Forum Nokia Web Talks

Forum Nokia @ Web 2.0 San Francisco, 31 March - 3 April

uptian — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:22:47 +0200

With Web 2.0, the era of participation has spawned a whole new generation of web-based communities and hosted services – from social-networking sites with embedded widgets and social applications to wikis and folksonomies - a set of meshing behaviours and technologies bringing a whole new meaning to the idea of people facilitating, collaborating and sharing.

Mobile services are also evolving in line with web 2.0 - and Forum Nokia wants to share ideas with you about how the latest mobile applications and services are allowing users to connect and share on a whole new level. At Web 2.0 San Francisco, we will showcase the innovative homescreen widgets on N97 and demostrate the easy-to-use mobile widget development tool, WRT plug-in for Aptana Studio.

You can also find out more details about the latest global mobile application competition which you can win cash prizes, Spotlight status at Ovi Store and showcase your widgets at Nokia World event

Meet us at Forum Nokia Stand @ Nokia Booth, Web 2.0 San Francisco.

Nokia Web Stories in 2008..

uptian — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:43:54 +0200

Year 2008 has been a 'happening' year for Nokia Web Technologies. Web Runtime handsets (e.g. N95 8GB, N78, 6220 classic, 5320 XpressMusic..etc) started shipping in consumer hands in mass quantity at the beginning of 2008. All the latest S60 3.2 onwards handsets are WRT compatible. Some of the latest S60 3.1 handsets (e.g. E66, E71..etc) are supporting WRT. We are putting up a filter on the forum.nokia.com device page for you to easily to find out which are the WRT compatible handset. Stay tuned for that...

For consumer, they can find the library of widgets here, http://widsets.mobi/library. From the library, you can find widgets related to news, weather, blogs, travel, tool and etc.. This is one of the steps for Nokia to educate consumers on widgets. Not only finding widgets, users can also share their favourite widgtets with their friends via sms.

In April, Nokia announced that the new version WRT widget (WRT 1.1) which can access to S60 phone's Platform Services like calendar, location, contacts..etc The first handset with this capability is Nokia 5800 which started shipping in Nov. This open up an existing opportunity for web developers to provide a better web experience to their customers. For example, when an user search for restaurant, he will get the list of restaurant according to his location without entering the location. The widget is able to provide a seamless experience by detecting his location and provide the list of restaurant near his location. Here is an example from the lastminute.com fonefood widget

In regards to WRT tool, we have released the public beta version of WRT plug-in for Aptana Studio. This is the first WRT plug-in release for an existing web IDE tool. We want to allow the Aptana tool users to use the familiar Aptana studio environment to build their first widgets. We have been receiving lots of valuable feedback on this tool and the tool team is continuously working to make the WRT tools offer better. You are encouraged to provide feedback at the discussion board and also sign up the coming webinars to learn more about the WRT plug-in.

Not only on the S60 phones, the new Series 40 6th edition handsets (Nokia 6260 slide, 7510 Supernova) has the WebKit browser which allow users to browse full web. This gives web developers to have direct access to the huge market represented by these users. Many of them could be from emerging markets who have their first Internet experience via mobile. see this recent article from the Wall Street Journal, Poorer Nation go online on Cellphone.

Last but not least, the N97 with widgets on its home screen is the latest kids on the block. The personalised homescreen (with widgets) provides users an 'always open' window to social networking sites and Internet destinations. Stay tuned for more info about the home screen widget. Meanwhile, you can study the current Web Runtime Widgets materials at forum.nokia.com/widgets. The widgets on N97 homescreen is based on the same technology but with more advanced features...

Wish all of you have a happy holidays. See you all in 2009!

My take away from the SDForum search and social graph panel

wmseto — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:44:31 +0200

It is wonderful to be in the bay area... Just so many talented people and exciting new technologies.

Last night I attended SDForum Search SIG panel session. The discussions were wonderful and going pretty fast. It was difficult to take notes but, there were few key items that are interesting (to me).

Panelists:
Kevin Marks from Google (heading the Google social graph API effort)
Aditya Argarwal (Director of Engineering, Facebook)
Kent Brewster (Yahoo! Working on MyBlogLog API)
Eve Phillips (CEO of Chirp)

Lightweight Social Graph vs. Accurate Social Graph - This has to deal with rather a social graph is for causal sharing or rather details/accurate information are shared.
Avoid Anti-Patten - This term anti-patten is new to me, but according to Wikipedia, a solution that initially seems to be solveing problem, but later found to be cause more issues.
Portability of a social graph - Can you move it easily? Even further, if someone decides to leave the network, can all data be erased.
Privacy - The key is no surprises to the users
Not knowing users want want is common - Initially, at the bootstrap phase of a social network it is not often clear what the users really want. Listen to the users.
Every social network has a bootstrap phase.

Kent Brewster showed a really cool demo, the latest MyBlogLog API, which allow blog visitors' social graph (mush up) data shown. You can try the demo here: http://kentbrewster.com/blogjuice/ (just click on the Blog Juice link and select some people from the popup window) According to Mr. Brewster, he had only 2 days to work on it, so expect beta experience

Even Phillips CEO of Chrip showed off her company's product: A social network/mash up screen saver. http://www.chrip.com

Yahoo Media team taped the session, and they told me that the video will be on either http://next.yahoo.net or http://developer.yahoo.com . I don't want when the video will be up, but as soon as I know I will an update.

W. Seto