1. I waited eagerly for Symbian Anna. One of it’s promised of many enhancements is the improved Email app. Is it?

2. On all my Symbian^3 smartphones, I did not use the Email app at all. I hate to say that it never worked as good as what Nokia folks believe it is. I use Visiarc’s Mobile Documents. Waaaaaayyyy better than the built-in Nokia Email app.

3. I know. With Symbian Anna, the Email app has been redesigned, restructured, and streamlined. It has slicker interface with excellent inline HTML support and it performs faster than any of it’s previous versions.

4. But in terms of usability, I personally think that it has not been improved at all. Infact, I feel the Email app in Symbian Anna has become worst.

5. For the record, my main email address is using Google Apps. Hence, the configuration is similar to normal Gmail account.

6. The auto-configuration doesn’t work properly with Google Apps. It will set a POP3 email account. This is annoying.

7. Using Mail For Exchange, will set an email account that is very slow in getting emails and I need to pull email manually by using “Send and Receive” command from the menu.

8. Using another method to decline Nokia’s terms and condition, I can get an IMAP account setup inside Email app but similarly like the above, it doesn’t push my emails. I need to get them manually.

9. I have tweaked the settings by going to Advanced settings and change many parameters to my liking but emails are still not pushed.

10. The most annoying and stupid thing about Nokia Email app in my personal opinion is the fact that there is no way to subscribe to email folders (Gmail labels). For example, using Mail for Exchange, if I want to check the contents of the folders, I need to do a lot of clicking.

11. I use some filters in my Google Apps email. When emails arrive, they will be automatically labelled and moved to the defined labels, without going to the Inbox. Hence, I need this to work.

12. But Nokia Email app doesnt allow me to subscribe to any folders under Mail for Exchange. There’s no command to select which folders to be synchronised with my devices.

13. I have used many mobile Email app on many platforms, they allow folder subscription. This is one feature that I think needs to be addressed by Nokia.

14. Another feature that needs to be fixed, in my opinion, is the push function. During my experience with Nokia Email app on Symbian Anna, the push function doesn’t work properly. I always receive my emails on my desktop but they NEVER gets pushed to Email app.

15. Please Nokia, improve the Email app more. It’s 2011 not 1911 you know. An email client that doesnt work properly in your devices doesnt give you a good impression you know…

- For i-Symbian.Com
- September 6th 2011
- Asri al-Baker

2. Option 1 : Using the stock Symbian Web or Opera Mobile, or Opera Mini, you can access your Google Plus account using http://m.google.com/+. BUT, this URL will open the basic version. And sometimes the pages are not displayed very well.

3. True. You can use the basic version of mobile Google Plus but the basic page is too… well… Like the name suggests, basic…

4. Option 2 : is using Opera Mobile or Opera Mini to visit the HTML5 mobile version of Google Plus but the layout is effed up.

5. Option 3 : is to use the latest Opera Mobile 11, change the user agent to Desktop, go to http://plus.google.com. This opens the full desktop website of Google Plus with all bells and whistles. It’s very heavy on RAM and clunky to navigate on mobile.

6. Option 4 : designed for HTML5 enabled advanced mobile web browsers. It offers a better Google Plus mobile experience because it offers more than just basic html.

7. The full URL for this HTML5 version of Google Plus for mobile is https://m.google.com/app/plus/?force=1

8. Try typing that URL on your Symbian touch smartphone on the alphanumeric virtual keypad. Your brain wil pull a stunt and synchronising your thumb is painful.

9. Therefore, for all Symbian touch users all over the world, I developed this Widget launcher. Go download this Zip file, extract the “sweetgplus.wgz” file inside it and install. There will be an icon called sweetGplus in your Application folder.

Here is how it looked like :

10. Do take note that Google Plus is a new service and it requires registration before you can use it.

11. If you like what I do, and want to see more cool WebApps for Symbian, send me some PayPal love will ya!

Download the file HERE!

- Asri al-Baker
- For i-Symbian.Com
- July 21st 2011

Donate to us

If you like what we do, please help us to maintain the Independent Symbian Blog.

1. Nokia Malaysia organised a special preview session for bloggers on Friday May 27th in Kuala Lumpur.

2. This preview session is intended to show the latest Symbian devices which are the E6 and the X7.

3. Also previewed, was the first glimpse of Symbian Anna. The new Symbian revamp that was scheduled to be shipped with the E6 and X7, and also to be made available to all existing Symbian^3 smartphones (N8, E7, C7, C6-01) in the coming weeks.

Some observations

Calendar

1. I only had a brief moment with Anna, particularly with the X7. And I wasted no time, for 25-30 minutes or so, I digged into X7 user interface and found some interesting tidbits.

The calendar view is improved. In here, calendar entries are displayed. Just like on Symbian^1. Interestingly, it applies for month and week views.

For single day view, time-slots are displayed all the time even on empty days.

The toolbar has been removed. Giving more space for contents. However, this means changing views is harder (Options – Change View…).

Full screen view can be activated by pinching the screen.

Editing screen is also improved (no screenshot)

File Manager

1. Finally. Selecting multiple files (Mark) is easier. When activated, checkboxes will appear on the left of the filenames. Very easy to mark any files that we want. The menu also dynamically changes when selection begins.

2. Speed is increased, eg. opening large photo.

Web-browser

1. I was impressed with the rendering speed. Definitely better than the old Symbian Web.

2. But the UI is still not to my liking. e.g. Changing tabs/windows is still needs many clicks.

3. Creating new tab/window is supported. But the UI for it is very slow. The closest comparison I can mention is like creating new tab on Skyfire for iPad. Very sloowwww….

Overall impression

1. To be honest, Symbian Anna is a step in the right direction. The most obvious change is the application icons, where they are now standardised and looks cooler. And that’s about it.
2. There are some core application changes like the Web browser, and Photo viewer. But most apps stays the same like on Symbian^3.

3. For Symbian^3 users, the changes are not that noticeable. Particularly it has the same UI. Not really a refresh.

4. The overall speed is increased. Launching apps is faster.

5. The portrait QWERTY is included, users can choose between the alphanumeric keypad or the new portrait QWERTY. But, in my opinion, the new portrait QWERTY keyboard needs some time to get used to. The individual keys are too small for my thumbs.

6. Anna will be shipped with E6 & X7 first. Then only for existing Symbian^3 smartphones via software update.

7. Nokia E6 will be priced at only RM1155 when it reaches Malaysia market in early June 2011. For the X7, the price will be determined later. It will be made available in early July 2011.

8. All in all… cant wait to test it in real life

*** More coverage from Tallboyz who also attended the preview session.

- For i-Symbian.Com
- Asri al-Baker
- May 30th 2011

1. It’s been a while since Symbian apps looked beautiful and function well, making using them a joyful ride. If I remember correctly, Jan Ole’s Gravity is one of those apps which brings some fresh ideas to the world of Symbian apps. But that was like 2 years ago…

2. With the full release of Nokia Qt SDK 1.1 last week, developers can publish their Qt Symbian apps (developed utilising Qt 4.7) in Ovi Store. This include apps that are developed using latest Qt (including QML). Lets leave the technical jargons and see what Qt and QML can do :

Flowd

In my opinion, flowd is the best-looking Qt app for Symbian at the moment. Developed by a Digia, it is a social networking client of http://www.flowd.com that connects to your Facebook and Twitter accounts to follow favourite artistes and celebrities, as well as to check-ins and create locations.

The UI for Flowd for Symbian, is very iPhone-ish but there’s some twists and enhancements done by the team. Makes you feel very easy using it.

For some people, who couldn’t get what Flowd is, you can use this app to create favourite locations that you can visit, add details, add photos and so on.

Flowd for Symbian requires latest Qt and Qtmobility to work. Get it from Ovi Store : http://store.ovi.com/content/118220

Linkedin

For professionals, business and corporate users, Linkedin is their preferred social networking platform and for years, Symbian users have been left behind.

Finally, us Symbian users can experience Linkedin in our Symbian smartphones using a dedicated Linkedin app. It is available for FREE in Ovi Store : http://store.ovi.com/content/121603.

Although it is not as extensive as the Linkedin Web or the mobile client on other platforms, it performs very well, smooth and connects without problem.

If you are a Linkedin user and carry a Symbian^3 smartphone, this is a must.

TwimGo

A Twitter client, developed by Tommi Laukkanen. It’s not as feature rich as Gravity but for a free client, it does offer some great functions.

You can visit the developer’s website to follow the development, because it is being heavily developed and new versions are released.

Get it for free from Ovi Store : http://store.ovi.com/content/103956

Kasvopus

A Facebook client, also developed by Tommi Laukkanen.

If you hate the built-in Social app inside your Symbian^3 smartphones, you must try Kasvopus.

It is not yet feature complete but the basic Facebook functions are there. Heck, it’s so smooth and a joy to use compared to the crap Social app.

Get it for FREE from Ovi Store : http://store.ovi.com/content/120928 or from it’s official website : http://kasvopus.substanceofcode.com/

- @asrialbaker
- May 8th 2011
- For i-Symbian.Com

1. Viewing office documents, is very important for road-warriors in modern day smartphones. It’s a must have feature which determines buying decision.

2. PDF, DOC, XLS and PPT are the most common file formats that people use. To some extent, there are those who use Open Document format.

3. By default, Symbian smartphones today, shipped with an application called Quickoffice. But it has not been updated for modern day use. The look and feel of Quickoffice feels the same today and five years ago.

3. With Quickoffice, viewing and editing is supported. But you need to be very patient to use it because it suffers when dealing with big files such as 200MB powerpoint.

4. There are also other office app for Symbian called Documents To Go. In my opinion, it is easier to use than Quickoffice and has better round-tripping compatibility but like Quickoffice, the Documents To Go UI is also a pain in to use.

5. Another important requirement for a good office app in my opinion is PDF file support. Both Quickoffice and Documents To Go did not have PDF viewer component.

6. But Quickoffice includes Adobe Viewer LE which is another relic from the S60 3rd Edition days. It is very painful to use and suffers a lot when rendering PDF files.

7. Enter Picsel Smart Office, an office app in steroid. It views common office file formats PDF, DOC, XLS and PPT, as well as JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF and TXT and it throws a beautiful UI.

8. It is also a document editor but I am not very fond of it’s editing feature.

9. For viewing office files, hands down, it is the best for Symbian at the moment. The rendering is fast, it doesnt eat a lot of RAM. Zooming and panning using one finger is also supported.

10. Take a PDF file for example, a 1.5MB file takes 9 seconds to be opened by Adobe Reader LE but Picsel Smart Office only took 3 seconds to open it. And the rendering is better, you can smoothly pan around the document.

11. Picsel Smart Office implemented a very visual UI. When the main interface is loaded, called the Visual Explorer, it allows users to browse the device for documents. It’s some kind of a file-browser actually.

A doc file, without "Reflo" function. Need to scroll left and right

With Reflow on, just scroll up and down

13. There’s another cool feature called Reflow. At the moment, it is only functioning inside DOC files. Would be great if it is also implemented when viewing PDF files. What Reflow does is reflowing the text to fit screen. No need to scroll left and right.

The "cover-flow" page viewer to scroll between pages in a document

14. For viewing Powerpoint file, it is also very fast and smooth. A 25MB 86 pages PPT file can be opened in 5 seconds. While Quickoffice took more than 10 seconds to render the first page…. Oh and Picsel Smart Office has this unique way to scroll between pages. It’s like “cover-flow”. Very nice and smooooootttthhh…..

15. There are many more functions inside Picsel Smart Office which makes it a valuable purchase for those need to view office documents on their Symbian smartphones.

16. More information at : http://www.picsel.com

17. Buy it from Ovi Store : http://store.ovi.com/44983

- Asri al-Baker
- For i-Symbian.Com
- March 23rd 2011

1. In my blogpost dated November 28th 2010, entitled “Funny Things About Qt for Symbian^3″, I mentioned something about Ovi Store 2.0 installation failure :-

“10. But that is not all…

12. Even with the correct Qt 4.6.4 installed, you will never be able to install Ovi Store 2.0 after a factory-reset on Symbian^3 devices. The ONLY way to get Ovi Store 2.0 back is via reflashing from your nearest Nokia Service Center. Or using Navifirm and Phoenix to reflash. How did I know? I HAVE TRIED

2. Ovi Store 2.0 installation failure will happen to you if you do “three-fingers-salute” i.e. the “real” hard reset i.e. the “real” format. Not soft-reset, not user data deletion. Not *#7370#.

3. Three-fingers-salute is by pressing the following combination on your Symbian^3 smartphones :
- Menu button
- Camera button
- Volume down
- All of the above must be pressed together, and then, press the Power button.

4. But. Today, February 26th 2011. I felt I need some adventure. And I decided to give my N8 a treatment it deserves and went to apply this procedure. I know, I wont be able to use Ovi Store on it. But that is not a big deal to me because I kept a number of SIS/SISX files inside the microSD card, which I can use to install all my favourite apps later.

5. And the journey begins! 1, 2,… 3,… Boom!

6. Wiped out all data inside my N8. Phew….

7. After the process, I switched on the N8, blablabla… and the first thing I did was to check SW Update. Lo and Behold!!! Ovi Store is there to be downloaded. The size of the file is 15 MB but hey! I’m on unlimited data plan so it’s nothing!

8. Downloaded it, took a couple of minutes. After installing Ovi Store downloaded from SW Update, it prompts me that there is an update, and asked me whether I want to install it or not. Yes please…

9. So, another few minutes and the latest Ovi Store is now installed. I wont use it that much but for completeness sake and also once in a while, I just want to know what’s new, I use it.

10. Thank you Nokia for finally making it possible to install Ovi Store 2.0 on Nokia N8 after hard-reset, WITHOUT the need to use Phoenix, or bringing it to the nearest Nokia Service Centre. \

Cheers!

*** Some weird thing happen to my WordPress. I cant upload files to my server. Can someone assist?…

Asri al-Baker, February 27th 2011

Dear Readers,

1. I am writing this as a plea to all of you who are interested in assisting and helping me out with my projects, financially.

2. In the last couple of months, I’ve spent some considerable amount of time learning Qt development and I have prepared some applications to be made available. I cant spill the beans yet at the moment The time will come…

3. However, at the moment, my work machine is an underpowered Lenovo S10-2 netbook which becomes slower and as about to die in the coming months. It crashes around ten times, EVERYDAY!

4. I have some fund to buy a new workhorse but it’s insufficient at the moment.

5. You can assist me with the following method :

- Buy my Symbian stuff from Ovi Store
- Donate to my PayPal (click the PayPal banner below or the “Donate to us” button on the sidebar)

6. I am targetting one thousand dollars (USD1000) to get a proper workmachine and also some devices to do real world tests. In my hand, I have now around six hundred dollars (USD600). It took me eight months to save that six hundred bucks and to reach one thousand, another six months maybe…

7. I will be eternally grateful to those who are willing to help me. And for others, your support to i-symbian.com over these years (almost ten years!) is also important.

8. Please spread the words.

Yours sincerely,

Asri al-Baker
Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia

1. Mobile Documents, the alternative Email client for Symbian, which, in my opinion, is not just another regular email client, it’s a WORK OF ART.

2. A few days ago, Visiarc announced it’s cooperation with Nokia Betalabs to host Mobile Documents in Betalabs’ website, to access more potential users and to collect more feedbacks.

3. At the same time, Visiarc also announced a new version of Mobile Documents, optimised for Symbian^3 devices. You can download the new version (0.9.19) from Nokia Betalabs at the link in the above paragraph.

4. I’ve used Mobile Documents for a couple of months now, and I am a fan! Honestly, it’s not perfect, has some bugs and needs overhaul in the UI department. However, I stand by the concept and I share Visiarc’s vision of a powerful mobile email solution. Mobile Documents cannot be taken lightly, it’s the signs of more beautiful and powerful things in the future.

5. To understand and dig deep into the vision, I interviewed Peter Lindgren, CEO of Visiarc, via email somewhere in November 2010. And I am honoured for his answers. Text interview is a traditional i-Symbian.Com feature which we love to do since aeons ago. Among others, we have interviewed Steve Litchfield, Sander Van Der Wal, and aso Malcolm Lithgow (to name a few) over the years.

6. Text interview is easier to digest, you can re-read many times, you can stop reading anytime you want and you can skip to any particular topic in the interview if you want.

7. I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I wrote it It’s a looong interview, so take a cup of coffee and enjoy!

8. Oh! And there’s a nice little surprise at the end of this interview

Introduction
———-

1. Hi Peter. How is it over there?

Hi Asri. Winter is approaching and we already have had our fair share of snow storms. Being this far north, close to the polar circle, days are short and nights are long and black. It’s nice but very different from what you have. I actually visited Malaysia a month ago, very nice, but thirty hot and humid degrees is perhaps a bit too far at the other end.

2. Can you introduce yourself? The longer the better?

I’m Peter Lindgren, the CEO and Co-founder of VISIARC. We’ve set out to mobilize email and are actively developing Mobile Documents, a cloud-boosted push mail service. For a bit more than a decade I’ve been pushing the envelope as an entrepreneur in Internet software development, marketing and sales in different companies. By training I have my Master of Science degree and Post-Graduate studies in Marketing and Management. But my greatest interest has always been art and design, graphical design especially. Luckily, I still can be hands-on engaged in the user interaction and interface design process, to make sure we don’t compromise the user experience. A profound interest in usability is something that we all share. When not on the job, I try to live an active life and depending on the season I enjoy different winter or water sports. Especially I love traveling in and near tropical waters. I’m also fortunate that in the sense that doing what we do on a global scale brings travel opportunities all over the world.

3. What does your schedule look like today? Business travels? Meetings?

Today is Sunday and my day off. Obviously my professional and personal life is a blur. I don’t mind. If you mostly do things that you are passionate about, then what does an unbalanced life look like?

4. Anything interesting coming from Visiarc in the very near future?

Yes there is. Expect interesting stuff around the shift between November and December (2010).

5. Lets start the interview shall we?

Of course.

Visiarc
—–

1. You (Visiarc) have won various awards throughout the years. How do you feel about being at the forefront of innovation?

Receiving recognitions for your innovations is very rewarding. Only user feedback means more. We are where we like to be right now. From experience, we know that being too far ahead is painful – likely just as painful or even worse than being left behind. In my world, there’s no shortage of innovative ideas and disruptive concepts.

2. How long have you established Visiarc? Have you achieved your targets that you envisioned for Visiarc since the beginning? Can you tell us a bit about it’s history?

We started out building and launching our first mobile cloud back in fall 2002. That was early, early as in a time when a brick (Nokia 9210 Communicator) was a leading and really the first smartphone. Cloud wasn’t even coined. From that perspective we’re kind of pioneers in the mobility space. That was way too early, but now I think time is catching up. Just two years ago, what we’re trying to do was too radical. In three years time, what we do will be a totally “given”. What I refer to is of course mobile apps that reach out into the cloud to add most of its value. Nokia started talking about it three years ago, powerful servers in the cloud, fast networks and smart phones. A couple of years ago Microsoft adopted this strategy, Software + Service. This year Google says mobile first. Of course, I say…

3. How many people in your team? Do you have offices outside Sweden?

We’re just eight people today, a really small but tight team. VISIARC is a private company and just as you say, we’re based in Sweden. But today, in the networked Internet era, you don’t necessarily need more to start a global mobile cloud business, any online business for that matter. Yet, we do. But that’s just more a consequence of the scope and reach of our business concept and vision.

4. What does Visiarc mean? Is it a Viking word?

VISIARC is a totally man-made word that means nothing anywhere, but has the one increasingly important characteristic – being globally unique – so that any search hit leads to you, and only you. Just try google, we’re alone and on the top of the world at zero cost.

Actually it has a meaning too. The first part “visi” refers to visualization, a key concept, viewing of emails, attachments and documents. “Arc” is a common feature but also refers to a bridge. Bridges bring people closer together, just as messaging and email. If you take a look at the logo the “A” and “V” are the same, two stylized eyes looking in each respective opposite direction. That provides a 360 degree view, representing both our focus on viewing as well as our global scope. Sorry, no heritage to the vikings to be found.

5. What is the mission and vision of Visiarc?

Mission, well I’m not sure we’ve headed out on any holy mission, but we want to make things more convenient and not necessarily just a little at a time. I like our vision – to spread the rich messaging tool we’re building to every person on this earth for free – to give everyone a first-class Internet voice. Our Freemium subscription based model will make that possible. Free email will be free with us – any document, any email, any attachment, on any device, from any source, on any network, anywhere, anytime – instantly & securely – to and from anyone. I guess if we succeed, Mobile Documents will soon become a household name in the global village.

Mobile Documents
—————

1. Can you share with us the background for Mobile Documents? How did the idea come into the picture and why?

Email as we know it is older than the web and is basically still the same as back in the 70s and 80s. Yet we’ve seen no innovation in email since push mail, and that’s ten years ago. Take anything else mobile that is ten years old and compare to today (phones, laptops, navigators, web browsers etc) and you will conclude they are as different as day and night. Email though remains the same. Traditional email is not only dated, it’s outdated.

Everyone uses email and everyone is taking it so much for granted. Revolutionary thoughts and changes are and has simply been overlooked, since “we all know what email is”. Who asks what could email be?. We did and we also asked ourselves how can we create something that is radically different? And even if the answer means a disruptive solution, can we make it a plug-and-play technology to fit the present, the legacy? Simply, to really mobilize email, a drastically different approach is what is required, a cloud-boosted approach.

Then why email? Well, email is dominant. For a fact, it’s the most popular and fastest growing mobile Internet activity. It’s not mobile first, it’s mobile mail first. Mobile mail is 4x larger than #2 and #3. A whopping 42% of the time spent on mobile Internet in the US is email, up from 36% last year according to Nielsen . #3 is social media (Twitter/Facebook) and it grew only from 8% to 10% last year, 3x slower than email! Email usage is increasing every year, and we are the sole company to address the root cause of the #1 problem with mobile mail.

This is today. We identified this development to come several years ago, and solving this problem is what drives us.

2. Mobile Documents, in a way, is competing against Nokia’s own solution called Nokia Messaging Email which also does push email. What is the most important feature of Mobile Documents that distingush it from other competing products out there?

That’s easy. Mobile Documents offers mobile documents. Nokia Messaging doesn’t. There are other differences as well. Nokia is taking its messaging closer to the social networking space while were concentrating on the last mobile frontier in email, managing the steady stream of ever-increasingly larger attachments and documents ending up in mailboxes. In a way this also makes Mobile Documents more professionally and business oriented than the more personal and social path Nokia Messaging is following. Last but not least, Mobile Documents will not be free, it’ll be freemium.

3. Email 2.0 can be seen a lot in Mobile Documents’ product sheets and marketing materials, can you share with us what is Email 2.0? Are we still in Email 1.0 now?

Mobile Documents represents a paradigm shift in email, that is also why we talk about Email 2.0. Ask yourself, ask your peers or ask any mobile email user what the major problem with mobile mail is. The answer is heavy attachments. When asking users how they deal with such heavy attachments they will tell you they don’t. They don’t deal with them at all on the phone, but they do that back in front of the computer, at home or in the office. Not very mobile, right?

Simply Email 1.0, it can’t do mobile documents, it can download only. Email 2.0 offers an entire toolbox to manage emails, attachments and documents – and we’re the only company to address this the #1 problem associated with the most popular mobile Internet activity. There are two key mobile concepts that Email 2.0 address; (1) remote viewing/reading and (2) remote handling/sending/managing emails, attachments and documents – instantly and without the need to download first.

Mobile Documents offers value to everyone in the mobile ecosystem. The user gets a better user experience and can do things easily that is basically not possible to do with traditional email – saving time and bandwidth. Companies can save 60-80% on roaming charges and receive a higher productivity and increased level of security with no documents in the field. Carriers/MNOs are offered multiple advantages. A fact is that one single optical fiber is about 250,000 time more capable than an entire 4G LTE phone cell, to be shared among all users. That means the air will always be crowded. With Email 2.0 (attachments today clog up networks across the globe, just ask) operators can deliver a better Quality of Service. Collaborating with VISIARC there are even more benefits to be reaped for an operator.

We’re used to do email on our computers. But the world is changing. There are today a little more than 1 billion PCs. Already there are more people with a smartphone. We’re entering a mobile age. Soon the majority of the global population and in particular the young will have a smartphone, but far from all a PC. And soon every single one will have Internet and email. In spring 2009, Nokia asked people with web mail if they wanted to mobilize their email. 78% said yes, but 10% had mobilized their email. Over the next couple of years we’ll go from a low penetration with a very few to a high penetration with a majority of the world population to have mobile mail. What will they opt for, probably email that is designed with mobility in mind, Mail 2.0.

4. Designwise, currently, Mobile Documents on Symbian does not look very attractive compared to the Android version. What enhancements can we expect to be implemented to the Symbian version in the near future? Will we see a more unified & professional user experience in Mobile Documents across all platforms?

I wouldn’t go so far as calling it unattractive. We’ve adopted a clean uncluttered minimalistic approach in line with the general look-and-feel and behavior that is standard on Symbian. We want our app to look and behave like everything else because that benefits our users.

Thank you, pleased to hear that you like the Android look. On Symbian you should expect enhancements in the unique key aspects of Mobile Documents, and quite soon. Soon after, you can also expect general enhancements based on user feedback. Correct, we’re also in the process of unifying and harmonizing the various platforms feature-wise. Yet, interaction-wise each app will stay true to respective platform behaviors.

5. How long did it take for Visiarc to develop Mobile Documents? From idea & concept to actual software running on real devices. How’s the
response from Symbian users?

We’ve been working pretty much full-time for three years now, from prototype to where we are today.

The response has been overwhelming. At first we asked ourselves, will anyone download? will they like it? Yes, they did! And yes, they do. We’re still in beta and there are a few fundamental features we don’t yet have that’ll be released shortly, still we receive mostly very positive reviews. I’m quite excited about that considering the relatively early stage we’re at yet.

6. Empowering users to do more with their email attachments seems to be the philosophy behind Mobile Documents. In your opinion, how connected devices (e.g. smartphones) can be fully utilised? For work and personal?

In the smartphone era of today, users expect nothing less than the same user experience they get from an app downloaded for personal use from an app store as they demand for an enterprise app. The software companies that don’t recognize that will meet the same destiny as the dinosaurs. And I agree, you’re absolutely right. We want people too, from one intuitive place, be able to manage their personal and professional life. That’s one reason why we’ll offer personal free email for free so that it can sit next to your work email. Because that’s how people live their lives, they need to manage both their personal and professional lives at the same time.

Yes, Mobile Documents is about empowering people, get more done on the go, instantly. Conceptually I don’t believe that we will or want to be carrying every single data file with us. Instead what we want is ways to gain mobile access to any of our files, regardless if it sits in my Google Docs or corporate mailbox. And that’s what we’re doing, starting to mobilize email, attachments and documents. Unless data files die, there is unlimited value that we can bring about, philosophically talking.

7. Other than the regular office files (doc, ppt, pdf etc), do you have future plan to support more file formats? Multimedia files maybe? Or how about ZIP/RAR file support where users can click on a ZIP attachment and Mobile Documents will extract the contents serverside allowing the contents to be viewed?

Indeed, very good suggestions. Let me put it this way. Doing most stuff in the cloud, neither is there any limit in what kind of operations, functions or manipulations we can do, nor is there any limit on the number of file types and formats we can support.

8. In Mobile Documents, viewing files are done by rendering them serverside, nothing is downloaded locally. How this is achieved? Do you develop the technology yourself? What is it called? You patent it? What is Cherrypicking?

First, we leave all the heavy stuff in the cloud server-side where we do all heavy-lifting. We open up attachments and documents there, render and on demand stream the bits and pieces that the users wants. We use the mobile network. This makes everything instant and it saves time and bandwidth. It requires minimal effort of the mobile phone since the smaller the screen the less information needs to be sent. This also means that all limited resources on the phone (CPU and storage) can be dedicated to maximize user experience (unlike opening, parsing, drawing etc). Plus, no downloaded documents means no documents that can be lost or stolen.

Second, traditional email requires users to download the entire email and attachments. Mobile Documents allows the user to manage the email and attachments without a download. Simply, like a shopping cart a user can collect and add attachments to new email without downloading, from any email sent or received in any account or even from other remote document sources in the cloud. Press send and it’s sent. Instantly. Since nothing resides on the local phone but are visual representations, everything regardless of actual size becomes light as a feather and instant. This we label Remote Attachment Management and Cherry Picking technologies – the core of Email 2.0. Basically we shortcut the unnecessary – download, find, add and send – loop that cost nothing but time and a lot of money if you’re roaming.

Yes, the underpinning key technologies of Mobile Documents are patent pending.

9. You also provide a web interface for users to manage their Mobile Documents’ accounts and their documents. What is your highest priority in ensuring users confidentiality and documents’ security? Are they encrypted?

Nothing is more important than to preserve our users security and privacy. Mobile Documents is secure. All connections between the mobile app and our cloud is secure. Even when users set up new email accounts, we always try to help finding the encrypted settings as long as the primary email provider allows secure connections, but not all do. We use strong 128-bit bank-level encryption over SSL.

Like most Internet services, we use a password based security model (no hardware crypto device). The length of the password then becomes critical. From this perspective Mobile Documents offers a nice security aspect. We offer the PIN. For example, a long twelve character password with a mix of numbers, small and large cap letters and alphanumeric characters on a mobile is just plain awkward. Such attempts are futile. Either users will disable password protection or change the password to a short easy insecure one, or simply stop using the app. With Mobile Documents you only input the long awkward password once. Then you create a PIN. The long password is not stored on the smartphone but a secure cookie that allows the user to login with the short convenient PIN code. Should the phone get lost or stolen the user simply logs in on the web interface and change password. The cookie then becomes invalid instantly. So even if the thief would know the PIN, it doesn’t allow access to Mobile Documents any longer. And with no emails or documents on the device there’s little to be lost, more than the actual device of course. To reset a password is also the main function of the web interface.

10. Can you share your future plans for Mobile Documents? Will you add features such as adding attachments to outgoing email from device, or adding eye-candy such as transition effects and cute icons? Will it be free forever? Ever?

Right away I can tell you that adding attachments from the local device is the single most asked for feature. It’ll be released soon too. There are a few new icons in the pipe. If they’re cute or not, I wouldn’t know. We will keep Mobile Documents free as in freemium after the beta period too.

Business Model
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1. You offer Mobile Documents for free? Why?

Our vision is to bring Mobile Documents to every relevant mobile phone and we don’t want to discriminate any platform, device or network. We believe the next generation email should be free. If everyone can use Mobile Documents that benefits us in many ways as well. I simply see no reason to not let it be free.

2. Where does the money come from? As a business entity, how do you leverage your offerings?

We’ve financed it out of our own pockets and we still do. We have received some seed funding and loans though.

As soon as Mobile Documents becomes the best mobile mail, a premium version will be offered for advanced users on a subscription basis. These advanced users will leverage and pay for the free usage. People that don’t use email much will receive the Mobile Documents benefits for free.

One cool thing is that since we’re not a software company per se but rather subscription based, one user can have one or ten smartphones with Mobile documents all in sync at no extra cost.

3. Is Visiarc also involved in other businesses? Such as?

We’ve done a fair share of mobile development for other mobile companies over the years. Being on the cutting edge and working with R&D pre-release software, I can just say that I respect the signed NDAs.

4. Other than Mobile Documents, do you develop any other products or solutions?

No we don’t.

5. If it’s possible, can you share your plan for the near future? To ensure user’s confidence in your business?

We’ve been around since the dawn of the first smartphone and we’re still today more alive and kicking than ever. If you like what we do, support us.

As I always say, if there are things you don’t like, let us know so that we can fix them. If you like what we do, please let us know too, because that’s what motivates us.

Want to reach the entire team? Email us at support@mobiledocuments.com, or email me at peter.lindgren@visiarc.com.

Multi-platforms approach
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1. Most of your products are available only for Symbian, why?

Symbian offers the single largest user base and we have always been doing hardcore Symbian development. It was just a natural starting point for us. But we’re platform agnostic. We have a first early beta out on Android market and the next platform is iPhone.

2. What is your opinion on the announcement by Nokia to develop Symbian on it’s own? What will be the impact to software developers and those who build software and services around the Symbian ecosystem?

From a Nokia perspective I just understand. It makes a lot of sense. For Symbian as a platform Nokia was in the driver’s seat of its development already. I don’t really have an opinion.

3. How many Symbian smartphones do you own personally at the moment? Which one is your top favourite Symbian smartphone of all time?

Actually, I don’t know. They’re all in the office. I know that we have Nokia 9210, 7650, 3650, Sony Ericsson P800/P910, Motorola A1000 and many more to the more present E71, N97/mini, N8 and other. I’ve used all these and many more, except the Symbian based Motorolas for obvious reasons if you ever had one.

4. With Nokia’s commitment to Qt for it’s future Symbian smartphone and MeeGo mobile computers, will Mobile Documents also be ported to Qt? By the way, will you make Mobile Documents available for future MeeGo products? Your opinion on Qt?

I like Qt. I look forward to familiarize myself with Qt Quick. Probably, Qt is very underestimated. We’re a small company, but of course, how could Qt not be part of our road map?

5. Recently, you also released Mobile Documents for Android. How’s the response? What’s the difference developing it for Symbian and Android?

6. What’s the most challenging aspect in developing Mobile Documents? Is it the mobile client, or the web interface, or the technology? How do you put everything together?

All! But I must say that without the help of all our beta users we would not have been where we are today. They’ve helped us identifying all the peculiarities and imperfections in the real-world.

A long detour, if you’re not interested in our challenges just move on to the next questions. Mobile Documents today interfaces with almost any type of mail server out there (note. IMAP and Exchange) including all their imperfections, implementations of protocols and configurations. That’s a challenge to connect and stay in sync to push any email as soon as it arrives. Then, these emails are sent by various other servers (SMTP) created by a plethora of different mail clients or scripts – emails that are standards compliant but in reality more or less broken. That’s another challenge. Then add a steady stream of attachments generated by various kinds of native and not so native software saving files in various formats. Some are fine but many are imperfect and other are infected with different viruses that need to be quarantined. That’s yet another challenge. Take all that machinery to push every new email to every single user to allow instant reading, viewing, streaming, cherry picking and other you stat to understand the scope. Then add a rapidly growing number of new users atop of this. That is a massive hurdle that we’ve soon overcome.

In relation, dealing with internal things such as innovative interface design, internal protocol implementations etc becomes less challenging, even though it may take time to perfect.

7. Will you also port Mobile Documents to other mobile platforms? Windows Phone 7? Bada? Blackberry? iOS?

We’re platform agnostic. The mobile mail experience is quite different across all platforms that you mention. The most important aspect to decide if to support a platform or not is if we can add great value to the platform or not, more than just mobilizing attachments and documents. But ultimately, we’ll support every relevant platform including all you mentioned.

8. In the future, these platforms will be more advanced than what they are today. And their built-in email clients will also improve. Where do you position Mobile Documents to stay relevant?

The built-in clients are of course fundamentally our closest competitor. But they can never be what we are, per definition. Unless the built-in client is not only a client but a cloud-boosted push mail service with built-in mobile document capabilities, of course. But then, we’re not standing still and I have both one or two ideas where to take Mobile Documents. Believe me.

9. Of all these mobile platforms, which one, in your opinion, has the potential to be leveraged, and will benefit your company, strategically and financially?

If I just knew…

10. Are you going to license your solutions to other interested parties? OEM manufacturers for example?

We are the sole proprietary owner of all material rights to everything that constitutes Mobile Documents™. The most important aspect is to make our innovations benefit the users. There are many things that can be improved beyond what we can achieve as a third-party developer through working with mobile network operators, hardware manufacturers and others.

Conclusion
———

Please say something to our readers.

Mobile Documents offers cloud-boosted push mail – we’re in beta still – and what we want is your feedback and support. We can’t always deliver everything tomorrow even if we want, being a small company, but we try hard to. Please help us make Mobile Documents the best mobile mail and document sharing experience.

———

There you go… I also asked Peter about giving you, our readers some little present and here it is. The same elegant wallpaper used by Peter to decorate his Nokia N8 in the video above (Betalabs – first video in this interview). Get it here (right-click – download) :

1. Qt (pronounced “cute”) will be the sticking glue to the future of Nokia’s advanced device offerings. It will be the application layer for both the New Symbian and MeeGo in the future.

2. The work has begun and Nokia invested A LOT to ensure Qt will be the preferred method for developers in developing apps for Symbian platform and MeeGo. From the SDK to APIs to app store to training… you name it. Nokia is all out for Qt.

3. This is not an easy job and it will take a lot of money, time, sweat, blood and tears to accomplish.

4. Currently (December 2010), there are not many Symbian Qt apps available yet but they start to appear for users to downlod and install. These apps can be downloaded from the developers’ websites or from Nokia’s Ovi Store.

5. Here are 3 Symbian Qt apps that I use. And I like them a lot because the developers took the time to bring new and fresh user experience and functions in these apps. Away from the traditional Symbian/S60/AVKON UI layer.

6. This is not a definitive list and I may post something else in the future when more Symbian Qt apps are available.

Toshl by ThirdFrameStudios

1. In my opinion, today (Dec 19th 2010), this is the most beautiful Symbian Qt app on the planet anno 2010. PERIOD!

2. Toshl is an expense tracking app, on steroid! It’s strength lies in the ability to sync with Toshl online account where users can see more details and reports of their expenses, and many other functions.

3. The application is free (forever! – yeah!) together with the basic online account. But for those who are serious in tracking their spending, a subscription based Pro account is available for $USD19.95 annually.

4. More information about Toshl at http://toshl.com/

5. Get it from Ovi Store. Highly RECOMMENDED!

Moodagent Playlist DJ by Syntonetic

1. Moodagent is a music player with a twist. It’s main feature is playing music according to user’s mood. The UI is unique and very easy to use. Changing mood can never be easier. You just need to slide the colour bars up or down. Words cant describe how easy this is actually!

2. You can also create playlist directly inside Moodagent following to the mood (Sensual, Tender, Happy, Angry, Tempo) that you just selected.

3. It is free. You can download it from Ovi Store.

4. The official website is at http://www.moodagent.com/

WordPress for Nokia

1. If you are using a Symbian smartphone, writes a blog, and you use WordPress engine for your blog, this is the best app for you at the moment.

2. This app was ported from other platforms to Symbian and the develoers decided to use Qt.

3. Current stable version is 0.86, available from the developer’s website at http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org/. To differentiate the app that’s being heavily developed than the one available from Ovi Store, the developers added the word “Beta”. So if you download and install from here, it will appear as WordPress Beta on your Symbian smartphones.

4. If you download from Ovi Store, it will appear as WordPress only (without Beta) on your Symbian smartphones.

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If you find other Symbian Qt apps that you like, why not write about them in the comments below.

* Tip 1 : If you want to know which app is using Qt in Ovi Store, search for “13 MB”. This is because for Symbian devices prior to Symbian^3, they need to download and install 13 MB Qt components. (thanks @_brendand_ )

** Tip 2 : Try this search on Ovi Store web.

- Asri al-Baker

2. There’s nothing wrong about it. Except that it is not touch friendly, it was designed for devices without touchscreen.

3. If you use a touch optimised link to experience Facebook, the interface is different.

4. With this launcher, you’ll have a touch optimised experience on Symbian smartphone when you click on it.

5. Here are some screenshots to give you a better picture

6. I am giving this shortcut for free. As usual. It’s a Widget WGZ file and you have to install it in your Symbian touch smartphones where it works best.

7. I havent test it on non-touch Symbian smartphones. If you do, let me know!

8. Get it for FREE from our download section

Cheers!!!

Asri al-Baker