Ron Liechty's Forum Nokia Blog

My Daily App

Nokia Ron — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:49:13 +0300

Are you reading My Daily App? This site sponsored by Forum Nokia has been reviewing applications available from Ovi Store and blogging about them at MyDailyApp.com. As a person selling applications, it is good that this independent group is reviewing and bringing to notice these applications. These applications are something you may never have heard about but are cool to have.

I invite you to take a look; the reviews are cool and unbiased. As a developer you should know they are not limited to big developer houses but highlight the small independent distributor. If the Widget or app is cool and in the Ovi store, they will promote it.

Ron

Innovation on YouTube

Nokia Ron — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:35:10 +0300

You can find all of the Forum Nokia Innovation Series Videos on Forum Nokia's Innovation Series YouTube channel.

You can learn more about top applications from the Forum Nokia Community, as told and demonstrated by the developers themselves. So go ahead, and check them out, leave some feedback, and subscribe to our channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/nokiadevforum

Ron

Ask the Expert about Symbian Platform Security, manufacturing grantable capabilities and Java verified.

Nokia Ron — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:27:00 +0200

Forum Nokia devotes one week to answering questions on a specific topic on our discussion boards. The Nokia expert that will answer the questions daily that are within their expertise as long as it is a reasonable question or comment.

We are fortunate this week to have an expert on application signing, one of the hottest topics on the discussion boards. I am sure there are lots of questions about Symbian Platform Security, manufacturer grantable capabilities and Java signing.

So if you have any questions about Symbian Platform Security, manufacturer grantable capabilities and Java signing please ask them. However, Symbian Signed questions are to be asked at the web site set up for Sybmian Signed questions and not in Forum Nokia.

Ron

2008 Technology Innovation Competition

Nokia Ron — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:52:15 +0200

Nokia extends the possibilities of open innovations to start up and midsize companies. By seeking out technology inventions in four design and HW focus areas the aim is to further drive the aspects of miniaturization, enhanced performance and green technologies in the area of consumer devices. Namely the four focus areas consist of:

Mobile Multimedia Experience: specifically driven by audio reproduction, camera and display technologies for exiting and professional performance.
Future Device Architecture: as enabler of enhanced device capabilities, faster processing and lower energy consumption for increased customer usability possibilities.
User Interface interest areas are very much in simplicity and human intuitiveness together with naturally required haptics.
Future Touch and Feel is seeking after novel look & feel, form factor, durability and movement solutions which provide unique design possibilities and may even enable the capability for individual personalization with no compromises on the usability.

In order to file in the proposals the inventor is asked to go to http://www.mobilerules.org/technology/ and fill in the given fields.

The winning companies will get into closure discussion possibility of solution development and resulting product creation with Nokia or the involved industry players. In total, there will be four winners as one within each of the Technology Innovation Competition categories. Further more, there will be three finalists nominated in each of the categories.

These finalists will be invited to an Innovation Exhibition within the Nokia Head Quarter in Espoo, Finland to demonstrate the developments and may get discussion with Nokia decision makers. For the advantage of the finalists Nokia will also make a public announcement, naming the 12 finalists as the short listed companies of this competition.

Timing of the Technology Innovation Competition Technology Innovation Submission starts
29 November 2007

Technology Innovation Deadline
25th January 2008

Finalist announcement
15 February 2008

Award ceremony
21 March 2008

Win a Nokia N95 Multimedia Device!!

Nokia Ron — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:50:03 +0200

Be one of the top contributors to the Forum Nokia Developer Wiki between November 15 and Midnight November 30 and win Nokia’s new premier multimedia device. The rules are simple, contribute quality or topical articles, How to’s or code examples. All articles submitted during the time period will be subjectively judged on how well they are presented, what the content is and the number of quality entries. The number of N95’s rewarded will be reflected by the number or quality articles submitted. The more people that participate; the more N95’s we will give away. In addition to the possibility of winning, all contributors will be considered for nomination into the Forum Nokia Champions program. So if you want honor and glory and a new N95 device contribute to the Wiki this month. Those who have previously won a Forum Nokia S60 3^rd edition device as well as Forum Nokia employees and contractors are not eligible for this contest.

For a full set of rules see the Rules of Participation

Ron

It Takes Time

Nokia Ron — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:13:16 +0300

How many times have you heard the phrase it takes time. Two pretty common ones are: it takes time to do a good job, it takes time to do it right. You know it does, but the best way to save time is to do it right the first time. An old story is the boss who gave three electronic engineers one third of the project to complete within six weeks. This program was in modules so none of them depended on the other engineers involvement. The first engineer immediated developed a prototype using a high level language he was fluent in that basically did what he wanted before writing it in the language specified. The next developer started directly with specified language and perfected each section as he completed it. The last engineer smply sat at his desk and occasionally jotted down a note or two that no one understood by his self.

After three weeks the engineer who had done the prototpye foutnd that the steps he had taken in the high level language did not translate into the same steps in the language specified, he was already a week behind with only three weeks to go. The engineer who perfected each section as he went along found that he often had to go back as the final elements never quite worked to gether, he was also a week behind. With three weeks to go the third engineer, looked once again at all his notes, turned on the computer and began writing the module.

With one week to go, the first two engineers were at their bosses desk asking for more help and an extension, there was no way to complete their assigned tasks with just the one week left. The third engineer was also at his bosses desk but he was there to ask for the rest of the week off; his job was done.

I am an action person, I want to jump in and do it now. I want to see instant results. When I take the time to plan out what I want and write it down. When I wait and look at all the outcomes. When I consider the options and make sound decisions before starting. I find that I save the most time and my work is the best.

Ron

Time Immemorial

Nokia Ron — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:45:18 +0300

British law sets the start of time as September 3^rd 1189. All POSIX based operating system sets the start of time as Midnight, January 1^st 1970 CUT. Apple set the start of time on Macintosh operating systems at Midnight, January 1^st 1904 as it saves one equation necessary to determine if it is a leap century or not. For some of us time started the day we were born. For others, time started when man first started telling stories that were passed down. Some believe time started with the (ever increasingly disproved) Big Bang Theory and others may believe that there was only time before the Big Bang. How can anyone manage something so overwhelming as time. Is “Time Management” and oxymoron?

Time management is a skill I have yet learned to master but I would not consider it an impossible task. At some times I do very well managing time. In fact if it wasn’t for outside influences I would have no problem completing all of my day to day work in a few hours. What takes most of my work time is one time only requests or demands upon my time. What I was taught was to build in to your schedule time for these external times and budget your time accordingly. One way to free up time is to not go to meetings where you are not needed. Read the minutes of the meeting, talk to someone that encapsulates it, or just ignore it totally. If you take stock of your time; log what you do every day; you will find that meetings and phone calls (or e-mail) are the biggest time waster of your day.

Stop doing the time wasters. For example I’m on a group list at work and get 20 or so messages a day from the list server. I filter my mail so that any from that group is diverted to a sub folder in Outlook and I never read it until the end of the day. If I am busy it can wait to be read another day or two. Do not attend every meeting, and if you do attend them make sure there is at least 15 minutes apart from the last meeting. If you hold meetings wear a watch or watch your phone, start and end on time. Once people learn your meetings start and end on time they will be there promptly.

Ron

Power saved is Product Sold

Nokia Ron — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:56:38 +0300

Increasingly I see complaints on the discussion board about poor battery life. Of course there are bad batteries out there but for the most part batteries live longer now than ever before. One of my mobile devices would go for days on end without needing a charge but if I used it for an alarm clock it would need charging daily. If I had not observed that it was this one application that caused the battery problem I would have been extremely upset with Nokia. Knowing what caused the poor battery life made me quite upset with the application and I only used it when absolutely necessary.

If you are planning on selling your product and want to have loyal customers you need to consider the power consumption of your application or utility. Forum Nokia has created a web site that will help you achieve this with information and tools. Please visit this page as it is not only important to Nokia to have long battery life but also for you or the company you work for to have the ultimate power management. Right now they may blame Nokia but do not under-estimate the word of mouth that would spread if your product was listed as an energy waster. A good programmer always tries to write the most elegant code and this will help you achieve that.

Ron

The Symbian Smartphone Show

Nokia Ron — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:05:16 +0300

What a great name for an exhibition no pretense at all, let’s just call it what it is… a show. Oh sure, there will be thousands of visitors and keynote addresses and many uppity ups and muckity mucks will be there. There will be exhibitions and conferences and meetings but it is a show, and that is what they call it. I’ve never attended the Symbian Smartphone Show and I don’t think I would want to if they called it the Symbian Multimedia Device Exhibition and Conference. Even though Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, I say a cubic zirconia by another name would be a diamond.

I’m glad they are still calling it the Smartphone show since I’m going this year. Many of you will be going this year too. There are many Symbian developers in the UK I suspect I might know many of them but they will have to tell me their user name if I am to recognize them. There will be a Forum Nokia Champions event there, one of the reasons I’m going but the real reason I’m going is to just meet with you people. So if you see a one eyed pirate, tap the shoulder and say “Ron?” and let me know your name.

Ron

Web 2.0 rev. 8.0d

Nokia Ron — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 02:42:25 +0300

I never got the purpose of a Wiki until I started using Wikipedia. To me the only thing that Wikis were good for was for collaboration projects. I did not grasp the concept of contributed documentation, only contributed code and comments. Now, a Wikipedia is my first stop for documentation of anything I am curious about. Want to know what SOA is? Then wikipedia.org is the place to go. Now granted there are twenty other possible solutions besides Service Oriented Software but generally from the context of the phrase you are reading it, you will get the right answer.

I hope that Forum Nokia’s Wiki can be the place for all mobile device developers to go to first for answers. I hope that when a person predominately doing Samsung device applications wants to find out information that they check the Nokia Wiki first. I say this because then that that same person will contribute his knowledge to Nokia’s developers Wiki. Sure we could all just use Google and let the Google Brats rake in the dough but do we want another mega-corporation dominating the world? (Well, yeah, if it is Nokia).

The best way to learn something is to teach it, the next best way is to write an article about it. If you don’t have time to do those, read a Wiki. If it is wrong, don’t worry an expert will come by and correct it in short order. I don’t comprehend why I resisted Wikis for years, most likely is that I just had this concept of it as a project tracking system. Whatever held me back, like a dam breaking my enthusiasm is bursting out. So, watch out below.

Ron