KuneriLite – Innovative Flash Lite on S60


In this interview we speak with Ugur Kaner, CEO of Kuneri about the company, the products and what he sees on the horizon for mobile development.

Please tell a little about your company?

We are a talented team of designers, developers and strategists creating great looking mobile applications for people, and helping other companies to do the same. We primarily focus on Flash Lite and S60 technologies, highlighting user interface, interaction and innovation. We are based in Oulu, Finland and also have operations in Helsinki.

What background do you have, previous software projects, success cases?

We have been working behind the scenes for many years in mobile industry, and decided to step forward in 2006. Since then we have been working on our products and ideas. KuneriLite is our very first product and we are confident that it will be a success; not only for us, but also for everyone else. Our first project KISS60 is developed using KuneriLite and are very happy about the interest. In parallel to our production efforts; we have partnered with respected Finnish companies; working on unique mobile applications and user interfaces for world's leading brands.

What are the good and bad points about working in Finland’s “Silicon Valley”?

It's a great place for mobile a company, where technology and innovation is highly encouraged and supported. Its strategic location being close to well known mobile technology companies enables mobile business, and makes it possible to create new things.

We can't say there are many bad points, but surely some things that could be better. It's not very easy to find resources and business is mostly in south. But we see those as challenges, they don't stop us keep on going. Cold and darkness might be another unavoidable challenge, but we like to look things from brighter side; it helps us to focus on our work.

What challenges did you face in developing the application?

Biggest challenge we had was working on a new concept, with a new technology. Things change very fast in business and not always as you expect. You have to understand the market very well, foresee upcoming changes and be little lucky. Every strategical move of bigger players had drastic effects on our plans and implementation. But luckily we were flexible enough to adapt and react to sudden market changes.

Technically, creating a product fulfilling all S60 application quality requirements needed intensive work. It also was not very simple to design an easy to use interface and understandable process for developers who do not have any Symbian development experience. Different platforms and fragmentation also was an issue and we had to take some tough decisions. But in the end, I am glad to say that we are very pleased about the results and the end product.

In your view what are the main development opportunities offered by your technology.

We created a very stable and easy to use platform for all mobile application developers, especially working with Flash Lite. Our technology simply makes S60 development faster, easier and cheaper. This happens without any Symbian knowledge, with a Symbian-like performance and noticeably better user experience. Therefore we believe our technology allows developers to focus more on what they do, instead of how they do; bringing a new approach to S60 application development with Flash Lite. One of the great things about KuneriLite is that it's completely invisible to end users. Nothing has to be pre-installed, everything happens out-of-the-box without any extra requirements, making business easier for everyone.

How are you bringing your product to market?

KuneriLite is available to download, request or purchase directly from the web site. It comes with a very easy to use project manager (Wizard), which also can be used as a free SIS packager for any S60 projects. We provide KuneriLite for free, hoping to encourage students and enthusiasts to create free applications for S60, pushing the limits of innovation. It's also commercially available for a funny price, which I guess makes it clear that license sales is not our concern, but a factor used to improve the platform. We also offer custom, tailor-made solutions for enterprises that are creating global mobile products with KuneriLite.

How have you addressed hardware issues in your application design (memory – power consumption)?

We have been very sensitive on low memory and power consumption, as well as security, extensibility and small footprint. I can say that architecture is very well designed, considering different S60 phone form factors and features. Platform is implemented using pure Symbian C++ and has a plug-in system, which enables developers to use only the features and resources they need.


Having been through this project- what lessons have been learned?

It's not easy, but don’t give up. Things get better and better, if you have a good idea and believe in what you do.

What do you see as being important for your company in 2008?

We have been working hard to make KuneriLite a stable and easy to use platform. There is an increasing set of plug-ins and features for developers, and we work on new ones every day. 2008 is very important for us to gain visibility and get support of S60 and Flash Lite developer community. We see Forum Nokia as a great start and with further efforts we aim to make KuneriLite a success story this year.


http://www.kuneri.net

Realeyes3D – finalist of the 2007 Forum Nokia Developer Innovation event with motion tracking technology

Can you tell us a little about your company?

Realeyes3D is a privately owned company specialized in imaging technologies, applications and services for camera phones. Realeyes3D headquarters are in Paris, France and has offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong and San Francisco.

The company’s mission statement is to “take camera phones beyond taking pictures” by enabling innovative camera-based applications and services such as handwritten messaging, mobile scanning and motion detection.

What background do you have, previous software projects, success cases?

Realeyes3D core competences cover three areas: Imaging (several innovation prizes since 2001 for our image processing technologies), Mobile terminals (We are development experts in all major platform environments: Symbian S60, BREW, Windows Mobile, Java and proprietary platforms) and Server technology (Qipit.com consumer service for mobile scanning was launched in September 2006).

Realeyes3D is the world leader in Mobile Handwritten Messaging with its products Digitizer (enabling the capture, processing and sending of handwritten notes, drawings, doodles) and w-Postcard (picture decoration and personalization).
Since 2005 over 50 millions handsets have been shipped with Realeyes3D applications factory pre-installed.

Was there something in particular that sparked off the interest in camera based motion tracking technology?

The idea came from the explosion of content on the handset and more specifically dense and high resolution content (megapixel pictures, large size web sites, large maps, scanned documents, email attachments, etc.). On the other hand the physical size of the handset displays can’t grow much larger; today, a 3.2 Mpix camera phone image is often up to 40 times the size of a handset screen. Traditional navigation based on menus (Zoom In / Out) and keys became more and more tedious as content get larger. There had to be a solution to navigate inside this content easily and intuitively.

In parallel the motion detection paradigm started to get momentum with the launch of the Wii console from Nintendo and in other industries.

As for the use of the camera to detect motion, the idea came from analysts’ prediction that while camera phone resolution will continue increasing, hardware accelerometer solutions will remain confidential in volumes for the next 3-4 years: there is plenty of room for a software based solution if you can make use of the existing sensor - the camera module.

What challenges did you face in developing theis technology?

Our target was to enable motion navigation without extra hardware cost. And being experts in imaging for camera phone, we naturally focused on the use of the camera preview to calculate the motion.

Some of the challenges we faced are related to the accessibility of the camera APIs on some platforms.
Other challenges were related to the user experience and how we can make the navigation paradigm intuitive and easy knowing that two main actions are possible: Zooming in and out (2 way decision), and panning around (in all directions).

Finally we had to solve the challenge of minimizing battery consumption while the camera is being used for navigation.
To overcome these last two challenges, we implemented a two-key navigation, while the user is pressing the key, the navigation mode is activated (zooming or panning). When the user releases the key, the camera is released; preserving the battery moreover the image stabilizes and is no longer sensitive to ancillary movements.

And lastly, we have developed mechanisms for memory management that not only take advantage of the increasing memory available in recent handsets, but also work perfectly on handsets with more limited amount of memory.

.

What assistance did you get from Forum Nokia in helping overcome those hurdles?

Forum Nokia is the greatest source of developer information when it comes to software development in the mobile device space. And that, combined with the fact that the S60 platform is the best one in opening its features to third party developers, make the S60 platform the reference platform of choice for developing and maturing new technologies in the mobile imaging field. 

In your view - what are the main development opportunities offered by your technology?

Integrating the Motionized® technology as a core feature of the platform enables motion-based, innovative user interaction in many applications such as web browsers, picture, map and document viewers, games, etc.
What were the main difficulties you faced in getting your concept to market?

The challenge of introducing innovation and facing skepticism that is not uncommon when a whole paradigm is changed. However, motion navigation is getting more and more momentum today and our technology has been recognized through industry awards.

What lessons have been learned from recent projects?

We confirmed our view that the handset user interface is going through a major revolution in 2007 and 2008.

What do you see as being important for your company in 2008?

Our goal is to establish motion detection as a key solution for browsing large content on handset and to make camera-based motion detection the technology driving this change across the range of handsets, alongside hardware motion detection that will be available on selected high end devices.

The MobileMonday Expert Jury Award we received last year for Motionized® confirmed the tremendous potential of the technology.

Reporter service developed by Fromdistance has been voted by the audience of the Forum Nokia Innovation Event, held in Amsterdam 3rd of December, as the most innovative mobile application of the year 2007. Fromdistance competed in the event among 12 carefully pre-selected developer companies which represented the highest peaks of their application areas coming from different parts of the world.

We speak to CEO Jouko Vierumäki about the company, products, and future horizons for the company.

Please tell a little about the project team ?

The project team consists of much of the R&D team of Fromdistance, as Reporter combines our expertise in several arenas: advanced client application, encrypted client/server communications, intuitive administration interfaces and image and video encoding/decoding. Like always in case of Fromdistance, the magic is in smart client/server architecture.

What project history does the company have?

The primary product of the company is Fromdistance MDM – Mobile Device Manager – which is an enterprise platform for managing their IT assets. The focus is on mobile device management; dozens of organizations use Fromdistance MDM for management of their smartphones and PDAs, nowadays also PCs are supported. Fromdistance MDM is the most versatile enterprise mobile device management platform on the market; it offers features like remote device access, comprehensive automated inventory, security policies, software enrollments and so forth.

Was there a particular spark that got this idea off the ground?

We came up with the concept together with our first customers for our mobile professional reporting solution – the leading publishers in Finland. The idea was to offer the general public the same enablers we had built for the professional reporters.

Did you have any problems in getting this production started?

Fromdistance believes in customer-driven innovation – and we are lucky to work with innovative customers. After the idea had come up and the first feasibility studies were done, we only had to take care of the implementation.

    
What challenges did you face in developing the application?

Integrating Reporter seamlessly to device’s built-in gallery was not trivial. Had we started from scratch, also transmission of large media files and building secure client/server communication framework would have been an effort. Now, however, we could use our experience from mobile device management.

What assistance did you get from Forum Nokia in helping overcome those hurdles?

Without Forum Nokia’s help it would have been very difficult – if not impossible – to build the seamless integration between Reporter and device’s built-in gallery. Forum Nokia helped us to come up with integration that received praise from our customers and give us good starting point to build follow-up product concepts.

In your view what are the main development achievements, made by this application?

The primary achievement was to come up with user experience that wouldn’t require the user to learn new ways of using his/her device. Reporter is an application which is not expected to be used every hour. Normally people don’t have a need to send material to publishers every day. Therefore, making Reporter intuitive enough for occasional use was the primary challenge. In this respect we seem to have succeeded :)


What were the main difficulties you faced in getting this concept to market?

Our customers involved in the co-operation see each other as competitors to some extent. Having them around the same table was not always easy to arrange. However, the parties involved shared the greater vision of creating something which wouldn’t be possible without this co-operation – Fromdistance really appreciates their open minds.
 
Having been through this project- what lessons have been learned?

User experience is paramount. Also, innovation without clear scope in terms of application is not a very valuable innovation as such. It is important to recognize the needs of the parties involved.

What do you see as the next big project for your project team?

Having built an enabler for mobile content creation, enabling mobile content consumption would make a nice challenge. This domain has been widely discussed but there are few success stories – we obviously need to make one.

http://www.fromdistance.com 

This is the first in a series of interviews that highlight innovation and best practice in Mobile Development. If you would like to see your product or company featured here - please contact the Forum Nokia Community Team. 

It was an evening of innovation, networking and entertainment. The Forum Nokia Innovation Party attracted a wide range of industry professionals to see and vote for the application they thought was tops for innovation.

Some of the best applications from around the world were on show at the Forum Nokia Innovation Cocktail Party 2007 held in Amsterdam in December 2007. A selection of 12 applications was short-listed for the event’s ‘Most Innovative Application of 2007’ award, with the winner being voted via SMS by the party’s 150 or so guests.

Competition for the top prize was fierce with innovation shining out from both the commercial and academic worlds. However, there could be only one winner, which turned out to be Reporter from Fromdistance of Estonia. This mobile journalism tool is a complete end-to-end platform for both professional reporters and citizen journalists that enables videos and images to be sent from a mobile device to the publisher.

The innovation lies in the application’s combination of good usability with efficient delivery of content to publishers’ content management systems. Ordinary smartphone users can send content to be used by the publisher of his or her choice. Furthermore, the quality of images and videos is not compromised during sending – publishers receive high quality user-generated content.

Speaking about his win, Jouko Vierumäki, CEO of Fromdistance said: “The standard of applications here is very high and presented really tough competition. We’ve shown that innovation can be profitable – they support each other.”

There was a tremendous range of applications being demonstrated on the night. Each was available for a hands-on demonstration as well as being presented to the audience in short video presentations.

The 11 runners up for the award were:

3DViva  from InterGrafx

From China, this interactive, multifunctional Avatar application enables users to create three-dimensional avatars. At the party, CEO Charles Chiang said: “You can also invite friends to create their own avatar and share it with you so you can see the avatar when the friend calls. This event is a great opportunity to promote this really cool application in the West.”

Pocket Express from Handmark

The UK version of this personalized, on-device service from US company Handmark integrates news and information in an easy-to-use interface, that turns an ordinary mobile device into a personalized experience.

Vringo from Vringo 

Vringo allows users to create ringtones from video clips, available for download or created by themselves, and share them with their friends and family. The clips then become ringtones that show when the recipient’s phone is called.

Phone Alone from Mobisophy technologies

Another Chinese entry, Phone Alone provides a remote control capability for devices that enable an answering service to be set up, or calls to be diverted to another phone, using intuitive voice-activated menus. So should a user leave their mobile phone at home, they need never miss any calls.

Share your mobile life from Bliin 

This social networking application enables geo-tagged audio, text and video to be shared from a GPS-enabled handset, directly and in real-time. An online Google map is used to access the social community.

LocoMash from Lancaster University

A mobile location mashup, LocoMash enables users to geotag and collate their photos on a single web page to provide a location-based record of an event, instead of a more conventional time-based history. “You can then view the event by zooming in and out of the map and clicking on pictures to see what actually happened anywhere at the event.” says Dr. Reuben Edwards of Lancaster University.

MotionLens from Realeyes3D 

Using the cameraphone as a motion detector, this application simplifies the navigation of maps, websites, images and other content by intuitively moving the phone. Representing Realeyes3D at the event, Katia Hilal said: “We have built an application that allows very smooth navigation and zooming just by moving your hand. Our mission is to make the cameraphone do more than just take pictures.”

Kyte from Decentral.tv 

Kyte Mobile enables users to broadcast their pictures and videos to a Kyte channel for sharing with their friends. Using LifeStreams, polls and text, audio or video chat, users can also interact with viewers.

Xelnex from PSILOC 

The Xelnex Voice Logger records mobile conversations in the background, tags them and encrypts and uploads them to a secure server. Aimed at professional users that need records of transactions, the application enables any authorized person to access the voice recording via the web.

Funny Cam Football from Technobubble  

This Spanish games developer was showing how its movement detection technology through a cameraphone allows player physical interaction with games that can be shown on a larger screen such as a TV. The application detects the player’s body movements to interact with the game.

Rexplorer from ETH Zurich 

This application combines a game with a sightseeing tour of Regensburg in Germany. In the game, tourists act as assistants to Professor Rex to help discover the city’s historical and mythological spirits located at 30 different locations of interest. “We’d love to extend this to other cities and we are in talks with some who have shown an interest. We are also talking to parties in the entertainment industry,” commented ETH Zurich’s Steffan Walz.

Moshing The Mobile Artist

A further demo at the party that was not part of the voting was MOSH, the content sharing site where members upload, distribute and manage content to be used on mobile devices.