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Archive for the ‘nokia’ Category

Two finger scrolling on Windows 7/XP/Vista

30 Jan

The two finger page scrolling on the macbooks is really neat, I think it is a better implementation then using a part of the laptop track pad for scrolling the pages. The newer laptops now have that feature, but what if your laptop doesn’t have multi-touch trackpad ? Well Logitech has released a new free iphone app which lets you use your iphone/ipod as a multi-touch track pad with your laptop.

First you need to install it in your iphone/ipod.  Search for ‘Touch Mouse’  in the app store, install it. Then go to Logitech Touch Mouse Server Web site, and get the server software for what ever your OS is. It seems only Linux is not supported. Sad! . Install the server, then run the app on your iphone/ipod, it will detect your computer and hit connect.

So while this is very neat, not every one has a iphone/ipod ( I have a first generation ipod touch ). It would be really great if there was a similar app for the Symbian phones, Android, WebOS or Maemo phones.

To do that we need to understand the protocol used by the touch mouse server and the client. My investigation just came to the conclusion that its a UDP based protocol, the app also uses bonjour for service discovery. The UDP protocol is very cryptic and it seems this is not a easy task, it would be just great if Logitech can release some documents on this.

 
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Posted in Qt, UI, nokia

 

iPhone OS 4 SDK, the iPad Mania today.

27 Jan

So here we go again, another new product from Apple and the Internets will be getting crazy tonight. A humongous iphone will be great for web surfing on the sofa if nothing else.

But what I am excited about is the background processes in the new sdk (which they are yet to announce, hopefully). Finally we can have some useful applications. What I would want is a nokia step counter kind of software. I already have it on my Nokia E72 and it is so useful. I have my daily goal set to 10 km of walking.

So just waiting for the new sdk to be posted on to the web and weeks of endless night hacking ahead. Time to market is the key.

 
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Posted in apple, iphone, nokia

 

Nokia should enable third party developers to submit apps to ovi store.

11 Dec

Nokia should get its act in order if it seriously wants to compete with google & apple. One big thing that I dislike about Symbian and Maemo phones is the inability of independent developers to make money out of it. This is where apple has succeeded and might be one of the big reasons iphone has been so successful.

Take symbian, I can not even afford to get my applications signed for distribution[1], it adds up to 300 euros every year just for administration fees then further more money when you submit an application, and every times it is tested, which can easily cost you hundreds, this is just too much, sorry I am not buying.

For Maemo, well, there is no ovi store, yet! but what does it cost to install applications on the Nokia N900? so i did some searching and it seems[2] maemo uses the standard debian debs, and using debsign is enough and you don’t have to pay any one, much like android. So this would mean once the ovi store is launched for the N900, it could be a good option since Qt is now available for maemo as well. However the mentality of the average user of maemo will be that of a hacker and I am afraid they might not pay money unless the software is extremely good, in other words they are not idiots like most of the iphone users.

But since Symbian has the most install base Nokia should get more developers onboard by making it easier, it just costs too much right now.

The Maemo powered Nokia N900

The Maemo powered Nokia N900

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Complete_Guide_To_Symbian_Signed

http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Packaging%2C_Deploying_and_Distributing

 
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Posted in annoyances, nokia

 

Compiling Qt4.6 with OpenSSL Support on Windows with MingW

01 Dec

The Symbian port of Qt is a blessing, no more head banging. Work will be so much easier. The best thing about using Qt for Symbian development is that you dont need to use Carbide or the Emulator, you can use QtCreator to do most of your work. So I downloaded the 4.6 and before I can use it to continue my QFacebookConnect library, I need to compile it with OpenSSL support enabled. You have to do a lot of googling/binging to get that information. Well here is how you do it:

in the command prompt:
SET LIB=c:\openssl\lib\mingw;%LIB%
SET INCLUDE=c:\openssl\include;%INCLUDE%
SET PATH=c:\openssl;%PATH%

now go to the Qt source folder and execute the configure.exe like so:

configure.exe -openssl

and finally
mingw32-make

and here a nice demo of qt4.6 while it compiles for you.

 
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Posted in Qt, nokia, programming

 

Nokia N900

29 Nov

Maemo seems to be getting good reviews all over, Nokia shows off SNES on N900, quickly thinks better of it — Engadget. But lets not forget Palm’s webOS also dazzled people and it is currently better that Maemo 5 in some aspects, but it has not gotten much traction, yet.

I am getting a N900 in a couple of days, but I am not planning to do any major development, if any at all for Maemo yet. That is because there is currently no easy way to sell your apps for Maemo i.e. there is no Ovi store for Maemo yet. But most importantly I just hate Gtk/Gnome/Hildon UI which Maemo5 is built upon. If I was to say I hate C it would be very close to truth. I think of C as a uncivilized savage beast (a beast, not a mouse).

Another thought I have about this n900 is how much they are promoting its multitasking capabilities, multitasking does have its benefits, but in small portable  devices, where speed and performance is very important, multitasking can create problems. So now I think iPhone’s approach is better, there is only so much you can do on a 600MHz processor. I think Apple will eventually introduce multitasking, but not like we have it in the existing smartphones. I believe at some point in the future the iphone os will allow ui-less apps to run in the background, but only one ui app at a time. I think they will have a approval process with conditions like how much resources etc an app uses.

 
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Posted in nokia

 

Introducing www.namaz.me

19 Sep

One problem I have always had was getting the Namaz/Salat times for the place I am at a certain time, now there are web sites which give you that information. But there is too much hassle involved in getting the required information. You first have to select your country, then your city and then you are bombarded with lots of advertisements and so on.

I thought that there must be a simpler way. I was aware of the new w3c geolocation api, which is available in firefox 3.5 and in google chrome ( with a certain google plugin, in other browsers as well ). So I decided to use that API in browsers where it would be available, and use IP Geolocation ( from ipinfodb.com ) to get the latitude and longitude position where I am at a certain. After that it is just a mathematical equation to get all the prayer times.

The user interface of the web site is very simple, infact I copied the iphone UI. But the application should theoretically work on all mobile devices ( iphone, nokia, samsung, htc etc ) on all desktop browsers ( firefox, chrome, internet explorer, safari ).

I tried to use w3c geolocation api as much as I could, but for example its not possible to use in safari, internet eplorer, older versions of firefox so then IP geolocation is used. Like wise only iphone and android devices currently support the w3c geolocation api ( android uses google gears ) so for Nokia s60/s40, Windows Mobile, and other devices IP Geolocation is used. Also the opera mini browser is officially not supported and probably never will be, the reason for that is because opera mini uses its servers located in Norway to fetch the data, and www.namaz.me will always think that the user is in Norway. Same is true also for skyfire.

IP Geolocation is not accurate, in some cases it can be only as accurate as the country level.

So do give www.namaz.me a try and report bugs etc.

 
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Posted in firefox, internet, iphone, muslim, nokia

 

Nokia N95 8GB

10 Mar

I got a free Nokia N95 8GB from work a couple of weeks ago, I had previously used the regular N95 which I very much liked, it was an even better experience with ths 8GB version, it feels much faster and better, the wider screen does look better and it came with spider man 3 movie, which is my favorite movie and played really well on the phone, the quality was crisp and very clear, this phone feels very solid in hand. But the best thing about this phone is how usefull it is. I use the web browser a lot, I check emails a lot on this phone, I check bus timings, flight timings, the Google Maps application is really usefull with the internal GPS, and 8 GB of space is really awesome when it comes to music.

 I also played with the iphone as well a couple of days ago, iphone feels great in the begining but i miss the keyboard, and the lack of 3g really sucks and on top of that no application development support for iphone really is something to think about.

well i just want to say that n95 is a goood phone a really usefull phone.

 
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Posted in 8gb, iphone, n95, nokia