Sammi shows-off (devices) at Orange Partner Developer Day

Last Tuesday we were fortunate enough to be invited along to Orange Partner’s London Developer Day. The event ran all day and was held at Orange’s fantastic developer centre located in the Chiswick Business Park – just across the road from Gunnersbury tube (district/overground lines). This centre gives developers the opportunity to go in and test their apps on live Orange devices, a great way to check that your app works perfectly on a variety of different handsets.

The day was divided into two parts, separated by a great lunch which also provided the perfect opportunity for developers to network. The morning consisted of several presentation sessions. These covered the opportunities Orange have for developers with their A-Store solutions – across all platforms (Symbian, Windows Mobile and Java) – how to submit your app to Orange, and also a really insightful overview on mobile UI design issues.

The afternoon was then divided into one-on-one-sessions where developers could meet with a representative from the Orange Partner team to answer any questions not covered in the presentations and discuss further opportunities for collaboration. While these meetings were taking place we were able to show the other attendees the latest Samsung devices on the Orange network and discuss the opportunities available in the Samsung Mobile Innovator program.

For those who couldn’t make it on Tuesday, Orange is running a series of webinars over the next two weeks that cover similar topics to the ones presented on the day:

• 24th Nov: "The App Shop client - what is it and how can I get my apps onto it?"
• 25th Nov: "Let’s help you develop, test and finalise your app (technically)"
• 26th Nov: "the apps we are looking for right now"

These are being held in the run-up to December’s LeWeb event in Paris, where Orange is a gold sponsor and will be revealing their new on-device App Shop.

Thanks once again to Orange for a fantastic day.

Submit your app for the Omnia II and win $100,000 – entries now open!

Samsung Application Store Developer Challenge 2009

Our first Samsung Application Store Developer Challenge is now open for entries. Submit your app for the Omnia II by Thursday 10th December 2009 and win your share in a $330,000 prize pool.

This year there are four separate prize categories for both English and Italian language entries.

Further information can be found on the Events page of the Seller Office.
http://seller.samsungapps.com/contestcs/getContestMain.as
To access this link you must be a registered member of the Samsung Seller Office.

Discover how to target the Samsung Omnia II using our latest SDK at Samsung Mobile Innovator.
http://innovator.samsungmobile.com

Want a free Omnia II to develop for Windows Mobile 6.5? Register your interest TODAY!

For today (WED 28 OCT 2009) only we are opening this exclusive offer to the entire Windows Mobile developer community.

Samsung Application Store wants your app, and to prove it we’ll give you our latest Windows Mobile device for FREE…

We are offering you a device to keep, just for porting your existing Windows Mobile app to the Omnia II and making it available on Samsung Application Store. Why? Because we want to help Samsung Mobile Innovator Hub members like you grow their business.

You will need to attend our UK Developer Day where the devices will be available for you to collect on the evening.

Samsung Application Store UK Developer Day
Monday 02 November 2009, 6pm to 10pm
Bonetti Suite, Chelsea FC, Fulham Road, Chelsea. SW6 1HS

There will be a champagne reception, followed by a series of short informal presentations:

1. Introduction to Samsung Application Store
2. Technical support with Samsung Mobile Inno vator
3. Using the Samsung Omnia II SDK
4. Taking your app to market

Plus, plenty of time to network over drinks with other Windows Mobile developers and find out what they are working on. Then pick up your de

vice and start porting.

This is a free event and offered on the understanding that you wish to accept a free Omnia II device. To accept this device you must agree to port your Windows Mobile app by Thursday 10 December 2009 and distribute it on Samsung Application Store.

There are a limited number of seats available for this event, so unfortunately we won’t be able to accept all developers. Instead we will be choosing developers based on their responses to our online registration form. Complete this form at the link below.

http://bit.ly/SamsungDevDayNov09

Selected developers will receive an invitation by Thursday 29 October 2009.

If you have any questions regarding this offer please contact us on the email address yourpartner@samsung.com.

The Omnia II is a fantastic device, as you’ll hopefully discover first-hand. It is with great pleasure that we can offer you this chance to develop on it.

Farewell SIQ; hello SEE…

It has been a busy week here at Samsung Mobile Innovator. Today we announced the winners of our Samsung IQ win BIG with Widgets competition. We were very pleased with the quality of all the entries in this year’s competition, but the three place-winners below really impressed us….

First Place - Oh my Tweet
Oh my Tweet! We love this cool widget that brings the functionality of Twitter to the home screen of the Touch Wiz UI with a dynamic, easy to read, interface that can be minimized to take up less space on the home-screen. It has all the Twitter functions you need and it's a Samsung Mobile Widget that we think our customers are going to love.

Second Place - Twitter Tiny
Looks like Twitter definitely captured the imagination of our entrants, because our second place Samsung Mobile Widget is also a Twitter client. With innovative collapsible tabs, Twitter Tiny uses minimal space on the Samsung Touch Wiz UI.

Third Place - LoveOMeter
Think love's irrational? Our third place winner LoveOMeter tries to bring some logic (and fun!) to the situation. Simply enter your name, and the name of your partner, and check out how well you and your partner match. Want to compare yourselves to other users? Click on the statistics icon to get an overview of what the world is matching on!

For full details see http://bit.ly/CsoBx.

Also this week we have been putting the final touches on our preparation for SEE 2009. This year we will have a dedicated area in the Samsung Mobile stand showing off some of the coolest apps that have been developed by our Core partners for the i8910 HD. We hope to meet as many of you as possible. Our Global Relations Manager, Anwar Ahmed will be at SEE 2009 on both days. Get in touch with him on Twitter (@AnwarAhmed101). We will also be updating this blog as much as possible over the two days.

You can still register at http://www.see2009.org/

Location, location, location...

MoMo London
Last night our resident Technical Author, Ben Morris, attended MoMo London. Ben has a healthy(?) scepticism for anything he considers “trendy” or “marketing” so his thoughts on this month’s MoMo theme Location (a topic that continues to capture the imagination of both trend-setters and marketers alike) were always destined to be interesting.

Find them below…

Location has been the "new new thing" since, ooh, about Y2K, and was the theme at last night's MoMo London with some nice app demos and a panel discussion. A couple of key themes emerged:

• The cool new apps are using location as an added dimension to their main function/service and not as the primary service. Pure maps and navigation thus gives way to "where was I when I heard that song...?"

• There's still a place for pure location though, as Vodafone 360 demoed with its "location nudge" - on the new LiMo based 360 phones from Samsung

• The jury is still out on location based advertising. Biggest boo of the evening was for intrusive advertising along the lines of "when you walk past the store/coffee shop it can send you an offer". What we want instead are apps that add location to enable us to make the choices we want to make...

• In other words we want location browsing, and as if to make the point - the Flook demo seemed to offer us exactly that. Can't wait!

• The elephant in the room was privacy. It was the question I was going to ask, but Dan Appelquist beat me to it. The dystopian vision is of the mobile phone as a self-inflicted surveillance tool. The big question is - do we care/who cares? The optimistic view - perhaps "hide in plain sight" will save us.

• Best use case of the evening - "Let's me find myself when I'm in a bar!"

Loads of people, standing room only, tolerable wine, bags of chat and discussion afterwards until chucking out time.

Considering Ben is also a wine producer, “tolerable” is quite high praise.

Map out your future and get into the fast lane.
That’s the message from our partners NAVTEQ who are once again running their LBS Challenge, this year there is a special category for Touch UI apps in their annual LBS developer competition. The competition is open for location-aware applications based on any platform, including Symbian and Windows Mobile. This presents the perfect opportunity for any Samsung Mobile Innovator members currently developing LBS apps for Samsung's Windows Mobile Samsung Omnia range or the Symbian powered i8910 HD to participate.

For further details see www.LBSChallenge.com

Widgets, Widgets and more Widgets…

A quick look at our site this week will reveal that Samsung is excited about the possibilities offered by widgets in a mobile context.

Firstly , we released the Beta version of our Samsung Mobile Widget SDK. This is housed in a separate forum on Samsung Mobile Innovator. This area is aimed at both mobile and web developers and is dedicated to Samsung’s widget implementation on the touch Wiz UI. Whether you are a web developer looking to target mobile devices, or a mobile developer keen to explore widgets, we are sure you will find our area useful. Access it at the link below.
http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/platform.main.do?platformId=12

Media interest in this is already quite high with articles published in Engadget Mobile, Information Week, CNET and MobileCrunch.

Next, to coincide with the SDK launch we invited our Californian-based members who like caffeine and coding to pull an all-nighter with Samsung Mobile in San Francisco at our first Widget Developer Camp. There are some great prizes up for grabs ($5k each individual category and $20k Best in Show, plus a trip to CTIA to show off your widget), just remember you need to be a CA-local. For more details see our micro-site.
https://samsungwireless.com/devcamp/

And finally, due to demand from our members, Samsung IQ has been extended for two weeks. This means that the competition remains open until Friday 28th August 2009, giving developers more time to build their Samsung Mobile Widgets and refine their work. For full details, click the link below.
http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/bbs/tech/view.do?boardName=technology&messageId=39101

The message clearly - if you’re interested in this technology that combines HTML, CSS and Javascript to create cool UIs there has never been a better time to start coding.

Lights, Internal-Web-Cam, Action.... i8910 HD DevPack 1.0 has arrived

After several alpha and beta versions we have now released v1.0 of our industry leading DevPack for the i8910 HD. It has been in beta for the last few weeks while we sorted out some issues with the web-cam functionality. Previously you could only use this with an external webcam, but we have now resolved this issue so it works just as well with your internal camera.

Add to this advanced GSensor emulation, full support for the Samsung Mobile Widget framework and an interface optimized for a small laptop screen and we think we've given developers the best SDK experience around. Download today and try for yourself (http://bit.ly/i8910HDdevPack).

Making the most with MoSync

The latest in our series of technical papers, which bring you analysis and instruction from some of the leading authors in mobile development, comes from the team at Pragmaticomm. In his own words, John Pagonis explains what piqued his team's interest in this innovative cross-platform development tool:

"We at Pragmaticomm, after meeting with the MoSync team couple of years ago at the Smartphone Show, were really impressed with the technology and the team behind it, so we wanted to dig further. As with other companies we have been under pressure lately to bring the cost of development down while spreading across more device platforms, so we got back to Mobile Sorcery for a trial run and this is how this investigation on the Mosync SDK happened.

Our domain is Mobile VoIP, which is not ideal for such investigation, so we chose to build a mobile shopping application instead. Since this is outside our remit of projects, we thought that it would be interesting and also indicative of the problems a new developer would face on MoSync, starting with estimating the project and navigating around new APIs. We found out that MoSync was no harder than other environments and that for many domains it can really make a difference in getting your product to market when you need to cover many OSs - no matter what. Give it a go, it may not save money for everyone right now, but certainly it will be a worthwhile programming experience and for those of you that don't have the time, read on... "

http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/cms/cnts/knowledge.detail.view.do?platformId=1&cntsId=4780

Widget Team visit Symbian Forum

On Wednesday evening me (Wojtek) and Maciek (Widget Project leader) boarded a plane to LHR and on the following morning we had the opportunity to meet the Samsung Mobile Innovator Symbian platfrom team. As the result of this short trip we finally meet in person our colleagues and discussed wide range of issues including current status of widget-related projects and (what is more important) shared our widget related ideas and experiences. First few minutes chatting with Andrew gave us a strong impression we all share the same vision and all of us are aware of the widget ecosystem importance for shape of mobile communication in near future.

In some aspects our teams do similar work and it will be really beneficial for us (in the Widget development team) to learn from the Symbian guys knowledge and expertise. We hope we can share our technical skills in area of widget development in exchange. In addition this is the opportunity for us to extend numbers of channels for support and contribution to widget developers community. Keep eye on news at Samsung Mobile Innovator website as the results of our work will be going live soon...

PS. Thanks guys, it was pleasure to meet you!

Great minds think alike

With Samsung IQ in its final weeks it looks like Samsung Mobile Widgets are on everybody’s minds at the moment.

We have just released the third in our Series of Technical Papers on Widgets. Following on from his great Case Studies on MyWeather and GyPSii, Richard Bloor’s latest paper is titled Creating Samsung Mobile Widgets for Samsung S60 devices and it really pulls the mobile widget story from Samsung together. As well as a great overview of the mobile widget world, Richard unpacks the technical specifications of Samsung’s implementation of mobile widgets on the Touch Wiz UI.

No sooner had we released our Technical paper, than we discover that Rafe Blandford at All About Symbian has been doing some investigations of his own into Samsung Mobile Widgets (he uses the term “TouchWiz widget” which is the same thing). He also provides a great working example with a nifty Samsung Mobile Widget that opens a link to the All About Symbian website. Well worth a look if you wanted to make your own shortcut links, but weren’t sure how. Rafe also offers to put any widgets you produce for the i8910 HD up on the All About Symbian Website – yet another channel open for widget developers to share their handiwork with the world.

All up, if you have skills in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, (and as Rafe suggests a bit of imagination) now is a good time to be developing for mobile. Plus with Samsung IQ £15k could be yours. Remember entries close Friday 14 August 2009.