The other interesting thing is that the carriers will also have the option of customizing the OS to suit their own requirements. bada will definitely give a tough competition to other Linux based mobile OS’s like Google Android and Nokia Maemo. Samsung is  obviously also planning to launch it’s own App Store.

Some additional UI tools include the ability to embed the Adobe® Flash® Player and the WebKit Internet browser directly into native bada applications, allowing seamless integration of premiere UI technologies. Also, the bada map control is easily embedded in your applications to deliver interactive mapping and routing with POI features for your users.

What does this mean for the other OSs that Samsung use today ? Well the forecast would have Symbian gone entirely by 2011 from Samsung phones and Microsoft’s OS at just 20%by 2012 where it makes up 80% of Samsung phones today. Not sure how this will affect Android but it would seem hard to understand that Samsung continue supporting Android against their own champion. The reach and actual popularity of Samsung phones (around 20% of the global market) means that bada will obviously be a force to reckon with if just by shear numbers!

Samsung has a vision of “Smartphone for everyone”, and by offering cheap Bada handsets as well as expensive ones, combined with a focus on in-app purchasing, Samsung hopes to entice developers with greater profits.

Samsung’s hoping to see an influx of applications thanks to the $2.7 million prize that’s been put up for grabs, and so far, EA and Gameloft have been signed up to develop games for Bada.

Bada will initially run on Samsung’s proprietary SHP (Samsung Handset Platform) paired with Samsung’s upcoming TouchWiz 3.0 user interface. It will be entirely multitouch, supporting both resistive and capacitive touch screens. Hardware-wise, it’s chip-agnostic, and Samsung aims for the cheapest bada handsets to be cheaper than the cheapest Android ones. It won’t run on older phones, however, and the first bada handset will arrive somewhere in the first half of 2010.

Definitely an exciting space to watch and see how well they pull this off.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 with prerelease support for building applications for iPhone is planned for later this year. Sign up to be notified when the beta starts.

Learn more in http://www.adobe.com/iphone/

Courtesy of Brian J. Friedman

Growing pervasiveness of mobile widgets has created every mobile app designers a challenging role to play within a limited space. Only 1 percent of Mobile Widgets are successful.

What makes some widgets thrive and used by millions, and others with equal functionality bite the dust ?

Rajesh demystified the ‘invisible’ layer below the surface with 10 pragmatic tips, which covered some of the most useful and often ignored standard design principals and the tip & trick to apply them in mobile context.

The Ten Tips are :

1. Design for a MobileUser
2. Know Widget
3. Target Specific Set of Users
4. Play Nice
5. Utilize Device Potential
6. Focus on One Functionality
7. Simplify Features
8. Grab the User
9. Add Social
10. Make it Fun

Have a look at the Audio Visual Presentation.

The N900 is very similar to the Nokia N97 aesthetically, having a 3.5″ touchscreen above a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and many of the same design features. However, the screen of the N900 is significantly higher resolution (800×480 as opposed to 360×640) and, unlike that of the N97, does not tilt up. Additionally, the N900 does not appear to feature the navi-keys found on the slide-out layer of the N97. And, of course, it runs Maemo rather than S60.

Now, on to the meat.

Hardware Specs:

• Update: A few comments inquired about GPS. Our source has since verified that the N900 does indeed have GPS, along with an accelerometer.
• Dimensions: 59.7mmx111mmx18.2mm
• Weight: 180g
• 3.5″ 800×480 (WVGA) touchscreen
• OMAP3430 500/600 Mhz processor (Fun Trivia: Same CPU as the Palm Pre)
• Bands: GSM Quad-Band 850, 900, 1800, 1900. WCDMA 900, 1700/2100, 2100
• 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with dual-LED flash, autofocus, and sliding cover
• Though the renders we’ve seen show two lens-like circles near the screen, we’ve got no word on what’s behind them. However, we feel safe in assuming that its a proximity sensor and a front-facing camera.
• 1GB total virtual runtime memory (256MB physical RAM, 768MB virtual memory)
• Wi-Fi, HSPA
• 32GB internal storage, expandable up to 48GB via external memory
• Keyboard variants: English, Scandinavian, French, German, South European, Italian, Russia
• In the box: Connectivity cable, headset, charger, battery (1320 mAh), Video-out cable, microUSB adaptor, cleaning cloth

Some of the mentioned software features:

• In all of the renders we’ve seen, it appears to be running Maemo 5.
• Multitasking: “Run all of your favorite applications simultaneously”
• Live Dashboard allows all open tasks and unread messages to be displayed in one view
• Browser: Firefox 3 with support for Flash 9.4
• Built-in automatic update software
• Contacts has some sort of status sharing built in, allowing you to share your status, location, and mood. Support for Contacts on Ovi and Google Talk.
• All SMS and IMs accessible from one view
• Cellular voice or VOIP both supported
• Captures video at 800×480 in AVC/H.264
• Image tagging and geo-tagging support
• Nokia intends to have at least a dozen add-on apps available at launch, including a game called “Bounce”, a Jaiku/Twitter app called “Mauku”, and a few widgets.

If you’re not drooling yet, you should probably get your salivary glands checked. If you are, you’re probably getting curious about availability. Don’t worry, we’ve got details on that, too.

This documents all specifically and repeatedly mention “TMO” launch targets. We’ve never seen this stand for anything besides T-Mobile in this context, and everything still makes perfect sense after swapping out every instance of “TMO” for “T-Mobile”. As such, we assume that is what they mean.

The tiny mistakes that can doom your mobile site.Here they go one by one…

Absence of About Page/Site Description When you reach a mobile site,what do you want to know at the first instance.”What is this all about?” Giving a short introduction to your service is extremely important.People on the go are in very hurry.They don’t have enough time to figure it out themselves.You should minimize their work.The best way to do this is to provide a short paragraph below the header of your page with a link to your full “about page”.Mippin.com implements this very nicely.

Absence of Contact/Feedback method Be accessible.The end-user knows better than you what your site lacks. If you don’t provide a contact form,you lose a big chance to take your site to the next level adapting to the rapidly changing mobile scenario.Always provide a contact method for users to get new ideas,complaints and error reports. Remember,providing a contact form is always better than merely specifying an email.The social media sites like Twitter can also be used for direct user interaction and feedback.

Incorrect Use of Container Elements A lot of developers use tables to enhance the “look and feel” of their mobile sites. Sadly enough,tables were not created for glamorising your webpages. They were created to present statistical information in a tabular form.Presentational tables increase page weight and plummet your site’s mobile-readiness adversely. Similarly,many a developers use divisions repeatedly to list the menu items. Repeated use of divisions also increases page weight.For listing the items,always use list containers.

Absence of Accesskey Accelerators Mobile web experience needs to be fast and “accesskeys” are essentially a boon to mobile browsing. While they might not have been so successful on desktops,accesskeys are almost a necessity for mobile sites. They fasten the navigation considerably by reducing the overall click distance. If you don’t provide them,users are likely to struggle scrolling your site.

Absence of a link to Full Website Everyone has their own needs and preferences. People on capable browsers might wish to use your full desktop website instead of its mobile edition. If you fail to provide a method to bypass the mobile version,you are going to be disliked by users. Never force a particular version of your site on a specific browser without providing an option to switch to the other version.

I know I have missed many other issues. If you want to share more “grave and oft-committed” mistakes of mobile web developers, let us know in comments.

mobiSiteGalore one of the pioneers of the mobile web with their PC based mobile site builder have taken their tool to the next level, they have taken the guts from their builder and made it accessible to mobile only users.

Now anyone with a mobile connected to the web with a GPRS connection can now create their own mobile site. No fancy smartphone needed either a normal WAP phone will do just fine.

I got to give it to these guys.. they are in my view spot on in their creation of a tool accessible to the masses. As I reported in my last article millions of new users are getting their first mobile : close to 300 million users in India and the same in many developing countries. These new users want to taste the web and don’t have access to PCs so they do what Pc users would do except from their mobile. And one of the things people want to do is create their own site to talk about themselves, to meet people, to promote something or to sell something. This is the first step in that direction.

There are other site creators but they are more based around a community, they are more profile like or blog like. Whereas mobiSiteGalore allows users much more freedom in what they want to create. I am looking forward to see how users like their tool.

So what I would like to do is give a few resources that my team has found interesting. Following will be forums, blogs and tools that can be used for developers or managers who are getting acquainted with the mobile internet which todays latest mobile phones can easily access to.

I guess to start off is the people behind .mobi sub domain and who are based in Dublin and push very hard to make .mobi THE destination for mobile sites :

You can find many resources and info on their sites and blogs. They also link to many exemplary mobile web sites so you can see what is best practices and what should be avoided.

A pretty cool mobile web site that talks about .mobi is this one :

I would suggest that you visit directly from a few mobile devices and maybe an emulator so you can see the differences for yourselves.

The next place I would suggest you go is here :

These are the same people as .mobi and they provide quite a few pointers on how to develop a proper .mobi site.

Also with all the visibility that the iPhone is making for the mobile web it can be worthwhile to start right from th beginning to look at what it takes to make a iPhone and iPode touch compatible site. Apple gives here the stuff to start off :

The next place to visit is our friends over Mobility. They are a forum of mobile enthusiasts, developers, entrepreneurs and industry specialists.

You can visit from both a PC or from your mobile device.

To fully understand the user agent issues and to tap into the largest open source database of mobile device it is a must to visit Luca Passani’s WURFL here :

At this point hopefully you will have tried building your own site.. well then it is time to get a rating :

Once you know about all these things and you build your site it may be time to earn some money… that is where things like MobPartner.mobi come in :

Finally as we all know networking is super important.. well I found a small but growing network on Linkedin :

Here are a few great blogs that will help you understand the various issues surrounding mobile sites and the revenue models that are used :

http://www.developing.mobi

http://mobienthusiast.mobi

http://www.mobiadnews.com/

http://www.m-trends.org/

http://wapreview.com/blog/

http://igloo.mobi/

The mobile world is abuzz with the news of Nokia’s plans to open source Symbian. There’s been a lot of great analysis of what this means for Nokia and its major competitors. If you aren’t up to speed on what it means, I recommend Micheal Mace’s in depth business analysis, Symbian changes everything, and nothing and Simon Judge’s developer perspective.

What I’m wondering though is how the existence of a free, high quality, open source mobile software stack will change the whole mobile ecosystem. I’m struck by two things:

* The barriers to entry for anyone wanting to manufacture advanced handsets have been lowered dramatically. There are hundreds of mobile phone makers in China and elsewhere with very low costs making cheap hones for the domestic market. Will some of them add Symbian or Android phones to their product mix? I think they will and that we will see direct to consumer online sales of generic smartphones before very long. Think zzzPhone or fake iPhone but toting a real OS.

* Open sourcing Symbian offers the possibility of community development based on the Symbian core. Imagine Symbian Kernel hackers branching off the Symbian core to create custom mobile operating systems. With the full source its possible to do things like removing the restrictions on unsigned applications and adding features that Nokia’s carrier customers don’t want you to have like VOIP over 3G. Someday will we be flashing our old S60 handsets with customized Symbian builds from a mobile hacker community?

A lot depends on just how complete Symbian’s open source offering is. I don’t think the software that manages the cellular radio or the boot loader needed to flash a new OS onto a phone are considered part of the OS. There’s a lot of licensed intellectual property tied up in cellular radio software that can’t open sourced. The would-be phone manufacturer and the hacker will have quite a bit of work to do to fill in the missing pieces.

Courtesy of Dennis at WapReview.com

This practice has been carried over to the mobile Web were I think it hurts usability while doing little or nothing to enhance security.

Of course, security on the web is real concern. Phishing and identity theft are constantly in the news. For eCommerce and banking sites I’m willing to put up with a little inconvenience in the name of security. But does masking the password of, say, an online RSS reader really make us any safer? What’s the worst that can happen, someone marking all our feeds as read?

Phones have small screens and correspondingly small fonts. It’s hard to read a mobile screen from a distance of more than a couple of feet. If your worried about password theft, you can usually turn away from onlookers or shield the screen with your hand while entering your password. I think there is a far greater likelihood of a bad guy stealing you password by watching which keys you are pressing than by reading the screen.

Mobiles generally show you the actual character for a fraction of a second before it changes to an asterisk but It’s still hard to accurately triple tap passwords on a phone. It’s especially difficult if you use “strong” passwords with a mix of upper and lower case letters, digits and symbols.

What do you think, do masked password fields on mobile web pages actually enhance security? And even if they do in some small way are they worth the cost in usability; especially on sites where there’s no risk of financial loss?

Courtesy of Dennis at WapReview.com

Mobility.mobi uses browser detection to display either the full PC version of the vBulletin based forum or a mobile one using a great mobile template developed in-house by mobility.mobi. There doesn’t seem to be a way to force the mobile version if browser detection fails although I wasn’t able to make it fail with any of the dozen or so mobile user agents I tried.

Mobility.mobi’s mobile front page mobile scores a perfect 5 out of 5 on the Ready.mobi test. The index pages listing the posts in each forum and the post pages themselves can get quite large however, well over the 10KB of markup and 20KB overall limits generally recommended for “one-size fits all” mobile sites. If this causes out of memory errors on your phone, and you are a registered user you can change the number of posts per page from the default of 25 to five on the Options Page which should help a bit. You can only change the settings from the PC version though.

Except for options, the mobile version offers almost all of the functionality of the PC site including posting, private messaging and registering for the site. It’s not necessary to register to view the site except for a few members only sub-forums. You have to register to post, of course.

It’s really inspiring to see Mobility.mobi doing so well. Anyone who has any doubts about the mobile web’s vitality should spend a little time poking around. There’s a friendly, cooperative feel to mobility.mobi with developers and publishers helping each other out without any cattiness and flame wars so common to online forums.

Courtesy of Dennis at WapReview.com