It was a tough call for the individuals who do not own a company to publish on Ovi store. To publish Symbian based contents, one has to get the application siged either via Expressed signed or Certified signed Symbian Signed options. In both the cases, one has to purchase a Publisher ID and sign the content before submitting to the Symbian Signed options. But the problem with the individual developer is that, they cannot aquire a Published ID unless s/he has a company, which in turn becomes impossible to get the application signed through Symbian Signed and hence individual cannot publish content on the Ovi Store. But wait, there is a light of the hope. Now an indiviual can submit content on Ovi publishing. Let me narrate my story.

Since being an individual developer, I had many ideas but as I could not submit on Ovi store as an individual, publishing on Ovi store was just a dream for me. But about a month ago, Nokia rolled out the possibilities for individual developers to submit their applications on Ovi store. You do not have to be a company, nor you require a Publisher ID. It was very simple and easy process for me.

Publishing on Ovi store was a foreign land to me as I never imagined I could submit my  application on Ovi as an individual. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone’s genuine efforts from Ovi Support team. I participated in the Public beta of Nokia signing Symbian apps for free. It all started with the initiative from Bill Perry (mobileperry) who helped me in pushing my content further. Eventually, I received confirmation e-mail from Ovi support team and the journey started on Ovi road. As everyone knows by now that one can register as an individual on Ovi store by just paying €50 as a one time regisrtration fee, I was bit hesitant in paying that €50 as I did not know whether everything would go fine or not. But I just registered on it to experience this new beta program. Believe me, I did not pay any extra cent after that one time €50. I did not have to pay for those $200 for Publisher ID, I did not have to pay for setting up my own company, I did not have to pay for getting my application Symbian Signed. Finally, it was worth paying just €50 to save all these extra expenses. I, then, followed all the subsequent steps as follows:

1. Ovi Publisher emails support and requests more details
2. Ovi Publish support asks publisher to review and accept new T&Cs
3. Ovi Publisher accepts new T&Cs and provides IMEI numbers for up to 5 devices
4. Ovi Publish support sends publisher UIDs, a cert installer, and developer cert/key pair for testing their app
5. Ovi Publisher packages their unsigned SIS file using the UID
   provided and tests on their device making sure it is tested against Symbian’s signing criteria
6. Ovi Publisher submits their app (unsigned SIS file with the UID provided) to the intake tool
7. QA and moderation will test the app and if it passes it will be express signed by Nokia and put into Ovi Store

( Courtesy: Reusing information from Bill Perry’s blog: http://mobileperry.com/?p=319 )

I would like to thank Ovi publishing support team. They politely replied me promptly on my  many questions. They are even colored with the Ovi spirit as they adapted Ovi as a prefix in  their names. You may know them as OviAndrew, OviBecaa, OviPen, OviEmma, OviGwen and so  on. I would also like to thank Ovi QA team(Kevin Lu, Luga and many others). Lesson I learnt  from Ovi publishing support team is how to keep calm and gentle when you are receiving hundreds of email requests and answering them genuinely on a daily bases. Hats off!

Ovi store is improving day by day. It is a tough job to maintain such a big service for hundreds of millions of phones already out in the market and the same numbers are coming in the market every day. Since the introduction of publishing as an individual on Ovi store, it has broaden the horizon and there are plenty of opportunities to earn from a huge mobile base in the market.

I would keep the context of this blog post and won’t be selfish to use it to promote my application.

Please let me know if you want to know anything more about my experience on publishing on  Ovi store as an individual. I would like to help you in whatever way I can.

Note: Ovi Publishers who are interested in participating in this public beta, please send an email to publishtoovi.support@nokia.com with your Ovi Publish username and you’ll receive more details

Download Here>>

The Symbian Foundation today announced its annual event, the Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2010 (SEE 2010), which will be held at Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam on the 9th and 10th November. Attendance is free and the event is open to all. To register, visit www.see2010.org.

Just as Symbian has broadened its mission to driving innovation throughout the mobile space, it is also redefining the landscape of its annual event to engage and inspire the brightest and most enthusiastic minds in the industry. SEE 2010 is not a tradeshow — it is a place for the wider community to come together, make cross-industry connections, conduct conversation, share ideas, educate each other and realize some of the vast possibilities that exist in the mobile market.

There is truly something for everyone, including open forums, keynote sessions, seminars, hands-on labs, interactive demos and, as always, the much anticipated Symbian party.

This year SEE 2010 will feature four seminar tracks, allowing the community to share its experience and knowledge and to engage with the topics that appeal to them. These include:
• Application Developer Track
• Horizon Track
• Platform Developer Track
• Business Track

Symbian is now looking for inspired individuals to submit abstracts that address the industry’s hot topics. The Call for Papers portal is available at www.see2010.org/call_for_speakers and the deadline for entry is 3rd September 2010.

Media contacts:
North America:
Andrea Heuer, Consort Partners
+1 917-886-5113
symbian@consortpartners.com

Europe:
Claire Rayner, Brands2Life
+44 20 7592 1200
Claire.Rayner@Brands2life.com

Listen to Part 1 of the podcast

Listen to Part 2 of the podcast.

Qt WRT is a W3C-standards-based web runtime. The runtime is now under the Qt’s new open
governance model . This is a signficication step for Web develpment because there is now a completely open mobile application development platform that requires only Web skills. We are talking about real applications on the mobile devices. From Webkit all the way to application runtime, every layer is open for contributions and innovations. You can try out some of the HTML5 CSS3 features that are available with the QtWebkit port. (I will write another post to dig deeper on what HTML5 features are in our QtWebkit, stay tuned.) Get the source: http://get.qt.nokia.com/qtwrt. If you have an N900, should be available in Extras-devel http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/307/

Meet the 2010 Top Women in Wireless.

Watch a video of Purnima Kochikar introducing the new and improved Forum Nokia community.

Alessandro shares with us that recent Nokia financial results pave way towards upcoming Symbian^3 devices and some OVI services numbers.

• Nokia Symbian^3 expect to sell 50M
• OVI Store 13,000 content items
• OVI Store 1.7 millions download per day
• OVI App Wizard achieved 1 million downloads
• OVI Maps with free navigation has been downloaded 17 million times

Also the Nokia N8 will be shipping by end of Q3 2010.

A new website for Nokia developers has recently been launched: NokiaDevs.com The website proposes conversations with Nokia developers, talking their experience and thoughts on Nokia technologies. As the website says:

Nokia is open, so Nokia Devs want to be: open to any opinion, thought,
vision about the present and future of mobile development.

Want to join the conversation? Get in touch!

For its launch, NokiaDevs has also launched a contest to win two licenses for FDT 3.5 Pure, the editor for Flash, Flash Lite and Flex developers: you can read full details here.

There is a very good tutorial about creating a Web Runtime Podcast application over at Nokia’s Wiki. The example demonstrate how to use a JQuery based UI framework, Guarana UI developed by INdT, HTML, JavaScript and CSS to create a mobile podcast application. Web Runtime has been on our Nokia Symbian devices for a while, and it is very easy to create applications if you understand standard Web technologies.

Go to the Wiki page WebRuntime Podcast application

Would you like to create professional-looking mobile applications in mere minutes, then distribute them to millions of consumers around the world through Ovi Store? If so, then the new Ovi App Wizard is for you. Designed to be easy and helpful, this tool lets anyone create an app quickly — even those with no design or programming experience. Ovi App Wizard is available now for free as an open beta to all individuals and businesses, and there is no registration or publishing fee for the apps you create.

And if you create an app with Ovi App Wizard that uses RSS content, you could win a new Nokia device and cash. Submit your app to the Calling All Innovators contest for the Most Popular RSS app. The top 10 submissions will win Nokia devices, including a Nokia E71 and Nokia N97 mini. The No. 1 submission will win placement in Ovi Store and a prize of $5,000. Applications may be submitted in any of four categories: Eco/Being Green; Entertainment; Productivity; and Life Improvement.

Enter the Calling All Innovators Most Popular RSS app contest.

Get started with the Ovi App Wizard.