OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash

Are you a developer seeking the widest and most profitable distribution for your mobile software? The traditional platform for achieving such goals over the past couple of years has been Apple’s iOS, but Android’s rabid ascendancy has recently turned that into a legitimate question. A question that OpenFeint is looking to sway even further in Google’s favor by announcing it will fund the porting of games from “other app stores” to Android with the help of Chinese online game operator The9. The specially selected games will of course get saddled with OpenFeint integration and the whole effort does have the waft of a publicity grab to us, but hey, it’s another few pennies thrown into the bottomless well known as “Android gaming.” Surely something worthy will eventually come out of it, no?

[Thanks, Calvin]

Continue reading OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash

OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung tries its hand at poaching disgruntled Symbian devs for Bada

We can’t help but feel like this is one sinking ship coming to the aid of another, but for what it’s worth, Samsung has apparently started emailing Symbian developers in India with a very simple message: “if you’re unhappy about what’s going on, give Bada a shot.” Sammy, of course, is referring to Nokia’s decision to slowly phase out Symbian over the course of roughly 150 million additional shipped handsets — not a small quantity, granted, but the platform’s still got a definitive expiration timeline attached to it now that’s undoubtedly going to sour devs who want a mobile platform that they know will be around for the long haul. Though Bada doesn’t have the global traction that Symbian enjoys, it’s definitely geared to target some of the same low-end market segments Symbian was starting to gun for over the past couple years… so we suppose we see some synergy. Still, if it were our engineering dollars, we’d be hard-pressed not to target a platform with a little more multi-manufacturer support and worldwide reach — Android, for instance. Can’t blame Samsung for trying!

[Thanks, Peter]

Samsung tries its hand at poaching disgruntled Symbian devs for Bada originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia sells Qt commercial licensing and services business to Digia


Now that Nokia has shifted to a Windows Phone-centric smartphone strategy, it’s only natural for the company to divest itself of responsibility with regard to the Qt framework at the heart of Symbian and MeeGo development — a platform Nokia acquired from Trolltech back in January of 2008. We just got word that Digia will acquire the Qt commercial licensing and services business from Nokia, including the transfer of some 3,500 desktop and embedded customers actively using Qt today. Sebastian Nyström, Nokia Vice President, Application and Service Frameworks, had this to say about the agreement:

“Nokia will continue to invest in developing Qt as a cross-platform framework for mobile, desktop and embedded segments, focusing on open source development and expansion, we wanted a partner who can drive the commercial licensing and services business around Qt. Digia has proven, in-depth Qt expertise, operational excellence and a keen interest in growing and improving the overall Qt community and so well positioned to expand the Qt Commercial licensing and services business.”

So, if you’re interested in developing in Qt commercially, Digia will be your contact just as soon as the transaction completes sometime later this month.

[Thanks, Nisse]

Continue reading Nokia sells Qt commercial licensing and services business to Digia

Nokia sells Qt commercial licensing and services business to Digia originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 05:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google gifts Xoom tablets to game devs at GDC 2011

Google’s notoriously generous at developer events, tossing out free devices like candy on Halloween, but here at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco it’s letting them flow like wine. Each attendee at Google’s Web Developer Day yesterday got a free Cr-48 laptop, and today the company dished out even greater prizes — either a free Motorola Xoom tablet or a Nexus S smartphone to every soul listening to some exceedingly well-attended technical sessions on Android. That’s certainly one way to attract game developers to your platform.

Google gifts Xoom tablets to game devs at GDC 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s Vague Subscription Policy Sows Confusion, Doubt

Steve Jobs introduces the iPad in a January 2010 event. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The fumbled introduction of in-app subscriptions shows that when it comes to charging for subscription services online, Apple is just as confused as everyone else.

The widely anticipated policy allows publishers, including Wired, to charge subscription fees for recurring content. But while this is in principle a feature that both publishers and readers actually want, the announcement has been met with derision and complaints about the extortionate rates Apple is charging.

Clearly, Apple misjudged its audience.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that no one really knows what counts as a “publisher.” Wired parent Condé Nast certainly is. But what about the makers of Dropbox or Evernote, to name two popular cloud-based services that charge premium customers with a monthly subscription model?

Apple’s new in-app subscriptions policy requires publishers of “content-based apps, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc.” to pay a 30-percent cut to Apple for every subscription sale made inside iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch apps, according to Apple. So for example, when an iPad customer purchases a subscription of The Daily newspaper through the app, Apple takes a 30-percent cut of the subscription sale. Sounds about reasonable.

To anybody who’s even idly followed Apple in the past few years, this shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Currently for every app that costs money on the App Store, Apple takes 30 percent of each sale, leaving the software developer with a generous 70-percent cut.

Publishers can still take subscription payments outside the apps — for instance, on their own websites — and when they do, they keep 100 percent of the proceeds, as Jobs was careful to point out.

But the new in-app policy is more strict and more confusing than it initially appears.

Publishers that offer alternative means of subscription must also offer Apple’s in-app purchase system, and subscriptions offered outside the App Store can’t undercut the in-app price. Also, only the in-app sale option can appear inside the app; external links are not allowed.

Here’s where things get really confusing: The iOS developer agreement states that “Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality or services in an app will be rejected.”

Certainly any app would fall under that category, wouldn’t it? So now is everybody a publisher of “content-based apps”? That language would suggest so.

In-app payments sound more convenient for iOS customers, but the wording of the policy is loaded and vague. Every app can be seen as something that provides content, functionality or services, but Apple particularly describes this policy as applying to publishers of “content-based” apps.

What about companies that provide paid, subscription-based software services through an app, such as Dropbox, Evernote and Salesforce? Marco Arment, developer of the iOS app Instapaper, points out these apps offer paid services outside the iOS payment system. Should they be rejected for not doing so? That would upset everybody, but it would only seem fair.

Those apps haven’t been pulled. And if a purported Steve Jobs e-mail is to be believed, they aren’t going to be — although it’s hard to say. The e-mail merely states, “We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not [software-as-a-service] apps.”

The bottom line is that Apple has managed to make its App Store review policy even more confusing and vague than it already was previously, and this disarray may discourage businesses from participating, Arment says.

This policy will prevent many potentially great apps, from many large and small publishers, from being created on iOS at all,” Arment says in his blog.

A large contributor to the confusion is that Apple is creating an invisible hierarchy inside the App Store. Traditional publishers have been receiving different treatment than everybody else for over a year.  In early 2010, Apple approved the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps, for example, while banning a plethora of sex-tinged apps made by smaller companies.

The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller told The New York Times last year.

Herein lies the problem: Apple seems to think there’s a difference between a media organization publishing a magazine through an app and a software maker publishing a service through an app. While there are obvious differences between the products provided, the fundamentals are the same: These are companies using Apple’s app channel to sell product.

From a media publisher’s perspective, it probably doesn’t seem fair to be stuck with different rules.

And from a software service provider’s perspective, it’s uncertain what it can or cannot do in the coming future given the broad wording of the new policy, and Jobs’ apparent statement that the policy doesn’t even apply.

If Apple wants to give different kinds of publishers different rules, they should give them a separate channel in iTunes, where partnerships are firmly established in inked agreements between publishers and Apple.

Why not create a separate store for magazine and serials publishers, just as Apple has done with book publishers in iBooks?

By giving publishers a separate place to play ball, Apple could also grant them access to an important resource: user data. The New York Times‘ David Carr points out that publishers are less concerned about the revenue split than they are about the difficulty of collecting user data with in-app subscriptions.

Apple only allows user data to be shared with the publisher if the user gives permission. When a customer chooses to subscribe to a publication, a message pops up saying, “The developer would like your name, e-mail, and zip code so they can send you messages about related products in accordance with their privacy policy.” Who would hit OK on that? Tracking user data is crucial for a business that relies heavily on ad targeting, but Apple’s privacy policy creates a high hurdle.

Keeping developers in the same arena as publishers while enforcing rules inconsistently creates an atmosphere of unfair play, and suddenly the App Store no longer feels like the “best deal going” for mobile apps.

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Nokia giving developers free E7 and Nokia WP7 handsets

Nokia’s fighting an uphill battle to retain its community of developers as it switches focus to Windows Phone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Tools from what was a joint Symbian / MeeGo smartphone strategy unified under the Qt development framework. As such, Espoo just notified its Launchpad members that they’ll be receiving about $1,000 in free hardware in the form of Nokia’s new flagship E7 QWERTY slider and a “Nokia WP7 device” just as soon as it’s available. Nokia’s also tossing in a few other incentives like free access to the next Nokia World / Nokia Developer Summit, three months free tech support for all Nokia technologies (limited to 10 tickets), a free User Experience evaluation for one app, business development assistance, and help publishing apps on the Ovi store. This is also great news for us as the chance of seeing leaked pics of that first Nokia WP7 device have just increased dramatically.

Nokia giving developers free E7 and Nokia WP7 handsets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP donates server to WebOS Internals, makes homebrew its boo

Palm’s always been pretty cozy with the homebrew community, and now, with a donation to WebOS Internals, HP’s showing that they’ve got love for hackers, too. Just in time for the lover’s holiday, HP announced plans to donate a ProLiant DL385 server to the independent developer’s resource — a gift worth $10,000 and packing 32GB of RAM and 8TB disk space. Considering all the new devices we saw at the webOS event this week, the added capacity comes at just the right time. We always thought diamonds were a nice gesture, but we suppose, in this case anyway, nothing says I love you like an HP ProLiant.

HP donates server to WebOS Internals, makes homebrew its boo originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google details low-level Renderscript API for Honeycomb

There’s no question that Honeycomb tablets like the Xoom are powerful pieces of hardware, and it looks like Google will be doing its best to ensure that developers are able to exploit as much of that power as possible. A big piece of that puzzle is the company’s Renderscript API for the OS, which it’s just now starting to detail in full. The big advantage there is that it’s a low-level API designed especially for developers who are “comfortable working closer to the metal,” which will let applications built with it (including games) take full advantage of the high-end GPUs and dual-core processors found in Honeycomb tablets. What’s more, while the API is just now being made public, it’s already been put to use in Honeycomb by Google itself — both the YouTube and Books apps, and the live wallpapers shipping with the first Honeycomb tablets were created with the help of it. Head on past the break for another quick example — a brute force physics simulation that involves 900 particles titling with the tablet — and look for Google to provide some additional technical information and sample code sometime soon.

Continue reading Google details low-level Renderscript API for Honeycomb

Google details low-level Renderscript API for Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development

Nokia’s been beating the Qt warpath for years after purchasing the developer framework from Trolltech back in January of 2008. In fact, Nokia just made the switch to Qt exclusively back in October in a sign of its unrelenting support for the unified development environment. That, like all previous Nokia strategies, is in for a big change today. While Qt will continue on as the development framework for Symbian and MeeGo, Microsoft will provide its free Windows Phone Developer Tools (Visual Studio 2010, Expression, Silverlight and the XNA Framework) to developers interested in developing for Nokia Windows Phones (get used to that phrase) while providing “guidance” to anyone wishing to port their apps to WP7. In other words, Qt will not be adapted for Windows Phone 7 APIs. Full letter after the break to what we imagine is a very disgruntled and previously loyal Nokia developer community.

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Nokia to developers: no Qt for Windows Phone development originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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webOS Enyo framework free to developers today, brings pixel density agnostic apps to phones, tablets and PC (video)

Development frameworks don’t make for exciting gadget news, but HP’s Enyo is kind of a big deal. It’s the little dealie that allows new webOS apps to stretch between vastly disparate screen resolutions — say, tablet and phone — and still work just fine, and since it’s based completely on web technologies, they can also run in a PC browser with no formal emulator or OS install required. While dev team lead Matthew McNulty pitched the browser functionality as a debugging boon, we’re starting to wonder if that’s how HP could bring webOS to PCs to start — rather than a dual-boot or a UI layer, it could simply make your favorite apps available in a web store. Sound like fun? HP says you can download the basic package right now for free if you’re a member of the webOS developer early access program, and start cracking on some apps of your very own. We’ll have video of an Enyo-powered app on PC in just a tad, so keep your eyes glued to this post.

Update: Video after the break!

Continue reading webOS Enyo framework free to developers today, brings pixel density agnostic apps to phones, tablets and PC (video)

webOS Enyo framework free to developers today, brings pixel density agnostic apps to phones, tablets and PC (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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