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Welcome to the Orange Partner newsletter.

In this month's edition you can find out all you need to know about EDGE - how it relates to existing Orange networks, our strategy across the footprint, and the results so far.

Discover who were the winning developers of the Nokia Series 60 challenge, read through their accounts, and find out what happens next.

We tell you about forthcoming Virtual Seminars and encourage you to book your place now – before they sell out. And, if you missed out any of the Orange Partner events last month, find out where to download the presentations.

Lastly…we'd like to let you know that there will not be an August edition of the Orange Partner newsletter, but the next edition will be with you on 1st September.

Kind regards and enjoy your summer break,

Steve Glagow
Orange Partner - Director

Boston and San Francisco Developer Centres – a dedicated development environment for premium members
You heard it here first in last month's newsletter! The official openings of both the Boston and San Francisco Developer Centres took place on 17 and 23 June respectively.

Thanks to over 100 of you who joined us there for the respective Orange Partner Day – it was good to meet you all. For those of you who were unable to make it,,,, they are now fully-open and ready for you to use…

The Developer Centres are an exclusive development environment, for Premium Members of the Orange Partner programme. Located within the existing R&D laboratories of the France Telecom Group, both centres offer well–equipped technical facilities designed to provide you with an efficient and comfortable atmosphere for application development.

The latest Centres in the US are part of a global Developer Centre network that already includes facilities in the UK (Maidenhead and Glasgow) and France (Vélizy). Also, look out for our next Developer Centre opening which will be in the Netherlands later this year.

The Orange Partner Days at each of the Centres were a massive success, and apologies to those of you who missed out on a place, but we will keep you informed of future events. If you would like to find out about what happened the presentations are available to download:

Boston 17 June >                                         

San Francisco 23 June >

Find out more about the Developer Centres (including San Francisco and Boston) and book your place now >

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Momote MX Platform – download your free 30 day trial
If you're developing a new business mobile application requiring a mobility solution, then this offer from Orange may be of interest to you.

The MX Platform is based on XML methodology providing a standard way integrating with back-end systems allowing developers to produce business applications and deploy them on multiple devices without having to change code.

The MX Platform is based on XML methodology providing a standard way of integrating with back-end systems. If you're developing a field service engineer application for example, you might be interested in taking a look at this offer.

Find out more about how it works, and how you can download your free 30 day trial at www.momote.com >

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The Nokia Series 60 Challenge – winners are 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 well – deserved winners are:

Best Consumer Solution NINJ Ltd – VirtualRadio
Best Enterprise Solution Flextronics Software Systems – Visitor Management System (VMS)
Most Entrepreneurial Developer Alan Bradburne & Paul Bentley – Phlogger

Read through some of the developers accounts, find out about what the developers were faced with, details of the challenge and more on the winning applications >

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EDGE – What is it, how does it relate to existing networks, and what is the Orange's strategy?
France, Slovakia and Romania have already commercially launched EDGE this year. But what is EDGE, what is the Orange strategy and what does it mean for you our developer members?

EDGE (Enhanced Data rate for GSM Evolution, is designed to make the use of the radio network capacity and spectrum more efficient.

In essence, EDGE changes the encoding of the radio between the GSM base station (BTS) and the mobile device. It adds new techniques for modulation and encoding data using the same radio frequencies. Other than the handset and BTS the rest of the network remains the same, and to the end-user the only change is an increase in data speed.

Orange customers can view videos, listen to music, or watch live TV on their mobile phone using the Orange World portal. Business customers can connect simply and easily to their company network, picking up their e-mails, surf the Internet and Intranet, plus access their business applications…

Find out more about the EDGE and Orange strategy >

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Microsoft® Windows Mobile™Developers – new information on the website
Find out all you need to know about developing for Windows Mobile™

Disabling the security device on Windows Smartphones is a re-occurring issue which many of you seem to be battling with. IIt's a topic of much discussion in our developer forums and it's the support issue that many Orange Partner premium members, most require help with.

We've been a shoulder to cry on, a pillar of support, we've listened to your woes, and hopefully we can now help you even more….

By working together, Microsoft and Orange are providing developers and partners with the knowledge, resources and tools you need for effective application and development.

Read through the updated Microsoft section in develop with Orange and find out all you need to know about developing for Windows Mobile™, download the presentations, read through the whitepapers, and get to grips with testing and signing…more >

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Keeping ahead of the Game – In-Fusio we take a closer look at In-Fusio and ExEn Gaming Extensions technology
Who invented the mobile game? That question is nigh-on impossible to answer but French company In Fusio certainly has a decent claim to being one of the first.

Back in September 2000 when the most pioneering gaming minds were thinking about WAP-based browser games (if they were considering mobile at all, that is) In-Fusio single-handedly launched a downloadable games service based on its own technology. In so doing it 'beat' most European networks by at least two years – and even pre dated the launch of downloadable games on Japan's I-Mode by five months.

Since then In-Fusio has evolved. It still offers a proprietary games service, but also publishes Java, Brew and DoJa titles and has formed relationships with operators all over the world. Of course, in 2000 In-Fusio had to do everything itself. As no infrastructure existed through which to launch downloadable games, it created one. First it built an engine called ExEn (a cut-down version of J2ME retaining just the elements needed to download and execute games), then it developed a catalogue of software titles compatible with the engine and finally it built a back-end infrastructure for managing downloads and the community elements surrounding them.

With all this in place, the company approached France Telecom Group and a number of handset companies with a compelling proposition: put this engine into your phones, host the games on your networks and watch the revenues explode. The resulting service, entitled 'Les Games' generated more than 10 million consumer downloads in 18 months.

In 2003, In-Fusio announced a successor for ExEn named EGE (ExEn Gaming Extensions), which has attracted so much interest that in July of last year Orange agreed to put EGE into our Signature phones which will launch over the next few months.

Read the full article – and find out more >

In the next edition of the Orange Partner newsletter, we'll be updating you on what we're doing with EGE, and how it will affect you.

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Virtual Seminars – the forthcoming topics and dates
The real-time workshops that allow members of the Orange Partner programme to participate from the comfort of your chosen environment – no travel is required!

Judging by the popularity of last week's seminar (Working with the programme), if you're interested in attending future seminars then we urge you to register early to avoid disappointment.

We've a number of seminars scheduled for July - if you would like to attend, become a member and reserve your place now!*

07 July 2005, 14:30 – 15:00 (GMT)
Orange Partner – "Getting your products into our catalogue" - Anna Grundy and Steve Parrott, Orange Partner
The Orange Product Catalogue is the shop window for your mobile applications, content and solutions to gain exposure within Orange countries...register now >

14 July 2005, 14:30 – 15:00 (GMT) – Almost full!
Orange Partner – "Testing, testing and more testing" - Martin Wrigley, Orange Partner
You've asked us to repeat this virtual seminar … learn why testing, signature & validation is so important - not only for Orange, but for developers too...register now >

21 July 2005, 14:30 – 15:00 (GMT) - Almost full!
"GSM - an introduction" - Richard Sparkes, Senior Technical Consultant, The VAS Team, Orange
What you've always wanted to know about networks: the benefits and technical constraints of mobile technologies... register now >

28 July 2005, 14:30 – 15:00 (GMT)
"Networks and more networks" - Richard Sparkes, Senior Technical Consultant, The VAS Team, Orange
Wireless broadband technologies and market opportunities from a technical, commercial and capacity point of view... register now >

*You must state your Orange Partner username for your registration to be valid.

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'Working with the programme' –– virtual seminar - did you miss it?
Download the presentation and get your Orange Partner questions answered.

We kicked off our latest series of virtual seminars last week with 'Working with the programme', which was hugely popular and highly attended plus we've received some fantastic feedback from those of you who participated. Thank You.

The presentation by Steve Glagow, Orange Partner Director, is now available to download >

We collated all your questions during the session and some are already answered, in the Q&A section of the website. If you can't find the answer to your specific question, don't worry we're diligently working on this...and it's coming soon!

If you have a question and can't find the answer, let us know at developers@orange.com.

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MEDC – Who were the winners of the Orange Partner SPV handsets?
Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2005 (MEDC 2005) was an event that focussed on the future of Microsoft Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded platforms.

At each venue (Paris and Reading) where Orange was a gold sponsor, we gave delegates a chance to win an SPV in our prize-draw.

For those of you who attended, dropped by our booth, and entered the draw…are you one of the lucky winners?

They are …

The Paris event - Steve Morin
The Reading event - Gareth McSorey

Congratulations.

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Top Links from last month...

If you're a new subscriber to the Orange Partner newsletter, or you merely ran out of time reading through all the articles from last month's edition before this month's promptly arrived in your inbox …we've collated the 'Top Links' from the last edition so that you don't miss out!

Based on the articles that other newsletter subscribers found of interest last month, the top 3 Links to the website were:

• The categories of mobile applications, content and solutions that Orange is looking for.
• Information on devices, the categories that each handset falls into and the customer segments they're aimed at.
• The new Unified Test Criteria for Java Technology-based Applications for Mobile Devices version 2.0

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We want to hear your thoughts about the Orange Partner Newsletter. Drop us a line at developers@orange.com