Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

Samsung Mobile Innovator extended support to the Java and Windows Mobile platforms

Samsung just extended support to the Java and Windows Mobile platforms in addition to Symbian for their developer network program, Samsung Mobile Innovator.
Samsung Mobile Innovator is free to join, and basic (Hub) membership is open to everyone at all levels of interest in open mobile devices. Join the Samsung mobile community, take advantage of the resources Samsung offers and discuss your ideas and challenges with other developers and Samsung!

For registration and more information, please visit our website:http://innovator.samsungmobile.com
Follow us on: http://twitter.com/MobileInnovator
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Samsung-Mobile-Innovator/50457604410

Top ten iPhone's bad features that make me switch back to Nokia N95

Less than one month ago, a 16GB iPhone was sent to me for development purposes. We have some clients interested in porting their web applications to iPhone devices so I needed the Apple device to test applications.

After one month testing I can say that I'm totally disappointed with the iPhone as mobile device and today I've turned back to my Nokia N95.

First I thought it was only a matter of time. I believed that, as usual, when you buy a new device you need time to take confidence with the new tools, features and shortcuts.
But I was wrong.
These are some of the most important bad things about iPhone that made me switch back to Nokia N95:

1. Low Battery Duration: a mobile phone can't last 4 hours. And the time could be a lot less if you browse internet, watch YouTube videos, using the GPS mapping system, launch applications, listening music . Everything on the iPhone is battery-intensive and can drastically reduce the battery usage.  I can't recharge my phone 4 times per day. It's absurd ! My N95's battery last all day long (watching videos, navigating, using the GPS ...)

2. Poor camera quality: the quality of the camera is very low (2 MegaPixels). You can't print (with a decent quality) an image taken with 2MP camera. Nokia N95 has 5MP camera.

3. No flash and no zoom: when I discovered this I went crazy. iPhone camera DOES NOT have flash and zoom. Is useful a digital camera without the flash and zoom features ? Not at all. Th Nokia N95 has a 5MP camera that means having a real digital camera device with you !

4. No video: iPhone can't make videos. It's fun because iPhone gives you the ability to watch videos on the web via YouTube but the camera can't take a video. I travel a lot for conferences and I often need to shoot video quickly. The Nokia N95 makes great videos.

5. No MMS: Multimedia messages are very popular in Italy. They're fun and useful. iPhone can't send MMS messages.

6. Bad autocomplete features: This is one of the worst feature that makes me very unhappy. When you write text messages iPhone tries to help you autocompleting text. 95% percent the system is wrong. Then if you don't click on the popup with the suggested text it will overwrite your word. It should work in the opposite way letting me choose whether accepting the suggestion or not. The Nokia's T9 system is very powerful and useful. I can write a complete message while driving without watching at the mobile screen (it's impossible to do that with iPhone)

7. No video conference call: I'm not a fan of video calls but they can be useful when you want to see your girlfriend when you're out for business for a long time. iPhone does not support video calls.

8. no FlashLite plugin for browser: I'm honest. With the ecosystem of applications available for the iPhone you won't miss Flash Lite standalone player. But what it's missing is the Flash player browser plugin. I think that the iPhone is a great Internet device. But it's a great limit for an Internet device not to show flash contents. Nokia N95 has Flash Lite player embedded.

9. No Expansion slot: 8 or 16GB can't be enough, especially if you start installing many applications, copying videos and music. iPhone does not have any expansion slot. Nokia N95 supports microSD cards !

10. Cut and Paste: no needs to explain this feature. You can't cut/copy and paste anything !

UPDATE: 11. Modem usage: this is something I forgot to mention but it's crucial for a mobile device. iPhone device can't be used as a modem connecting it to a laptop via USB. The Nokia N95 once connected through USB to a laptop can connect to Internet working as a modem.

iPhone is a trendy device. It's cool, user friendly, with a a fabolous screen (for size and quality) and it's one of the best Internet device I've tested so far. But it's not a mobile phone.

On demand mobile distribution with MobyMobile platform, now available in english

We've released MobyMobile platform in english at least ! MobyMobile is an innovative technological solution which gives you on  demand distribution and fruition of editorial contents of various genres  through mobile phones, also delivering high quality interactive images and films.

MobyMobile formats contents in a particular way, reducing their weight in KB in order to considerably reduce the download time required; and therefore, the cost for the user is also kept down and his satisfaction maximum.

MobyMobile is the solution finally capable of distributing multimedia editorial contents through a world of 60 million mobile phones active today in Italy (almost triple the number of computers connected to the internet!).

Photos of Nokia N96

I found some first shots of a new Nokia phone that could be identified as Nokia N96. The design is inspired to N95 and N81 and it looks very cool.

No please Nokia ... not now.
I was very happy of my recent N95 8GB

Find enchanting locations in Italy with a brand new RIA : YuBuk

I'm glad to announce a new project's on which Comtaste is working on : YuBuk. Flex with cross scripting techniques,  Google MAPS, AJAX with Scriptacolous and Prototype libraries are some of the technologies involved in this project.
It was very fun to see how a simple web based old style application in some months turned into a real rich internet application.

We have published a Case Study on our site, where you can have more details.

Yubuk is  a platform which is accessible on the internet and on mobile terminals for all those who love Italy for its enchanting locations, for its excellent cuisine and exceptional hotels.
Yubuk.com contains information on ten of the “coolest” locations in Italy, information which is accessible to all and to which all the users can contribute and create, modify or comment.

This is one of the best and most useful mash up Rich Internet Application we've worked on. In fact to be able to conceive new and richer modes of fruition, the technological choice has also required a careful analysis of the languages and the standards of highest profile.

Starting from the initial prerequisites, at Comtaste we have analyzed the following list of technologies was opted for which together has contributed to create a true and real mash-up application:

• AJAX with Scriptacolous and Prototype libraries
• Flex with cross scripting techniques
• Google MAPS
• PHP
• Zend Framework
• MySql

It was chosen to use Google Maps to visualize, through the use of its API, the restaurants, hotels and all the locations present in the data bank of Ybuk.com.  Furthermore, Ajax and Javascript functions were adopted to reduce the minimum traffic of data and download only the data relative to the portion of map visualized by the user. Through the use of the combination of Flex and Javascript technologies additional filters were made available to the user to optimize the searches on the map.  

The increase of the visits to the site has brought (and will continue to bring more) an increase of traffic and load on the infrastructure web server. To avoid problems of instability or delays on the site, it was decided to separate the principle applications of the site on two different servers, Apache and PHP 5 was installed on the first, and instead MySOL is present on the second. Both applications were configured in order to obtain the best performance in relation to the load.

To improve the entire infrastructure of the site, a course or restructuring of the code was undertaken to exploit the potential offered by a powerful and famous PHP framework such as Zend. Security, reliability, modulation and integration are just some of the benefits that such a choice entails. The Zend Framework uses the latest development technology to be able to produce flexible and extendible code, using the standard design pattern for the web applications, the model-view-controller (MVC). Furthermore, in the framework, there are also functions present among which internationalization and localization, authentication, session management, search, cache and integration with external APIs.

The activities on Yubuk are up and running, with a continuous assistance for the improvement and evolution of the service. Important goals have already been achieved, measurable especially in terms of the improvement of the user experience and the ranking of the portal.

Convert DVD to Nokia N95 video (MPEG-4)

Now that I have the N95 8GB I want to upload some videos from my laptop to my mobile. It will be very cool to see an entire movie while travelling on an airplane or train.
When I first browse the video gallery of my N96 8GB I discover that the N95 8GB has integrated the full SpiderMan 3 movie. It's amazing to see the quality of the movie on the mobile device.

Anyway I started to google to find a way to convert a DVD to N95 video using some free software.
This is a list of softwares I found and that I'm trying to use, feel free to add your favourite tools :

SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) : is a free GUI for ffmpeg. You can download it for free.
DVDFAB platinum (not free but very easy to use)
Mobiola Media Player (not free but cheap)
Videora iPod Converter to convert it to MPEG4
Winnydows: Soft for PSP, iPod and PC
DVD Shrink
ProjectX: used to demux the VOB MPEG2 files
mplex1.exe: used to remultiplex the audio and video stream to  an MPEG2 file

Browsing Flex applications on the new Nokia N810 with the Flash Player 9 support

The Nokia N810 seams to be a great mobile phone. It's linux-based and it runs a Debian derivated OS, Maemo, with a custom user interface built with the GTK-based Hildon framework.

The N810 supports WiFi,  a four-inch touchscreen with an 800x480 resolution, Bluetooth, and VoIP via Skype,  GPS and a slide-out keyboard.

But one of the greatest features is the support of the Flash Player 9 as well as PDF documents.
This means that you can launch Flex applications on the N810 phone.
Cooool !

If you want to read more have a look at this detailed review of the Nokia N810.

Never lost with Google Maps Mobile and My Location technology

I've just had bought my new N95 8GB when I discovered (thanks Tommy) that Google Maps for mobile is about to use a technology called My Location :

My Location is a new beta technology from Google that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS. Simply fire up Google Maps for mobile, press [0], and the map will indicate your approximate location by centering on a blue circle.
If you do have a GPS-enabled device, My Location can actually complement it. My Location kicks in faster than GPS in most cases, so you can access your location even faster on the map. It also works reliably indoors (unlike GPS) and doesn't drain your phone battery at the rate that GPS does.

A Flash Lite content studio: Mobile Folio

Dmitry from flashweb.sabiostar released his new project - Mobile Folio.
His company provides such services as :

    * Web-programming
    * Graphic design
    * Flash multimedia
    * Illustrations
    * Flash lite for mobiles
    * SEO promotion

Take a look at FlashLite screensavers/wallpapers portfolio that we've done.

J2ME for Nokia S60 devices blog

A new blog dedicated to Java (J2ME) development for Nokia S60 devices  is live : (via seeinto60)

This is the goal of the new blog : We love open source in S60 java and we are trying to enable more of it in our platform. But It is always interesting to hear your opinions. Why do you think there are not as many mobile java projects? What about converting those existing desktop and enterprise projects to mobile? What are your candidates for converting to mobile?