By Dusan Belic on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 12:41 AM PST In Symbian
Vopium, the folks behind the popular mobile VoIP solution/application, is the latest member of the Symbian Foundation, the move that will give the company the “immediate right to license the Symbian Foundation platform, royalty free and without source code fees; participate in the governance of the foundation; and take part in joint marketing and branding campaigns.”
This doesn’t come as a surprise as Vopium was already a member of the Symbian Partner Network, and extending its membership to the Foundation seems as a next logical step.
Commenting on the new member, Symbian’s David Wood said: “The Symbian Foundation welcomes Vopium into the community. Applications developers are crucial to creating the richest possible user experiences. We are eager to see the innovations that Vopium will bring to Symbian consumers.”
Boingo Wireless announced that it has joined the Symbian Foundation. As a member of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK)-led group, Boingo gains the “immediate right to license the Symbian Foundation platform, royalty free and without source code fees; participate in the governance of the foundation; and take part in joint marketing and branding campaigns.” As an end users, this means absolutely nothing to you. However, I’ve no doubts we’ll see Boingo’s clients being released for every Symbian version in the future.
Commenting on the move, Symbian’s David Wood said: “Symbian is pleased to welcome Boingo as the latest member of the fast-growing Symbian Foundation. Boingo is widely recognised as a leading enabler of mobile WiFi access. We look forward to seeing their innovative use of Symbian platform assets, and to their participation in community activities.”
I can’t fathom anyone reading IntoMobile wanting to buy this device. I’ve covered it before. It’s been leaked on numerous occasions. It has a 2 megapixel camera, GPS, QWERTY, blah, blah, blah, most people buy devices based on how they look and this thing looks … well just look at it yourself:
And if you’re interested, and not on the influence of drugs, then read the press release after the jump.
What’s really funny about all of this, at the end of the press release it says go to www.att.com/nokiasurge to get more information. The website is down. At least it is as of 16:57 Helsinki time aka 09:57 New York time. Now excuse me while I go brush my teeth to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth.
Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 feeds at a time, give some detail as to why I subscribed to a particular feed, and then decide whether or not to keep on consuming that feed. In Episode 1 I explained what RSS is and how to use it, please read that if you need a refresher on why RSS is awesome and why you should be using it if you take reading news on the internet seriously. The prefix to Trimming in Public is “Becoming a better blogger, reader and helping me take out the trash.” For the bloggers out there who read IntoMobile, I hope you get a better idea of what I do to keep on top of the news. For the readers who read IntoMobile, I know that this site isn’t the only mobile focused technology publication on the internet, and by sharing which sites I read I’m hoping that you’ll keep on coming back here. Taking out the trash has an obvious explanation, I can’t keep up with my RSS feeds and need to trim my list. For those who want to download my complete list of 293 RSS feeds, feel free to grab my OPML file.
Check out Episode 10 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:
Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 feeds at a time, give some detail as to why I subscribed to a particular feed, and then decide whether or not to keep on consuming that feed. In Episode 1 I explained what RSS is and how to use it, please read that if you need a refresher on why RSS is awesome and why you should be using it if you take reading news on the internet seriously. The prefix to Trimming in Public is “Becoming a better blogger, reader and helping me take out the trash.” For the bloggers out there who read IntoMobile, I hope you get a better idea of what I do to keep on top of the news. For the readers who read IntoMobile, I know that this site isn’t the only mobile focused technology publication on the internet, and by sharing which sites I read I’m hoping that you’ll keep on coming back here. Taking out the trash has an obvious explanation, I can’t keep up with my RSS feeds and need to trim my list. For those who want to download my complete list of 293 RSS feeds, feel free to grab my OPML file.
Check out Episode 6 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:
Today is the second day of the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference. Yesterday was the developer’s day, which I missed to attend HiT Barcelona. Again, it’s a small conference, but there seems to be more enthusiasm in the air than at HiT event. The reason may be that it’s taking place in a smaller venue at Esade Business School.
Anyway, I arrived in the midst of “Openness” panel where we’ve heard Matthaus Krzykowski from VentureBeat, Pat Phelan from Cubic Telecom, Andreas Constantinou from VisionMobile, Christian Sejersen from Mozilla, and Jacob Lehrbaum from Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) discussing what the “concept of open” brings to the industry. Symbian Foundation’s David Wood supposed to be on the panel, too, but when I arrived, he wasn’t there. Unfortunately, I haven’t caught much of the action, but it looks like the audience was engaging.
Symbian Foundation’s David Wood has a new post on Symbian blog. In his latest article, he discusses the release plans for the platform:
The source code for the first release of the platform, Symbian^2, is already available on the Mercurial repositories on the Symbian developer website. This version will reach Functionality Completed stage in week 19 2009, and is expected to be Hardened by week 51 this year.
Among the key features of this release are support for multiple form factors, resolutions and input methods; as well as customizable home screen supporting embedded widgets and other personal content.
David Wood wrote an interesting piece on the official Symbian blog, outlining plans for the Symbian Foundation platform development. From what we see, the first Symbian Foundation release based on S60 5.1, Symbian^2, reaches a functionally complete state at the middle of this year, and should be “hardened” by the end of the year. This means that the first devices based on Symbian^2 could hit the market any time around the end of this year. Symbian^3 follows on six months later – reaching a functionally complete state at the end of this year, and should be hardened by the middle of 2010.
Here’s how this should work:
Prior to functionally complete, the platform grows as new features are added by contributors
Between functionally complete and hardened, the development community focuses on stability of the platform by testing and contributing defect fixes
After hardened the release enters a more stable phase. Bug fixes are still being made for around a year, but prime focus will be on later releases.
As for the first Symbian Foundation release, the feature set for Symbian^2 is already virtually frozen. Most of the content for Symbian^3 is already agreed, but there’s scope for contributors to make a difference… Check out full David’s article from here.
Symbian wants to know what people in academia think about the direction the smartphone space is heading and where it will be in 2012-2015. If you’re a University Student you have until the end of September to submit an essay, 10 winners will be selected, each will get 1000 British Pounds (1991.50 US Dollars or 1263.48 Euros).
While the ability to download full-length movies straight to your mobile phone is still out of the question, CinemaNow makes it easier to download full-length movies to your computer. By serving up video trailers for a catalogue of 10,000 movies on your mobile phone, CinemaNow allows users to initiate downloads of movies from their mobile phones.
Simply head on over to the mobile website to view the company’s catalogue of movies, watch trailers, and start downloading a movie to your desktop while you’re on the road. Your download will start remotely and hopefully will be done and ready to view by the time you get back home.
Movie trailers are encoded in mobile-friendly H.264, so most people (iPhoners included) should have no problem browsing the collection of trailers on their mobile phones. Head on over to mobile.cinemanow.com from your cellphone and start viewing and buying your favorite movies remotely.
While the ability to download full-length movies straight to your mobile phone is still out of the question, CinemaNow makes it easier to download full-length movies to your computer. By serving up video trailers for a catalogue of 10,000 movies on your mobile phone, CinemaNow allows users to initiate downloads of movies from their mobile phones.
