Alessandro and myself were recently speaking with Forum Nokia on their Ovi App Wizard product, and the podcast of that conversation has just been released (Part 1 and Part 2). Thanks to Jason and Ung-Ping for the invitation to give my thoughts.
Posts Tagged ‘Forum Nokia’
Forum Nokia Podcast on Ovi App Wizard
My first Ovi App Wizard product in the Ovi Store
Posted 17 Mar 2010 — by Dale
Category Development, Mobile
Category Development, Mobile
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.
Nokia WRT Extension now available for Adobe Dreamweaver and Visual Studio
Posted 10 Jun 2009 — by Dale
Category Development, Mobile
Category Development, Mobile
Forum Nokia have been doing a lot of great work with tooling for their WRT (Web Runtime) widget platform over the past year or so. I think it’s important to provide web developers (who are the main target audience for growing the WRT dev community) to be able to use common tools when building widgets for the web, devices, etc. Following on from their Aptana plug-in, you can now also extend Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Visual Studio to fast-track widget development.
I’ve been playing around with the Dreamweaver extension, and I have to say that they’ve done a very impressive job with integrating development, testing and deployment into the Dreamweaver environment. I’ll hopefully be getting to do some WRT/Flash Lite development soon, and will be able to give you all a better review of the DW extension then. Well done Forum Nokia!
- Download Nokia Web Runtime Extension for Adobe Dreamweaver
- Download Nokia WRT plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio
- Download WRT plug-in 2.0 for Aptana Studio
And don’t forget, once you’ve built your rockin’ WRT widget, you can publish it to the Ovi Store for distribution!
Moket joins Forum Nokia Launchpad program
Moket has had a very healthy relationship with Nokia right from the ealry years of Flash Lite, and I was pleased to extend this with our joining the Forum Nokia Launchpad program. Launchpad is a program that aims to give developers and companies further access to Nokia knowledge, expertise and business development opportunities.
This all comes off the back of Moket being added to the Innovation Series last year, and becoming a Premium Publisher for the Ovi store in 2009. We’re hoping that Launchpad will continue to build and strengthen the Flash mobile ecosystem, with the net result being more market opportunities for everyone.
Nokia WRT Aptana Plug-in now available
Posted 16 Feb 2009 — by Dale
Category Development, Mobile
Category Development, Mobile
Nokia have released the 1.0 version of their Web Runtime Widget plug-on for the Aptana authoring IDE. Nokia WRT widgets are light-weight web applications designed with common technologies (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, and even Flash) which can be distributed and installed like native mobile applications.
Nokia have been looking to strengthen the tool set and workflow for web developers to take their existing skills and start creating these WRT widgets, and so have been looking at ways to engage the developer community through the tools they already use. Aptana is a commonly used authoring environment for creating Ajax-based web applications, and being based on Eclipse it was a good first target in this strategy. Well done to the Nokia team!
Here are some useful links to help you get started:
