S60 Open to new features

FON offered a free access point on last November and I joined the group. Now couple of weeks ago FON access point arrived and I became officially a Fonero.

FON works with S60 but when accessing FON connection could go more smoothly. For some reason my phone gives several times a message. "This site has sent an untrusted certificate. Continue anyway?". But yes, FON works with a wi-fi phone. Does anyone know how to get rid of the warning message?

Installing FON AP was easy. But having my access point displayed on FON maps in the right way wasn't that straight forward. I was waiting that my AP appears automatically on map. It never came. Then I found out that for some reason my access point on the map was initially located to South Korea and I had to correct it manually. AP range is not huge but coverage is available outdoors. Welcome Foneros to use it. No limitations for bandwidth:-)

EU has investigated mobile roaming charges in Europe. I wrote about this long time ago. Operators has been slow in this issue  and now EU is getting into real action. The EU's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has voted overwhelmingly in support of the proposed cap on EU-wide roaming charges, fixing the price at €0.40 for outgoing, and €0.15 for incoming calls. EU is making easier for people to move around and make business in other EU countries but in ancient telco business you can see national boarders still too well. Regulation is strongly needed and this is a great step.

Now as a smartphone user I'm interested to know what's going to happen for roaming data charges. If voice roaming is extortionately priced, roaming data is not from this planet. It's no surprise for me that EU politicians know well Graham Bell and mobile versions of his innovation. But I'm afraid they haven't heard about mobile data service yet.

Widget support for S60 was announced today. Demos are available in Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and Nokia CEO CTO Tero Ojanperä is starting web cast now 13.15 CET. Developers can use standard Web technologies such as AJAX, HTML, CSS, Java Script and easily create small applications, Widgets, for users. Widget support will be part of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and makes S60 developer platform even stronger.

Widget is an embodiment of S60 Web Run-Time. Web Run-Time allows Web developers to build new Widgets for mobile and even migrate existing widgets from other platforms to S60 with minimal effort.

Web Run-Time lowers the barrier to develop applications for mobile. No need for Symbian programming experience. No need for application signing. Do it fast and distribute on Web for everyone. Use common Web tools, documentation will be available. When bringing existing Widgets to S60, few things has to be taken into account. Screen is smaller, no mouse, two softkeys: options and exit. The core of the existing Widget can be utilized and migration is easy. We have worked with several companies to create demo Widges and usually migration took only few days. I'm impressed.

Ebays, Amazons etc. big Internet names are already on mobile but I believe this is a great step to make long tail available on mobile. We have had the best mobile browser which is making billions of Web pages available for S60 users. But now there is going to be easy way for every Internet company to make mobile user experience even better. Widgets make access to Web services fast and pleasant.

With Widgets smartphone users gain instant and easy access to commonly used Web services. In the first phase Widget functionality allows access to Web and displays information for user in mobile optimized way. Widget user experience on S60 is similar to any other application (Symbian or Java). Widgets can be downloaded and launched in similar way that other applications. Several Widgets can be run at the same time and be seen and switched from multitasker menu.

Open to new features. This has never been more true than today.

I have reported systematically Greenpeace's "Green Ranking" of electronics industry. This time bad news for me is that Nokia is not anymore the number one. Lenovo has raised to the leading position. On the other hand I'm very happy that overall companies are putting more and more effort to environmental issues and for the most direction is right.

Also Sony-Ericsson has improved while Apple, having made no progress since the launch of the Guide in August 2006.

I'd like to see that my employer, Nokia, works towards carbon neutrality. Employees in global company travel a lot. Carbon emissions created by aviation industry is not high if we look the global total numbers, but in my personal "sins" air traveling is clearly the number one and it's mainly business traveling. I have been thinking about buying  Carbon neutral flights from Carbonneutral.com with my own money. I know I should have done it already and not just think and write about it. For example neutralizing the effects I created last week when traveling to Orlando would cost less than 20€. It would be great to work in a company which does this automatically for every employee and flight. It also fits so well for a company and brand which wants to be the most admired in the world.

One more exhibition experienced and I'm back from Orlando. When comparing the last 2 events, 3GSM and CTIA, there is a huge difference. 3GSM is bigger having about 60000 attendees and CTIA about 35000. In 3GSM we had nice S60 branded booth and in CTIA S60 was presented in Nokia area. The Nokia booth was Texas BIG (although it was Florida:-). It's nice to have lots of space but area felt quite empty. That's not the impression we want to give. But it was same in the other booths, kind of semidead feeling. Of course situation was different when Clinton and Bush senior visited. I happened to have afternoon shift and still at hotel so missed that.

I didn't see any big announcements. We didn't do those and others were pretty quit as well. Of course vibe is different in US where S60 phone penetration is not that high but I was happy to meet so many people who were big fans of S60 and hoping to see S60 devices available in operator portfolios. And only one blogger came to say hello.  See you in Madrid on 25th, if you are coming to S60 community event called S60 Summit.