Adobe Max Milan 2008-Interview with Riku Salminen, Nokia

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere!

Mobile Web is red hot and getting hotter every day. For today’s podcast, I?’m featuring Riku Salminen, Senior Technical Consultant at Nokia. Riku presented last week at Adobe Max 2008 Milan regarding programming with Adobe Flash Lite for the Nokia mobile phone. I sat down with Riku for a summary of his session and the benefits for Web professionals.

Check it out on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by Web Directions North taking place in Denver Colorado February 2-5, 2009 Web Directions North is one of the world’s leading conferences for web professionals, bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain and inspire our attendees.

WOW will be participating in a session entitled Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals For more information about the conference visit the Web Directions North website.

Transcript of Adobe Max Milan 2008-Interview with Riku Salminen, Nokia

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute here at Max Milan at the Web Pro Community Challenge booth, in the community lounge I have the pleasure to be interviewing Riku Salminen with Nokia. He?’s the senior technical consultant from Nokia here presenting on the topic of designing with Flash Lite for Nokia phones?

RIKU SALMINEN: Yeah, actually we call it Flash Lite Programming.

BILL: Programming, OK, excellent. Can you summarize that session for us Riku, and also can you provide me with a better understanding of how web professionals can benefit?

RIKU: Yeah, sure. So, basically the whole session was about how to develop applications for mobile phones, for Nokia devices with web designer skills. So that?’s the message that I?’m kind of giving as an evangelist you would say, on web technologies for Nokia. So what we want to tell people, and especially web designers, is that you don?’t have to know Symbian C++. You don?’t need to be a hard-nosed coder so to speak, but if you know how to create a web page, if you know how to make Flash, you can create real applications for Nokia devices.

So all of the latest S60 and serious [indecipherable] devices for Nokia they support one version of Flash Lite or another, starting from Flash Lite 1.1 going all the way up to the latest releases where we have Flash Lite 3.0. And now that, for the fifth edition which I have the device here it?’s the all new touch screen device, you can also develop, this is actually an application I made with web run-time for my son so that I can go and get him. So with one button it reads the GPS. With another button it sends the GPS as a landmark attached to an MMS message to me so I can go and get my son. So the platform services in the fifth edition of S60 allow the web developers to use…well obviously you don?’t have to be a web developer but you can use those from S60 run time widgets and Flash Lite and services included are sensors, GPS landmarks, VIM which is visual information management, where you have calendar contacts and a media gallery. And there is also an application manager which means that you can launch different applications. And more to come, there is messaging, so you can send and receive text messages, emails and multimedia messages from Flash Lite or web runtime widgets.

Basically web runtime widgets are a HTML, JavaScript, CSS, basic web technologies using AJAX or just basically being a standalone web page without the browser UI. It?’s all packaged in a nice little zipped package and you put an item in there as well and then it installs in your phone just like any application.

BILL: Excellent, and so I’m watching this podcast, I’m a designer and I’m listening, net it out for me. How am I going to benefit? Am I going to improve the functionality of my customers?’ websites through these applications?

RIKU: Well I think the most, the biggest thing is the time to market. So if you develop in Java or Symbian C++ what it means is you need to test, you need to go through different cycles of software development. With Flash Lite and with S60 web runtime your UI is developed right under your eyes with normal IDEs that you have. Flash professional, you can have DreamWeaver, there?’s Aptana studio which is a free version. You don?’t have to have an SDK to build your application and install it somewhere and emulate you can use your web browser to test that the UI is functioning. Instead of developing a software for two months you can launch it in two weeks.

BILL: Excellent, well thank you for your time today Riku. Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Web Directions North. Web Directions North is taking place in Denver, Colorado February 2009 and is one of the world?’s leading conferences for web professionals bringing together the leading experts from around the nation and around the world to educate, entertain, and inspire. WOW will be participating at Web Directions North with a special session entitled “Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals.” Check out all the details and the great links on the WOW technology minute.com website.