Nokia and Qt, I Choose You!

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Since I commented on this post about MeeGo here, I really should explain.

I went to a Wavefront/Nokia seminar about Nokia’s Qt and Ovi store on Friday.  Partially out of curiosity, partially to network and partially to perhaps win a brand new spanking N8.  Not that I want to hand in my N900, but I like new kit.  And as a research & development mobile developer it is my responsibility to learn about the whole of the mobile ecosystem.

First of all I want to say is that I am amazed by the pains that Nokia goes through to maintain being a market leader.  Not to sound like a PR person for Nokia, but the number of countries and languages that Ovi is available is astounding.  And for anyone wanting to integrate their app purchases with a carrier’s billing system Ovi is the only way to go.  Why?  The Google Market integrates with 2 carriers.  Nokia’s Ovi Store integrates with 99 carriers.  So while Apple iOS and Google Android do a remarkable job, they don’t scale like Ovi does.

Another thing that Nokia does well is compete in various markets against various vendors at the same time.  In the superphone market it is up against Apple, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Microsoft, Google, etc.  In the business space against RIM’s BlackBerry.  And it wipes the floor in the feature phone market.  Yes, the superphone market is proving difficult for them.  Hopefully MeeGo will change all that.

Qt is amazing, and Nokia is pushing Qt hard.  Very, very hard.  This is awesome news for the KDE community.  And it also provides a glimmer of hope for developers who would love to learn one framework very, very well and use everywhere.  Java failed, and if Android (which ONLY works on smartphones or smartphone-like handsets) is the best we can do then we have failed.  This is coming from someone who earns his bread and butter as an Android developer.  I love working in Android, even with all of its quirks and oddities.  But Qt… thats a whole new level, especially if the market accepts MeeGo.

So know there is a bunch of speculation about Nokia CEO Stephen Elop dropping a platform and merging with something Microsoft.  And everyone is speculating Symbian, Symbian^3 or MeeGo.  Symbian is not going away.  And I don’t think MeeGo will go for three reasons: it took years to get MeeGo to where it is.  Second is that already most of the up and coming in-vehicle interface systems will run MeeGo.  And third is this interesting tidbit:

Audience: So when is the next Qt training session for Toronto?

Nokia Rep: There is one in March for Montreal.  There will be one in Vancouver in April.  And there will be a whole new set of sessions including Toronto, around MeeGo devices.

That and other comments at the seminars point to MeeGo device appearing sometime before May.  So what about this mysterious announcement?  Well everyone seems to have forgotten that Nokia has a gaming platform: NGage.  Yes, that NGage.  The one that is not doing so well.  So how will they compete in the mobile gaming space with the iPhone/iPad and Sony’s next PSP that is Android based?  How about bringing Microsoft’s XBox to mobile devices?  Hmm…

Discuss!

As a sidenote, I’m planning to learn Qt while working on my current work project.  I can’t wait.

Messy

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I missed an update yesterday, but I won’t fudge it today and backdate this post. Things are a bit messy at the moment and behind schedule unfortunately.  I’m trying to fix this, but I’m not sure when everything will get back on-track.

So until that time, I’m going to keep the posts shorts and not necessarily daily.

Daily Writing

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I’ve done a lot of thinking today.  About what to do next in life, and what will be the next big thing.  I feel that I should seriously back into writing in a big way.  Managing all the projects that I’d like to do will be challenging.  But I think I should try and dedicate one day of my week for a particular project.

But one thing I will do, is do some daily writing.  I should be able to manage, cause after all I am posting this even though it has been an off day.

Getting Back into the Swing

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This post is actually a few minutes into the next day.  But I’m still trying to get into the swing of things.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to put parts of my life that aren’t on track, back on track.  Of course this is easier said than done.  But like Matthew Kelly–an amazing Catholic inspirational speaker and evangelist–says: “Our life changes when our habits change.”  Changing habits is a long and difficult process, and honestly I’ll be happy if I can get everything in place by the end of THIS year.

In totally unrelated things, I found out that the original Starcraft runs beautifully under Wine.  I’m going to try some of my other Windows games in the future, and see if I can realistic ignore using my Windows partition.

On the First Day of 2011…

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…I’m recuperating from the awesome party that the Huddarts (and Sharon) threw.  Lots of fun, met new folks and partied well into the morning with everyone especially the Nasons and the Nolans. :)  Thanks guys.  And the weather cooperated as well.

Anyways, I’m still pretty tired out.  And tomorrow will really feel like the first day of the new year.

Happy New Years! Goodbye 2010.

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I’m on my way to the New Year’s party that my friends the Huddarts are throwing. So I’ll keep this blog entry short.

I meant to blog about a few things. But these last two weeks, have left me with a lot of work and not much time. As part of my resolution for next year, I’ll try to blog on a daily basis. And so I’ll get to all the content I meant to blog about soon.

I want to wish everyone a happy, prosperous, blessed and cheerful New Year! I hope that 2011 will be a year just as great or even better than 2010. For myself, it has been a year of ups and downs, blessings, challenges, and opportunities. New experiences many of which I ever imagined all happened in 2010. Many questions answered themselves and many things make more sense now. I also saw many promising developments for the future. I hope 2011 will be a continuation of this.

So Happy New Year to all of you! Don’t party too hard tonight and see you in the new year.

Published in the Alexandrian!

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I found out on Friday that my friend and founder of the Alexandrian, just released the Fall issue. I haven’t read the entire issue yet, but it looks like a great issue.

I’m particularly excited about this issue because it contains my first ever non-self-published short story: Learning to Love God

http://thealexandrian.org/journal/learning-to-love-god

Do Android Devs Dream of Electric Sheep?

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I can’t speak for all the other Android developers in the world, but I know that I don’t. But I can’t pass up a good opportunity for a terrible pun at the late Phillip Dick’s expense.

However I am enjoying living in the Android ecosystem both as a developer and as a user. Just right now I am trying out a blogging application for Android. And even without the slide-out keyboard, using the Swype input app and using an unfamiliar app, I feel more at home on the Samsung Galaxy S than on my Nokia N900…

As a developer I really enjoy working with the APIs. And I appreciate using a widely used platform. No it is not a perfect platform. But it is a joy to work with compared to some mobile platforms and much better than plain old Java development. I guess the saying that the Android development is where old Java developers feel young again is true.

Now if only Google keeps on doing and good job, the manufacturers keep on churning out good handsets, and the fine legal team at Oracle lays off then we’ll all be well off.

Totally Unknown Writers Festival 2010

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On Wednesday evening, I went to the 17th Annual Totally Unknown Writers Festival. As always organized by the great folks from Life Rattle Radio and originally founded by two of my professional writing professors, Guy Allen and Arnie Achtman. As with every year, great stories written and read by talented authors from around Toronto.

I hoped to read this year, but I’ll get ready for next year’s festival. I did meet up with some of my old classmates from university. And I was able to catch up with them and Guy. If you want to hear great stories of life experiences from the GTA, I highly recommend coming out to the festival.