Hartti Suomela's Forum Nokia Blog

Mobile Python book is out

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:39:44 +0300

Here is the evidence. Mobile Python book is out!

Jurgen Scheible (on the right) and Ville Tuulos holding the first autographed copy of their new book about Python on S60 devices. I quickly browsed the book and it looks very good and very useful book teaching how to use PyS60 to prototype mobile applications! Nice work guys!

Slides for the S60 runtimes presentation on SVSIG

Thu, 17 May 2007 22:50:09 +0300

Here are the slides I prepared for the Silicon Valley Symbian Programming SIG about different runtimes on S60 (warning: 1.4 MB file). With runtimes I mean here Java ME, Flash Lite and Python, even tough there are many more runtimes available on S60 (browser, Perl, Ruby, LUA, you name it).

The structure of the presentation basically is

Overview of S60
Overview of Java ME, Flash Lite, Python
Comparing Java ME, Flash Lite, Python from different angles
Some background material on Java ME security and Symbian platform security

I got material for the presentation from different sources including Mr. PyS60 himself, Bill Perry from Adobe (you will notice which slides are from his presentation, as their graphical quality stands out...), and of course my colleagues from Forum Nokia. Big thanks to everyone (and all the other people I forgot to thank above)!

I tried to be as diligent as possible in filling in all the tables, but it is possible that there are still some kinks which needs to be corrected. Please chime in if you find a mistake in here. And note, all the mistakes are mine.

The event itself was a cozy meeting with a handful of mobile developers. The talk ran over the time limit very very much, thanks to me having way too many slides and the attendees asking a lot of really good questions. Special thanks for John Kern for organizing this event and Mozilla Foundation for hosting it!

Comparing Java ME, Flash Lite and Python - what would be the topics?

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:24:28 +0300

I am in the process of creating a presentation on the three main runtimes on S60 platform - well, I should probably include also the browser in there, but currently the idea is to compare Java ME, Flash Lite and Python environments. Like: What functionalities are available? What is each good at? What is each not good at? and so forth...

My intention is to get this ready by mid-May, so there is still time to work on this (which is a good thing because the current version is like pre-draft quality :-)

However, if you would attend such presentation, what would you like to hear about? Also if you have some specific comments (pro or con) for a a specific environment, all comments are more than welcome!

Of course I will post the final presentation in here (or maybe a better place is FN Wiki...)

Courseware for mobile programming

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:38:19 +0200

Good and extensive teaching material about mobile programming is always hard to come by and knowing how long it takes to create material only for one lecture, it was nice to find that the course page for Mobile Multimedia Technoogies course, lectured by Vidya Setlur from NRC Palo Alto contains a lot of useful material for mobile Python, Java, and Flash Lite programming.

Does anyone else have any other pointers to useful course materials? (I am guessing that Paul Coulton has something in his sleeves, any others?)

Preview of Python on S60 3rd Edition

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 04:04:03 +0300

"When is Python on S60 3rd Edition devices going to be available?" I have heard and seen this question many times during the past few months, and finally there is some kind of an anwser to this question. PyS60 1.3.8 was just released on SourceForge . Source code and self-signed SIS packages are included.

NOTE: This is a 3rd edition only release and it is not a stable final release. The changes required by the platform security of Symbian 9.x and S60 3rd Edition are explained nicely in the readme file. Make sure to start from there.

The best place to provide feedback and ask questions is the Python discussion group on Forum Nokia web site.

Python S60 at Emerging Tech SIG (Bay Area)

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:58:34 +0300

Mike Rowehl (one of the guys behind Mobile Monday) and myself gave a talk on Python development on S60 phones (check out Forum Nokia Python section) at SDForum's Emerging Technology SIG meeting last week. Mike was responsible for the demos and I tortured people with my Finglish. Of course I ran over my time a lot, but my excuse was that there were a lot of good questions coming in. My estimate (yes, I should have counted) is that 30+ people attended - I think also people from Bay Area Python Interest Group were present.

While preparing the presentation and revisiting the PyS60 functionalities I realized (again) how powerful Python is. I need to find out more time to hack some of my hobby projects on the Python on S60 devices as well as on desktop. Wishful thinking, I am afraid...