Ron Liechty's Forum Nokia Blog

Brief Forum Nokia Maintenance

Nokia Ron — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:26:17 +0300

Forum Nokia web services will be down for a brief period Thursday morning from Midnight to 1:00 AM GMT (3:00 AM to 4:00 AM eastern Europe daylight savings time). During this time the entire web services will be affected. Forum Nokia thanks you for your patience during this brief maintenance break.

Ron

Removal of Verification for Responding to bBog

Nokia Ron — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:23:58 +0300

Last year we tried to open the Forum Nokia blogs up for non-members. However, in order to prevent spam we instigated a verification scheme which was faulty. Basically if you made one mistake or didn't put a title in the response it would be eternally fouled up as the verification would be cached incorrectly.

I apologize that it took so long to just abandon the verification process. We felt it could be fixed, it is a well established and used system but it just never worked correctly. The intent was to attract comments from outside of Forum Nokia but that never came about so there was no reason to continue with this frustrating verification system.

Ron

Recent Discussion Board Changes

Nokia Ron — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:34:43 +0300

I imagine that almost everyone has noticed the new changes in the Forum Nokia community discussion boards. The most striking change is the removal of descriptions for many forums. The reason for this is to clarify what is forum in itself and what is a group of forums with sub forums. Removing these generally redundant descriptions will allow us in the future to shrink some icons and make more forums viewable without scrolling down. For those that do like the descriptions we plan to add them back in as context sensitive pop-ups later this year.

I personally felt that the idea of having a forum like Location Based Services have a description of "Use this forum for discussion of Location Based Services" as foolish and almost insulting to our members.

All of the Parent forums with child forums now have a listing of the sub forums until we have context sensitive pop-ups. The forums that are stand alone have no description.

The other step that has happened is many sub-forums have been promoted to a higher level. The most recent was the Widget/Widset forum was promoted up from a sub forum of Web Technologies. Other notable changes are some of the feedback channels were merged into others and the parent folder was removed. At no time are messages lost they are simply put into another category.

We have other plans to merge forums I think Games will merge into the General category both on Symbian C++ and Mobile Java forums. They simply do not have enough traffic to keep them separate.

Please feel free to let me know how you like or dislike these changes and other changes you'd like to see.

Ron

Forum Nokia Provided Code Snippets

Nokia Ron — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:34:29 +0200

Forum Nokia has started production of Code Snippets in the Knowledge Base in the FN Wiki. Code snippets are well-written code blocks that demonstrate how to use APIs and methods to perform a certain task or use case, providing easy-to-use code for faster application development.

Forum Nokia developed snippets use interfaces from the public SDKs and have been tested on real devices. A code snippet also typically contains a simple application that uses the code, or information on how to apply the code in an application. Code snippets are provided for various technology areas and specifically address current themes of interest. For example, the first published code snippets concentrate on use cases related to the Symbian Signed test criteria.

Forum Nokia provided code snippets complement the existing offering of hundreds of code examples created by the developer community at FN Wiki. Besides being a separate category in the Knowledge Base, the code snippets are also listed in the Code examples section among other examples.

The Forum Nokia published code snippets can be easily distinguished by a specific banner and the CS prefix in the title. Check them out at: http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Portal:KB_Code_Snippets

If you have any specific topics that should be addressed, send your suggestions to forum.feedback@nokia.com

Ron

Truf and Leisti Awarded Conributor and Poster of the Month Honors

Nokia Ron — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:01:00 +0200

Most months Forum Nokia recognizes individuals that stand out in the developer’s community for their work. This month we are happy to announce that the winners will receive one of the latest versions of S60 3^rd Ed. Devices in addition to the recognition and thanks for their achievement.

For the Wiki this user is Leisti who’s contributions for Java beginners Installing Java ME development tools for S60 and Creating your first MIDlet using EclipseME caught the attention of the Wiki Moderators.

For the Discussion Boards it is an honor to name truf as the Poster of the Month. Truf has been very helpful in organizing and leading the discussion in the new Russian discussion board. However, it is his activity this past month and in previous months helping others with Symbian development questions that has made him a stand out community member.

Ron

Ask the Experts: Carbide.c++

Nokia Ron — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:05:32 +0200

This weeks ask the experts is on Carbide.c++ Nokia’s tool for Symbian C++ developers. Our experts this week are Matt Salmo (msalmo) and Matt Pinsonneault (Mpinsonneault) from the Carbide support team. If you have questions for them please ask in this thread.

Please keep the questions related to Carbide.c++

Ron

Everything you wanted to know about VoIP

Nokia Ron — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:19:37 +0200

This week the Ask the Expert topic is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). I doln't know about you as a developer but as a consumer this really thrills me. The idea of being able to use my cell phone in my home as a house phone and then taking it with me anywhere and having the same number is great. I have a VoIP phone in my house now well it is a cable internet phone but it is great. Now to converge the technology with my multimedia device has me thinking wow. Of course I can use my N800 and do VoIP and browse the web or I can do the internet wtih wirelss LAN but wow lets do this seamlessly

If you are curious, this weeks ask the expert is on VoIP and he is eager to answer your questions. If you have any questions for our expert in this smoking hot technology we will try to answer them as promptly as possible.

Ron

Happy Holidays from the Discussion Boards

Nokia Ron — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:24:21 +0200

At the end of the year it is traditional to wish everyone a happy holiday as it seems almost every culture has a celebration at this time of year. I have been very blessed to have been manager of one of the most enthusiastic group of developer one can imagine. Forum Experts and Forum Champions contribute their expertise for no reward other than the satisfaction of helping others. I wish to take this time to thank everyone that has taken part of the Nokia developer’s community by either by asking or answering a question. I feel close to each and everyone, and would feel no less a community if we were all in the same complex and sharing a cafeteria. I give a heartfelt thank you and happy holidays to each and everyone.

A couple notes of interest.

We have not been neglecting the discussion board as the Blogs and Wiki have grown in the past year, but being mature they have taken a back stage to the rest of the community. In the upcoming year we will be adding new features and tweaking what works well now to make the discussion boards even more compelling.

The Forum Nokia Discussion Board’s forum experts are an unsung group of volunteers who take their own time to help others. Almost all of them are Nokia engineers or employees who care deeply about the quality of applications for Nokia. Since each and everyone started with no knowledge they can understand the novice and since almost everyone has developed his skills to the expert level they can also help the seasoned professional developers. So perhaps the next time one responds to you, you might want to thank him or her for their taking the time to help.

Ron

New Wiki Improvements

Nokia Ron — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:59:56 +0200

We have added several improvements to the Forum Nokia Wiki I hope you enjoy them. First we have added a way to rate the articles based on how well it is written by stars and what you feel the target audience is by the circles. Of course you can’t rate this home page, I don’t want my feeling hurt. Just click on the rating you want to vote for the levels.

We have also added improved Editor to the Wiki, it is now a lot easier to create or edit the Wiki pages. This is a great plug-in for the MediaWiki software that we use. Speaking of MediaWiki we also upgraded to the latest version and patches.

Another new feature is adding links to similar topics from the discussion boards. If you find an article and want to discuss it you can jump to one of these or create your own with the same title as the article and it will be a link for everyone.

We aren’t done yet so if you see any new features on other Wiki’s that you feel we should add here; let me know.

Ron

Happy Holidays from the Wiki Team

Nokia Ron — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:18:57 +0200

This has been quite a successful year for the Forum Nokia Wiki. We started with nothing and launched in April. Already we have over three thousand five hundred contributions by our members to make our Wiki one the best developer’s Wiki in the world and hands down best Mobile developer’s Wiki ever. We have added the Forum Nokia Knowledge Base to our Wiki to allow for faster updates and comments to Nokia by our users.

I am not alone in the Wiki team ten volunteer administrators that help me to find problems and determine contest winners and suggest paths for the Wiki to move to. These moderators are extremely generous with their time and without them the Wiki would not have grown so quickly and had such well written articles.

Rest assured we won’t be sitting still for the next year. We have plenty of revisions and a few major updates to bring to you. We will not be idle but an ever changing and ever adapting Wiki with many ideas yet to implement.

From all of the Forum Nokia administrators and my self; we wish you a Happy Holiday and many more to follow.

Ron