Andreas Jakl's Forum Nokia Blog

Developer Events

2009-05-14T22:57:29+03:00

Last week, I’ve been giving a talk at the first Austrian Android Developers Day (a2d2, organized by T-Mobile) about Android as a mobile operating system. It has been a very interesting experience – is there something that Nokia can possibly learn from this event?

Let’s start with the location: the event took place in Vienna. It was fully booked; nearly all attendants were from Austria. Most developer events that I know of try to gather an international audience and are therefore hosted in the larger cities. But the a2d2 clearly demonstrated that it’s perfectly feasible to host regional developer events. After all, the country size doesn’t say anything about the quality of developers: I've been told that when taking the number of inhabitants into account, most entries/finalists from the Android developer challenge came from Austria.

One of the most interesting aspects about the event was the mixed audience. About one third was actually developing for the platform, while another third didn’t really know a lot about Android beforehand! This is unique compared to most developer events, where attendants are experienced developers or managers who wish to extend their business. At the a2d2, students, small and big companies were all thrown together and enjoyed talking to each other. For example, several of our students (some from 2nd semester!) presented their projects at the tech sessions; on the other hand, there have been representatives from large companies like Red Bull or bwin. This resulted in a very relaxed atmosphere that lead to many new ideas.

The choice of date and time is the last fact I’d like to point out: the a2d2 started in the late afternoon and lasted until 10 pm. This made it a lot easier to attend after work, instead of having to take several days off to drive to some big developer event.

Developer Events

Obviously, huge events like the recent Nokia Developer Summit in Monaco are important as well. These serve the business target group and bring together the dedicated core of development companies, who can and want to spend the time and the resources required to travel there. The events demonstrate the dedication of Nokia to their business and show the value that lies in the ecosystem – which is bigger than on any other platform.

However, smaller companies, individuals and students are more or less left out. They need regional events that are easy to reach and cheap to attend. These events help to build the regional network that's needed to acquire new projects. And: this group is where the real innovation comes from. While they do not generate money for the platform or Nokia in the short term, it’ll pay off in the long run.

The interaction of Nokia with bloggers and with dedicated members of the community (through the FN Champions program) is excellent. Additionally, companies that are really interested in working on Nokia platforms are taken care of through the FN Launchpad / Pro programs.

Now, the goal should be to take care of the rest – developers who are not yet working on the platform, but might be interested. And those who are already doing something, but don’t have the resources to travel to big events or spend time on engaging in the online community. This is vital for creating a buzz around the platforms and for showing developers that they are being taken seriously. Just imagine how great it is for a student to be able to demonstrate his project at an event organized by a company like T-Mobile – or Nokia!

Protect your Skis with your Phone!

2008-09-10T22:26:45+03:00

TDS-S uses NFC technology to secure your skis.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is mostly associated with micro payment systems or access solutions. These are the ideal use cases for rather slow, but contactless information transmission over distances of up to some centimeters.

Theft Deterrent System for Skis (TDS-S) is a novel approach to using NFC technology – it protects your skis from being stolen.

The students Markus Eder, Florian Lettner and Carina Madlmayr from the Mobile Computing department of the FH Hagenberg are fond of skiing – rather natural, considering they’re from Austria. Everyone who has already been on a slope in his life will know the slightly worrying thoughts when you go into a ski hut: “Are my skis still going to be here when I return?”

Especially if you know that there are more than 10,000 registered ski thefts every year only in Austria, it’s certainly not inappropriate to think about securing your expensive skiing equipment. Naturally, cameras outside of the restaurants usually don’t help much. If you consider what everyone is usually wearing when skiing, you’ll usually have a hard time to identify the thief should the police ever catch him. The only commercial solution that’s available today is to the skis together using a lock (like the simple bike locks). Unfortunately, this isn’t the most comfortable solution.

Near Field Communication is here to help

Surprisingly, NFC is the technology that proves to be incredibly useful to prevent ski theft, while still offering all the comfort you might want to have. The project “Theft Deterrent System for Skis (TDS-S)” is essentially about pairing the boot with the ski and doesn’t let the thief step into the binding if the secure code doesn’t match.

This is done by putting an MIFARE-tag into the boot. A small RFID-module is inserted into the ski and connected to one of the new bindings that electronically control the operation of the binding – like the Atomic Neox EBM. A Near Field Communication-enabled mobile phone or a PC is able to pair the boot with the ski. If anything else than the trusted boot steps into the binding, it refuses fastening and doesn’t let the thief drive away with your skis.

The project is currently still in development - you can read more about it at symbianresources.com or the project homepage. The first prototype has already been published and managed to be among the winners of several global competitions – the 1st Austrian NFC Developer Competition as well as the NFC Forum Global Competition. Who knows how much longer it’ll take until skis, which started out as simple wooden planks (The word “ski” meant “a stick of wood” in Old Norse) will finally turn into a product full of high tech.

NFC Congress

By the way, if you're interested in NFC, the place to go is the third annual NFC Congress from the 24th - 26th of February, 2009. It'll take place again in Hagenberg. After the successful previous two events, it has now turned even bigger and now consists of the conference, a workshop, an exhibition, a competition and even an IEEE scientific workshop day. Register now!

A video about the project:

A new way of using the mobile phone for the visually impaired

2007-09-13T12:04:27+03:00

Nowadays, more and more features are added to every new generation of mobile phones. It’d be hard to find a phone without camera, mp3 player or advanced games. However, sightless people don’t get a chance to experience these fascinating possibilities.

Prototype of the Ninepoint Box in use.

Without eyesight, there are currently only two possibilities for mobile communications:

Text2Speech-software: This is problematic due to the privacy requirements – it’d be hard to use in public. Also, navigation through menus is slow. Another disadvantage is that it’d be nearly impossible to put text2speech-software on top of the existing UI of mobile phones, as today’s interfaces are usually very graphical. For example, even the alarm clock application couldn’t be read by software, as the time is usually presented in a graphical way.
Special Braille PDAs: They are comfortable to use, but very big and expensive, making their daily and mobile use problematic.

Why not use the power of modern Smartphones to provide a new and better solution? A project started by Ewald Kantner at our University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg tries to address this issue.

Ninepoint Box

Closeup of a prototype Ninepoint Box.

A small, external box with several Braille components and keys for easy input connects through Bluetooth to the mobile phone. A special Python-application on a Symbian OS phone is responsible for communication and for providing the special non-graphical user interface.

The interface has to be highly optimized to be able to efficiently access the most important features of phones, like making calls, sending SMS and using the alarm clock or calculator. Python proved to be the ideal choice for these tasks as its performance is sufficient and it enables better access to the required phone services than Java ME. On the other hand, using standard C++ would be very difficult due to the vast amount of different system APIs that are involved – of course, they’re very powerful but therefore also complex.

The resulting solution is relatively cheap, easy to use and very transportable. It has been a big challenge to design the hardware and to test it with the target group, as the requirements are hard to meet. In the current status, fully working prototypes are finished and the final hardware design is on its way.

To bring this product to the market, Ewald Kantner has started his own company “Ninepoint Systems”. Currently, he is searching for investors to bring the solution to the market – which is looking forward to the solution, according to the feedback from Europe’s biggest fare for sightless people, “Sight City”.