Tony Dong talks about Touchnote Postcards, the app that turns your photos into real postcards

An article by Nokia Devs    3 Comments

We’re back with new interviews to the developers of some of the best apps for Nokia devices. Today Tony Dong shares insights and thoughts about Touchnote Postcards, the app that lets you send real postcards with your photos around the world.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the app, there’s a beautiful review available on the Ovi Daily App blog, and you can read it here.

ND: Hi Tony, welcome to Nokia Devs! Please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, I work for a company called Touchnote. I am the technical lead for Touchnote’s server/app integration.

Basically, I make sure the app and the server talk nicely to each other.

ND: Can you describe Touchnote in 10 words?

Touchnote prints and posts photos from your mobile phone.

ND: Which are main Touchnote’s features, and how did the original idea come?

The concept came from Raam (CEO) wanting a better way to share special moments.

Touchnote allows you to take a picture or use one from your gallery to be printed and posted anywhere in the world.

ND: Which technologies were used to create Touchnote for Nokia devices?

The touchnote app was built using native Symbian C++ for both our 3rd and 5th edition apps.

We also have a server built using PHP. Our API uses XML for communication.

ND: Which devices are supported? Do you plan to add other devices in the future?

Currently any S60 3rd edition FP1 device is supported, such as the N95 and E71.

We also have a version for S60 5th edition which support devices such as the N97 and 5800.

We are also doing our final tests of our 5th edition on the N8, which we are hoping to release soon.

ND: Have you encountered any issues during development? Which dev resources have you used as a support for the development phase?

The Nokia developer forum is always a great place to ask for help. We have found the Symbian board really useful as well.

We have also used more generic resources such as StackOverflow.

ND: You’ve implemented an in-app purchase process, a feature not available in most Nokia apps: can you share with us some insights about the way you choose to implement it?

Unfortunately for us, it is currently not possible for Touchnote to incorporate in-app billing via the OVI store, and we initially had to work around this. However we now use the external billing provider Bango.

The tricky bit about Symbian 3rd and 5th is that you can’t have an in-app browser.

This means for the payment to work, it has to break out into the mobile browser for the user to make payment. We then have a polling service so the app knows when the payment is complete so it can redirect the user back into the app.

ND: Touchnote is available for other mobile platforms: which you think are the key differences in developing for these platforms today, compared to Nokia?

I’ll get past the painful bits of Symbian first, and that’s certification. However, I believe what Nokia is doing to sign the publisher certificates, is going to be a huge step forward.

Now the fun bits. What you get with Symbian that you don’t get anywhere else is stability. – it’s an OS that has had 12 years of continuous development and huge amounts of bug testing and fixing (and therefore improvement). And what Nokia is doing with the Qt platform is amazing.

ND: Are you working on new features for the mobile client?

We are always thinking of tweaks and changes which make the process and the user experience easier. We believe the best features are the ones the user doesn’t see, ie, those that do the heavy lifting for them.

Things that we are currently working on are a simpler payment process and faster app-server interactions to make the process more streamlined.

ND: Is there something you’d like to see in upcoming Nokia offerings?

Nokia’s hardware is still consistently excellent, but we would like to see the usability and user experience to improve. The N8 has been a good step forward. For services, in-app payment for non-digital devices would also benefit us greatly, as it will make the user experience easier and therefore better.

Platform-wise, we are really looking forward to see Meego.

ND: Something else you’d like to say to Nokia developers?

With Nokia (and Symbian) having such tremendous reach and scale, there are some exciting opportunities for developers.