Andreas Jakl's Forum Nokia Blog
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/andreas-jakls-forum-nokia-blog
<p>As an Assistant Professor, I'm teaching Symbian OS at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria. My company "Mopius" is developing mobile software with a special focus on Symbian OS.</p>
mopius2009-11-23T20:45:52ZAutomatically Calling Back Saves Money
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/andreas-jakls-forum-nokia-blog/2008/08/26/autocallback
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<td align="center"><img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/105214/t_autocallback01.jpg" alt="Auto Call Back" /></td>
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<td align="center"><em>Auto Call Back can help you to save money.<br />
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Starting with today, I'm now also on one of the hugely popular all-inclusive phone tariff plans. In Austria, every operator currently has a plan with a certain number of minutes (usually 1000 or more) included - essentially, a flat rate for around €19/month.
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On the other hand, many friends and relatives have minute-based plans, which can be rather expensive if they're calling to other operators.
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Rationally, it'd be the best if I call someone with a minute-based plan back and don't accept his call. In this scenario, nobody of us pays anything (extra). Obviously, it's a bit of work - you have to discard the call, go to the call history and call back.
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Automatic Call Back
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Already two semesters ago, two students (Dominik Brandlberger and Daniel Haslinger) developed a solution to this called "<a href="http://www.symbianresources.com/projects/autocallback.php" title="Auto Call Back">Auto Call Back</a>" (why always invent strange names if it can be that simple?). The whole call-back process is automated by the application.
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The result after one semester is a prototype and no commercial application - after all, both didn't have any serious Symbian OS development experience before and the whole issue turned out to be not so easy.
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Apparently, you can't easily cancel calls that you don't own through the public CTelephony-APIs of S60 3rd Edition-phones - it only seems to work if you accept them first and immediately cancel them. However, this means that the caller already has to pay up to one minute, no matter how short the call was. Therefore, the application now cancels the calls through simulating the red key. The disadvantage here is that the mailbox has to be turned off for rejected calls.
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But how does the app know for which contacts to do it? After the first initial experiments with an own database, the best solution turned out to put all those contacts into a special group. This also allows the user to easily manage the call-back contacts through the normal contacts-app of the phone; the call-back app doesn't have to re-invent the wheel.
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The prototype is <a href="http://www.symbianresources.com/projects/autocallback.php" title="Auto Call Back">available for free</a>, but of course not yet ready for real-world usage. It lacks many features and is by far not bug-free. Also, you need to sign it yourself through the <a href="http://www.symbiansigned.com/" title="Open Signed at Symbian Signed">Open Signed</a>-process from Symbian Signed.
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If anyone is clueless what application to develop next, I'd be very interested in getting a finished and polished application that can do exactly what the prototype can do. Or is there already anything around on the web that I didn't find?
</p>ConnectivityEnterpriseGeneralS60Symbian C++2008-08-26T18:18:15ZmopiusNear Field Communication in Real Life
http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/andreas-jakls-forum-nokia-blog/2007/02/20/near-field-communication-in-real-life
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<td><img width="260" height="241" align="middle" alt="That's me in front of a smart poster" src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=379&file=poster.jpg" /></td>
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<td>That's me in front of a smart poster.</td>
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 <a href="http://europe.nokia.com/A4153291">Near Field Communication</a> (NFC) is often handled as one of the most promising technologies of the mid-term future. Through contactless and at the same time simple data transfer using RFID – combined with a high security storage of encrypted data in the smart card (e.g. the SIM-card of the mobile phone) – it enables several new and exciting usage scenarios and improves the comfort of many existing areas. With this posting, I’d like to share some insight about the current state of NFC.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">NFC-Trial</span><br /><br />One of the world’s first NFC-trials is currently running at the <a href="http://www.fh-ooe.at/index.php?id=90">University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria</a>. 100 students and teachers (including me) got an NFC-enabled phone and can now use it for various services that are evaluated through usage studies and surveys. The goal is to measure the acceptance and use the input for improving the current ideas.<br /><br />The trial is still running, but when talking to the project managers, they already reveal some of the first results. It seems like micropayment is one of the main killer applications for NFC – especially the coffee machine is the place where everybody wants to use their phone for quick payment, instead of having to carry around lots of coins or special chip-cards.<br /><br />Another result is that speed is very important. An info-terminal that can synchronize the phone with the latest news and menu plans from the local gastronomy is a great idea, but data transfer is just too slow. NFC only works well if everything happens instantly – “touch & go”. Downloading a video through NFC by holding it to a smart poster for half a minute (as seen in the otherwise very interesting <a href="http://www.nokia.com/link?cid=EDITORIAL_81777">NFC video</a> from Nokia) won’t be a great experience. If bigger data should be submitted, it would be better to use NFC to create another data connection, like seamless Bluetooth pairing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Development</span><br /><br />
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<td><img width="300" height="178" alt="The Nokia 6131 on the pad of the NFC info terminal." src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=380&file=infoterminal.jpg" /></td>
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<td>The Nokia 6131 on the pad of the NFC info terminal.</td>
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At the moment, only four mobile phones are available:<br />
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<li>The pioneer phone: Nokia 3220</li>
<li>SAGEM my419X</li>
<li>Samsung SGH-X700N</li>
<li>The new Nokia 6131</li>
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Especially the new phone from Nokia is ahead from the competition and does already contain a thoughtful implementation of some standards that are partly not even yet standardized. Exactly this is also one of the major things to take care of during development – through the lack of finished standards, it’s not really possible to let the Samsung and the Nokia-phones communicate with each other. However, the <a href="http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=257">JSR 275</a> (Contactless Communication API) is set to change this situation.<br /><br />Another aspect that’s often overlooked in the early stages of development is battery consumption. For early adopters, it might not be a big issue if they have to charge their phone every second day. But when I was talking to “normal” students about the advantages of Smartphones about a month ago, they said that they really wouldn’t want a phone where the battery has to be charged so often. For example the NFC-phone from Samsung only lasts for two days. This is something where the clam-shell design of the new Nokia 6131 comes in handy, as it is by default (when it’s closed or switched off) only in passive mode, while it only activates the active mode when the phone is opened. In my opinion, this is an important fact when NFC should go mainstream.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">More Information<br /><br /></span>If you’d like to know more about NFC or the trial that’s currently active in Hagenberg, take a look at <a href="http://www.nfc-research.at/">http://www.nfc-research.at/</a>. On this website you’ll also find the program of the upcoming NFC Applications Conference, a very interesting event with high-profile speakers talking about NFC technology and its future applications.<br /><br />
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<td><img width="300" height="199" alt="In the NFC Trial, the mobile phones can also be used to access the labs and the parking garage." src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=381&file=access.jpg" /></td>
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<td>In the NFC Trial, the mobile phones can also be used to access the labs and the parking garage.</td>
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</table>ConnectivityEnterprise2007-02-20T18:34:29Zmopius