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!
Friday, 31 July 2009
Monday, 27 July 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
One Month left to Win BIG with Widgets, Three BIG reasons to try...
We talk a lot about widgets in my team, and to be honest everyone has a slightly different view on how widgets will affect the mobile development industry. With only 31 DAYS LEFT until Samsung IQ closes, I want to share what I think the BIG deal is about widgets.
1. Widgets = Rapid development time
All widgets share the same basic technologies - HTML, JavaScript, and cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This makes them great vehicles for leveraging existing web skills to bring web developers to mobile, leveraging the time-to-market advantage of web scripting technologies.
The fact mobile widgets are developed utilizing practically the same skills as those needed to build a conventional website makes Samsung IQ the perfect opportunity for a web-developer looking to diversify into the Mobile space.
2. Widgets = X-platform
With widgets you have a real cross-platform advantage. Although packaging requirements differ slightly between different widget flavours, and access to native service APIs can differ significantly between different widget platforms, the basic principle is the same: create an application, that utilizes a WRT engine without the cumbersome browser chrome.
For entering Samsung IQ, this means you may already have a functioning widget, that with a few minor adjustments to your code and configuration would make a perfect Samsung Mobile Widget, making easily accessible from the Touch Wiz UI widget tray.
3. Widgets = Business opportunity
Looking around at other mobile developer blogs and communities it’s clear our industry is captivated by these little zipped up packages of code, images and script. This is occurring at all levels: device manufacturer, network operator and Mobile OS platform.
Enter Samsung IQ and you could win not only cash, but also the opportunity to distribute your work via Samsung’s More Widgets on-device service. What a terrific way to build your brand. Better yet, our competition is completely non-exclusive so there is nothing to stop you going out and taking advantage of the other promotions and opportunities out there – and they are out there.
Thank you to everybody who has contacted us, seeking further information and advice on how to get started.
Based on you questions and feedback, we have been continually updating our Knowledge Base SIQ Resources Page. If you haven’t visited this page recently, it’s well worth another look as we’ve added some further information and tried to clarify some points that were generating queries. If you have any further questions, do let us know. We’ll be here to assist right until the competition closes on Friday 14 August 2009.
1. Widgets = Rapid development time
All widgets share the same basic technologies - HTML, JavaScript, and cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This makes them great vehicles for leveraging existing web skills to bring web developers to mobile, leveraging the time-to-market advantage of web scripting technologies.
The fact mobile widgets are developed utilizing practically the same skills as those needed to build a conventional website makes Samsung IQ the perfect opportunity for a web-developer looking to diversify into the Mobile space.
2. Widgets = X-platform
With widgets you have a real cross-platform advantage. Although packaging requirements differ slightly between different widget flavours, and access to native service APIs can differ significantly between different widget platforms, the basic principle is the same: create an application, that utilizes a WRT engine without the cumbersome browser chrome.
For entering Samsung IQ, this means you may already have a functioning widget, that with a few minor adjustments to your code and configuration would make a perfect Samsung Mobile Widget, making easily accessible from the Touch Wiz UI widget tray.
3. Widgets = Business opportunity
Looking around at other mobile developer blogs and communities it’s clear our industry is captivated by these little zipped up packages of code, images and script. This is occurring at all levels: device manufacturer, network operator and Mobile OS platform.
Enter Samsung IQ and you could win not only cash, but also the opportunity to distribute your work via Samsung’s More Widgets on-device service. What a terrific way to build your brand. Better yet, our competition is completely non-exclusive so there is nothing to stop you going out and taking advantage of the other promotions and opportunities out there – and they are out there.
Thank you to everybody who has contacted us, seeking further information and advice on how to get started.
Based on you questions and feedback, we have been continually updating our Knowledge Base SIQ Resources Page. If you haven’t visited this page recently, it’s well worth another look as we’ve added some further information and tried to clarify some points that were generating queries. If you have any further questions, do let us know. We’ll be here to assist right until the competition closes on Friday 14 August 2009.
Friday, 3 July 2009
Infinite possibilities with the camera functionality of our latest i8910 HD DevPack.
Holding the a webcam in front of the screen, so that it shows a screen of a webcam being held in front of a screen, and that then shows a screen of a webcam being held in front of a screen and within that screen…
Well this was the first thing we did when we were testing the functionality of our latest DevPack anyway. We admit it, we’re geeks, but we think the picture below is pretty cool – and after all it is a Friday.
The latest version of our DevPack for the i8910 HD features webcam support which allows you to test the camera API in the emulator. This is the first Symbian emulator to feature this functionality and we think - while maybe not infinite – it will definitely open up some great opportunities for developers looking to develop applications that make use of the camera.
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