I am Victor Palau and today I would like to introduce you to a newly launched initiative called the Bug Squad.
Following the EPLing of Symbian^3, we have been thinking about how can we best enable everyone to make a difference and contribute to the platform. We researched what community programs were working well for other successful open source projects and we decided to start by tackling a key issue for any software platform – Bugs!
Hi! My name is Victor Palau and I wanted to share with you a couple of new features that have been added into the Symbian^3 release and that have a very visual impact in the emulator. The screenshots in this post have been taken from PDK_3.0.f.
First of all is the Localisation support. Maintaining a UI in multiple languages is not an easy or cheap task. Nokia has contributed their localisation support, and it is as simple to set up as changing a digit in a text file (thanks to Mattd for the tip!). I have changed my PDK to my native language: Spanish. Read more »
Hi, I am Victor Palau and I recently travelled to Japan , where Fujitsu-san hosted the Release Council in January. We took the opportunity to address the Japan member community on a local face2face forum. I had the chance to address the audience on why should commercial companies contribute open source assets to the Symbian Platform.
A bit put off by the simultaneous translators and the 15min timeslot, but here I am: (You might want to download the slides first!)
Thanks to Ryo Inowa and the Symbian Japan team for their support
Hi,
I am Victor Palau from the Symbian Foundation, It was suggested that 1st of January post in my blog might be interesting to all of you, so here it is (a bit enhanced):
I am just back from my holidays back home in Barcelona and I wanted to share with you what I think are very good signs for the new Symbian^1 Nokia 5230.
If you watch TV during the Xmas period, you will have noticed that over the last decades adverts for mobile phones seem to have overtaken those for perfumes and toys.
It seems that Vodafone and Telefonica have gone into a price-plan tug of war, offering cheap tariffs all over the place. The “Planazo” from Movistar (a Telefonica company) seems to be everywhere on TV in Spain.
What I found surprising is that their star handset to launch the Xmas season from both Telefonica and Vodafone is the Nokia 5230.
Near my flat in Barcelona, the streets seem to be wallpapered with 5230 pictures, with the only difference between them being the red (Vodafone) and blue (Telefonica) background themes.
I quote @Oscarb (Spanish Tech Blogger) when I say that non-operator sponsored handsets in Spain account for less than 10% of the overall sales volume. Hence, the Nokia 5230 available from Telefonica at FREE with a 9,95 Euros monthly price plan (similar deal from Vodafone), it seems poised to be the iPhone of the masses!
It will be interesting to see how mass-market smartphones change the type of applications that are developed for open platforms such as Symbian.
The Nokia 5230 is a touch screen decently equipped Symbian platform device. If it has inherited the learnings from the 5800 and N97 series, this could be a great little device. Here is a review from Petra Soderling:
I have previously blogged about the quantity and quality of features that the community is planning for Symbian^3, but how about Symbian^4?. Let’s have a recap on where we are today!
Symbian^3 is nearing Functionally Complete (FC is in Q1 2010, likely to be February) and the contributions have come fast and thick over the last month. Of the 43 package feature tracked in the integration plan for Symbian^3, 30 have already been contributed to the foundation code line. These are: Read more »
We recently announced via twitter that S^3 is now a reality, and it can be found on our Mercurial repositories. We are also planning to create the first Product Development Kit for Symbian^3 and the baseline for Symbian^2 over the next few weeks, but how do you keep track of all this! Here are a few suggestions:
For more “hot of the press” news….
We have also some active twitterers in the team: William Roberts (Chief Integration Engineer) , Jim Clarke (The Boss) and yours truly!
Hi all! Let me get the introductions out of the way first…My name is Victor Palau and I am a Release Manager at the Symbian Foundation.
I was living in India when I got the chance to stay at a small Coffee and Tea plantation in Koppa (in Karnataka). The plantation was owned by my friend’s family, and we thought it would be a good weekend break. Although it sounds quite grand, the plantation was a nice medium size house with a mountain attached to it. We toured the site with my friends grandfather, and for the first time I saw why open source works. Read more »
