook I usually share everyday life things although I'm losing interest to Facebook.

I don't use aggregator services, like HelloTxt that enables updating multiple social service simply because I don't want to share my credentials.

I usually tweet using Dabr with my phone or TweetDeck if I'm next to my computer. In TweetDeck I have some work related searches configured.

Picture 1. With Dabr, twittering is easy.

Picture 2. TweetDeck offers good twittering experience on desktop. You can also configure different searches.

So, if you want to follow my "geeky thoughts", follow me in Twitter. If you are more interested in my personal life, follow me in Facebook.

Saving Private Phone

2009-04-30T07:00:00.000+03:00

Have you ever lost all your contacts and/or calendar and you don't have backups available? I have. I have also good news for you. Nokia and Google have been offering contact synchronization for some time now. Obviously, you have to have Google account to be able to use Google Sync and Nokia Account to be able to use Nokia's Ovi services.

I'll show you how it is done in both cases so that you can deside which one you want to use. I'm not personally using these synchronization services because I have company-confidential data in my phone. I suggest that also you think twice before start sending information to Google or to Nokia although these services should be secure.

There is also another aspect than security why to avoid these online-services. What if Google or Nokia would be down for multiple days? Or even start charging suddenly for the service? It is not so long time ago when Gmail was down for some time. Remember, this can happen to any service.

Google Sync

It seems that to be able to use Google Sync, you have to set up it manually following these detailed instructions if you have S60 3rd edition phone. If you have some other phone, you should start from here.

In general it seems that Google is not offering automatic synchronization, so you have do everything manually. This of course makes it more difficult for the big audience to start using the service, although atleast S60 specific instructions were really detailed.

Ovi Sync

Unlike Google, Ovi (or Nokia) is setting up sync profile as automatically as possible. You can setup synchronization profile either using only your mobile phone or then with a desktop browser. The procudure is exactly the same with mobile browser and desktop.

Log in to Ovi.com
Choose your device pre-selected for you and enter your phone number
Ovi sends you a SMS with sync information
Open SMS and save sync information
Start syncing

As you can see this is really straight-forward. Here are screenshots from this process.

Picture 1. Log in to Ovi.com.

Picture 2. Choose your phone model that is preselected and enter your phonenumber.

Picture 3. Wait for SMS.

Picture 4. Open SMS and save Sync settings.

Picture 5. Everything is set for syncing.

Picture 6. When ever you want to sync your device, you just need to press Sync.

After you've synchronized your phone, you can access the information even if your device would get lost or stolen.

Shopping centre in your pocket

2009-03-12T08:45:00.001+02:00

Nokia Research Center is having a trial in Kamppi Shopping Centre in Helsinki where they are offering the content of info board to mobile channel. In addition to this there are also coupongs (Etusetelit) with different discounts, special offers (Erikoistarjoukset), shop listing (Liikkeet), maps (Kartta), seach possibility (Sivuston haku) and changing ads (picture below search) like shown below in figures 1-3.

Figures 1-3. Kamppi Shopping Centre's mobile home page

The service consists of list of shops and when you choose a shop, you'll see its opening hours, homepage and phone number. You can also rate the shop and see where it is located.

Figures 4-8. Shop listing and information about the shop.

You can get different discounts using coupongs like illustrated in figure 9. By showing this code in a restaurant, you would get an euro discount from a beer.

Figure 9. Discount coupong.

It is much easier to find shops using mobile channel's search functionality than searching them from traditional info board.

Figure 10. Search -functionality.

When you are going next time to Kamppi you don't need to stand in front of info board anymore if you are looking something. You might also find some interesting discounts from the mobile channel. You can access the service by entering kamppi.nokia.mobi to your mobile phone's browser.

You might wonder how users will find this service? There are posters around the shopping centre the address as well as video ad in the screens. Because this is a browser based solution, it should work in every phone that has browser.

I really like this service, especially because I don't need to stand in front of the info board if I'm looking some store etc. The concept is easy to copy and use in any shopping centre or fare and this way offer good user experience to visitors.

Disclaimer: Nordea is participating to the trial and I have also been involved but thoughts mentioned above are my own.

Little help for power problems

2009-03-01T22:00:00.000+02:00

I believe everyone have had some issues with their phone's power consumption. In today's smartphones the situation is even worse, because you can use lots of their features simultaneously and this way use even more power. For me it is quite normal to browse, use Nokia Email, listen to music and navigate at the same time. When you add here calling, taking pictures, writing SMSs etc. you'll soon find yourself in situation where you would really need to use the phone but the battery is dead.

I've managed to run to these kinds of problems with my Nokia N96 quite often and started thinking of buying an extra battery, just like in my digital camera. Unfortunately there are some problems having two different batteries, for example charging and changing the battery when you need to switch your phone off. Due to these problems I decided to struggle with one battery.

Today I ran to a little helper called DC-11, which enables you to charge your phone wherever you are.

Picture 1. Nokia DC-11 gives you an extra boost.

After charging DC-11 I noticed that my N96 switched itself to power saving mode which means that battery is about to die relatively soon. I plugged in DC-11 and was able to move freely, make calls etc. and after about 2 hours the battery of N96 was full.

DC-11 is a really handy and small gadget that helps you before the batteries get better and power consumption lower.

WRT Widgets and Aptana Studio

2009-02-25T18:54:00.019+02:00

Web runtime and widgets seem to be quite a hot topic at the moment so I will probably write some introductory post about widgets later. However, now I am going to take a look at the available tools from Nokia for widget creation. If you don't know anything about web runtime or widgets you might want to familiarize yourself with them before reading this. I'm not going to any deep detail here though.

Nokia recently announced The Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio. Aptana Studio is a popular web-development environment that offers integrated language support for HTML, DOM, JavaScript, and CSS technologies. Aptana Studio is available free of charge under an open source licence and is based on the Eclipse framework. The Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio provides features that enable the creation, editing, testing, and deployment of WRT widgets from within Aptana Studio.

The plugin allows you to preview widgets created for WRT 1.0 and also have code completion for that. You can also develop widgets for S60 5th Edition and WRT 1.1 but the Platform Service APIs are not included in the plugin, so the autocomplete feature will not work for the API functions. Also, widgets using the Platform Service APIs must be tested using the S60 5th Edition emulator. Hopefully we'll see a full WRT 1.1 support in the plugin sometime soon.

The Forum Nokia pages say that the installation of the Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio isn’t supported if you are running the Eclipse IDE and using the Aptana Studio Plugin. However, since Aptana is Eclipse based, I found installing the WRT Plugin actually possible. In case you have done some S60 C++ development or maybe Java development, you already might have Eclipse or Carbide.c++ installed. In this case you might not want to install the standalone version of Aptana Studio. I used my existing Carbide.c++ installation and added the Aptana Studio Plugin and the Nokia WRT Plugin on top of that. EDIT: I noticed that only parts of the WRT Plugin will work with Eclipse/Carbide so installing the standalone version of Aptana Studio is recommended. You can still do widget development in Eclipse/Carbide but your tools will be limited.

This is an optional part if you don't want to install the standalone version of Aptana Studio. In your Eclipse/Carbide.c++ installation you can add new update sites to download extension for Eclipse. Add http://update.aptana.com/update/studio/3.2/ as an update site. You can find this from the menu path Help > Software Updates > Find and Install. Select Search for new features to install and New Remote Site.

Confirm and accept the license agreement that follows. You'll also need to accept installation of some components and finally restart Eclipse. After the restart Aptana plugin wants to install Aptana Subversion Support. Install that as well and restart again.

After restart, your installation should have a My Aptana tab open. This is also the case if you have a standalone version of Aptana Studio. Select Plugins and you should find Nokia WRT Plug-in for Aptana Studio. Get it. (Alternatively, you could add http://release.aptana.com/install/nokia1.0/ as a new update site and install the WRT plugin that way.)

Installing the WRT plugin will add a new item in your development environment's projects. You should now see Web Runtime (S60) under File > New > Project. Creating a new project with this wizard will create the minimum set of required files for developing a web runtime widget.

You can easily validate, package and deploy a widget from the project context menu.

The widget can be deployed to either an S60 device via Bluetooth or to S60 3rd FP2 or S60 5th Edition emulator.

Once you have deployed the widget package to the emulator environment you have to locate the wgz file from the File Manager application and install it. The widget package can be found from C:\Other.

You will probably also want to enable debugging facilities for JavaScript. This can be done by activating script logging from S60 browser settings (General > Java/ECMA Script errors).

Location, location, location

2009-02-22T20:25:00.000+02:00

"Location, location, location" - I bet almost everyone has heard that phrase. You might wonder why it is used in a blog that covers mobility and technology?

The answer is Location Based Services (LBS) which are discussed more and more everyday. With the help of LBS, you can easily let your customers know where you are instead of taking your services wherever the customers are.

Previously only operators were able to know where you were, or actually where your phone was, using GSM cells. It is now almost an everyday business for service providers to utilize the same information in their services. Good example would be Google Maps that uses both GPS and GSM cell information for defining your location. If GPS is not available, GSM cell information is used like illustrated in picture 1.

Picture 1. GSM cell information is used for defining your location if GPS is not available.

Now some of the service providers have started sharing your location. One good example is Google Latitude which was introduced lately as a new feature in Google Maps illustrated in picture 2.

Picture 2. Latitude shows where your friends are.

Luckily Latitude don't show your Google Contacts' location automatically so you need to ask their permission and then they will be added to Latitude. This task is extremely easy because you can choose to add all of your contacts same time without writing their e-mail addresses like illustrated in picture 3.

Picture 3. You can add all of your Contacts easily.

You can see easily where all of your friends are with a single climps like shown in picture 4.

Picture 4. You can see all your friends location easily.

Like you can see in picture 5 you can also edit your information in Latitude and luckily there are also privacy settings, so you don't necessarily need to show your location to everybody. You can also manually define your location, so you can be wherever you want.

Picture 5. You can edit your information and set privacy settings.

In addition to mobile service, Google is also offering a Latitude widget to your iGoogle page, so you can see where your friends are even if you are not using your mobile phone. An example is shown in picture 6.

Picture 6. Latitude gadget in your iGoogle page.

Unfortunatelly Latitude doesn't offer any interaction methods with your friends, e.g. chat or some kind of microblogging. This kind of feature would be really handy in some circumstances.

Google isn't the only service provider who is offering social location based services, for example Nokia Research Lab is offering FriendView which also utilizes your phone's location. You can see example in picture 7.

Picture 7. Nokia's FriendView shows your location.

There are some diffirences between Nokia's FriendView and Google Latitude. FriendView offers microblogging possibility (picture 8.) that Latitude lacks. On the other hand FriendView doesn't have gadget/widget that you could add to your iGoogle, or similar page, but they have a web-based service like shown in picture 9. Like Latitude, FriendView offers the possibility see where your friends are (pictures 10 and 11.)

Picture 8. Microblogging with FriendView.

Picture 9. FriendView has a webpage where you can see where you and your friends are.

Picture 10. Also FriendView shows where your friends are.

Picture 11. FriendView shows you the listing of your friends, just like Latitude.

I think the biggest difference between FriendView and Latitude is that Latitude is "a real" product and FriendView is more of an experimentation. This being said, I haven't seen or heard that Google would be offering advertising based on your location but I would guess this will happen relatively soon.

Everybody that has been using services that are showing your location knows that it doesn't work well indoors. Don't worry, there is a solution to this - indoor location. It is possible to define your indoor location with the help of wireless accesspoints. Nokia Research Center has written an interesting article (pdf) about indoor positioning. I hope we'll see some real life experiments about this soon.

It is interesting to see when location is integrated to your phonebook. Imagine seeing all your contacts with their location. Nokia is for example offering Contacts on Ovi through Nokia Betalabs, which allows you to chat with your Nokia Ovi or Google contacts. This service could also utilize positioning information. What if Nordea that is shown in brackets in picture 12. would be my location?

Picture 12. Contact on Ovi could show also location.

In addition to location, your phonebook could also show all the conversations that you had with your contacts no matter what method (SMS, e-mail, IM) you have been using. Nokia Betalabs is offering a Conversation application that is grouping your SMSs based on the sender. You can see "the conversation" with the person, just like in iPhone.

Digia Phonebook

2009-02-20T20:08:00.006+02:00

It has really been a while since I posted something. Luckily Teppo has been writing some great stuff meanwhile! Anyway, inspired by Teppo's post about fullscreen caller ID, I'm going to post a shameless advertisement in here now. It's all about Digia Phonebook. The thing is that I'm using the software myself and I think it's great.

The fundamental idea behind Digia Phonebook is that you don't have to manage the contacts of your colleagues and customers manually. The software can be integrated to a backend directory service system like Active Directory, LDAP or CRM. This allows an access to (possibly) thousands of up-to-date contacts with detailed information. The contact information isn't limited to your own company but you can also transfer customer's contact information into the software. This can also be limited via access rights. All of the users are identified based on their phone number.

Using Digia Phonebook is simple. You can search for a contact by their name, title, organization or location and immediately call or SMS the search results.

The application is always on, so when someone in your contacts calls you, information for incoming call is displayed. The information and colors that will be shown are customizable to suit your own preferences.

Digia Phonebook client is available to pretty much all major mobile platforms now, including S60 2nd, 3rd and 5th edition, UIQ 3.x, iPhone, Android G1 and all the devices with Java MIDP 2.x and CLCD 1.1 or later. The server side solution just simply needs a Windows or Linux host with Apache, MySQL and PHP. The server can be located either in customer's premises or be hosted in Digia's premises.

Enhance your S60 3.2 with full screen caller ID

2009-02-19T08:00:00.001+02:00

It is nothing new that you are able to assign a picture to a contact, but S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 enables you to use full screen caller ID instead of the "small print". This is a nice way to enhance your experience when calling or receiving a call.

1. An example of full screen caller ID (I know that you probably don't want this guy calling to you... :)

To be able to use full screen caller ID, you need of course to have the desired pictures. I noticed that if you add picture in Outlook and then synchronize contact to S60 3.2 (N96 in my case), only small caller ID is shown. It is the same case if you have assigned a picture to a contact and then remove the original picture.

To avoid this, you have two options. You can use fonebook for fetching pictures from Facebook and assiging them automatically in Outlook. Symbian-Guru told recently how to do this. I chose more "conventional way" and desided to do this manually. The reasons why I chose this approach were that I didin't want to install Fonebook to my work laptop that has Outlook, I still have a bunch of friends / relatives / colleagues that are not in Facebook and I'm not going to assign a picture to every contact. I'll be assigning pictures little by little.

I created a sub-folder called Contacts to Images -folder in N96's mass memory and transferred desired pictures to Contacts -folder and assigned them to contacts. Whenever I take a picture that I want to assign to contact, I'll copy it also to Contacts -folder to avoid the case where original picture is removed and N96 shows only the small caller ID. I noticed that N96 is not trying to stretch the image, so if the image is smaller than 240x320, it won't be shown in full screen.

I wonder what will happen if I need to restore my N96, will these changes be included in the backup? I'll keep you informed if I run to this.

Palm Pre and WebOS, what is it for you?

2009-01-30T22:00:00.000+02:00

Palm introduced a new and fancy Palm Pre in CES some time ago. Palm isn't so popular in Finland (or in Scandinavia?) but I believe it has some interesting possibilities for all of us. The main enabler is it's new operating system called WebOS. At the moment there isn't too much information about the WebOS, but all in all this seems like an interesting mobile phone and concept.

1. Palm Pre. Images available at Palm Pre -gallery.

It is interesting to see how market will adopt touch-screen with a slider. I think this is a good idea, because the user has an option to use either one. I really like Nokia N96's slider mechanism, but every now and then I wish it would have also a touch-screen.

Pre's technical specifications are quite similar to any other smartphone; big screen, all necessary communication methods (GSM, 3G, WiFi, bluetooth), enough memory and good processor. One interesting detail is that Palm offers a cordless charger for Pre. The charger uses induction for charging, but if I understood correctly this is not included in the sales package.

Although Palm Pre is meant for anyone, I've listed some of the possibilities that it offers to users and developers.

Users

As a user, you are probably enjoying the big screen that is suitable for example for browsing and watching movies. As a "all-in-one" device, I believe Palm offers a good music experience also. Palm has basically the same Webkit-based browser that S60 devices and iPhone/iPod Touch have.

You can use Pre with our without physical keyboard and I believe most of the users like this kind of possibility. Touchstone, the cordless charger, sounds first nice but when you start thinking it a little more, it might not be so convenient. At least I usually browse or play with my phone when it is being charged. When using Touchstone, this is difficult or impossible. So I think you will need 2 different chargers. On the other hand, cordless charging is a really nice feature which will be more and more popular in the future.

It doesn't matter which smartphone you are using, still you usually need to install some 3rd party software to make your life easier and better. Hude wrote a really good article about mobile platform diverseness and Palm brings yet another platform to the markets. Although platform is based on web technologies, it might take some time before you'll get all your favourite applications working in Palm Pre.

One of the coolest (and probably one of the most useful) feature is combining contacts and other information from different services, like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and corporate e-mail system. Palm Pre should be also able to combine conversations meaning that you can start with IM and continue with SMS and they are shown as an one conversation thread. Palm calls this feature Synergy. These kind of features are really good when people are using more and more different services. It is really time consuming to be active in several social networks.

Palm Pre promises that it is able to automate (or think ahead) in some services, for example if you are running late from a meeting, Palm Pre should be able to estimate your arrival time using GPS and maps and send a note to meeting participants. It is interesting to see how well these automated features work because usually they don't.

It is interesting to see what happens now that there are more and more devices with a really good browser. Good browsers combined with today's "cloud thinking" can be a success. Companies are for example taking or investigating if it would be beneficiary to take some of the services to a cloud. When the services are in the cloud, employees could easily access them with their mobile phone as long as the communication channel is secure enough. I believe this will fasten the mobile browsing even more. One of the obstacles offering intranet services for mobile employees have been wrongly designed intranet and connections to intranet.

Developers

As a developer, you must be thrilled that all the applications in Palm Pre have been build using web technologies (XHTML, JavaScript and CSS) or atleast they are stating this in the introduction video.

According to Palm, there are around 10 million web developers, so there should be a big enough developer community. Application distribution program will be vital, just like Apple has shown. I still have difficulties believing that there are more than 15.000 applications in Apple's AppStore. It remains to be seen how well Palm will handle this.

I believe that due to lack of information, developers have more questions than answers. Here are some questions that came to my mind:

Will the WebOS be fully open? Are there some restrictions that application can or cannot do?

Can application access memory card or SIM? Is this possible via browser?

What kind of billing system there will be? In Palm and in the Application Store.

When the SDK will be available?

How easy is it to port existing Palm software to be interoperable with Palm Pre?

Unfortunately there isn't too much information available yet about Palm Pre and my views are based on the Palm Pre introduction video. See it yourself and check if you are also amazed at the people applausing for the fact that Palm Pre has a removable battery?!?

Streaming your favourite music with your mobile phone

2009-01-30T20:00:00.001+02:00

Streaming music has been possible to your home computer for a quite some time, e.g. using internet radios or different music services. Smartphones are getting closer and closer to computers, and it has been possible to stream music to your S60 smartphone using Nokia's Internet radio. You can find installing instructions in above mentioned link if your S60 doesn't have it pre-installed, my Nokia N96 had it.

One of the services that offers streaming music through a browser is Last.fm. One of its benefits is that it offers you the music that you like or at least similar artists when traditional radio stations play random music. You can also share your favourite music/genre/artist with your friends. It was nice to notice that it is possible to use Last.fm -service with S60, the only thing you need is Mobbler. Mobbler is a Last.fm music player and it also enables you to scrobble tracks that are played with S60 Music player.

1. Mobbler in S60 plays the artists you've added to Last.fm.

2. Mobbler looks nice also in landscape.

3. If you are using S60's Music player, Mobbler scrobbles music that you've listened.

When you choose the left icon, Mobbler enables you to buy music from Amazon's aStore, but the store is not mobile optimized. This weakens the user experience. You can also "Love a track", choose next track or "Ban a track".

4. There is also a possibility to buy tracks from Amazon's aStore.

5. Unfortunatey Amazon's store isn't optimized for mobile.

6. Amazon's aStore and S60's browser.

Mobbler enables you to easily expand the music that you are listening and you don't need to carry all your favorite music with you. You can also easily offer better musical experiences in different parties, because you can always choose the desired music based on the people and / or the feeling just by opening Mobbler. If you have your music in your S60 and there is right equipment available, you can use your smartphone as a media center.

When you are using Mobbler for streaming, you should use WiFi or have unlimited dataplan, otherwise your phone bill will be enormous. I've experienced that 3G is enough for music streaming.

One other thing that you need to keep in mind when using these "always-on" services is battery life. At the moment batteries don't last too long, but luckily this is improving all the time. For the time being, you should make sure your charger is near.

Putting videos to your phone

2009-01-05T14:00:00.000+02:00

Phone screens are getting bigger and better all the time. This gives the users the opportunity to watch their favourite videos or TV series wherever whenever. For encouraging the users to do this, Nokia atleast have included some movies or trailers to their smartphones. Nokia N96 had Transformers, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic had Dark Knight's trailer and if I remember correctly Nokia N95 had Spider Man 3.

Sony on the other hand has taken little different approach and they are selling UMD movies that can be used in Sony PSP. Personally I don't understand this kind of approach because why should I buy another copy of my favourite movie which I have on DVD (or on Blu-Ray)?

Unfortunatelly putting videos to your phone is not too straight-forward because you need to convert the desired video so that it has the right resolution, good enough bitrate for video and sound and good enough frame rate. The better quality you want, the longer converting usually takes and the bigger output file gets.

Nokia offers a tool for this called Nokia Video Converter that is bundled to PC Suite and Ovi Suite. Unfortunatelly the program has still some flaws. I tried to use it for few times but it crashed and when it didn't crash, my Nokia N96 didn't have any video - only sound.

Luckily there are other (free) converting tools for Windows like Super, HandBrake, MediaCoder and Vio. I thought to test all of these, just to get some experiences and to see do they work similarly and are there big difference in converting speed.

My test environment were Windows Vista Home Premium with 2 GB of memory and a 17 minute avi-file with DVD quality. The file size was 121 MB, frame width 800 and frame height 450.

Basically every software converted the desired file in almost same time (7-9 minutes), and with same output size (56 MB). For some reason files converted using HandBrake and MediaCoder refused to work in N96. I didn't investigate the reason, probably some wrong setting caused this because MediaCoder used to work with different file some time ago.

Vio offered broad list of settings for different phones, but it lacked N96. Overall this is really important because settings are something than clear. Vio suggested 128 bitrate for N95, which seemed to be ok also in N96 but 400 that I used with Super was much better. With Vio's settings, the whole process was extremely fast, it only took 2 minutes and the output file was only 20 MB.

It seems that the most important thing in converting is to use pre-loaded settings. After this converting is easy and it can take some time and it is worth it. In future your trips will go much faster by watching interesting movies or series.

Inspired on discussions in Jaiku I'll try out soon a VGA quality video in my N96, then I could watch it from hotel's tv when I'm travelling. After all, N96 came with a S-Video cable.

Broadcasting your life with Nokia viNe

2008-12-08T00:12:00.025+02:00

Nokia announced viNe sometime ago. Someone could call it as a modified SportsTracker that gives you the opportunity to share the route you have traveled, pictures and videos you have taken, or songs you have listened. ViNe records your journey using GPS when it is available. If it is not available, viNe will connect last and current position with the shortest possible line.

1. Starting point.

2. ViNe saves the music you've listened and pictures and videos you've taken.

3. After you've accomplished your route, you can add tags to your viNe.

I'm not sure what one should call it, in a way it is a modified SportsTracker but it is also a subset of SportsTracker because the application doesn't offer as much training information as SportsTracker. Maybe viNe is a SportsTracker for an everyday user who is not interested in all the possible training information? You cannot for example specify type of workout and see as much information about your journey/training but the upload is much more convenient and you can add tags. ViNe shares your information to everyone and you cannot restrict this in any way. In SportsTracker you were able to restrict your audience. I think this is something that some users will not like.

Few other differences between SportsTracker and viNe are that in viNe you are able to move in the map. It doesn't utilize the map information that Maps is using but it caches the map information so it works quite fine. When you are viNing, you cannot see any details of your route, e.g. distance and speed that you can see when you are using SportsTracker.

When you upload your viNe it will go to two different places, to viNe and to SportsTracker. ViNe will also replace your SportsTracker user ID with Nokia Account user ID. This means that you will get rid of one useless user ID. ViNe probably tells you about this, but I didn't notice this and had some difficulties accessing SportsTracker before I realized that my user ID had changed. I think that this was a really good idea from Nokia. I hope this trend continues because nobody likes too many user IDs.

4. Your viNes are published to viNe -service.

5. Same time your viNes are published to SportsTracker -service.

I don't know what is the main idea behing viNe, and I haven't seen any discussion about this, although I haven't been searching so much. One idea that came to my mind is that Nokia tries to use social networks for modeling the world's most interesting places. This would be different approach than Google's Drive. Do you have any other ideas?

I first thought that viNe would have been introduced through Nokia Beta Labs like SportsTracker, but apparently Nokia thinks it is a finalized product. I would like to disagree with this because at least I have had some difficulties with it, e.g. it crashes quite often with my N96. I just updated my N96 to version 12.043. I hope viNe works better with this new software version.

Here is a list of bugs and some features I would like to see in the future:

It tags only the first songs name and artist. (See picture 3.)
Sometimes it tags city (Helsinki) but not always. It could also tag parts of the city like Punavuori, Ullanlinna and Kamppi.
It could show album art of the listened music.

6. Album art is not shown.

ViNe's internet service's search should work better. At the moment it is difficult to find anything or anybody.
Could there be a way of following your friends?
Could there be a possibility to restrict your audience?
Could there be a possiblity to buy music that someone else has been listening in their viNes'?
ViNe should automatically upload pictures and videos to Share on Ovi.
Embedded widget could show only desired viNes, e.g. your own or your friends. Usually there are desired audience you want to share information with or follow.

7. Embedded viNe widget shows all the viNes.

Could viNe be combined with FriendView? You could see where your friend has been or is at the moment?
Could viNe updates be offered in RSS format?
Could you send your viNe to some of your friend, e.g. "look at my cool journey"? This could be also available in mobile format.
Could you provide more information during viNing, e.g. distance?
Could viNe show a dotted line in saved journey when GPS hasn't been available?
Could viNe use either cellular or WiFi positioning when GPS is not available?
Is Nokia doing any co-operation with different heart rate monitoring companies, e.g. Polar or Suunto? This kind of co-operation would provide all the necessary information that you need when working out.

All in all this application seems interesting and I think I'll continue using both viNe and SportsTracker. You have to remember that viNe and SportsTracker are almost identical; viNe is basically a SportsTracker with a facelift. If you want to follow my viNes, search for teppoj.

AppStore vs. Download! - The good, the bad and the ugly

2008-12-03T11:00:00.000+02:00

I'm not a great Apple fan, but I must say that I admire how they have been able to change people's way of using different mobile applications. There is a wide range of different mobile applications for S60 and other mobile devices, but still the usage is relatively low if you compare it with applications available for iPhone or iTouch. Kai Öistämö from Nokia mentioned in Symbian Smartphone Show that there are around 10.000 applications for S60. This is quite a big number of applications but the truth is that without a proper distribution channel and easy enough installation method nobody will use these applications.

Apple on the other hand have managed to introduce 10.000 applications through AppStore in a relatively short time. If I remember correctly AppStore was opened on around June 2008 which means 10.000 applications in less than 6 months. 148apps.com have created a tribute page which shows all the applications available in AppStore.

I listed some of the good, bad and ugly in Apple's and Nokia's way of offering applications and installing them. After these lists, there are multiple screenshots illustrating the user experience of finding and installing an application.

AppStore

The good (positive):

Offers wide range of applications.

Search works really well. This is important when you have lots of applications.

Fast. iPhone doesn't ask too many questions when using AppStore.

Really easy to use. Just browse to an application that you like, click install and installation process starts.

Updates. AppStore informs the user about possible updates.

Easy payment process. Uses iTunes payment methods.

The bad (negative):

The only place for finding applications.

Applications don't have a test period, at least I haven't noticed this.

iTunes id is needed for installing even free applications.

iTunes is the only payment method.

The ugly (improvements and thoughts):

Suggestions. AppStore could suggest applications that other users have installed, just like e.g. Amazon.com. AppStore through iTunes does this.

What happens to compatibility if Apple introduces more devices?

Download!

The good (positive):

Not the only place for finding applications because you can find applications anywhere from the Internet.

Most of the applications offer trial period possibilities.

You can use any credit card for paying.

The bad (negative):

Only limited number of applications.

Search doesn't work well enough.

Somebody can find it difficult to use because device asks quite many questions, e.g. used internet connection and where to install the application.

Relatively slow when updating content in different folders.

The ugly (improvements and thoughts):

Usability should be much better.

Updating different folders should be more seamless, not asking question from the user all the time.

Number of available applications should be much higher.

Screenshots of installing an application from the AppStore:

1. You can find AppStore from the main menu. AppStore also informs the user about possible updates (red 1 in AppStore's top-right corner).

2. AppStore advertises recent applications.

3. Applications are divided to Paid and Free sections.

4. There is also an application Top list.

5. Searching for Facebook application.

6. Search results.

7. More information about the application.

8. Free button toggles to Install button when you press it. After pressing Install, the installation starts.

9. You need to use iTunes' credentials to be able to install applications.

10. Installation process ongoing.

11. Installation finished. You can find installed application from the main menu.

Screenshots of installing an application from Download!:

1. You'll find Download! from the main menu.

2. Download! asks used connection really often, although phone should be able to choose desired connection.

3. Search possibilities after choosing Options - Search and about to search Facebook -application.

4. One search result but it is not shown on the first page.

5. You have to scroll down to see all the results.

6. The search result.

7. After choosing Details - Get, phone shows information about the application.

8. Choosing where to install the application.

9. After installation application can be found from Applications folder.

10. Most of the applications have trial possibilities like ForecaWeather.

11. You can also use multiple credit cards for paying.

Experimenting with media streaming

2008-11-20T18:40:00.007+02:00

Inspired by Nokia Home Media we tried out media streaming between various devices. The setup included two PCs with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux, a Playstation 3 and a Nokia N96.

First we tried streaming video from Linux to N96. We faced our first obstacle when starting Home Media in N96. The software tried to use previously defined WLAN access point and didn't offer the available ones. The access point had to be specifically selected from the settings. If the previously defined access point is not available it would be logical to show the ones at hand.

Setting up a media server on Linux is pretty easy using the Mediatomb software. Basically you just select the files to be shared with a browser user interface and that's it. The problems start when trying to view the files with N96 though. You can see the shared files just fine but playback of music or video won't start. We simply were not able to get this work in spite of several attempts.

After this we tried streaming files from Linux to PS3. Mediatomb was easily found under the Video menu in PS3. Also streaming of videos worked but some of the video files didn't work automatically. Mediatomb is able to transcode videos on the fly to a supported format but we actually skipped that part for now. How about music? Ok, we navigated to music folder of the shared PC files, and none of the files were found. After a moment of confusion we realized that you actually have to select the media server under the Music menu in able to see and play music. This seems pretty silly because you still can see the whole shared file hiearchy. Anyway, after this streaming music worked ok.

There is a Windows counterpart for Mediatomb called TVersity which is free and has streaming and transcoding capabilities. For some reason TVersity couldn't be seen at all from N96 though.

What about streaming from N96 to PS3? First it was pretty difficult to see the N96 media server in PS3. We had to toggle share content/hide phone/show phone a couple of times to see the device in the PS3 list. Browsing files worked fine but selecting something to play didn't seem to make anything happen. After a while we noticed that it was actually just some buffering delay that took about 10 seconds. All in all everything worked and the quality was fine but the buffering was a bit annoying. Videos didn't work but this was to be expected as PS3 is a little picky about video formats.

Trying Play via home network from N96 didn't however work at all. This is because PS3 expects itself to be the controlling point and is just a media viewer and not a media renderer. This is quite a common problem with several home entertainment devices.

One of the biggest problems using these above mentioned media servers with N96 was that the devices didn't see each other straight away. This was an interesting geeky experiment but can't be recommended for serious use. Streaming from PC to PS3 works well with different platforms but if you want to use Nokia Home Media enabled devices the best option is to use Simple Center. Unlike the other media servers, Simple Center also works as a media renderer.

First impressions on Ovi Suite - no thanks

2008-11-17T21:00:00.001+02:00

I thought that I'll explore Nokia's relatively new Ovi Suite and start using it with my Nokia N96. After all Ovi Suite should be designed for NSeries phones. How wrong could I have been?

I'm not going to go through all the features Ovi Suite has because it has lots of those. Maybe best way of describing Ovi Suite is to say: "Ovi Suite tries to be your 'home entertainment center' that has everything, from music to maps and from videos to software updater and phone backups."

My first impression was that it is just a big mess and it is difficult to find or do anything. I don't know the reason for this because, for example, I think Nokia's phones, especially S60 phones are easy to use and I can find all the features easily. If I compare Ovi Suite to iTunes, iTunes was much easier to use in the beginning. I think the reason for this is a little similar to the fact some say that iPhone is much easier to use than S60 phones. After all with only few features it is easy to make usable product. This is a really big challenge for Nokia because they want to do all the possible things with their Ovi concept.

I have to be honest and say that I haven't used Ovi Suite enough to make a final decision, but it didn't impress me in the beginning. I'm for example getting "runtime error" when I've chosen "Yes, show me what's new" and try to resize the window.

This is something that you shouldn't get in this kind of product.

I'm a big fan of PC Suite and use it daily at work for synchronising calendar and contacts and sending SMSs using my PC. It seems that Ovi Suite is missing all these features; at least I didn't find them.

If I understood correctly, Nokia remade everything from scratch when they created Ovi Suite, and might eventually stop supporting PC Suite. I would like to say that this will not happen any time soon.

I think I'll try to reserve some time on weekend and explore Ovi Suite more, maybe my thoughts will change...

Should you be scared of mobile viruses?

2008-11-05T19:59:00.002+02:00

I attended to a quite big party recently and noticed that someone was trying to send me something via bluetooth. As you can guess, it was a mobile virus.

I did two things that you should never do. Firstly I had switched on bluetooth and secondly I answered yes to every possible question. I received a virus to my phone, but it refused to install. The reason for this was platform diverseness. Virus was from a S60 2nd edition phone and my phone (N96) was 3rd edition Feature Pack 2.

Now you might ask why did I do these things? The reason for this is work. I'm working with different kind of technologies and security is also part of it. The second reason is that I'm just interested in these things.

To answer the question in the title, I would say "No, not yet". There are a few mobile viruses, but at the moment there isn't any business case for virus writers / criminals. I have received a virus via bluetooth 5 times in 3 years or so. Here is a simple list how to avoid mobile viruses:

Switch off bluetooth. Bluetooth is a really common way to distribute viruses because usually operators filter viruses that are included in MMSes.

Don't install any programs if you haven't initiated the installation process. Viruses don't install themselves, usually the user needs to answer "yes" multiple times. It is also good to remember that cracked software can contain viruses, so don't use cracked software.

Don't give your phone to anyone you don't trust. At the moment there are some keyloggers for phones and software that records your phone calls, but if you don't allow anyone to install these, you are safe.

Install Anti-Virus software. If you want to be 100-percent sure, install Anti-Virus software. They work pretty well nowadays and don't slow down other processes in your phone.

Cute updates from Trolltech Qt Software

2008-11-05T10:19:00.011+02:00

Did you know that Qt is a spelling for cute? You do now if you didn't already. Anyway, there has been some interesting updates related to Qt technologies lately.

First of all Qt is going S60 and there is a technology preview available already. There is also a webcast about making Qt work in your S60 phone behind the link. The full release is scheduled for mid 2009. This is of course old news by now but what does this really mean? Well, first of all, Qt is going to reach millions of S60 phones. Secondly, developing cross-platform applications for S60, Windows CE and embedded Linux becomes available. Sounds great.

Another update from Qt Software (formerly Trolltech) is a Qt 4.5 technology preview. Most notable updates of the new version are runtime performance improvements, integration of latest WebKit that enables Netscape plugins and Flash, and 64-bit support for Mac OS X Leopard.

Finally, there is also a preview release of Qt Creator IDE. You can find a presentation video on the site as well. The final release is scheduled for early 2009. Qt Creator integrates an code editor, Qt Designer, graphical debugger front end and a cross-platform build tool. I have mentioned Qt Designer before. Qt Creator doesn't support mobile platforms yet but those are on the roadmap. The features supporting this include remote compilation and debugging as well as device deployment solutions.

Interesting to see how Nokia's involvement shows in the different announcements. Apparently Qt development proceeds as planned but there are certainly also some new issues related to mobile development.

Some thoughts from Symbian Smartphone Show 2008

2008-11-03T11:30:00.001+02:00

I had the opportunity to participate to Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 for the first time. It was work-related so I spent quite much time on S60's stand but still had free time for exploring the rest of the area. Now someone can ask why a Nordea employee would spend time on S60's stand? I'll answer to this question after a while.

I'm not going to give you a full coverage of the conference, just some miscellaneous thoughts:

I know that you've heard this before but Symbian is going open source. It will be interesting to see how this will affect Symbian development, smartphone market share and number of services.

User experience was seen extremely important. This is really good news, users are not interested in technology (well, some are), they want useful services.

Different kinds of widgets were popular topic. There are a number of companies that offer a widget platform, e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Nokia and Opera. MS and Apple weren't in the conference but they are also supporting widgets. It is interesting to see if widgets will keep their original purpose? I would say that companies will misuse widgets by thinking that it is the main thing now and everything users want is widgets. This shouldn't be the case, widgets are "small services" that provide you important information, not everything. A good example would be a financial widget that provides basic stock information, and when you want to sell or buy stock you are following you would open your desktop or mobile browser.

Be proactive, not reactive. Mobile users don't have multiple browser windows open for checking if something has happened. This why it is important to tell the user if there has happened something important. If I had to advertise Nordea's proactive products, I would mention account alert.

Nokia's Kai Öistämö mentioned in his keynote that Nokia offers an innovative platform to developers and they are not disdaining anyone. He actually mentioned Apple a few times and how they are behaving toward developers. I believe this kind of approach is really interesting and most probably there are lots of discussions internally when some service is competing with Nokia's own service. On the other hand, this keeps everyone awake and improving their services.

During the conference it was also mentioned that "Qt is going Symbian". Qt will be supported in S60 starting from S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 1. Qt offers real cross-platform support. Read benefits of Qt.

Overall Symbian Smartphone Show was worth participating and I can really recommend it to anyone who is working with / interested in Symbian / smartphones.

Ovi - door to success?

2008-10-31T21:57:00.014+02:00

I bet you've heard about Nokia's Ovi, but do you really know what is it about? If you know what it is about, do you know how Nokia will make money out of it?

The reason for these two questions is that one of my friends asked me recently: "That Nokia's Ovi, what is it? I would like to use it, but I don't know how and I don't know what I could do there." I explained to him shortly that Ovi is a place for accessing Nokia's different services. You can find maps, music, games, share pictures there and upload calendar, contacts and files. To be honest, this was a kind of lousy explanation. After this I started thinking a little more about Ovi.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Nokia's general idea is to offer a service where you find everything you need and you can access it with any device (pc, mac or phone). Maybe it could be described in a few words as "personalised multi-channel portal"? Personally I think that if something cannot be explained in a few sentences, it won't be a success among users.

This "personalised multi-channel portal" looks quite nice and if you synchronise your phone with Ovi, it can be an useful service.

I tried it once, just to check it out how it works with generic data and stopped using it. Reason for this is that I've have company confidential information in my phone and I really don't want to share it. I know Ovi should be safe, but still I don't want to take that risk. I believe this is a quite big question / threat for IT departments because syncrhonising is really easy.

I'm not saying that Ovi concept wouldn't become a success, but I must say there are still lots of work to be done. I've listed some of things that need to be improved before success.

Too many user IDs and passwords. At the moment there isn't any general user ID and password for Ovi services, because it builds up from different services. Users won't use a service which need own credentials for Ovi (synchronisation), music, sharing pictures and games.

Integration. Basically same as above, all services must be seamlessly integrated before it is usable. If I use a portal, I want to be able to use all services easily and smoothly.

Common user-interface. I believe that a portal should have common user-interface because otherwise the usage of different services will be much more difficult.

Logic. A service must be logical to use. I was really surprised when I went to Ovi.com, clicked Sign In and saw a page saying "contacts & calendar". My first thoughts were: "What did I do? I don't want to sign in to contacts & calendar, I want to sign in to Ovi".
Useful services. Ask yourself why would someone create credentials and start using this service daily and suggest it to his/her friends? When Ovi is "fully personalised multi-channel portal", I believe this is possible.

Don't get me wrong, there are also good features already existing, for example easy syncrhonisation and your content from your Share on Ovi comes automatically to your Ovi portal. Atleast I don't remember giving any Share on Ovi credentials to Ovi, probably sharing is done by checking e-mail addresses.

A more difficult question is: "How Nokia will make money out of this?" If I would need to guess, I would mention three different approaches:

Offer first free services, then start charging. This seems to be the case in the Maps for example. Most of the new handsets have a free license for a year, after this the user needs to purchase a license.

Offer first free services, then start charging small amounts. Almost like previous, but with smaller amounts of money, e.g. a few euros (even cents?) per month.

Bundle the price to handset. Nokia is trying this with Comes with Music and everyone is waiting for the results.

I suggest that you check Ovi out yourself and make your own decisions. So, go to Ovi with your desktop or mobile browser and explore it.

Tackling the mobile platform diverseness

2008-10-19T23:39:00.008+03:00

With the emergence of new mobile platforms like iPhone and Android the diverseness of mobile platforms is greatly increasing. This brings some trouble for developers who try to target as many platforms and as wide audience as possible. Let's take a look at the platforms currently at hand.

First of all there is Series 40 which is Nokia proprietary platform that accepts only applications developed with Java ME, formerly known as J2ME. Also Flash Lite has been supported since S40 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 for stand-alone applications and content. There are tens of millions S40 devices out there which makes this platform one of the most widely used.

When we are talking about Symbian, we are actually talking about three different platforms: S60 and UIQ. "But that is only two?", you say. Yes, but there is a compatibility break between S60 2nd and 3rd edition which means I'm counting them as two separate platforms. All of this is to change, though, when the S60 and UIQ platforms will be merged into the open source Symbian Foundation code. The S60 platform sucks and even Nokia developers admit it. Coding for Symbian is simply harder than it really should be. However, S60 is not going to die, at least not very soon. This is because Nokia is making money with the platform right now and is porting Qt application framework to the platform too which is going to expand its lifetime.

The iPhone OS or OS X iPhone is the operating system used in iPhone and iPod Touch. Mac OS X applications cannot be run on an iPhone device. Applications need to be specifically written and compiled for the iPhone OS and ARM processor architecture. Authorized native third party applications are available for the phone through Apple's App Store. The software developement kit allows developers to make applications and test them in a simulator but loading an application onto the devices is only possible after paying a iPhone Developer Program fee. Java or Flash are not supported but Sun Microsystems and Adobe have their plans to release a third party Java virtual machine and Flash Lite player respectively.

Google's Android platform is written in Java running on top of a Linux kernel written in C. However, it is not Linux. There are also some apparently performance critical libraries written in C/C++ but the application framework is fully written in Java. Flash is not supported but there shouldn't be any technical obstacles for it. Some people have said that Android is actually what Java ME should have been or should have become. Obviously software written for Android can't be run on other Java enabled devices. On the other hand it should be possible to run software developed with Java ME in an Android device.

MicroSoft's offering to the mobile market is of course Windows Mobile. Managed applications can be developed with .NET Compact Framework using the C# language. Native applications can be developed with C++. Both Java ME and Flash Lite are also supported.

The problem with Linux is the number of distributions involved. There is Maemo that is used in Nokia Internet tablets, LiMo foundation founded by companies like Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic and Samsung, Mobilinux by Montavista, Moblin sponsored by Intel, Ubuntu Mobile and OpenMoko. You could actually say there is probably as many mobile linux distributions as there are other mobile platforms together. There are no common SDKs nor tools for developers, no common distribution channels, and no common application directories for devices. Linux people are going to kill me when I say this but unless some company is strong enough to create an uniform platform, there might be not so bright future for mobile Linux, which is a great shame.

BlackBerry smartphones are built on a Java-based operating environment, which supports the development of custom Java ME applications. There is a BlackBerry plug-in for MicroSoft Visual Studio that lets developers working within a .NET programming environment use their development tool of choice.

With the platforms mentioned I have addressed the majority of mobile devices out there. As you can see its almost impossible to target all the platforms at once. In practice there aren't any natively running cross-platform applications. How should this be handled then?

The easiest way to target every device is web-based applications. That way you reach every device out there equipped with a internet browser. Web applications are limited though and not applicable to every problem or service.

The second easiest coverage comes probably with Java ME. It is supported pretty much on every phone except the iPhone. Using Java you get access to a lot more interfaces of the phone but are still more limited than using native code and native APIs. It also differs too much from usual Java so code reuse is not possible. Sometimes the Java slogan, "Write once, run everywhere", has been changed to "Write once, debug everywhere". This refers to the issue that even if you can run the same code platform independently, it still might behave differently on different environments.

Qt has some potential becoming a solution to some of the problems. It is already available in embedded Linux and Windows Mobile and will soon be in Symbian and Maemo. There are also Java bindings via Qt Jambi which, at least in theory, enables Qt in Android too. Qt/Mac won't enable Qt in iPhone but it adds another theoretical possibility. Qt Extended, formerly known as Qtopia, extends Qt application platform with additional functionality to embedded Linux. It might not be a silver bullet but it actually might make several developers' life a lot easier.

Another problem with cross-platform development is that the screen resolutions, color depths, input devices and multimedia capabilities, just to name a few, are very different. A device could or could not have a keyboard or a touch screen and even the touch screen can be single touch or multi touch. Whether you are developing a web based service or a full blown native application these issues have to be taken into consideration. Moreover, using generic toolkits always is a trade-off between portability and utilizing the platform specific device capabilities. In most of the cases true cross-platform development is not feasible or sensible or even possible. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that cross-platform toolkits wouldn't have their place in the market.

Having fun with 2D barcodes before NFC arrives

2008-10-18T20:39:00.018+03:00

I had some sparetime and thought to check out what one could do with 2D barcodes. The main idea is that when you see a 2D barcode you point your smartphone's camera to it and hold it there for a while. After this, something happens. This something depends on the content of the 2D barcode. It can be either a link, a phone number, an e-mail address or a business card. If you try the code below, you'll notice that it contains my work information (first name, last name, phone number, e-mail address).

In addition to camera phone, you also need barcode reader software. Some Nokia phones have the reader pre-installed but there are also numerous 3rd party softwares. For more information about 2D barcodes, you can check Nokia's site. You'll find also a tool for creating your own 2D barcodes.

I didn't do anything special with these codes, I just added barcode to back of my business card using a sticker paper which I found from my workplace.

Although 2D barcodes aren't too easy to use, they have some clear benefits: they are free to create and you can put them basically anywhere. I've seen them recently even in newspapers in some municipal elections ad.

With these two benefits, you would have the possibility to tackle the traditional chicken and egg problem. You can just add 2D barcodes anywhere and this way get more users, probably relatively slow, but still. With numerous 2D barcodes on the wild, I believe there would be more and more 2D barcode readers pre-installed in phones.

When users have learnt to "point-and-click" using 2D barcodes, transformation to NFC will be much easier. NFC is much more user-friendly than 2D barcode because you don't need to have an additional reader software installed and turned on. NFC is also much faster, "swiping" is usually enough for activating the session.

NFC has all the same use cases than 2D barcode plus a few more. You can pair devices, initiate proximity payments and exchange information between devices with it. Unfortunately NFC is not yet available widely but there are some different kinds of pilots around the world. Nokia is bringing their first NFC-capable phone, Nokia 6212 Classic, to the markets soon. (Yes, there is also Nokia 6131 NFC, but it hasn't hit the mass markets.)

So before NFC comes, you can play with 2D barcodes in the meantime. How would you utilise these 2D barcodes? What is the most weirdest place you've seen these?

No more backups when updating - FOTA saves you

2008-10-12T00:39:00.011+03:00

You've been able to update your S60 phone by yourself for a while, but the problem has been that you've first needed to backup your phone, then use Software Update and then restore your phone. This procedure has taken quite long, usually tens of minutes, if not hours.

Luckily there is a salvation near your. Just check if your phone has FOTA (Firmware Over The Air) feature. Some SonyEricssons have been having this possibility for some time, and now it has also come to Nokia phones. In Nokia phones, you can check this by entering *#0000# and choosing Options - Check for updates.

After choosing desired internet connection, (use WiFi if you need to be careful with your phone bill) download starts.

Phone suggests that you back it up before updating. I had to do this, mostly because I participated to a christening today (congrats to Juha, Njeri and Andre!) and there were some photos I didn't want to lose. After you have finished backing your phone up, you'll find update option from Device Manager.

Update process itself took something like 5-7 minutes. During this time the phone was unusable and there was a status bar showing the update status.

After the update the phone started normally and you had to enter your PIN code and lock code if you are using one.

I must say I was really positively suprised about the whole process. Everything went really smoothly and the phone had all the content that it had before the update. This way is much, much more convenient than using Software Update. I recommend you to try this out!!

MobileMonday - Crowdsourcing and ambient awareness

2008-10-06T20:28:00.022+03:00

MobileMonday had an interesting topic: Social and Mobile. Here are some points / thoughts from Monday's event.

A company can use its customers for innovating but it doesn't need to stop there. It can use its customers in any process when creating a service / product. Two companies that were mentioned few times were Lego and Cisco. These companies have used social innovation successfully.

Most of the companies are not using social innovations because of their cultural background, not because they would be missing the tools. Companies, in spite of being big or small, should try things out more openly.

Crowdsourcing is coming / already here. The main idea is that individuals all over the world are connected and are doing small things to help someone. Few examples could be social journalism or publishing photos that others can use. The interesting part was that money is not the only motivation, but there are lots of other reasons, e.g. you get to be innovative and because it is fun.

It was also mentioned that mobile will be a really important channel in crowdsourcing, but not the only one. Mobile can be used for example initiating something and then finalizing the task in other channel / media.

Yahoo is providing a number of applications / services that help to produce ambient awareness. One example of this kind of service is OneConnect. The main idea is to aggregate needed information (e.g. phonebook and different social networks) and provide it to the user. This way user can publish content once, use multiple times. This would mean that phonebook would turn out to be proactive. You wouldn't need to call someone to ask where he was or what he was doing.

Marc Davis from Yahoo was also telling about Blueprint that should give a service provider opportunity to support multiple devices/platforms when they are developing services. He didn't go into details but mentioned that same content could be used in J2ME, S60, and different browsers.

Yahoo thinks that they can make money when users have more shared and more accurate data. This data is then being utilized for advertising. With a lots of data, advertising can be much more accurate and people are willing to pay for it.

When I was walking home from MobileMonday these things were in my mind:

Social innovations would be worth trying out because that way you can get more brains working on the same issue. When the crowd grows, usually also the diversity grows and this brings good ideas and results.

OneConnect seems interesting because I know that I'm not the only one who has real difficulties using multiple social networks. It would be really nice to connect my phonebook with all the relevant social information from the Web.

Blueprint also sounds interesting, but will this really work? This is not the first time when I hear someone telling about "multi-channel". Usually it ends up being just a "channel".

Nokia Comes With Music

2008-10-04T18:07:00.003+03:00

A couple of days ago Nokia made a press release about launching the Comes With Music digital entertainment service that was announced a year ago. The bottom line of the deal is that Nokia will bring out mobile devices that can be used to listen to full music catalogs of some record companies like Universal Music Group and Sony BMG. You are entitled to download as many songs as you wish for free and after the one year contract you are still eligible to keep your downloaded material.

The concept sounds very interesting. The CD sales are continuously diminishing and at the same time sales of digital music have been doubling every year. The unpleasant truth is however that a lot of young people are used to download their music for free from P2P networks anyway. The new model offers music seemingly for free but is paid in the price of the device. It appears that Nokia and the record companies have realized that this could be the only way to attract people to actually have legally acquired music.

Like everything "free", this comes with a catch too. The service will be handicapped by DRM. You will be able to listen to your music with your Nokia device and your computer only. The content won't work in an iPod or any other device. Then again, if you actually bought a Nokia music device, why would you want to use an iPod? Also burning a CD or any tracks will require an upgrade purchase for each track. These limitations are something you probably can live with but maybe the biggest surprise comes when you want to renew your subscription. In order to regain access to music for another year you need to buy a new Nokia device.

Nokia is entering a new market a bit like Apple did a few years ago with the iPod and iTunes. Just like Apple, Nokia is having sceptical observers and a lot of critisism. However, everyone knows the success story behind iPod. It remains to be seen how well Nokia manages to market this new model.

The first setback at the launch of the service in the UK is that four big mobile operators, namely Vodafone, O2 , Orange and T-Mobile, are not planning to sell it. Nokia is likely to have to rely on the mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and its own shops and website. Its still unclear how this will affect the sales as a lot of phones are being sold with operator deals in the UK. The first two phones featuring the service will be XpressMusic 5310 and N95. The first Nokia touch screen smarpthone, XpressMusic 5800, is not on the launch list since it will not go on sale until next year.

It could be useful to combine a Comes With Music enabled smartphone with Nokia Home Media. Essentially you could carry your music collection anywhere with your mobile phone and in addition be able to listen to it with your home stereo. You could just make your smartphone a media server and stream the content to your UPnP/DLNA enabled media center device like Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Its a bit unclear if it would be possible to stream DRM protected content but I could imagine this as an attractive option if it would work.

Home Media - empty promises or useful software?

2008-10-03T21:34:00.025+03:00

"Home Media connects you wirelessly to your home network's media files. All you need is a compatible Nokia Nseries multimedia computer, a wireless network solution and a compatible PC or a supported UPnP/DLNA media renderer or server, such as a television, home stereo system or a gaming console." (http://europe.nokia.com/A41123203)

I've read about Home Media sometime ago and to be honest my two first thoughts were a) it probably won't work, at least not easily b) luckily I don't have compatible phone.

Time went by and I got more and more curious, especially after getting a Nokia N96. So what did I do? I tried it out, of course.

Part I / Installation:

Downloaded and installed SimpleCenter to MS Vista.

Clicked OK couple of times until SC wanted me to register. I really wonder why this software required registering? Well, I registered which was simple task as long as you find proper username that is not taken.

After installation HMS wanted to add the media from my computer. I just clicked OK-OK-...OK. Then I realized that HMS is about to add all our pictures, roughly 3000. Then everything stopped. No response, nothing at all. I had to kill the adding process and still my 2 cores are going at 100%. What about restarting the computer?

After restarting the computer and double-clicking Home Media Server, it opened normally and finished adding files.

Found Home Media from Menu - Tools - Connectivity - Home Media and opened it.

Wizard started and after 9 OKs and some other clicks (device name, accesspoint, shared content, etc.) it finished.

Does everything work now? No, it seems that I need to add device to Home Media Server by choosing Devices - Add device - Refresh and choose your phone. (N96's icon was N80 but maybe I can live with it. :)

Now I can see N96's content from Home Media Server but I cannot see Vista's files from N96. Maybe Vista's firewall is blocking the requests... No it didn't, it was just taking a while. Now I can see Home Media Server's content from N96.

Part II / Using HMS:

So, what you can do with this HMS? Let's check it out.

OK, most probably everyone knows that you can transfer pictures, videos, podcasts etc. easily from your phone to your computer or vice versa. Actually this is really easy, basically just click and the magic happens. One of the problems is that when I've been using PC Suite for transferring music, PC Suite had made another copy of each song and now HMS shows all these files. Probably this could be handled in Settings or then stop converting mp3's to AAC+, there are enough space in N96.

There are some other "flaws" like that you can see your music what you are about to transfer only by song title but luckily you can see more information using your phone. With a quick look, it seems that it is easier to transfer data from a computer to your phone by using your phone, but I'll find out about this after I've been using HMS for a while.

So you can easily transfer content between your two devices and you can also use your phone as a remote control for playing music, videos, etc. on your computer.

You can also define that pictures are automatically transferred from your phone to your computer when you come home. Now you won't lose your pictures so easily.

This means bye bye PC Suite and bye bye slow bluetooth connections when transferring files/music. Well, probably these aren't final good byes because standard HMS cannot convert files, e.g. movies to phone compatible form. There are also a premium version which has more features.

HMS really stands up to the exceptations and is worth trying out. It doesn't solve every problem but makes life again little easier, especially when transferring large files or multiple files where bluetooth/cable is slow. It won't replace PC Suite for good, because with PC Suite you can handle your PIM data.

Most probably you'll see another post about HMS after I've been using it for a while.

Quick thoughts about mobile marketing

2008-10-03T16:06:00.002+03:00

You might have seen this talked quite widely:

“Timberland pays $7m to settle SMS spam lawsuit
Outdoor gear firm Timberland has agreed to pay $7m to settle a text message spam class-action lawsuit in the US.”
(via The Register)

Of course it is really important not to use SMSs for spamming because people are usually quite cautious when it comes to SMS marketing. You don’t want to spoil good opportunities by spamming.

The reason why this article came to my mind is that I received marketing SMS from a Finnish IT training house. I believe I have given my number to them because I’ve taken a course or two in their premises. The thing that “hurt” me was that they were advertising mobile stuff and there was also a link. The link took to normal web page which size was over 1.2 MB.

What’s the point? If you are advertising mobile stuff using SMSs, you should also make sure you are directing the reader to mobile compatible page. Remember also not to copy existing techniques. What works in Internet, it might not work in mobile environment.

Rapid GUI prototyping with Python and Qt

2008-10-03T16:00:00.000+03:00

I have recently worked with Qt which is a cross-platform application framework. Applications and user interfaces created with Qt can be deployed on many desktop and embedded environments without the need to rewrite the source code.

Qt is most notably used in KDE (K Desktop Environment) which has been built on top of it. Qt is also used in such applications as Skype, Google Earth and Photoshop Elements. What makes Qt even more interesting for the embedded devices is that Nokia acquired Trolltech, the company behind Qt, at the beginning of 2008. But that is a whole another story.

I have also had a look at Python. Python is a high-level, interpreted, object-oriented programming language. Actually it supports imperative and functional paradigms as well but I wanted to mention object-oriented specifically. I was amazed at how easy it was to learn Python when you already know languages like C++ or Java.

Python is suitable for rapid application development because it has rapid spelled all over it:

very readable and simple core syntax
large and comprehensive standard library
fully dynamic type system
automatic memory management with garbage collection

"Great," you think, "that's all nice and dandy but what is it all good for?"

Here is where Python bindings for Qt come in. PyQt exposes much of the functionality of Qt to Python. It is also possible to generate Python code from GUI designs created with Qt Designer. This makes PyQt very useful as a rapid prototyping tool for applications that will eventually be implemented in C++ because the user interface designs can be re-used without modification. With Python you can setup your application within a minute. You also avoid the need to re-compile after each change you have made since Python is interpreted.

The best part about using PyQt and Qt Designer together is that you don't necessarily have to be a programmer to test these things out. You can create your GUI design in Qt Designer, convert your work into a Python script and just run it. It happens too often that the "prototype" ends up being the basis for the actual application. Breaking the GUI design further away from the actual implementation makes it easier to discard those prototypes.

The whats and whatnots of iPhone 3G

2008-10-03T15:59:00.001+03:00

Ok, so let’s get to business after introductions.

I chose to list Apple iPhone 3G’s pros and cons. Of course the major hype is now gone, but this might still be quite interesting. I made this list first in Finnish and “published” it in my Facebook page on July 2008 because few of my friends were interested in hearing my thoughts about iPhone. So here it is, with some modifications and with more detailed explanations. Enjoy!

In one sentence “I wouldn’t call this a smartphone, but rather a constrained entertainment device.”

General:
+ Touch screen with multi-touch.
+ Small eye-candy effects, e.g. in Maps's settings you can see through the map.
+ Display size
+ General appearance
+ Keylock mechanism. Just press a button and keys are locked and screen is turned off.
+ Usage of WLAN/WiFi made really simple. Once you've added WiFi details, iPhone will automatically choose the right connection, e.g. just added WiFi.
+ USB charging
+ Battery is quite ok. I wouldn't complain any almost smartphone's / smartphone's battery life because you are doing dozens of things at the same time (browsing, listening to music, navigating, writing SMS,... You got my point, right?)
+ Speakers. Ok quality to use as a boom box. Well not maybe boom box, but you are able to listen music in park with your friends.
- Display doesn’t rotate (go to landspace mode) in every application.
- Silence mode button. It goes on/off even if keylock is on.
- Only 2 profiles (normal and silence).
- There isn’t volume control in hands-free or way to answer an incoming call.
- iTunes dependencies. This makes it difficult to use in corporates because I could guess that iTunes is something you don’t want to / can't install.
- Difficult to change used internet connection, e.g. when you are browsing and want to change to some other connection.
- There are capital letters in virtual keypad although outcome is small letters.
- You have to active Caps lock from the settings to get it working normally.
- Special characters, even dot (.) and comma (,) are behind some keys.
- Predictive text doesn’t work properly. I used to accept suggested words although I wasn’t planning this. Prediction of compound words doesn’t work. Finnish language is full of compound words.
- You cannot use iPhone as a modem.
- Multitasking is slow or even impossible if you are using 3rd party applications. You cannot use multitask with 3rd party softwares because they are closed when you change from application to another.
- Crashing, even quite seriously and you couldn’t take battery off (unlike in most of the phones) but you just had to wait and hope. You can also try to press the menu button (basically the only button) long to restart iPhone.
- Expandability, you have to rely on current features.
- Doesn’t show any calendar etc information in Idle screen.

Text:
+ Discussion form.
- You cannot rotate the display. Writing of SMSs would be much easier with rotated screen. You can try this when you are browsing in landscape mode and write some address.
- You cannot send group messages.
- No MMSs.
- You don’t receive calendar invitations that are sent from S60 phone.
- You cannot forward a SMS.

Calendar:
- You cannot send calendar invitations.
- You cannot receive calendar invitations.
- You cannot enter a meeting that lasts less than a minute, e.g. from 9.00-9.00. I used to use this in S60 phone when I wanted to make a simple reminder that is not synchronized.

Photos:
+ Picture scrolling, zooming and showing. Slide your finder from left to right and the pictures will roll nicely.
- You cannot mark multiple pictures and remove them at once. You have to remove them one by one.

Camera:
+/- Camera and flash could be a little better.

YouTube:
+ Easy to use
+ Identifies used network speed and chooses the video quality according to this. In a way this is con because you cannot control this by yourself.
+ Youtube can be started from browser. If you happen to run into cool YouTube video, you don't need to find it from YouTube software.
+ Search. Works well and makes finding of videos easy.
- Some of the Youtube videos don’t work.
- Separate software.
- Supports only YouTube videos.

Stocks:
+ Simple
- Doesn’t have Scandinavian stocks, e.g. OMX (Helsinki)

Maps:
+ Fast. Downloads map information really fast.
+ WLAN/WiFi locating.
+ Search works relatively well.
+ Touch screen and zoom works well.
- Showing multiple search results and moving to another result is inadequate.
- GPS updates sometimes little slowly. Although I don’t have some much experience on this.
- Can you get a car kit from Apple? I mean where do I install this in my car.
- Display turns off relatively fast. This makes it difficult to use as a navigator.
- Doesn’t show the direction where you are going.
- Doesn’t recalculate routes.
- You cannot save any routes.
- You cannot download maps. This makes roaming really expensive.

Weather:
+ Simple and stylish
+ There are also Finnish cities
- Icon in main menu could updateable, just like in Calendars icon where dates changes.

Clock:
+ Stopwatch.
+ Timer.
+ Number of alarms. You can add multiple alarms.
+ World clock.

Calculator:
+ Simple.
+ Has also functional calculator.
- You have to use functional calculator in horizontal mode.

Notes:
+ Stylish fonts.
+ Outlook in general.
- You cannot synchronize this with Outlook using a cable. I've noticed that this is really good way to remember things.

Settings:
+ You can define multiple languages that you will be using. You can easily change the desired language when typing.
- You cannot choose your own ring tone except using iTunes.

iTunes:
+ Easy to use.
+ Billing made easy.
- Works only in 3G/WiFi.

App Store:
+ Easy to use
- Not too many useful software. (This was the case in the beginning, now there might be too many software?)
- Difficult to find useful software.
- Restricted 3rd party features.
+/- Are there possibility for trials?

Contacts:
+ Scrolling names made easy and fancy. When you slide your finger down, the list rolls nicely. Nice to show to your friends. Guaranteed WOW effect.
+ You see first name first although names are organized according to last name.
- You cannot create groups.
- You cannot send contact information in SMS.
- Takes sometimes long (3-4 seconds) to open.

Phone:
+ Favorites. You can add number of favorites and you can see them easily. Better than usual speed dial.
- You cannot organize received and made calls but all calls are in the same list.
- You cannot remove single call information

Mail:
+ Easy to start using.
+ Shows also HTML mails.
- Didn’t support SSL in Welho’s service.

Safari:
+ Seems fast.
+ Really accurate touch screen. You can hit even small links without zooming.
+ Zoom. Again nice feature and cool to show to your friends when you are sliding two fingers away from each other, browser zooms in.
+ Navigation is simple
+ Able to play mp3s, e.g. Radiorock’s podcasts rule.
+ Quicktime plays videos, e.g. trailers.
+ Establishing connection. Knows how to choose pre-defined WiFi or then use 3G/GPRS.
+ Big enough display to make mobile browsing a joy.
+ Opening new windows and handling them.
- No Flash support.
- Crashes quite often, although starts really fast after this.
- You cannot change used internet connection.

iPod:
+ Simple.
+ Shows album covers.
- Memory seems to run out if you are browsing and listening to music.

The Duo gets things rolling!

2008-10-03T09:10:00.002+03:00

Greetings everybody!

Welcome to our shared technology and mobility blog. Both of us had had the idea of creating some kind of technology related blog for a while. It wasn't until now when we finally got the idea of actually sharing a blog in order to help each other out. We had a short discussion about what we should cover here. First we were thinking to narrow the area quite a bit but then decided to cover things that we see important or interesting ourselves. Most probably they all are somehow related to mobile technologies but there might be some suprises also...

So who are we and what do we do?

Hude:

I've been working as a software engineer at Digia for the last 5 years now. I'm mainly doing application development for mobile devices and always on the lookout for new methods and technologies that will make the development process easier.

I have used several programming languages and tools on various platforms and think I have a good overview on technologies related to mobile development. Most recently I have been interested in cross-platform development and graphics related programming.

Teppo:

I started in Nordea straight after my first year in Lappeenranta University of Technology on summer 2000. I've been working there since and I'm mostly concentrating on mobile development and different web technologies.

I try to keep in mind both technology and business perspective, because without these both components, it is usually difficult to make a successful product / service. I'm going to write my own ideas / thoughts and not my employer’s. Of course I’m not promising that I wouldn’t tell some Nordea related issues every once in a while. If I do this I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

Regards,
Hude & Teppo