Nokia Open C Challenge Opens Opportunities For Mobile Developers - A Nokia World Feature
Written by Glenn Letham
Thursday, 13 December 2007
At this year's Nokia World event in Amsterdam, Nokia and partners announced the winners of this year's Open C Challenge - the contest invited developers to create and port their applications to S60 or create and develop a native application using S60 and Open C. The developers ported thousands of lines of code in a relatively short time to create some amazing applications. See the apps, hear their story and get more info on Open C... (One winner noted he got turned onto the contest by reading about it on SymbianOne!)
Recall, Open C is a set of industry-standard POSIX and middleware C libraries for S60 on Symbian OS. Open C increases the speed of application development by enabling the reuse of existing software assets. Because it is based on popular open-source projects, it offers a fast, flexible, and familiar development environment that is easier to learn than native Symbian C++. Open C speeds projects in three ways: bring existing Linux and other solutions to S60, take advantage of a larger pool of competent developers, Open C speeds maintenance and quality assurance... bring existing Linux and other solutions to S60 with minimal effort!
Back To The Challenge
Going back, recall the challenge to developers. Several months ago Nokia invited developers to participate in the Open C Challenge for a chance to win over $20,000 in prizes and an opportunity to showcase their applications to the World
Prizes for the winners of the challenge were:
- $10,000 for the grand prize
- $5,000 for the 1st runner-up
- $3,000 for the 2nd runner-up
- $2000 for the 3rd runner-up
There were 2 options for the developer: - Port an existing application to S60 - including 3rd Edition applications ported from already existing open source projects or from other mobile platforms. - Native development of an application using S60 and Open C. Entries to this category will consist of brand new applications created using Open C.
Submissions were judged on the quality, usability, creativity, innovation and porting difficulty of the application.
Sponsored by Nokia's global developer support program, Forum Nokia, in conjunction with Orange and the Symbian Developer Network, the Open C Challenge responded big time and rewarded the development and porting of mobile applications for S60. Responding to the challenge, developers had a chance to apply their desktop and open-source development skills using Nokia's fully supported Open C POSIX environment, which is built on Symbian's P.I.P.S. This enabled developers to quickly create and port their mobile apps for the latest lineup of next-generation devices based on the S60 platform.
The Winning Apps
Winners of the Open C Challenge were introduced during a special Dec. 3 Forum Nokia reception and presented during a Dec. 4 Nokia World session titled “Driving Innovation with Open Platforms,” part of the “More Innovation” stream at Nokia World 2007 chaired by Lee Epting, Vice-President, Forum Nokia.
The Open C Challenge Grand Prize Winner presented today is Sittiphol Phanvilai (Bangkok, Thailand) for his MobiTubia application - MobiTubia is a Flash Lite video player and YouTube portal application with real-time decoding for the S60 platform, developed by Sittiphol Phanvilai of Bangkog, Thailand, a graduate student in the Master of Engineering program in Computers at Chulalongkorn University. MobiTubia enables mobile users to access flv clips using several different methods. Additionally, the application allows users to browse and search for specific content on YouTube. Sittiphol ported some 25,000 lines of code to the Open C environment which included porting the FMPEG format from Linux in oreder to make the application compatible with S60 on Symbian OS. Nice to know, the developer has already been approached by several carriers!
MobiTubia has the following characteristics:
- a 3D UI
- 5 active folders
- enables access to YouTube on the fly and playback on mobile devices
- go directly to YouTube and view featured videos
- view popular clips by day, week, month
- search clips by ID or keyword
From Nokia World, Lee Epting, Forum.Nokia shows the winning app (MobiTubia) and describes the benefits of Open C
First Runner-Up Winner Pu Zhihua (Shanghai, China) received a cash prize of $5,000 for his LiveTraffic application. Live Traffic is a traffic assistance software that provides real-time traffic volumes, developed by a project team of four developers, led by by Pu Zhihua of Shanghai, China. Live Traffic adopts FCD (Floating Car Data) technology to acquire road traffic information anywhere anytime, and publish mapped traffic information to Nokia phone users via GPRS or EDGE connections. The developers ported 2,500 lines of code via Open C. We're told by the developer that development of this app took roughly 1/3 of the development time to market than what would have typically been required. LiveTraffic has already signed a number of contracts for deployment!
LiveTraffic features:
- provides major routes and traffic updates
- show traffic patterns by color code (think Google traffic)
- zoom in/out/ pan and other controls via key entry
- toggle to view multiple cities
See LiveTraffic on Forum.Nokia
Second Runner-Up TongRen (Shanghai, China) received a cash prize of $3,000 for the MobiClass application. MobiClass is a virtual multi-media courseware application, developed by a team led by TongRen of Shanghai, China, a researcher in the E-Learning Lab at Shanghai Jiaotong University, porting 16,000 lines of code using Nokia’s Open C Plug-In. MobiClass is designed to deliver an integrated learning experience with active notes and video playback. Courseware is downloaded to the device memory card for playback. A plug for SymbianOne, TongRen informed us that it was through SymbianOne.com that he learned about the Open C challenge... glad to know that we helped out! TongRen has already had some interest, including contact from a UK doctor who has an idea for some interesting opportunities for implementing the application! Not to be showing favorites but this application pretty much blew me away... indeed this is a useful application and will no doubt see much success... mobile learning could be a HUGE market.. kudos!
MobiClass Features:
- opens a PowerPoint presentation
- active video displayed in lower corner
- teacher notes and highlights as described in video or highlighted on the power point
- key control for functionality like play, pause, etc...
Third Runner-Up Steve DeLaney (Carlsbad, CA, USA) received a cash prize of $2,000 for ViewRight. ViewRight is a streaming mobile video application developed by Steve DeLaney, CEO of SDC Labs in Carlsbad California, with more than 20 years of application development experience. Verimatrix, a market leading CA/DRM supplier, contracted with SDC Labs to develop the ViewRight application, which enables users to watch television from their mobile devices. The application includes mobile video wireless download UI, proxy streaming, client and crypto middleware for Symbian 3G DVB-H H.264 platforms. The developer ported some 5,000 lines of existing Posix code and implemented new Posix for integrating mobile platform streaming support.
ViewRight Features:
- view encrypted videos on mobile device
- use a decryption code to view the video clip
Nokia's recently announced Open C Plug-In for the S60 3rd Edition Software Development Kit (SDK) is built on Symbian's P.I.P.S. and reducing the learning curve for desktop developers to implement business logic and other core components of an application.
Enabling deployment of Open C projects on existing S60 3rd Edition devices, millions of which have already been shipped into the global marketplace, the Open C Plug-In utilizes eight standard C function libraries for easy migration of open source and desktop applications to Symbian OS, lowering the barriers to entry and shortening the learning curve for mobile application development.
In addition, Open C delivers to developers significant portions of three open source projects - OpenSSL, GNOME, and LIBZ - providing the S60 and Symbian developer communities access to middleware functionality that is shared by many important open source projects, including Apache and Firefox.
The Open C SDK plug-in for S60 3rd Edition SDKs provides developers with access to a comprehensive range of functions from nine well-known standard POSIX and middleware C libraries — libc, libdl, libpthread, libm, libz, libcrypt, libcrypto, libglib, and libssl. These Open C libraries provide a Linux-like, vendor-neutral C-programming interface to core functions on S60 devices. Open C makes it easier for developers to port a range of existing standard C applications to S60 3rd Edition.
Open C was jointly developed with Symbian Limited; as a result, code written on top of Open C delivers performance comparable to that of native Symbian C++ applications.
Lee Epting, Forum Nokia, onstage at Nokia World describing some of the Open Source S60 apps like the web server, Internet Radio, and the very cool Internet Radio
The Open C SDK plug-in enables applications and application components to be developed using the developer’s chosen integrated development environment (IDE) for S60 development, although Carbide.c++ is recommended. Once an application has been built, the plug-in allows it to be tested on the S60 emulator.
Support for Open C will be integrated into devices based on S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2. For devices based on S60 3rd Edition and S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1, the Open C plug-in is delivered as a signed Symbian Installation System (SIS) package. This SIS package can be included in a Symbian Signed SIS file with an application using Open C components, enabling the delivery of a single installation package.
Of note: Symbian recently introduced four of the basic POSIX libraries on Symbian OS™. With Open C, S60 is implementing five additional C libraries built on open source projects including OpenSSL, GNOME, and LIBZ. Open C helps optimize porting of open source and desktop applications to S60 on Symbian OS.
Developers are also invited to accelerate your Open C development with the latest version of Carbide.c++. Carbide.c++ is a powerful family of mobile development tools built on the Eclipse framework. Family members include:
* Carbide.c++ OEM Edition for device creation users
* Carbide.c++ Professional Edition for developers working with pre-production devices
* Carbide.c++ Developer Edition for application development on production phones
* Carbide.c++ Express, available as a no-cost download to introduce developers to mobile experience
See more on Carbide here
See also http://www.forum.nokia.com/carbide_cpp
Summary
After speaking with reps from Forum Nokia, as well as the winning developers, it's now apparent that development of applications and services for the S60 platform will indeed become faster and more cost-efficient than ever before thanks to Open C. According to developers, because Open C technology provides a familiar set of standard C function libraries on the S60 platform, it enhances developer productivity and indeed reduces an application's time to market. A big plus, with Open C, you can reuse existing code and focus on other important aspects of the applications to make them better. Finally, sources at Forum Nokia tell me that developers can look forward to another Open C challenge in 2008. You'll also be glad to know that all of the contest winners have received interest in their applications from third parties!
Other Resources available to developers:
Webinars - via Forum.Nokia, a number of online webinars are available for viewing including... Porting Open Source to Mobile: Easy as 1-2-3 - Interested in developing for mobile? View this webinar, and learn how easy it is to port your existing open source applications to the Nokia S60 smartphone platform, using the Open C SDK. Our speaker will take you through a live demo and complete a porting exercise before the webinar ends.
Getting Started with Open C - This video provides C developers with an introduction to the tools and processes for utilizing Open C. It shows how to download and install the Open C plug-in. Then, utilizing Carbide.c++, the process of importing, building, and running an application that uses Open C is illustrated.
Open C Introduction for Experienced S60 developers - This video introduces Open C for S60, including POSIX libraries. The presentation assumes some prior Symbian OS development experience.
Open C Introduction for new S60 developers This video introduces Open C for S60, including POSIX libraries. The presentation assumes no prior Symbian OS development experience.
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