Of all the technologies created and/or promoted by Nokia, mapping services have undoubtedly been the the best. Nokia’s mapping performance has been unmatched in each aspect. Owing to this, Toyota has signed a deal with Nokia to use its “Here” service as it’s in-car navigation solution from 2014
Some years ago, being a Forum Nokia Champion was perceived as a significant achievment in the mobile industry – after the take-over of Elop, industry insiders reported that the ranks were filled with employees from consulting companies close to Nokia.
The latest rumor concerned the Finns force-retiring their Symbian champions. AllAboutSymbian now confirms the story as following:
Last week a number of developers received an email from Nokia Developer explaining that their membership of the Nokia Developer Champion program was not be renewed and, in some cases, was being cut short earlier than scheduled. The common factor among those affected by the move appears to be that their main focus is developing for Symbian OS
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Given that this story has already been picked up by various news sources related to the mobile industry, the image of Nokia (and, to a lesser extent, its partner Microsoft) is likely to become significantly blemished.
Stay tuned for further info as we get it…
When Palm first introduced webOS, many developers were wondering why in the name of god the company had chosen HTML5 as its application development platform.
Mozilla now plans to go along the same route with its Boot to Gecko product. It was demoed on a modified Galaxy SII:
The idea behind it is to break the “locked” relationship between developer and app store:
The most interesting feature: press the menu button to see the source code of the page:
The boys also showed off a little 3D demo involving a smoothly rotating skull. Given the power of the underlying hardware, this is not too surprising:
A little demo video, for completeness’s sake:
Given that the product is intended for ultra low end handsets (600MhZ, 256MB of RAM) and that Telefonica plans to release such a handset by the end of the year, things could become interesting…
P.S. Just in case anyone wonders: they still advertise FireFox for Android:
The times are not good for Flash – after Adobe announces the death of the platform in mobile, the TV version is the next to go.
BroadBandTVNews.com now states the following:
The implications for the connected TV world are widespread, although Adobe’s ambitions in this field did not stretch far beyond Sony and Google TV/Logitech, the technology had been picked up by Liberty Global’s Horizon box for UPC and the UK’s YouView. “Adobe will continue to support existing licensees who are planning on supporting Flash Player for Web browsing on digital home devices and are using the Flash Player Porting Kit to do so,”
However, it looks like the future path – from Adobe’s point of view – will be AIR:
The company said that its future work would be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.
Given that RIM is already offering a native SDK for its PlayBook, I am not sure to what extent this will catch on – stay tuned for info as we get it!
The story of Silverlight for the XBox 360 is old – we have been reporting about it for over half a year. Actually, most expected it to launch at the recently-held BUILD conference – but Microsoft’s ways are difficult to understand.
GigaOm now reports the following, and claims a release date around the US “Black Friday” (25th November):
We’ve confirmed that the apps expected to be added with the next major update to Xbox Live will be based on Silverlight — at least to a point. The framework they’re being built on is code-named Lakeview, which is essentially a prettied up version of Silverlight with new features like Xbox Kinect’s voice recognition and gesture control.
As of this writing, it is not known whether this service will be made available for third parties – stay tuned for further info as we get it!
Samsung is the king of tzhe hill in the Smart TV market: they have recently managed to distribute a total of 10 million apps to Smart TV owners. However, the incumbent manufacturer LG has recently ganged up with Hutchison, promoting the interconnection features between their phones and television sets.
Samsung is now fighting back by calling up a contest for converged applications. In particular, the following types of application are sought:
There are three categories of Converged Apps that Samsung is encouraging developers to explore:
Controller Apps – These Apps enable a second device to control an App on the TV, thus providing touch or mouse input and interactivity that a standard remote control cannot.
Companion Apps – These Apps use a second device to provide additional information (including via web sites and social media sites) that is synchronized to, and supplements, what is shown on the TV itself.
Interactive Apps – These Apps allow the user to use a second device as a secondary display. For example, a user can pause a video on the TV and resume it on the other device.
Not much to add here…
Great news…!!! Google Chat is now available for Windows Phone Mango devices. The Gchat app, as marketplace lists it, boasts of some pretty cool (read as kewl) features.
Not only it allows you to pin any of your contacts as a secondary tile with independent unread message count, it also gives a “special treatment” to off the record conversations.
The app is blazingly fast, faster than the IM+ client currently available for Windows Phone Mango.
The app costs $0.00 and is virtually ad free. It can be grabbed at the Marketplace by clicking HERE if you are running any version of Windows Phone Mango.
MS in 90s made a move that cost it quite a few users on the OS front when it offered MS Office to Mac users. People said back then that it was the stupidest move a company can make. But MS capitalized on this and made far more than it had lost.
In a similar move, it is offering it’s Windows Live services to Android and iOS.
The Windows Team Blog post states
With the recent release of our developer platform we’ve made it easy for developers on modern mobile platforms such as Windows Phone, Android, and iOS to easily integrate the ability for users to access their information such as contacts and photos from Hotmail, Messenger, and SkyDrive in their favorite mobile apps and devices.
We’ve streamlined the process for doing this in the following ways:
- Lightweight application setup process which requires no server-side code.
- Mobile optimized sign-in and user consent experiences
- Providing code samples which illustrate the key steps in building a mobile application that access a user’s cloud data
Although the port is not a complete package, but code. How this affects the Android and iOS users? It does not affect the Little green robot man and the eaten fruit users at present. It will just broaden the user base. People who were previously on WMS or are currently on WP7 and want to switch over to Android or Apple will welcome this with open hands.
And MS has done a good thing by not giving the gift in a package. This means that developers can deploy their creativity and make really wonderful things using the code.
What do you think?
So far, Microsoft’s Mango-related announcements have centered about new developer and internet features.
However, the Music+Video hub also gets a few new features, which have now been outlined in detail. First of all, the new features are imnproved podcast support and a feature called Smart DJ – it is very similar to Apples Genius, but can also restrict itself to the songs found just on your phone to create mood mixes.
In addition, a variety of small improvements were added – find further information via the URL below:
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2011/06/03/a-tour-of-the-new-music-video-hub.aspx
Microsoft has acquired Nokia’s former reference client for Qt – Skype is now part of the redmondian company.
The most interesting twist of the story comes via Austria’s Governmental TV – the blokes claim that Microsoft needs Skype to boost its “currently weak” Windows Phone 7 sales:
From my personal point of view, this doesn’t really make sense (Skype is already available on most mobile platforms) – it could very well be a sign of increasing desperation…
Image: Dr. D. M. Kohrs
MS is taking a lot of heat worldwide from users and media alike with the irregularities and problems with it’s NoDo update. We had told you about Samsung phones “dying” during the update process.
France is the country that would be getting the NoDo update this time. Windowsphone.frogz.fr reports that:
We are delighted to share with you that this update will be available for the second half of Mars (read March) through your Zune software. A notification will be pushed on all the Windows 7 Phone, allowing you to perform the update in the best conditions.
Here is a video demonstration, for your eyes only:
Our esteemed readers are advised to be careful while updating their phones, as a bricked/problematic phone is the last thing a user would ever want on this earth.
The first-ever dual core smartphone has been announced by LG – and it ran Android. Given that Windows Phone 7 currently doesn’t really multitask, it cannot benefit from a dual core.
However, Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:
The Dow Jones report suggests that potential product launches at next month’s GSMA Mobile World Congress will include a device with a dual-core processor (following recent similar launches from LG and Motorola) and a 4G Windows Phone 7 smartphones.
As of this writing, not much has been leaked about the device – stay tuned for further information!
P.S. If the device really has a dual core CPU, I expect WP7 multitasking for real…
The relationship between Microsoft and the Mobile World Congress can best be described as a long-running friendship – more than one important announcement by the company was done there.
WinRumors latest claim thus sounds believable:
Microsoft is planning to unveil and detail a second Windows Phone 7 update in February.
The software giant has chosen the Mobile World Congress venue according to sources familiar with the plans. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is due to hold a keynote at the event and Microsoft’s press event will mark a year from when the company first unveiled Windows Phone 7 to the world. According to a source who spoke to WinRumors, Microsoft’s second update will be a significant one.
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We’ll be there – further info from the floor as we can get it!
The recently-released ChevronWP7 tool allows users to install up to ten inofficial applications onto their Windows Phone 7 device – not native ones, but ones which do not come from the Marketplace.
Microsoft now states the following re the hack:
“We anticipated that people would attempt to unlock the phones and explore the underlying operating system. We encourage people to use their Windows Phone as supplied by the manufacturer to ensure the best possible user experience. Attempting to unlock a device could void the warranty, disable phone functionality, interrupt access to Windows Phone 7 services or render the phone permanently unusable.”
As of this writing, Microsoft has not stated whether it will block services like Windows Live for users with “illegitimate” devices – given their line on the XBOX, I would not be too surprised if the situation would heat up in the near future…
Last month, the folks from Distimo’s have provided us with interesting data on application stores. It looks like they hold up to their promise of monthly updates – the next report has just hit our inbox.
First of all, we get a look at the average pricing of applications across the various stores. One can clearly see that Microsoft’s plans to keep Windows Phone 7 a “premium brand” have failed when it comes to app pricing:
Next up is the usual list of “best sellers”. The top apps for the iPhone look as following:
On the iPad, the table looks different:
Windows Phone 7 has the following toplist:
Which can be compared to the more app-heavy toplist for Windows Mobile:
Next up is the Ovi Store:
And Palm’s webOS store:
Finally, a look at the BlackBerry:
Hit the URL above for further info…
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