ND: Welcome Leonardo, please tell us a bit about yourself!

Hi! I’m Leonardo Risuleo, a passionate mobile designer/developer working as freelancer from Italy. Forum Nokia Champion & Co-Manager of MobileRevamp.org, the Italian Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group (J2me user group too). I started my career as graphic designer but my passion for mobile began in 2003, when I started developing Flash Lite and Symbian mobile applications for Nokia devices. During the past years I worked as freelancer on a variety of mobile-related projects for big firms and studios in the mobile industry.

ND: Which platforms and technologies do you use for mobile development on Nokia devices?

I use different technologies for my Nokia projects: from Symbian c++ to WRT and Webkit but my main focus is on “Flash on Devices”. Recently I’m playing with a little bit of QT too.

ND: Talking about Flash Lite: which do you think are its greatest pros and cons?

Well, the first pro is definitely the active developers community. Friendly people always ready to help and share ideas. With Flash is easy and fast to build stunning mobile interfaces, working prototypes and multi-screen applications running on a big variety of devices (hardly possible with other technologies… ah right, now we have Qt too!).

The con is that while is super-easy to create mobile content with Flash is not so easy to find “Quality” contents. But I hope that new Adobe efforts with Flash Player 10.1 and Flash Lite 4 will bring a new quality standard for Flash on mobile.

ND: Which improvements would you like to see in Flash Lite support on Nokia devices?

I can’t really wait to see Flash Player 10.1 or AIR Mobile running on a Nokia device. The biggest limit I see now is all about packaging our Flash Applications. A real cross-device standard is actually missing from Nokia…

ND: Which technical resources would you recommend for developers who want to start learning Flash Lite?

Developer communities first. Places like Forum Nokia and Adobe user groups are really indispensable for developers to find answer to their questions. My suggestion is to follow as many top bloggers as possible too in order to be always updated with latest news! NokiaDevs.com for example.

ND: Have you published some app on the Ovi Store?

Yes, of course. My latest Flash Lite project “10×10 Mobile” is free to download from the Ovi Store. It’s basically the mobile version of 10×10™ (www.tenbyten.org). “Ten by ten” is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. For this application I used Flash Lite as the only technology (except for the stub application used for packaging). The application is designed for touch enabled device and gives to users an engaging user experience balancing visual animations and performances. Curious? Give it a try, it’s free!

ND: Which is your overall impression about the Ovi Store experience?

With the Ovi Store now Nokia users have a real, working app store. The overall experience is pretty good but unfortunately is still a little behind competitors.

ND: Please share with us your impressions about Nokia, and how you see it in the next few years.

I would like to see Nokia investing a lot more effort on User Experience. Other platforms are gaining a more solid position in the market while Nokia lost the leadership on UX. My suggestion is to put more attention on the design phase for both Nokia and Symbian.

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

Yes: keep up the good work! =)

Are there any more questions you’d like to ask Leonardo? If yes, please leave a comment!

Today Nokia Devs talks with Alessandro Pace, a.k.a. Biskero, experienced Flash Lite developer and blogger.

ND: Welcome Alessandro, please tell us a bit about yourself.

I am a mobile architect, with more then 12 years experience. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, concentrations in digital signal processing and communication networks, and a Master’s degree in Telecommunications systems Management, with a concentration in networking and mobile communications. I am the manager of the Boston Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group, an Adobe community professional on mobile devices, certified instructor and developer for Flash Mobile. I am very active in the Flash Mobile developer community. I am a WURFL contributor for Flash Lite. I am also Co-founder of Mobile Monday Boston. Architect of Kero Mobile Independent AppStore. Forum Nokia Champion and Forum Nokia Launchpad member.

ND: Which platforms and technologies do you use for mobile development on Nokia devices?

I use several different technologies for my projects from Flash Lite to Symbian C++, mobile web and WRT. Now looking at Qt too.

For tools I use Flash Professional, Carbide C++, Qt Creator and my old good text editor.

ND: What is Kero Mobile?

Kero Mobile is a project that I had in mind from several years. Kero Mobile is the next generation service oriented mobile independent AppStore.

Kero Mobile allows mobile users to access mobile applications, games, media, music, social networking communities, news, sport news, blogs, city information, RSS feeds and more. You can browse, view, play and download content via OVI Store. There are 12 different Kero Mobile services, content feedback and social sharing features. Also Flash Mobile and mobile ads are part of the platform.

ND: How did you have the original idea, and why did you choose Flash Lite to implement it?

When I started to look at Flash Lite technology back in 2004 I was surprised how easy is develop mobile content. Also Flash Lite content can be considered an application that can be used within another one. So I started to investigate the feasibility and I begin to design the architecture on my spare time.

ND: Is Kero Mobile open to third party developers?

I am working really hard to allow third parties to create content for Kero Mobile. It will be another distribution channel for developers with an instant revenue stream.

ND: Can you show us some of the apps distributed through Kero Mobile?

At the current moment there are more then 700 apps in Kero Mobile on 80 mobile phones and 197 countries. Here is a short video of Kero Mobile in action:

ND: Which were the main difficulties during its development, and how Nokia resources helped to solve them?

I have spent most of the time to design the architecture of the platform. I had in mind to keep it as simple and flexible as possible to allow me to add new features and complexity over time.

The openness of Nokia devices was key to distribution and reach for Kero Mobile.

Also the number of different mobile technologies supported by Nokia devices allows me to potentially add features to the Kero Mobile platform.

ND: Are you working on new features?

Yes. I am adding more content everyday. Also I am working on automating some parts of the content creation.

For Kero Mobile client I am adding some community features and distribution opportunities. But my focus is to keep Kero Mobile as simple as possible.

ND: Which distribution channels do you use to distribute Kero Mobile?

You can download Kero Mobile from http://www.biskero.mobi. Also I am looking at the OVI Store for distribution. In fact content available in Kero Mobile can be downloaded from within the AppStore. For example some of the games can be played within Kero Mobile and then downloaded from OVI Store directly from the game itself.

As I said before you can browse, view, play and download content via OVI Store. This is the unique feature of Kero Mobile.

More information is available on the blog: http://www.biskero.com/blog/

ND: Which are the major difficulties that you see today for Flash Lite developers? Which the greatest benefits?

Probably the most common issue is to generate revenue streams. And for the technology I do not see any particular issues.

With Nokia devices there is a very clear technology roadmap for the different Flash Lite versions. At the current moment Flash Lite 4 is coming to Symbian^3 Nokia devices.

Also Nokia is supporting Flash Lite developers with tools for free packaging and distribution, a great initiative!

The benefits are definitely the speed of development compared to any other mobile technology.

As the development cost and time to market are fundamental now for anyone in the mobile ecosystem and Flash Lite offer great benefits on this side.

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

Nokia is present in every market and giving the Nokia devices reach and upcoming new platforms I see Nokia as number one choice for mobile developers.

Today, we’ll talk with the developer behind Ting!, an application that brings new level of personalisation to phone calls and SMS messages.

Welcome Dmitriy, please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi, my name is Dmitriy Tarasov and I am head of Tarasov Mobile Software. 1 year ago I started my career as independent mobile software developer focusing on Symbian OS. I’ve released very popular products Ting!, Blacklist Mobile and Whitelist Mobile. At the moment I work with small group of developers on new cool apps for Nokia devices and I would say that from this point Tarasov Mobile Software becomes a company, not just one developer. It is exciting because I really like what I do, I have ideas and have talented developers around which help me to build new name in mobile software market.

Ting! brings new level of personalization to your Nokia device

The original idea was based on trying to figure out how to add some fun and personalization to daily mobile phone use. Modern Nokia mobile devices have lots of cool features which help users to use any services we can imagine but Nokia devices are naturally mobile phones. Users spend a lot of time calling and sending/receiving SMS. Looking at the same call dialing or message receiving dialog is boring and that’s where Ting! helps Nokia devices to bring some fun to user experience. Ting! allows to add to favorite contacts as many pictures or photos as you like. And it will show them all as very nice slideshow during incoming/outgoing calls and when incoming SMS/MMS arrives. This is not first application of this kind, there were some apps called “fullscreen callers” but Ting! is obviously first and only one which shows slideshows instead of one picture and which works on Symbian^1 devices.

I wouldn’t say that idea of this app changed a lot by this moment. It was pretty much clear for me since the beginning and the most major changes are rather marketing-oriented. But this is another story.

Ting! fully supports S60 3^rd edition and S60 5^th edition (Symbian^1) devices. Couple of days ago I added support of upcoming Nokia N8 device and Symbian^3 in general. So next release available in Ovi Store will support Symiban^3 as well.

The main technology under Ting! is Symbian C++. It was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio.Net+Carbide.VS as well as Carbide.C++. S60 3^rd MR, FP2, S60 5^th SDK’s + some private Nokia APIs were used. I know Nokia aggressively promotes Qt. But as small company we need to sell our apps, not develop for fun. And at this moment only Symbian C++ can bring us access to consumers.

There were some issues with S60 5^th edition devices, but we’ve found the solution. And that was the most fun part because we were very satisfied with the result. It looks really cool. You can check the demonstration of Ting! here:

Discussion boards and Wiki helped us a lot. I would say that it can give you answers for 99% of your questions. Also I would like to thank Alexander Trufanov from Nokia Russia for helping with resolving some technical issues. I don’t really think that success of apps like Blacklist Mobile and Ting! would be possible without using Forum Nokia developer resources.

I believe that Symbian is the most powerful mobile platform in its internals. It allows developers to use system resources very deep and to create very powerful apps. But it is weak in UI layer. Avkon doesn’t satisfy modern User Experience expectations so moving to Qt is very logical and bold move from Nokia. It will cause developer troubles in the beginning, but will bring more users of Nokia devices with upcoming Symbian^4 release.

Yes, next major version of Ting! will have sms preview and cool effects. So it is going to be more beautiful and useful.

APPsolutely, at the moment new cool entertainment app is going under QA. It is called Magic Brush. 2 more products will appear by the end of this summer, so stay tuned.

• Name: Dmitriy Tarasov
• Country: Russia
• Website: http://dtarasov.ru/
• Twitter: TarasovMobile
• Apps: Magic Brush, Ting!, Blacklist Mobile, Whitelist Mobile

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