S60 Open to new features

As expected, a great response all around the web for S60 widgets, although a few bit disappointed that they'll probably have to wait till later this year to get their hands on the first widget-supported device - certainly an understandable disappointment.

There's one outspoken dissenter in the mix, and he happens to be one of my favorite tech writers, Andrew Orlowski of The Register. What I love about Andrew is his ability to ruffle peoples' feathers. He's provocative, but between his rants are always some real gems. He's perfect for The Register (or as I like to call it, "The FOX NEWS of the UK").

Andrew raised some excellent questions about widgets that have yet to be addressed - I've heard no official response for these yet. Although I probably should be waiting for our widget guru Ganesh Sivaraman to reply, I thought I'd take a stab at some of the concerns he and others had about S60 widgets...

For "Transforming mobility" read: "opening up a secure platform" and for "rich Web 2.0" experience read: "to Javascript worms, pop-up windows and stealth dialers". In other words, it's the presentation layer people who think they can solve infrastructure level problems - and this time, they're coming for your phone.

Security is absolutely a concern. But Web 2.0 is here to stay obviously - should the mobile world just leave out 2.0 technologies like AJAX? You most likely have AJAX support on your desktop browser, are you concerned about security issues? Sure! But you know that developers of your browser are working hard to fight it. So why would it be any different on the mobile? S60 3rd Edition has proven to be a very very secure platform, same goes for the browser. Call me naive but I faith in those "Fiddling Finns". (He, actually the browser guys are in Boston)

Widgets do little if anything to change security, in fact it could even improve it - If you have a S60 3rd Edition device, your device supports AJAX/Javascript - and widgets are essential just AJAX/Javascript and existing web technologies, so how would they change anything? The concern is when these widgets interact with other components of your device, such as the contacts or calendar for instance. Now I have idea whether or not they'll allow this kind of functionality, but my *guess* is that if they do, they'll be some sort of signing process put in place, which would actually increase security.

Today's announcement will do little to raise the morale of the bedrock third-party software developers who Nokia needs the most: the C++ and Java developers required for infrastructure, middleware and mission-critical applications.

I dunno about that. Widgets have their limitations, and that's were the C developers step in. Users might get hooked on a particular widget, then a "real developer" steps in and makes an app that does much more. Widgets will attract a larger audience to S60, and a larger audience means more potential customers for professional developers. Also, those "real developers" might want put C on hold and develop some widgets of their own, not all widgets have to be free.

It's just that Widgets sum up so much of what Nokia today is failing to get right. The company is floundering if it thinks Web 2.0 is its salvation.

Well I doubt anyone around here thinks Web 2.0 or widgets are our "salvation", not even close. They're just a few features of many that make up the S60 functionality ecosystem.