Dale Rankine

In my last post I mentioned I was working with a new tool being trialed by Nokia called the Ovi App Wizard. It’s essentially an online wizard for converting an RSS feed into an application ready for publishing on the Ovi Store, similar to the “hello world” RSS widget app that you can create using the WRT extension for Dreamweaver and other IDE’s.

The Ovi App Wizard takes an RSS feed, some customised images and icons that you create, some skinning options, and produces a Java and WRT application. Simply take those files, plus the icons and screenshots that it also produces for you, and assuming you’re already setup as a publisher for the Ovi Store, login and upload your application files. The documentation that comes with the produced application files suggests that you can even just check all the supported devices as “Fully Tested” – which I did and the first of the apps I uploaded has just passed successfully through Ovi QA in a very quick time frame (certainly compared to when I first uploaded content to Ovi).

The first of the apps I uploaded was one for the OviFlash.com website, which showcases and links to Flash content within the Ovi Store. The WRT widget has passed through QA first and is now live on the store. The Java version is still in testing but I’m expecting this to also pass through without any problem. I also have an app awaiting approval that is for one of my other hobby sites called ToyTragic.com so I’ll let you know when those are online as well.

One suggestion I’ve had for the Ovi guys is to incorporate their Asset Generator tool into the App Wizard, so when you complete the wizard, you not only get the application files and screenshots, but also customised advertising banners ready to use. Just a thought …

Anyway, I’m interested to see how this goes. I’ve set my apps as free (cause I have a fundamental problem with people charging for an RSS feed), but you have the option during the App Wizard process of including your AdMob publisher ID and including mobile ads, which I have done in these first apps.

There are of course similar concepts to this already around the web, and in looking at the main one that I know of, I actually have a sneaky suspicion that there might be some re-skinning of services going on with the Ovi App Wizard, akin to Forum Nokia’s now defunct online SWF packager service (see if you can find out who might be powering the App Wizard – I’ll give you a clue … look for similar demo graphics!). Ovi App Wizard will certainly contribute to the number of apps Nokia can say are in the Ovi Store. Let’s see what the consumer response is from this kind of content being delivered.