Why Qt is so important for Symbian and Maemo

One of the major problems that the iPhone’s competing platforms (WinMo, WebOS, and Android) is that their development frameworks are so far from the actual hardware. Steve Ballmer has claimed that most of applications on the iPhone are simply dressed up web apps, but the truth is that the iPhone is the only mobile platform that has software (mostly games) that push it’s hardware. This is because these other platforms have chosen to base their development platforms around virtual machines and in the case of the Pre, JavaScript. We aren’t  going to ever see software that pushes these phones until they incorporate development frameworks that are closer to the actual hardware.

Symbian has such a framework, but when compared to the iPhone it is extremely complex. This means that even though the Samsung Omnia HD has an ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor and PowerVR SGX graphics we haven’t seen any applications that take advantage of it’s hardware. With the incorporation of Qt into the Symbian development process, along with Maemo, these platforms will have an easy to use framework that isn’t burdened by virtual machines and interpreters. This isn’t to say that there will be a huge rush of new powerful applications to Symbian, but that with Qt it will have the entire range of current development techniques in it’s portfolio. If you want to code classic Symbian C++ that will be available, but if you want to use the excellent Qt libraries along with the excellent tools like Qt Creator they will also be available along with Java and WRT, which is comparable to webOS development .  This is something that can’t be said for the other platforms.

Lee Williams from Symbian on Google

This video and post of Lee Williams talking about Google and their smartphone strategy is being spun as some kind of attack on Android, but he’s really just being honest about the way that Google gets revenue. Some people are willing to give up a little privacy to get access to the Google services (I’m one of them), but for many people that privacy is essential for the way their business or organization is run. And with the whole Cyanogen controversy (even with the workarounds) it’s clear that Android is not going to be a hacker friendly platform. Let’s not pretend that it’s a Linux distro for phones.

The company that made Descent is in Champaign, IL. Weird.

Descent was one of the very first PC games that I ever played and was certainly the first LAN game that I ever played. I’m currently attending  graduate school at the University of Illinois and it’s strange to find out that Parallax Games, now Volition, has it’s headquarters  in Champaign.

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AT&T Postpaid (monthly account) with Unlocked Phones

After a few hours searching the AT&T support forums looking for information on whether or not AT&T will provide a SIM card and monthly plans for unlocked phones without a contract, I visited an AT&T corporate store today. The employees were extremely nice and AT&T absolutely does this. As soon as I asked my question the woman helping me headed to the back to get a SIM card.

I’m not sure if T-Mobile does this as well, but I am going to contact them soon.

Ouch! Novell’s MonoTouch for iPhone development costs $399-$3,999

MonoTouch the software derived from the open source Mono Project is going to come with a large price: $399 for the individual version and up to $3,999 for a 5 seat enterprise edition. This is a large cost, but considering the opportunity provided by the App Store it may be worth it if you would rather code iPhone apps in C# using an environment that is similar  to Visual Studio. I personally dislike the syntax and the development style that XCode delivers and prefer C#. If I had a killer idea for an iPhone app that I knew would be successful it would definitely be worth the cost.

Nokia E51 and E71 Tips and Tricks

The Nokia E51 and the E71 are two of the world’s most popular smartphones, but seem less common in the United States.  Here are a few tips and tricks that I have run across that can really push these phones.

The Skyfire browser is a little more clunky when compared with the deafult Nokia browser, but with Skyfire you get access to much more web content. Flash is possible with Skyfire. You would be able to access Hulu, but they recently blocked all mobile devices. TV.com works fine though and duplicated much of the Hulu content. Lala also works with the Skyfire browser, which brings you access to a huge amount of music.

I’ve also been experimenting with Opera Unite, which turns your computer into a web server that includes a web interface for your local music collection. It works very slowly with Skyfire, but it’s better than nothing.

Palm Pre failing?

Compete starts by giving a description of those customers who are thinking about jumping ship. They call them Pre-churners; “a pre-churner is someone who is a current customer of one carrier, but is actively shopping on other carrier websites.”

They say that 14.8% of Verizon Wireless pre-churners are interested in the iPhone 3G S, when only 1.7% of pre-churners show interest in the Palm Pre. This – according to Compete – suggests that bringing the Palm Pre to Verizon won’t actually help the carrier retain some of its riskiest customers. (MyPre)

Ouch. 1.7%? The Pre was probably the most hyped piece of technology to be released this year and it seems likely that it won’t live up to that hype. The main problem has been the dearth of applications available for the device. It’s excellent address book and other features don’t make up for the lack of large application ecosystem that the iPhone and other platforms have.

Sorry, there isn’t an app for that.

PS3 Losing Functionality Again

It seems that the PS3 is losing more functionality. It’s bizarre that this product has actually gotten less sophisticated since it’s release. The original PS3 was capable PS1 and PS2, but slowly lost these features. Now the slim removes the ability to install Linux on the machine.

I’ve never been interested in the PS3 as a gaming machine — it’s other features (Blu-ray, Linux) were always more compelling than the games that have been released as of now. This is probably the reason why the PS3 has struggled in this generation of consoles, but is slowly eliminating functionality the answer?

Go0gle-Wizard Hack and Account Suspensions

I recently posted about my Twitter account suspension. It seems that my suspension is the result of a hack that is being documented by some blogs:

Go0gle-Wizard spreading on Twitter – but what the heck is it?

Another Twitter password stealing spamming scam

FourSquare & Hacked Twitter Accounts (Google Wizard?)

There is speculation about the source of the hack, but there is nothing definitive yet. Hopefully it will get some media attention and all the suspended accounts will be reinstated.

Mono Project for iPhone: MonoTouch

The Mono Project is going to preview it’s MonoTouch API this week. The Mono Project has been controversial in the open source community, but it has brought some great OSX-esque applications to the Linux desktop: Banshee (an iTunes clone), Cheese (a Photobooth clone), Beagle (a Spotlight close), and more.

The best news is that applications developed with MonoTouch will be eligible for the AppStore:

“To satisfy these technical and legal requirements, MonoTouch is delivered as a static compiler that turns .NET executables and libraries into native applications. There is no JIT or interpreter shipped with your application, only native code.”