Business Software Alliance: We don't sell software

The BBC News website today reported proposals to change EU rules governing consumer rights regarding software guarantees. In amongst the article was a gem of a statement from the Business Software Alliance which represents Microsoft, Apple, IBM and many other software giants: "(Digital content) is contractually licensed to consumers and not sold."

Route and AccuWidget - WRT examples with miniview

Forum Nokia regularly publishes example applications; they are intended as examples for developers, but occasionally are useful enough to be downloaded and installed by consumers. New today is Route, a basic GPS tracking widget. AccuWidget, an existing WRT example, which shows weather forecasts, has also been updated. Both widgets support miniview, which means they can be added to the homescreen of the Nokia N97. Miniview is something that all widget developers should consider implementing.

AAS Insight 70 - Nokia E52, N97 processors and Pandemonium

In All About Symbian Insight 70 (AAS Podcast 128) Rafe, Ewan and Steve talk about the recently released Nokia E52, the N96's firmware upgrade to version 20, the newly released Pandemonium and the N97's processor and specifications. Rafe also reports on UI changes proposed for Symbian^4. You can listen to AAS Insight 70 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.

Dev Week – FleaC and Java Sensor API for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Last week’s Developer section feature article took a look at FleaC, an easier to use API for Symbian C++ developers. Also, Forum Nokia releases a utility to make the Sensor API (JSR-256) available for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic devices. Read on for more.

Developers - 6 days left to win 150K Euros

Sorry, we should have posted this a few days ago, but Vodafone Mobile Clicks is an annual competition for mobile developers that finishes on the 14th May, with a 150K Euro prize. This is the first year that the contest has been open to UK entrants. On Twitter, see hashtag #vmc, or follow @vmc2009 or @momolondon for contest news.

Google Latitude API Takes Its First Steps

A quick one for developers, as Brady Forrest points out both the addition of some web badges/buttons for the Google Latitude location service, but also an API to allow apps access to the location data of a user. Available as both JSON and KML Forrest is right that this is a very small first step, but expects more features and functions over the coming months.

AAS Insight 69 - Ovi Store and Nokia Developer Summit 2009

In All About Symbian Insight 69 (AAS Podcast 127) Rafe, Ewan and Steve talk about Bobba, operating billing on the Ovi Store, v21 firmware for the Nokia 5800 and the new N-Gage game - Age of Empires III. Rafe then reports back in detail from the Nokia Developer Summit 2009. You can listen to AAS Insight 69 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.

Dev Week – Competitions, past and present

Today’s existential question – does a technology exist if there is not a competition to promote it? The Nokia Developer Summit offered us the hackathon and you can now see the outcome and several other summit sessions online. Also, NAVTEQ is getting involved with the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2009.

Samsung i8910 S60 SDK plug-in alpha released

Samsung Mobile Innovator has released the first iteration of the DevPak for the Samsung i8910 HD (formerly the Omnia HD). This plugs into the existing S60 5th Edition SDK to provide an emulator skin and control features, as well as additional APIs.

More on Symbian release plans - Qt-based Orbit UI supersedes S60 AVKON in Symbian^4

David Wood, writing on the Symbian Foundation Blog, about reviewing the release plans, has highlighted some details of upcoming Symbian releases. Symbian^2, the equivalent of S60 5th Edition Feature Pack 1, will be functionally complete next week and in devices early next year. Symbian^3, for which the majority of the source code should be available, enhances communication architecture, multimedia and graphics functionality, and should reach devices in the second half of 2010. 

Symbian ^4 will see the full integration and optimisation of Qt into the Symbian platform. Further proposals includes the 'Orbit' extension library for Qt (replacing AVKON) and a new 'Direct UI' interaction and navigation logic. Put crudely, this means we will see an evolution of the existing S60/AVKON UI to a new Qt-based 'Orbit' Symbian UI for devices coming out in 2011. Read on for more details.