On Monday, while waiting for my Mom to be finished at the dentist, I walked along the Seal Beach Pier and took the above left photo of the low tide line. Yesterday I ran the photo through the Tiny Planets app on my phone to good effect, middle photo. And then this morning, in a fit of experimentation, I ran the first tiny planet through the Tiny Planets app again to get a second almost trigometric/cosine effect, photo on the right. Thus, twice through the Tiny Planets makes for good fun.
I have been compiling a list of links for how to use, design, and develop for the Nokia N9 / N950, yesterday was links to tips & tricks for the User, Designers and Developers. Today is all the great and very valuable blogs and podcasts that I have found to be a font of information on the Nokia N9/N950, Harmattan, creating N9 apps in Qt.
If you know of other good Nokia N9/N950 designer, developer, and Qt blogs out there, let us know in the comment section.
Nokia N9 & Qt Blogs, Forums and Podcasts:
Nokia N9 Developer Blog
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/n9-developer
This Week in Qt Podcast
http://www.ics.com/learning/podcasts/
Blogasdf
http://juhaturunen.com/blog/
Cutehacks
http://cutehacks.com/
Ed Page (Python, Harmattan & Qt…)
http://eopage.blogspot.com/
fiferboy’s developing
http://fiferboy.blogspot.com/
flors
http://flors.wordpress.com/
KDE Pinheiro (Designer who works with Qt)
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/
Meego Handset Forum
http://forum.meego.com/
Meego Aggregator
https://meego.com/aggregator
My Meego
http://my-meego.com/
Nokia Developer News
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/nokia-developer-news
PySnippet (more Python & Qt!)
http://pysnippet.blogspot.com/
Qt Labs Blog
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/
Qt, Maemo and some other stuff
http://kunalmaemo.blogspot.com/
Qt / MeeGo Mobile Apps Development
http://qt-mobility.blogspot.com/
qtsource
http://qtsource.wordpress.com/
The MicroNokia Developer
http://micronokiadev.wordpress.com/
thp on Maemo
http://thpmaemo.blogspot.com/
I have been compiling a list of links for how to use, design, and develop for the Nokia N9 / N950. The first section tips and tricks is for anyone with a Nokia N9, the second section is links for Nokia N9/N950 designers and developers, and the third is Nokia N950 specific.
Tomorrow, I will publish a list of blogs and podcasts that I have found to be a font of information on the Nokia N9/N950, Harmattan, creating N9 apps in Qt.
If you have any tips and tricks links for the Nokia N9 or N950, be it for users or designers & developers, tell us about it the comments.
Nokia N9 and Nokia N950 general interest topics for everyone:
The Nokia N9 Swipe site:
http://swipe.nokia.com/
Nokia N9 UX Gestures – click on DEMOS (I found the gesture demos invaluable in the first hour of using the N950):
https://www.developer.nokia.com/swipe/ux/pages/getting_started.html
Nokia N9 MeeGo/Harmattan Swipe UI Tips and Tricks
http://blog.wapreview.com/15554/
Nokia N950 Close Apps:
http://my-meego.com/faq/showquestion.php?fldAuto=5&faq=1
Using Firefox Mobile on the Nokia N9 (I have been using a version of mobile FF from Sept on the Nokia N950 and it is great)
http://blog.wapreview.com/15780/
N9 Swipe undocumented feature; activate sane behavior (How to set the Swipe behavior to the gestures you want)
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/n9-swipe-undocumented-feature-activate-sane-behavior/
How to Take Screenshots on Nokia N9 with ScreenshotMee
http://thenokiablog.com/2011/10/13/how-to-take-screenshots-nokia-n9/
FM Radio App
http://my-meego.com/software/applications.php?name=FM_Radio&fldAuto=488&faq=2
“If you can build your app with HTML, CSS & JavaScript, then you probably should.” – @jonathanstark #wdx (via @garazi)
Some friends recently asked on Twitter what was the best way to start programming mobile apps with Nokia’s Qt, as they found that it was not as easy as the publicity from Nokia had purported Qt to be.
Anyone who has developed an application, be it for the desktop or mobile, can tell you that framework makes it so much easier, but easy is a relative term. What easy may mean is that development time is reduced from 6 months to 6 weeks or less. Still not that easy, but easier and a big relief.
For folks who want to learn to create and develop their own mobile apps, but don’t have much programming experience or little at all, I would like to suggest starting with developing a simple app in HTML, CSS, and Javascript to get your feet wet and see if you can get your idea up and running either as a mobile web app or as a native mobile app that is coded in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
As I wrote in DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed a couple of weeks back, there comes a time when your own natural diy urge or curiosity or frustration with a lack of an app drives one to learn how to program a computer, server, or mobile phone so that the itch has been scratched.
Rather than get bogged down in the debate between mobile web apps and native apps, let me give a few links to resources out there to help get you started on creating your own mobile HTML, CSS, Javascript app be it for the mobile web or a native app:
Cross Platform HTML, CSS, Javascript Mobile Development Frameworks:
PhoneGap – http://www.phonegap.com/
Sencha – http://www.sencha.com/
JQuery Mobile – http://jquerymobile.com/
Qt Quick – http://qt.nokia.com/products/qt-quick/
Tutorials and Presentations:
Building Mobile Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
HOWTO: Create native-looking iPhone/iPad applications from HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Forum Nokia on Developing for the Mobile Web
Tips and Tricks for developing Mobile Widgets
Books:
Programming the Mobile Web
Beginning Smartphone Web Development: Building Javascript, CSS, HTML and Ajax-Based Applications
Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Have fun, get coding, and send us/ let’s us know what you have created.
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Ms. Jen’s DIY Programming Series:
DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed
DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript
DIY Programming: Should HTML be Required for Literacy in the 21st Century?
Recently I found myself thinking about camera phone apps, more specifically about Hipstamatic and do folks really use it past the week they bought it out of the App Store?
Amongst the photographers and designers I know and follow on Flickr, I will occasionally see a photo that looks like it was Hipstamatic-d but not often, which makes me to wonder if it is due to the fact that Hipstamatic does not make a back up of the original photo before it is processed or if folks just aren’t interested in Lomo like mobile camera phone photos.
My curiosity continued to wander and I started to wonder really how many camera phone apps people were using past the first week of buying them. Furthermore, what iPhone and Android camera phone apps were people buying and using with any regularity. Do folks like the ‘toy camera’ apps or were they using camera apps with other functionality?
The Camera phone app world has quite exploded on the iPhone and Android is catching up, but when I searched the Ovi Store there were very few camera phone apps for Symbian devices and those that were there were more geared to an East Asian J-Pop photo booth cute overload on neon aesthetic than the Graham Parson-esque Silver Like circa 1972 via a yellow daisy filled green meadow in misty sunlight aesthetic of Hipstamatic.
There was one Symbian app, Joyeye, that promised Lomo style photos, but it did not work on my Nokia N86 and I did not try to download a version for the N97. It may be that it is only for touchscreen Symbian devices or it may be that the Ovi Store seems dead set on thinking my N86 is an N97.
Two weeks ago to satisfy my curiosity, I conducted a very small survey on Twitter by asking:
msjen: iPhone folk, what is your favorite camera or photo app & why?
Tues 12.01.09 – Rabbit rabbit. With the greeting to the new month out of the way, I would like to alert you to several interesting takes on Nokia’s strategy and mentions of the N900:
GigaOm’s very own Om Malik had a chat with Nokia’s Tero Ojanperä last week and Om now has a wee bit more faith in Nokia’s direction. Read it at, “For Nokia’s Ovi, the World (Minus the US) is Enough.”
Analyst Michael Gartenberg questions What’s the future of Nokia? on Engadget’s Entelligence:
“Second, Nokia’s services strategy is as muddled as the fruit in Don Draper’s Old Fashioned. Ovi sounded good when it was announced but it’s now gone through so many iterations, with different services added, dropped, and changed that it’s hard to know what’s in and what’s out. Comes With Music has been reported as having as few as 107,000 users worldwide, and Nokia’s put off bringing it to the US this year, leading me to wonder what kind of future it has as a service. The N-Gage project not only resulted in two failed phone designs but the service itself is on its deathbed.”
As a Nokia mobile phone owner, I have felt quite burned over the last four years by Nokia’s frequent changing around and dropping software and services. I won’t even invest any of my data at Ovi, as I don’t want it to go away in 2 years when Nokia has changed its strategy again or the project manager has moved on along with the marketing manager to another project and the new folks in charge don’t care and move on to new divisions themselves.
The big reason that I am so excited about Maemo is that Python comes already installed and integrated on the Nokia N900, so I can code my own apps and not worry about will they be supported 12-18 months from now. I don’t code in C, C+, Objective C, Java or Symbian, so most of the world of mobile application development is closed to me, but I do code in Python. While one can install python on Symbian and run a PyS60 app on a Symbian phone it is not without hassle and if you want to share the app, then the other person has to install Python on their phone too, thus creating a large barrier to entry.
Roland Tanglao and Croozeus are also both excited about pre-installed Python on the N900. Yesterday, I was on the Maemo.org website looking at the various apps available for download and the ones in development. The best part was finding out that many of the apps that I would want to use or contribute to are coded in Python. One of the great parts of any Open Source and/or Linux community is the ability to contribute to projects and to the code base, and now for me it is even better that I can contribute in Python. Furthermore, I am very excited that Maemo community has an active PyMaemo sub-community.
Yes, the Nokia N900 may seem a bit too geeky to some, but in the long run, I do think Maemo will bring in developers who have been alienated by Symbian’s high barriers to entry and the whole certification / app signing troubles, developers who will have more choice in programming languages, more choice in how to contribute & distribute. More choice means more mobile applications available to everyone.
*******
Related N900 Posts:
Nokia N900 : The Artist Phone
Nokia N900 : The Gold Standard Test
The Nokia Flagship Face Off : Nokia N900 vs. Nokia N97 : Part I, Night Video
test pixel pipe pro.
Update from my computer later in the day, Tues 09.01.09 – I realize that lots of folk find Pixelpipe to be a great mobile blogging application, but I just find it moderately annoying, and the above photo is a great example of why.
To start out with, I was unable to get Pixelpipe to work on the Nokia N97. I was able to get it to somewhat work on the Nokia N95 & Nokia N79, but was not happy with it.
I do find that the Pixelpipe Android user experience is MILES better than the Nokia Share Online + Pixelpipe. Also, I will say that Pixelpipe’s support folk have been great to help me set up an “Atom” enabled pipe so that I can blog directly to this blog, rather than have the photo hosted on the Pp servers.
Today, I went to the Android Market (on phone app store) and purchased Pixelpipe Pro for $1.99 to see if the experience would be any better. In many ways, the user experience of Pixelpipe Pro is better, as there is a nice tabbed navigation allowing one to do tasks such has add a title, body copy, tags, a tab view the queue of photos or video going out, etc. I was not able to figure out how to do a minor task like rotate the image, so I exited out of Pp, went to the Android Gallery, rotated the image, saved it and then opened Pixelpipe again.
The above image now showed up as rotated and up I sent it to Pixelpipe. I was a bit frustrated here, as it did not allow me to choose to what location I wanted to send out to other than the tag version of indicating where it is to be sent. In the paid Pro version, I should be given a drop down menu of my pre-registered pipes and be able to choose one or more of them.
I sent the photo and did not see it show up on this blog within 10 minutes, so I thought we had a Pixelpipe failure, only to see it appear about 20 minutes later in the non-rotated version of the photo, even though I had saved the rotated photo and chosen that one to send in Pixelpipe.
Here is what I would like to suggest to Pixelpipe for their Pro version of the mobile app:
1) Allow the user to do all tasks and activities from the mobile app and not have to go to the website to set up pipes or manage them. All the settings and controls should be editable in the mobile app.
2) Allow the user to be able to do minor image editing tasks in the mobile app like rotate a photo or choose what size the photo should be sent at.
3) Allow the user to choose which Pipe they want which photo to be sent to in the mobile app without having to add tags.
4) Can Symbian also have a Pixelpipe Pro mobile app comparable to the Android Pixelpipe Pro that is completely separate of the evil Share Online? Please.
It is official, Nokia viNe has been released into the wild and is now available for download. This version of Nokia viNe is a mobile geo-path-tracking / photo / video location based mobile app that allows one to create “vines” or “journeys” on one’s phone and then upload it to the nokia server to be displayed on the web or via a widget.
Nokia viNe version 1.02 released by Nokia today is for the following Nokia mobiles: the E71, N78 & N79, N82 & N85, and the N95 8GB & N96. I have tried it with my Nokia N95-1 and it won’t login to the server and start working, sad this.
I promise to write a new Nokia viNe How To tomorrow that will reflect the changes in the new version that has been released to all. Not only are there some nice improvements and changes to the mobile app since I wrote my tutorial (faster uploads!), but the Nokia viNe web interface has greatly improved.
There are three features I would love to see in the next iteration of the Nokia vine mobile app and web interface:
1) Multiple logins on the mobile app. I currently have two logins and would like to toggle between accounts as to what I upload where.
2) Be able to have finer control of what is public and what is private, not only on Nokia viNe, but also on Sports Tracker and Share on Ovi. I like Flickr & Vox’s approach of up to 4 plus levels of privacy to public with: private (only you), Friends & Family, Contacts, and Everyone. At this point, there is no way I can control this from the Nokia viNe mobile app, nor from the web interface. Given that Nokia viNe is a location based service this is extra important for trust and safety.
3) Be able to determine in my account settings if I want my photos or video to be able to be downloaded once they are up on the Nokia viNe site. Right now, I have no control, which as a beta tester over the last 2+ months didn’t bother me, but over time it will. Flickr allows me to set who I want to be able to download my photos (none, family, friends, friends & family, contacts, and everyone). This is important for trust and copyright.
Overall, I would like to say Bravo! to the folks who have been working hard to make both the Nokia viNe mobile app and the web interface.
My other posts on Nokia viNe:
The Nokia viNe Promo Video is Cute & Funny!
Nokia viNe How To Tutorial (The Alpha Version)
Nokia Nseries Widget or Why Nokia Really Needs a Good Internal Communication System
Batteries for Ricky
Nokia’s (life) viNe