Reliance Developer Programme is having a contest to promote the development of useful mobile applications for the rural population. If you are a mobile application developer, it is now your chance to win up to Rs.13 Lacs in prize money.

The applications could be in any of the following areas:

Transportation
M- Commerce
Information
Health
Education
Governance
Location Based Services

This is really impressive and heartening to see. I have earlier covered some Microsoft India Mobile R&D initiatives to help improve the rural economy of India.

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You may have seen Jaiku – the nanoblogging platform which is somewhat similar to Twitter. The Twitter is very simplistic in what it does. But not so fun. It’s pretty bland to state ‘What you are doing?’ and archive it as a life stream of events. Jaiku takes off from there..

You can do all of your twittering things with Jaiku too. Plus, You have IRC style channels on various topics – you may even create one. All of my blog feeds can be aggregated over to my life stream. All Jaikus are now wrapped into a widget and is placed on to the sidebar of this blog. The SMS, eMail and IM notifications feature works pretty well. The lack of status feature is what I liked more about Jaiku – talk about some change in philosophy! ;). I prefer to use my Facebook status more – if at all. MobileJuhu is an interesting native Jaiku client for iPhone which I’m using.

Let me know if you want to join me on Jaiku  – in the comments section.

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Just got an email from Zingku stating that they have been acquired by Google. I don’t know the details of the acquisition. Zingku is a Mobile Social Networking Service. Maybe Google will have it integrated with Orkut further.

Just wonder what Google would do with their Dodgeball !

What is Zingku?

With Zingku, things you wish to promote or share, can easily be created and fetched via mobile, instant messenger, and web browser. Our service integrates your mobile phone with a personalized web site so that you can easily move (zing) things back and forth between the web and and your mobile as well as powerfully connect with friends and optionally their friends.

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I have a Cingular 8125 Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone. Ever since I started using Nokia E61 and a Nokia N72 as the Business and Personal phones respectively, the 8125 has been lying idle in the drawer. Partly, this was because it is kind of bulky to pocket and mainly as it’s Windows Mobile 5 OS sucked. The brilliant guys at XDA-Developers plucked the latest Windows Mobile 6 platform to create a kitchen ROM – which could be flashed onto any HTC Wizard. Zoki, an able ROM Chef added some more flavor of the HTC Touch’s – ‘TouchFLO‘ and ‘Cube’ interfaces onto it – to create the NBD WM6 ROM. There were many others, but I chose NBD because it is stable and feature rich.

I must say, getting my G3 Wizard (8125) on to the WM6 platform was a little bit nerve wrecking procedure – though I have done a big storage hack on my earlier O2 XDA II Mini. Too many a things had to work flawlessly, which otherwise would have rendered my 8125 nothing more than a costlier paper-weight. I still have a few more things to iron out – like downgrading the GSM Radio to 2.19. Now with the faster WM6 on it, my 8125 got a fresh breather. It feels like a new phone. Something I will be keeping till I get an N800 or an iPhone.

Here is how my Cingular 8125 too feels like now:-

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Nokia promised Yahoo Go! 2.0 for Nokia E61 in April. Though a bit late,
they’ve released it now. It is a 590KB download. So go get your Yahoo Go! 2.0 for  Nokia E61.

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Symbian is giving away free booklets on Symbian OS and UIQ development. There are even some translated booklets. If you are into mobile development, you must read them.

Better still – Symbian will even send you free printed versions of these booklets.
I especially liked the POSIX on Symbian OS booklet.[tags]symbian,free,books[/tags]

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If you are like me , you read many books on your PDA/Mobile. But those screens are always small, brightness factor not-so-adjustable and you always miss the good old paper. Hardware e-book devices offers practical digital reading. You can read a couple of novels on the go. The battery lasts for almost 10,000 pages. That is almost more than a month of reading without recharging. Great isn’t it?!

[tags]hardware ebook readers, e-book readers, e-book devices, iliad, hanlin, bookeen, cybook, sony, walkbook[/tags]

Hardware e-book readers has a better large screen. The letters are large and readability is great. The most recent Hardware e-book readers uses e-Ink technology. It is a patented idea licensed by many. e-Ink enabled readers would look like plain old paper. The display will brighten up automatically with more visible light. e-Ink technology is potentially slated to advance into Color and Folding screens. That is something for the future. At the moment only black and white screens are available. But that itself is great for regular reading.

Here is some of the best practical Hardware e-book Readers :

1. iRex iLiad

This is one of the best Hardware e-Book reader available. Apart from reading eBooks, you can also play Sukoku and Crossword puzzles, read comics and sketch/draw on it. iLiad supports Wireless connectivity and many memory card types. It even supports inserting USB stick to quickly read the content. Cost: $700

2. Sony PRS500

Sony Portable reader system also supports e-Ink technology. It has a great battery life of up to 7500 page turns. Can hold up to 80 books in the internal memory and hundreds more with the Memory stick. Cost: $250

3. WalkBook

WalkBook is a next generation e-Book reader. Supports a variety of e-Book formats and podcasts. It comes with a stereo Earphone. One time charging covers 10,000 page page turns or 4 Hours of Music/Audio. Cost: 330 Euros.

4. Bookeen CyBook

Bookeen CyBook is not launched yet!. Bookeen is promised to give you a realistic paper reading experience. But remember, there is no backlight. This stylistic reader is something to watch out for. Priced: ~$350

5. Hanlin eReader V2

V2 is a high specification device with a Linux OS. This ships with an SDK which should see other developers creating innovative applications for this platform. This excellent device is in the same class as Iliad. Priced:~$350

Also have look at the e-book reader matrix based on configurations to learn more about these devices.

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Fring is the ONLY pure multi-client mobile VOIP (mVOIP) solution out there. I use Fring regularly on my Nokia E61 and N72. I always wanted it to work with my Cingular 8125 Windows Mobile.

Fring for Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 handsets is available for download now. Apart from the IM Clients for chat and VOIP, Fring also also supports Twitter. This is functionally similar to the Symbian versions. Fring for Windows Mobile 5.0 features:-

• Full fring mVoIP functionality – free calls, chat & presence over any Wi-Fi, 3G or GPRS connection
• fring, Skype, Google Talk, MSN & GSM buddies in one integrated contact list
• twitter support
• Skype-out & hundreds of SIP providers supported
• Turn your SIM–less, Wi-Fi enabled PDA into a mobile phone

Post Sponsored by:Navtej Kohli on Digg , on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Yahoo! on SEOMoz

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Nokia today announced a more product oriented mobile web server available for download.

You can find it right now at http://mymobilesite.net and soon also via http://www.nokia.com/betalabs, where there are a number of other cool applications.

The main difference between Raccoon and MWS, which is based upon Raccoon, is that while the former is primarily intended for hard-core developers and others who don’t mind spending time at the bleeding edge, the latter is more geared towards regular end-users. However, the possibilities for customization and for building your own kind of mobsites are still there.

Furthermore, MWS provides HTTPS and access control at the gateway, so the possibilities for controlling who can access what, are much improved.

Raccoon will continue to be developed and maintained, with the intention of bringing the S60 port of Apache httpd ever more closer to the other operating system versions, and the Raccoon gateway will also be kept available.

Developer support for both Raccoon and MWS is available at Forum Nokia:

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=129

If you install MWS, check also out the Contact Browser Plugin that works with MWS. It will very soon be made available at:
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/contacts-browser-plugin/index.html

You can see my mobsite at http://vinod.mymobilesite.net . You can test using username: vinodlive and password ‘subscribe’.

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Steve Jobs won’t let you. Because he don’t trust you. You would leak the memory, make hidden resource calls and kill iPhone. Better Steve plugged it. 2007 Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Steve gives you a penny. Go, Code for Safari. Do AJAX - and test them with this.

Lovely! AJAX games galore. Minesweeper anyone?.  Forget 3D games. iPhone is a Business phone, confirmed. So next you did a HandyShopper for iPhone. Great. What about handling a BT GPS Fix?. Sorry, you cannot. Live and die within Safari world. Though Nokia never said so. Probably, Steve wants us to VNC to Leopard from iPhone, for native apps ;)

Give me Java/Python/Ruby, Steve. They are harmless.

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