Nokia

May
03

Using Minify to optimize your Nokia WRT widgets

Posted by wubbahed at 9:09 pm

Recently, I’ve been playing around with Minify. For those who’ve never heard of it, Minify is a simple HTTP content server built as a PHP5 application. It’s placed in a folder on your server, and then either using a querystring or mod_rewrite, it will dynamically merge and minify CSS and JS files as they are served up to a user’s browser. This allows you to develop using multiple CSS or JS files with comments and clear visual formatting, but when they are delivered to your users via a browser, they get minified and optionally merged making your site load and render faster in the user’s browser.

While Minify is meant to run on a webserver, I thought it could also work as a handy offline tool for optimizing Nokia WRT widgets. Since WRT widgets are just zipped folders of Javascript, HTML and CSS, Minify seems like a simple step you could include in the widget packaging process of your workflow before testing and deploying.

I wasn’t sure how much savings Minify would give the average WRT widget, so as a quick test I batch processed the contents of the STEW sample widget from Forum Nokia using Minify running on a local webserver. The resulting files were bundled as a new widget, and here’s a comparison of the two.

  Size of all Files WGZ size
Forum Nokia version 122.4K 83.0K
Minified version 106.3K 78.2K
Difference 13.2% smaller 5.8% smaller

The savings aren’t gigantic, but they’re significant enough that you should seriously consider adding this step before deploying a widget. I’d also be curious to see if anyone has done comparisons about whether or not Minify affects how much memory is consumed at run-time in the browser.

I might do some more work on automating this process or creating a tool that minifies widgets automatically for you, but ideally, I think this should be something automatically built into widget IDEs like Aptana.

How are other developers out there currently optimizing their widgets for release on Ovi Store?

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Apr
29

Thoughts on the Nokia Developer Summit

Posted by wubbahed at 1:11 pm

I’ve spent the past two days attending the inaugural Nokia Developer Summit. For those interested who weren’t able to attend, there’s been coverage on Nokia Conversations, and on Twitter using the #nds09 tag.

The high level takeaways from the show are:

  • If you want to develop for Nokia, build WRT widgets. They’ve got a lot of functionality, you can tie it in with other Ovi services, and they can be built quickly.
  • If you need more low level control than is offered by WRT, be sure to develop using Qt because that’s the direction everything is moving in — S40, S60, and Maemo all are moving towards Qt
  • Once you’re done with your app, supposedly you can make lots of money with it on Ovi Store.

I don’t attend a lot of conferences, but if I had to give this one a letter grade, I’d give it a solid B.

WHAT WORKED

  • It was a large enough conference to be significant, but small enough that it still felt real and informal. Attendees were friendly and open.
  • The Nokia staff were extremely friendly and responsive. Everyone at Nokia I talked to gave time and attention to my questions, which is more than I can say for some other confereneces I’ve attended. There were even some instances where they went above and beyond. For instance, @ribot and I were talking about some Flash Lite issues, and when the Forum Nokia rep didn’t have the answer, she picked up her phone, dialed a number, and handed it over saying, “The Flash Lite guy is on the phone. Ask your question.” That’s responsiveness (and let’s hope they continue that same level of responsiveness online).
  • There was a good mix of content delivered in meaningful ways. In addition to keynotes and specific tracks, there were sessions to demonstrate hands-on coding, and fun events like the 24-hour hackathon. Even the booths at the event didn’t feel too gimmicky or sales oriented.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

  • Not enough specifics about timelines. We were shown a lot of new technology, but no clear roadmaps for exactly when the APIs would be made public. Also, some APIs were clearly targeted towards WRT developers and some towards native app developers, but this info wasn’t offered up — it didn’t come out until the Q&A.
  • Not enough emphasis on clear development paths. Developing for mobile involves a chaotic mix of different devices, screen sizes, firmwares, OS features, network speeds, local languages and operators. I was hoping that Nokia would help make some sense of this mess and give developers some idea of where they could obtain maximum value for their efforts, but no one seemed willing to put a stake in the ground and say, “Do it this way.”
  • Truly embracing openness. Lee Williams from the Symbian Foundation gave an emotional presentation on living and breathing the idea of open source, but in countless other sessions Nokia was promoting APIs that were only available to select partners and wouldn’t be open to the public until the software was released publicly. I really wish Forum Nokia would adopt their own Labs section similar to Nokia Beta Labs where *anyone* could be given early access to some of these APIs.

But overall, I thought it was a great experience. I’m curious what others out there are thinking (regardless of if you attended). Comments?

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Aug
29

Running OpenTape on my Nokia N95

Posted by wubbahed at 4:05 pm

I always liked the website Muxtape, and right around the time that the site went offline, a group launched an open source web application that allows you to run and share a mix tape on your own server. It’s called OpenTape, and while the idea is similar, they are NOT related to Muxtape.

OpenTape is amazingly easy to use. Just download the files, unzip, and upload them to your own webserver. From there you can use the web interface to set up and configure the mix tape you want to share.

But what I want to know is can I run OpenTape on my mobile phone? Specifically, my N95? If you want to try this yourself, here are the steps.

  1. Register and install the Mobile Web Server to your S60 compatible device.
  2. Download and install the PAMP package for S60 and install it on your compatible device.
  3. Download OpenTape and copy it to the htdocs folder of your Mobile Web Server installation.

Once that’s done, just go to the directory on your webserver, and voila, it works!

Notice that the URL is actually from my Mobile web site…

Once I set up the password, then it was still working just fine.

And after I added songs, i thought it was looking so good.

But then it never displayed any of my songs. Hmmm…

Not to give in so quickly, I started digging through the source code, and it turns out that the problem might be with the PHP package on my mobile. First, the /code/xspf.php XML file wasn’t returning any tracks even though they were uploaded in the folder and the permissions were set correctly. Digging further, it looks like the code is using an ID3 library to read all of the metadata about the Mp3 files, so maybe that’s not included in the PAMP package?

Anyway, I’m so close, but I’ll keep looking into this and see what kind of fix I can come up with.

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Aug
22

Sauna Talk

Posted by wubbahed at 1:34 pm

I read a lot of blogs many of which are heavily devoted to technology, mobile, and the developers who love them.

This week I came across a new video series for N-Gage targeting developers and it’s strangely brilliant in a Finnish way. It’s called Sauna Talk because all the interviews, well, take place in a sauna. Beware though, clicking this link will force you to watch a lot of video content starring this guy.

The only thing that’s really lame about it is that there’s no RSS feed and there’s no way to easily share/embed the video. If there were RSS, I’d probably go back to the site more. And this totally needs to be on YouTube.

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Aug
10

Children’s PressLine – RSS and widget for S60

Posted by wubbahed at 2:42 pm

I’ve been doing some pro bono web work recently for Children’s Pressline, a youth news service that trains kids to be reporters and editors who write articles for mainstream media partners. It’s a non-profit open to any child in NYC, and currently their news stories are being run in the NY Daily News, Metro, and the Amsterdam News.

The work I’ve done involves some basic tweaks to their website, setting up a Children’s PressLine Facebook page and creating a Children’s PressLine RSS feed that shows you their latest stories and links to the major media outlet running the story.

There’s not a mobile website, but just by having an RSS feed, that’s all you really need to get started reading the content on your mobile. If you’re reading this on your S60 device, you can just click on the RSS feed, and automatically subscribe to the latest news articles.

If you’ve got one of the newer S60 devices, though, then you can get a richer experience using this widget I made which pulls in the RSS feed and displays the latest news stories directly on your phone.

S60 widget (WRT)

You can download the Children’s PressLine widget directly, or scan in this QR code to get it straight to your mobile:

Get the widget

Total development time for this widget was less than an hour, and most of that time was just deciding which colors to use in the CSS. If you haven’t seen the Nokia Web Run Time, then I’d recommend checking it out as it’s going to be a great way to build quick applications for S60 devices. Right now, it’s only drawback is that it has almost no access to the device itself (e.g. GPS, Contacts), but Nokia has already announced these features will be included in the next major release.

If you want to see the source code of the widget, then just download the file to your PC and change the file extension from .wgz to .zip. Then open the zip file and all of the source code is there. It’s a very simple setup with one HTML page, and one XMLHttpRequest call to retrieve the RSS feed.

Let me know if you have any questions about how the widget was built, and I’m also interested to see how other people are using widgets not just for their personal use, but also to help promote causes they believe in.

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Aug
07

Google Maps blatantly copies Nokia Maps

Posted by wubbahed at 8:15 pm

So I’ve read a couple of articles lately about the new Google Maps that’s available for the Nokia N95. This is particularly exciting because they now offer Transit directions in some cities. Being able to get this type of information on your mobile is wonderful.

So I installed the app, and noticed that this updated version of Google Maps has a new icon. One that looks surprisingly like the Nokia Maps icon. Here’s some screenshots:

nokia maps icon Nokia Maps icon
old Google Maps icon (compass)
new Google Maps icon (ripoff)

I have a hard time believing that this new icon is just a coincidence… Thoughts? Is Google trying to intentionally confuse users so that they run Google Maps on their phones instead of Nokia Maps?

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May
20

Chumby widgets on the Nokia N82

Posted by wubbahed at 4:03 pm

So I recently purchased a Chumby. According to UPS, it’s on its way here, and in anticipation of its arrival I’ve started reading about how to make your own Chumby widgets. Turns out, the widgets are all just 320×240 FlashLite 3.0 movies.

This is wonderful news.

Why? Because my phone also runs Flash Lite 3.0. So now if I’m going to go to the trouble to make a Chumby widget, I can design it to work on the Chumby and on my Nokia device. As a quick test, I grabbed some of the existing Chumby widgets and tried to see if they would run on an N82.

Out of the box, two widgets worked great — the MTV News widget and the Chuck Norris Facts widget. Some of the other widgets like weather and NY Times launched correctly, but I need to pass them some configuration details so they know what content to download from the web. That’s the next step.

Bottom line is that if you have an Nseries device that runs FlashLite 3.0, then check out Chumby as a source for games and things that you can load straight on your device. And in case you need proof, here’s Chuck Norris Facts running on an N82.

Yeah, yeah the video is kind of fuzzy, so here’s what it looks like on a real Chumby.

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Dec
10

Nokia N95 apps show how easily it trumps iPhone

Posted by wubbahed at 11:10 pm

Today I was downloading the new Channels Media Service application from Nokia Beta Labs to test it out and see what it has to offer. The interface is pretty clean, but one of the nicest things I noticed is that Channels makes use of the N95′s built in accelerometer. I recently showed you the Lightsaber demo, but Channels automatically orients the UI based on how you’re holding the device, similar to what Apple always shows off in their iPhone commercial. Here’s a demo of it in action.

When the N95 came out it didn’t have this functionality. In fact, it didn’t even talk about the accelerometer. But you know what? Nokia is slowly releasing software updates for this device, and they’re slowly showing people more and more things that can be done with this device. Every time there’s a new firmware update or I find a cool new application, it’s like getting a whole new phone. And I’m just not seeing that with the iPhone. Web apps? Yeah, they’re okay and can be helpful, but they’re more like widgets that sit on top of an internet connection rather than something that truly integrates with the device. The N95 is showing me more and more that it’s retaining its value over time, whereas the iPhone price drop just says that it was overpriced to begin with.

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