Picture this. You are driving your car and get an alert that a new voicemail
has been received. Your mobile phone, as always, is seated comfortably on the
passenger seat. You lean over, and wave (literally) over your phone. If you wave
upwards, it goes to your next voice message, if you wave downwards, it goes to
the previous one. If you tap on your screen, your mobile device 'reads out' your
voice message.
Headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, EyeSight Tech uses the back and front
cameras of a Nokia handset, and uses complex image algorithms to understand and
decipher the motion of your hands and converts them to sensible actions. This
demo was the biggest talking point of the keynote at the first ever Nokia
Developer Summit, held at the Grimaldi Forum, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
The demo was an illustration of how Nokia collaborates with third-party
developers to create applications that would reside on Nokia phones, using an
open platform as part of the Symbian foundation — an effort to upgrade the
Finnish Handset manufacturer into a solution-focused company.
Bringing together 345 developers from around 40 countries, students from 11
countries and select international media, the summit kicked off with the simple
mantra of 'let's make more money together'. A developer could have expertise in
Carbide, Maemo, Eclipse, Ajax or any popular programming language, and Nokia
provides to him, a cross-platform development environment — rather cutely called
— Qt.
In his kick-off keynote, Rob Taylor, head of Forum Nokia, also emphasized on
the company's continued commitment to Flash and Java applications. As a win-win
formula to developers, he said, "Nokia is looking forward to pre-loading
applications on its mobile devices and this is an excellent opportunity for
developers. Alternately, developers can look to featuring their apps in the Ovi
Store — Nokia's online global marketplace for application downloads. The third
option, of course, is Service Possibilities where developer companies and Nokia
can work together, or with network providers."
Going a step further and helping developers understand the nature of
application that can be built, Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president,
Entertainment and Communities, Nokia said, "Maps, music, messaging, games and
media — these are the focus areas for development for Nokia — all landing into
Ovi. It confederates broadly to people and places — and if you put them under a
common umbrella, it is what Nokia called Social Location. "Users today
need the power to integrate the pictures they shoot, the music they listen to,
the calls they make — to their online social lives. Today, the Nokia platforms
allow widget-integration to the extent that the user does not need to click and
open an application. It is 'live' on his home screen."
The Nokia Developer Summit proclaimed a startling reality that today the
challenge is not to create a killer app. Rob Taylor said, “The killer app is the
mobile phone itself. The challenge is to use the APIs to make the user
experience better and more productive.”
The author was hosted by Nokia at the Nokia Developer Summit 2009, at Monte
Carlo, Monaco