Steve here shows us how to shoot video on the Nokia N95 and how to edit with the phone's video editor. He's also telling how to upload the video to a video blog and all this directly from you S60 phone!

Pizero is featuring the Profimail app. He is telling us about the handy auto-update feature in ProfiMail to have Push email on his S60 phone.

The release notes cover the new stuff added in each milestone. Some of these features are mostly of interest to Java or Eclipse plug-in developers but the platform features will be reflected in Carbide when we move up to Eclipse 3.4.

Our favorite picture comes from last week's runner up, the prolific Nikhil Chawla:

And this week's runner up comes from the "Shewhowearsred":

Next week's theme is green/alternative transport. May 12 to May 16th is Bike Week in the S60 Ambassador home office of Boston, MA. We'd like to see our S60 Ambassadors using alternative forms of transportation: Bicycle, rollerblades, rickshaw, skateboard, scooter, unicycle, whatever you use to get to work/fun. And remember (this means you, Stefan), old Soviet gas guzzlers don't count as "alternative" transport. Unless of course you are using them to carpool. The tag is transport7.

This week's Report of the Week comes to us from Jamaalism:

Convinced the wife...

During the majority of 2006 and 2007, Nokia never really had a device
that piqued my wife's interest. Both of us jumped to Sony Ericsson in
fact as we just weren't impressed with the
N73 or the N95 which, at that time, was quite buggy and prone to
crashing.

After the N95-3 came out for the North American markets, everything
changed.

I have championed that device online on Facebook and other user
communities and my wife has always been there at my side, jealous of
the functionality. Problem was, we couldn't afford to drop another $600
on another N95 and the phone is a little big for her taste.

Thankfully, the E51 came out at a price point that honestly amazed me.
As soon as I had an opportunity, I snagged one for her and she has not
looked back since. She's now an avid S60 user and preaches it's
benefits to her friends as well. WiFi, 3G, thin, metal, multitasking,
2mp camera, dedicated shortcut keys are all features she has come to
love and enjoy.

In fact, even though I've used an iphone and let her try it, we've
still went right back to the Nokias in no time. Keep it up guys and I
look forward to getting her an N78 when it's made available for the
North American markets (NA 3G).

She's getting impatient...

Thanks for creating one more fan Jamaalism...and we're also anxiously awaiting more S60-based devices for the NA market. Your 2 month loaner N82 is on the way -- Enjoy! Until next Tuesday, happy WoMing.

The user will now see the stack crawl display that a panic has occurred. The panic number is shown in the StackCrawl-Thread information at the top. The top frame will be the User::Panic() code. It will have source if Euser has symbolics and disassembly otherwise. The next frame will be the caller of User::Panic() only if symbolics exist for that location. Otherwise it will be in disassembly. The application will exit and the debug session will terminate when the user resumes.

Bogdangaliceanu from Nokia Mobile Blog shows Handy Taskman. Handy Taskman basically lets you control your phone in for example, switch to, close, kill any application or close them all in one click or find and start a desired application by typing the first letters of its name. Check out how this is done from Bogdan’s movie.

Gletham from symbianone.com has made a nice presentation of the Nokia Internet Radio application on His N95 8GB and throws in a couple of quick multitasking tips as well.

As the last time, it can be downloaded from SourceForge and installation instructions are provided in our wiki.

This version can fully replace the web-server of MWS 1.3, so that you can use all Python based web applications of MWS, and at the same time play with PHP and MySQL. Note though, that as PAMP has fewer capabilities than MWS, the functionality of some web-applications of MWS will be restricted. But please read those installation instructions, as you can't just simply install the PAMP sis on top of MWS.

So, if you want to move closer to the bleading-edge, install PAMP, but be prepared that there are still rough edges. For technical discussions and support, please use the Forum Nokia discussion board.

Have lots of Fun!

Johan

You can find this and other videos at:
http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Carbide_Training_Videos

This is pretty basic stuff; we're trying to put down a solid foundation of the fundamentals first, and then we'll start working on the more exotic stuff. We're always looking for screencast ideas, though, so speak up if you have any ideas.

1) mcpezza
2) LENNYBONS
3) NCtechfreak
4) technologicali
5) shewhowearsred
6) zadosha
7) gersbo
8) Mitko
9) Tangram
10) vaibhavsharma

You probably noticed a couple things have changed in the list...that's because you see usernames (instead of given names) from our new S60 Ambassador website. The site is currently being tested by existing S60 Ambassadors. Also, we're using the new counting system on the site...if existing S60 Ambassadors want to make sure they show up in the weekly lists, pls log onto the S60 website, register as an S60 Ambassador, and cut and paste your reports into the site! (We'll eventually find a way to give all S60 Ambassadors credit for the reports they've submitted directly to Ricky and Stefan.)
Thanks for bearing with us as we migrate onto our bigger, better, faster, stronger website specifically designed for S60 Ambassadors and S60- based device and service campaigns.

See you on Friday and until then, as always, happy WoMing!

Here is a message from Karri Kalpio, which I promised to put up in the blog:

We'll be presenting a very cool Java based content management system based on eSWT powered user interface. The link between that and Mobile Web Server is that because our demo concentrates on the new widget set soon available in S60 based smartphones we utilize MWS to handle all the actual content delivery. I think this is conceptually pretty cool: whichever application could behave in a similar fashion and simply make the content generated in phone to be distributed by MWS. Especially now that the new sensor framework is becoming available the amount of data that may be generated and processed in the device I cannot even start to imagine all the new possibilities this might open!

If you - or somebody else playing with MWS - happens to be participating JavaOne, please come to see us in Nokia booth #818!

--karri

I haven't seen the demo yet myself, but it was nice to hear Karri & eSWT folks could use MWS to enable their demo. Drop your comments here!

-Jukka

There is a little known program run by S60 Java platform team. We regularly work with software and game houses to find out about the problems on our platform and also help them solve problems on their applications. We hope to extend our reach with this BOF to broader developer community. I will be at the BOF and will be sharing some usability tips, I know that most of the S60 engineers that are attending the conference are going to be there. I am really hoping to hear about some of the performance tips and also problems that you face when working with the S60 Java platform.

When traveling on business you don’t have that much time of to do shopping, see the sights and all that, but sometimes you just might find a couple of hours to play tourist. Being a huge sneaker freak, I of course always head towards the sneaker stores. The problem for me is that when I’m in a strange city and have only a couple of hours to spend on shopping, I usually do not have a clue where to head for the coolest sneakers, especially if I haven’t had the time to familiarize myself with the city beforehand.

Now, what would be handier than an app that would tell me where to go! I would get a list of shoe shops, what kind of shoes they are selling (sneakers, high heels etc) and a map to locate the store.

Any other good travel apps you'd recommend besides WorldMate? Or even better, has someone already created the prefect sneaker-locator? Managed to find a decent pair of All Stars this time anyway though.

Needless to say I was a bit verklempt about the whole issue. Then I realized if I, who worked across the room from the developers didn't know of these features, it was a pretty good bet that the vast Carbide audience hadn't stumbled upon them either.

So, let's talk about them.

For next week, we want to see what kind of pets our Ambassadors have, or what kind of Animals live in your part of the world. Please tag your pix "animal6".

We also had a very active week for report submissions. Our favorite (a long one!) was from Daniel Ayala. Check it out:

Hi Ricky, Happy Friday.

Not that I have not been sharing with people about OVI Share, S60 and
Nokia, I just have not had a lot of time to type them up and send them
in.... Here is a particularly poignant one that resulted in some
really good uptake for the phones, the OS and the service!

Everyone in my extended family knows I am a phone fanatic and that I
often have phones and capabilities that are not available in the US
(either due to imports, carriers, etc). So last Saturday, in a
gathering leading up to Passover, out came the usual question about
which phone I was using this week, I pulled out my trusty N95-1. I
started showing it around and demonstrating the features of it
including its Mac compatibility, Flash in the browser, lots of open
apps that can be installed by the user and not require vendor
intervention (this topic came up when my uncle asked how it compared
to his iPhone). Finally we came upon the camera. I told them that
unless I was out with my Canon DSLR, I used my N95 for a day-to-day
camera. They did not believe that the quality was that good, so I
took a few shots and used the Share function to put them on Ovi
Share. We moved over to the family computer in the house we were
visiting and I showed them the 5MP quality and everyone was stunned.
The inevitable follow on question came very quickly... "How did you
get that up on the web so quickly?" A twinkle in my eye must have
clued my cousin off that there was something neat to show so she
commented, "I bet this is going to be cool." So, I took another photo
of my cousin's son, showed it on the screen of N95, clicked Send and
clicked Web Share. When the choice to select a service came up I
offered that you could use this integrated sharing software to post to
either Flickr or Ovi Share. I demonstrated Ovi Share and with a click
and a connect to the home WiFi, the picture was on the Ovi Share
website! I actually heard one person (and I can not determine who it
was) gasp when the site had the photo on it. At this point, I had
all 15 people (not including the 4 children under 6) around my
demonstration, and I wished I had my TV cables with me to make it
really visible to all gathered.

As I mentioned in my last report, I have a 4.5 month old son who has
a website with photos and videos on it. The videos are hosted on Ovi
Share. I told the group that I had one more neat feature using the
camera and Ovi Share and then I would get off my soapbox and we could
have dinner. I asked if anyone had been to Andrew's website recently,
and of course the answer was a resounding "yes." (What family would
not either visit, or pretend they visited your kids website, right?)
So I told them that the videos on the website were not from a
traditional video camera, but rather from my N95. Again, a level of
disbelief based on the quality of the videos they had seen. My
cousin, who is 4 months pregnant, seemed skeptical and interested, so
I gave another demonstration. I shot a 30 second video of my cousin
talking about her pregnancy and what she wanted to eat first after she
gave birth (in case you are interested, it was "a tuna melt and a
beer.") With the video shot, I again showed how quickly I could get
it posted to the web via the Share application on N95. 3 minutes
later, the video was available in my Ovi Share profile. I played it
and commented that any web browser should be able to play it without
plugins or external applications. The best comment was my cousin
again on the quality of the transfer and the speed of availability on
the website. The technical folks in the crowd also really loved the
ease and options of linking to or embedding the video into a blog,
website through the omnipresent URLs in the corner.

I also did a brief demonstration of the photo syncing capabilities in
the Share Online application between Ovi Share and the N95. This was
very well received as well, but my cousin indicated a desire to be
able to launch the videos from within that application, as opposed to
just seeing a static still image that represented a video. Either
that the still, when clicked, would launch a browser that lead
directly to the video on Ovi Share website, or that the transcoded
video could be stored on the phone like the sync'ed images are.

The last part of the conversation ended in 3 very happy people. My
two cousins, the one that is pregnant and the other who has a 1.5 year
old, are both GSM customers and were both interested in this union of
phone and camera. They both asked when I was next heading to Europe
and what the cost was, including the pain of the US Dollar exchange
rate. They were both overjoyed to hear that N95 was available at the
Nokia Flagship Store in the city (Chicago) and that it was at a
reasonable price, despite the exchange rate. I explained the
difference between the N95 and N95 8Gb.

To close out the story, I got a call from my pregnant cousin on
Tuesday to ask me if *I* Needed anything whilst she was at the Nokia
store in the City as she was going to buy an N95 to use as her phone
in-purse camera for the baby and use the Ovi Share service to post
them, since "it was so easy even her husband could do it." Yesterday
(Thursday), I got an email from my other cousin - the one that has the
1.5 yr old - and she had ordered an N95 8Gb online and was so happy to
have a way to post videos that "did not involve YouTube."

Regards,
Dan Ayala

Thanks Dan, keep 'em coming! Tune in next Tuesday for the "Top 10" Ambassador list. Until then, happy WoM'ing!

To investigate the performance of Code Scanner we ran it on the whole common Symbian/s60 sources directory and the scan completed in ~4 hours on a fairly recent PC. There was a big bunch of errors/warnings. The amount of errors is going down gradually though. We illuminated all the Code Scanner errors in TRK and PI sources last year. It is a good practice to run it every time you modify/fix something in your s60/Symbian code!

So the question is, why haven't you upgraded to Carbide 1.3 yet?

Carbide 1.3 includes support for Eclipse 3.3 and CDT 4.0, a host of build system improvements for large projects and indexing, a new System search capability, new debugger improvements like the Executables view and improved on-device debugger stability, new tool plug-ins like CodeScanner, Capability Scanner, Epocwind.out, and lots of bug fixes.

Carbide 1.1 and even parts of 1.2 really pale in comparison to what Carbide 1.3 offers. If this small message has struck a chord somewhere, go download the latest version here. Especially you Carbide 1.1 users as I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised at the improvements.

The real answer?

There is no excuse!

We've addressed both of these issues by creating the On-Device Setup dialog which can be found under the Help menu in Carbide. Use the On-Device Setup dialog to verify and update Carbide software services on a device. The first service supported is TRK.

One of the things that came out of my meetings with their support team manager was an agreement to share training materials. There is no reason why Symbian and Nokia should develop separate tracks of Carbide training material covering the same ground, so we're looking into ways to coordinate training topics between our two companies and will probably share all of the material we create via the Symbian Developer Network wiki. This means that new training content should appear much more quickly and in greater quantity.

Watch this space for further announcements!