Nokia N0

San Francisco 2011 talk

Thoughts on “Elopocalypse”

Fellow Maemo and MeeGo developers. Dear Nokia lovers.

Lot’s of things have already been said around the internet, both apocalyptic and joyful, about this agreement between Microsoft and Nokia. But mostly people somehow felt “betrayed” or something like that.

Let me ask you a question: would you like to see your favourite company dead? I really doubt it. But you still want Nokia to devlop only their own products, without realising actual states of them right now.

1. Symbian. This is a long story, this OS has both pros and contras, but it has one only downside that ruins the whole story – right now Symbian is the syninim to “Old”. You can argue with that as much as you want, but it’s true. And it’s suicidal for marketing to have “old” OS onboard. You just won’t be able to sell it to ordinary people, who just watch the ads and listen to their quasi-geeky friends.

2. MeeGo. MeeGo is a great and abitious start, but it needs money and work to make it useable for casual user. Meanwhile Nokia needs to sell something, anything. Maybe you’d suggest just not to develop any high end smartphones untill MeeGo is ready, but that not sounds  like a great plan for #1 phone manufacturer, eh.

So, Nokia needs to sell devices and it needs to sell it right now. I don’t know why the developement of symbian is taking so long, but right now it’s clear that Symbian is being developed much slower than competitors. And that will make a gap between them even wider.

Android is really the worst choice possibe and the reason has already been discussed thousand times.So there was pretty much one option – WP7

As for connection between Mr Elop’s past in Microsoft and current actions – I see pretty clear sense in it. He needs to do something right now, today, with no “dating” period for him and his future possible partners. So he started to work with people that he already knows well enough to do business. If I’m starving to death and have nothing to eat at home – I won’t be riding to some unknown grocery across the city.

And right now Nokia has only 3 things to eat at home: haribo bears, very old donut and half baked wedding cake.

So please, don’t feel betrayed when your favourite company is trying to breathe in to continue their marvelous work. Nokia still does the best hardware on the market, it searches for breakthroughs in every direction, it tries to do something with this difficult situation in software. Nokia does, Nokia will do.

Thank you.

2010 UI countdown. #1 – Thank You

Hello and good evening. The year is almost over so is 2010 user Interface countdown here. I was thinking bout that final post for some time. And finally, instead of another Mer improvement or application interface concept I’ve decided to thank all those people that I wanted to thank the whole year. No breaks.First of all Vladimir Vasiliev and Pavel Fialko – great developers and great guys that allowed me to make a user interface for Other Maemo Weather – probably that brought me here where I am now. Also I want to add some kind words about Max Usachev – great passionate young developer that brought you Mnenosyne for Maemo. I want to thank Carsten Munk a.k.a. Stskeeps for his extraordinary administration skills and bright mind. I want to thank Valerio Valerio aka VDVsx for his support and honest will to help.I want to thank Marat Fayzullin that he allowed me to finaly give something in return for stolen long ago VGBA emulator and for just being such a cool guy.I want to thank Ed Bartosh from Nokia – you’re great and you know it. I want to thank Nokia and Forum.Nokia. All that doesn’t kill us – makes us stronger. I’m really sorry if I forgot someone personally. I want to thank all of you for working with me, reading my blog and discussing my ideas – this is the greatest motivation for me to continue. Sometimes life punches me right in the face but you always can keep me on track. See you all.

Rover Rumors

Hey everybody.

Not long ago every maemo-related persom has seen sort of rumors from the mobilecrunch and especially cellpassion. The first one has pretty detailed description of the upcomming Maemo device and the second has “leaked” photo of it. I had some free time to redraw the device from that “leaked” shot and I’d like to say that it looks like fake. See for yourself:

The keyboard lacks of Fn and Char buttons so it’s definitely not the real device on the photo. Looks like Mobilecrunch has more correct details bout keyboard layout, but that’s not the reason to believe all these rumors around :) One thing is pretty clear – future device will rock.

P.S.: And yes, it’s a phone!1

“newstyle.maemo.org” Feedback Post

Hello world.

I’ve read on ITT forums that new style foe maemo.org is ready to be criticised by the community and is looking for feedback. As I’m a web-designer aswell, I thought that my feedback would be good advice for maemo.org guys. But I’d like to mention that I’m not the ultimate truth of any kind so it’s just my humble opinion.

So, here are 8 various mistakes in maemo.org fresh style from my point of view.

Nokia n97 widget contest.

Hello.
Sorry if this post is not 100% maemo related. I want to invite all maemo community to join interesting contest, that’s held within Nokia Innovation Newsdesk. It’s called Nokia n97 Widget Competition. You just have to come up with some fresh idea, some one-touch breakthru, draw it as good as you can and post it! No coding, debugging and so on, just you, your imagination, paint/photoshop/gimp/whatever you like and weird upload system, that actually uploads your creation but waits bout a week to show it.
Here’s mine by the way, I’ve taken my idea of Uni-Search from “New Year Countdown Series” and made it look as n97 widget.

Funny that it was already ripped off three times: by Ilian Tihov with his two widgets: “Apple movie trailers”

and “Digital Retro Clock”

And say hello to Martin Gerla with his “Ovi search” widget.

Also I’ve already found another Maemo Community member’s widget – Famous “Flip Alarm Clock No Party” by Ciro Ippolito!

So jump in and take a chance to win n97!

The Funny Thing

Hello everybody.

Very funny and confusing thing happened yesterday. Thanks to Flatfeet comment in my previous post bout my Mer contribution (which got unprecedented attention from the Community, I really can see that I’ve made right decision to work with Mer guys) it appeared that my wallpaper looks similar to upcoming Windows 7 wallpaper, which I haven’t actually seen until today :) At first I felt very confused and sad cause I’ve started to look like cheap copycat to some Windows stuff. But then I’ve finally googled that wallpaper and the result you can see below:

Somehow it reminds me some ad about modern HD TV, like “before/after”.

And if there are people, I think there aren’t but still, that think that I’m such a dumbass to copycat windows wallpaper and then claim that it was made by myself – I can’t help you :)

P.S.: I’m still contributing to Mer cause it’s awesome to work with such great guys :)

Maemo.org logo contest results.

Hello. First of all I’d like to thank all participants that submitted their logos to the contest. Some of them was really awesome, some of them were not (let’s be honest some of were real crap but who cares :D). But at last we have refreshed logo, made by Glaubert Oliveira

Though there is a rule that “winners are not judged” but I can’t not to say that I’m really surprised with that choice. And I really can explain why.
This logo is really awesome, Glaubert have done great job at visual interpreting of the ideas of the community but I can just describe what I see here. I can see “.org” part written in ordinary font somewhere under huge “maemo”. I guess this is a representation of actual community part in platform developing. I can see slightly modernized but basically same colors, which I guess represents inability to change. Also I don’t got how infinity cycle represents openess, and even meeting of minds. You know, tablets are sometimes falling into such loop if kernel is flashed incorrectly.
As for me, there is the only one winner: it’s Peres with “goggle guy”.
This is so fricking awesome that I just can’t find appropriate words :)

By the way, what was your number one in that contest?

Lets Talk!

Hello everyone.

Today I want to make a very small post. it will not be about UI or design. It will be about community. Maybe you heard about Maemo.org logo contest (it’s coming to the deadline soon so post your submissions!) and i’ve submited some logos too. i’ve put very much sense in each, to make maemo.org community deeper and even more sophisticated. One of the ideas is discussion between community members. This is great process that is very attractive for all developers and users, because together they can acheive great goals and create fabulous products. I’ve made this blog not only for posting interesting UI ideas but generaly for discussion! Your opinion is very important for me and for all of us. Please, feel free to express your thoughts about anything you see here. I’ve disabled “registred only” posting so everyone is extremely welcome to express yourself.

Thanks for reading.