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The Nokia Series 60 Challenge - winners announced!
The competition was fierce and the hours spent developing were long, tough, and gruelling but finally the lucky winners of the Orange and Nokia Series 60 Symbian OS Challenge have been announced.
Launched in September 2004 at Orange Code Camp, Poitiers, the Challenge aimed to find the most compelling Series 60 applications, running on the Symbian OS, optimised for 3G networks. From over a hundred application ideas submitted, the best 15 ideas were short-listed to proceed to the second phase. The development phase included support from Nokia, Orange & Symbian in the form of workshops, usability audits, and prioritised technical support from Forum Nokia, as well as two rounds of Symbian Signed testing.
Finally, once the applications were Symbian Signed, they were submitted to Orange, underwent Orange testing, and have been included in the Orange Internal Product Catalogue for possible commercialisation over the Orange 3G networks in the UK, France and Switzerland.
The contest attracted submissions from developers around the world, and a winner for each of the three categories has now been selected by the joint Orange and Nokia panel. The categories were: Best Consumer Solution and Best Enterprise Solution with a special additional category - Most Entrepreneurial Developer - created during the judging process, to reward the professionalism and entrepreneurial sprit of the competitors.
the winners are:
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As part of their prize, the winners will receive free places to attend the next Code Camp EMEA to be held later this year where they will be presented with their award.
They will also receive the latest Orange Signature device from the Nokia range, as well as having their applications promoted as 'featured' products in the Orange Internal Product Catalogue for four weeks.
Products that feature in the catalogue have a possible distribution of up to 54 million customers in 16 countries. |
"We are delighted with not only the volume but also the calibre of the entries for this award. The category winners really stood out in terms of creativity and innovation, and importantly by developing applications that our customers will really want to use. In the 3G world, one of our key success factors will be our ability to deliver innovative, exciting mobile applications solutions and content to our customers which will help drive usage and ultimately revenue".
Steve Glagow, Director: Orange Partner |
Find out what the developers were faced with
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the winners
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| Best Consumer Solution |
NINJ Ltd - VirtualRadio |
VirtualRadio is the first streaming MP3 player on mobile phones. Currently there are more than 100 web radio stations with more signing up for inclusion each day.
Users start up the player and the radio begins immediately. There is no need to define play lists or find and type the URL's. All the user has to do is select from a given list of stations, click and play!
The streamed format is MP3 on the 3G phones and consists of a player application, an application server and streaming servers.
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"Orange Code Camp last year in France was a brilliant and most inspiring event! It was on the way back to Switzerland in the middle of the night on deserted French country roads where the idea of VirtualRadio was born."
Juerg Ingold - NINJ Ltd
Upon winning the Best Consumer Solution category Ingold further commented "It's a great honour to be elected Best Consumer Solution! We are proud to be the winner or our category but at the same time we see the responsibility to make our customers happy and to bring more multimedia to the phone…. This award is a tremendous motivation for all of us!"
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| Best Enterprise Solution |
Flextronics Software Systems - Visitor Management System (VMS) |
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VMS is a messaging application that allows a user to always stay connected, by sending visitor alerts from the home or office, when the user is not around. Alerts include the visitor's details and photo.
The application has three main components; it runs on a Nokia 6630 using Symbian 8.0a, a VMS security desk application using WinXP/2000 PC and a VMS server that can run on either Linux Machines or a Sun Server.
The reason why Flextronics Software Systems entered the Challenge was to demonstrate how simple ideas can leverage new technology to enhance the end-user experience and create new revenue opportunities. |
We are excited to see the response to our application – this has strengthened our belief in the market potential of new technologies like SIP/IMS and FMC. We will continue our initiatives and build many more such applications that touch every-day lives and create opportunities for generating revenue."
Arti Khanna of Flextronics Software Systems
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| Most Entrepreneurial Developer |
Alan Bradburne & Paul Bentley - Phlogger |
Alan Bradburne and Paul Bentley won the category for Most Entreprneurial Developer because of their professionalism and entrepreneurial sprit, aswell as the high quality of the application.
Phlogger is a mobile photo-blogging application, integrated in to the phlog.net web site. A user can easily create a free account and immediately upload and share their photos with the world.
Phlogger, along with the web site phlog.net, is a quick and easy way to for end-users to share photos and discussions with their friends. The application allows users to grow their social network based around sharing photos. Other users can comment on the photos and add them to their personal community.
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Users can store their photos on the site for free, but can upgrade to a pro account, allowing them to store higher resolution photographs and enabling more personalisation of their 'phlog' (photo blog).
Alan Bradburne said "At various points during the development of Phlogger, I've been more than willing to give up. Symbian development is fairly tricky, but the application has also turned out to be far more complex to code than the initial specification suggested."
On winning their category Alan went on to say:
"After spending around 6 months developing Phlogger, with all the obstacles along the way, winning is not only an enormous sense of achievement, it also helps justify all the weekends and sleep lost to writing the application. I think we have developed a fantastic application and it is great that other people agree. Now we have to push ahead, add the finishing touches and look at getting this application into the hands of the public. Winning this competition will definitely help facilitate this."
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