At first, I was not much interested, as TV series were never my cup of tea but once I watched action scenes of 3rd season’s premiere I was quite amazed and got interested. And so the journey began. Quickly, we grabbed all season-1 and season-2 episodes form DC++. Initially, I decided that we (we means Me, Divakar & Rohit as they were re-watching) will watch one episode a day because otherwise 35 episodes will not last more than 2 days. This went fine for few days and with every episode the Chuck-Sarah chemistry kept getting better. Chuck as a show had everything I needed, action, comedy, geek references, an under-achieved nerd and a sexy, kick-ass heroine! And with all this it started getting over my mind and therefore I decided to finish first two seasons. It was the day before Indian Republic Day, I started my Chuck marathon watching 28 episodes at a stretch. Finishing season-2 was a big relief. Chuck & Sarah were almost together and Chuck had Intersect 2.0! But then began the hard part that is waiting for every episode for a week and to make it even worse, was the storyline of first 8 episodes of season-3 but charm of Chuck for me was such that downloading & watching a new episode became more important for me than even my exams. Tuesdays of my 6th, 7th & 8th semester of engineering got more busy and interesting.

My fascination for Chuck continued even after college. Though from Tuesday, my favorite day shifted to Saturday because of season-5 airing change and watching alone without friends became lesser fun. Even after 2 months I still feel how can someone stop such an amazing series and a bunch of boring and monotonous series air for a dozen of seasons. The problem with low viewership of Chuck, IMO, was that it was too good a show and it was meant for geekish people who spend less time watching television and more in front of computer screens. Though, it has its shortcomings and after finishing whole series I can point out many loopholes in the storyline and the mythology of the series but I can proudly say that Chuck has given me best 96*45 minutes of entertainment. Even today whenever I feel a little low I start watching one of Chuck episode. I can’t express what I loved the most about it, there are lot of things actually, but performances by Yvonne Strahovski & Zachary Levi are worth mentioning. The chemistry between their characters was awesome.

Although its disappointing that Chuck is over now and I miss this show a lot but atleast I do have all those five seasons with me! And I’m gonna get a Chuck t-shirt printed for myself soon!

Will miss you Chuck forever!

To manage work I asked my sister to focus on QML GUI as it is little easier to learn than Qt. I got going with developing Qt API for corresponding eBay APIs. As eBay provides XML response which is little similar to Flickr API response so I tried to built my APIs referring QtFlickr API which I use for FlickrUp. For now, I’m naming my eBay API QtEbay beacuse of its similarity with QtFlickr.

Difficulties

Problem with eBay API is that its a hell lot confusing. There are a number of sets – Shopping, Finding, Trading, Merchandising and they give XML response in different formats. And one cannot make a mobile app using only one of the above set of API. Also, response is not that well organized. There is new XML element for every data which is little difficult to parse. Parsing data becomes much more difficult when there are different number of multiple entries of a XML element for a set of items. Like here,
<title>Harry Potter / Hogwarts ULTIMATE COLLECTORS Package! Letter,Tags,Ticket,Yule,Map</title>
<globalId>EBAY-GB</globalId>
<primaryCategory>
<categoryName>Harry Potter</categoryName>
</primaryCategory>
<paymentMethod>MOCC</paymentMethod>
<paymentMethod>PayPal</paymentMethod>
<paymentMethod>PersonalCheck</paymentMethod>
<autoPay>false</autoPay>
<postalCode>DN226BL</postalCode>
<location>United Kingdom</location>
<country>GB</country>
<shippingInfo>
<shippingServiceCost currencyId="USD">6.34</shippingServiceCost>
<shippingType>Flat</shippingType>
<expeditedShipping>false</expeditedShipping>
<oneDayShippingAvailable>false</oneDayShippingAvailable>
<handlingTime>1</handlingTime>
<shipToLocations>US</shipToLocations>
<shipToLocations>CA</shipToLocations>
<shipToLocations>AU</shipToLocations>
<shipToLocations>JP</shipToLocations>
<shipToLocations>Europe</shipToLocations>
</shippingInfo>
<sellingStatus>
<currentPrice currencyId="GBP">24.99</currentPrice>
<convertedCurrentPrice currencyId="USD">39.71</convertedCurrentPrice>
<sellingState>Active</sellingState>
<timeLeft>P19DT20H33M14S</timeLeft>
</sellingStatus>
<conditionDisplayName>New</conditionDisplayName>
</condition>
<isMultiVariationListing>false</isMultiVariationListing>
</item>
<item>
<title>Nokia 5310 XpressMusic - Red (T-Mobile) Cellular Phone NEVER USED T-Mobile</title>
<globalId>EBAY-US</globalId>
<primaryCategory>
<categoryName>Cell Phones &amp; Smartphones</categoryName>
</primaryCategory>
<productId type="ReferenceID">99986195</productId>
<paymentMethod>PayPal</paymentMethod>
<autoPay>false</autoPay>
<postalCode>36117</postalCode>
<location>Montgomery,AL,USA</location>
<country>US</country>
<shippingInfo>
<shippingServiceCost currencyId="USD">12.0</shippingServiceCost>
<shippingType>Flat</shippingType>
<expeditedShipping>false</expeditedShipping>
<oneDayShippingAvailable>false</oneDayShippingAvailable>
<handlingTime>2</handlingTime>
<shipToLocations>US</shipToLocations>
</shippingInfo>
<sellingStatus>
<currentPrice currencyId="USD">56.0</currentPrice>
<convertedCurrentPrice currencyId="USD">56.0</convertedCurrentPrice>
<bidCount>25</bidCount>
<sellingState>Active</sellingState>
<timeLeft>P0DT0H8M53S</timeLeft>
</sellingStatus>
<condition>
<conditionId>3000</conditionId>
<conditionDisplayName>Used</conditionDisplayName>
</condition>
</item>

Here shipToLocations element vary for different entries it is difficult for me to parse with my current method. Wish they had separated location with comma and returned with a single entry.

Progress

Despite some difficulties and hiccups, I managed to get Shopping, Trading, Finding & Merchandising APIs with a lot of help from eBay’s developer API test tool. And after giving some demos to my sister, she was able make QML GUI for our prototype. This is what we were able to achieve:

We tried to make a simple design for the application following Symbian guidelines to submit it for the contest, similar to Nokia store app.

We are aiming for a simple app with feature of showing current top items, search, categories, user data addition & removal of items into user watchlist. Hopefully we will be able to complete the application with desired goals up to final date submission for the contest.

With FlickrUp 2.1.0, we can browse photostream, photosets, galleries & favorites of any user whose photo we are seeing either though search or in explore page.

As lists was not much fun for browsing photos so I also added grid view for every view. User can switch to list to grid or grid to list from a button row present in the toolbar. Default view can be set from settings.

Caching gallery images was taking a lot of time so I have tried to make some improvements to that and it has worked. I tried with ~3gb images and earlier it was taking nearly 25mins to cache on first run and ~5mins to show on next run. Now it shows first 50 images in <45secs and more images(next 50) are loaded every time user reaches at the end of list/grid.

I have also tried to add some gestures in this version. You can try swiping an item in list view left or right. But swipe has to be made after holding the press for a moment because it will not work otherwise as gesture conflicts with parent QML ListView item. In short, it needs a little practice.

There are also some graphical changes to it. Added a new splash screen for E6 users and a colorful new icon to reflect amount of features available.

There is also the fix for Belle upload problem. Hopefully, it will soon pass QA process and will be available on Nokia Store.

With these upgrades FlickrUp has become a better application but it still needs some improvements(a lot!). In future, I’m planning to add groups & activity support to it. Geo data is also another distant goal. One thing that I really want for next version is customizing size of images in grid view because it is difficult to get the feel of photo in 75x75px thumbnail especially in MeeGo with hi-res.

Below are some screen shots for new version

After a wait of almost an year, practically over a month, Nokia India finally forwarded Nokia Lumia 800 to my home address. It came through very NOT (atleast for me) so reliable courier carrier TNT.

Whats good..

For me, it was hard to found but still,

Packaging – Its a kind of funny but I loved the Nokia packaging for this one. Got 4 different Nokia phones within the span of last 1 year but this one has something cool in it.

Hardware Design – Always wanted a Nokia N9 ever since it was announced so getting a similar looking device is really great.

Some aspects of UI – Was following Windows Phone 7 UI videos on YouTube for while and I kind of liked it but using it was not so much fun as watching it in videos. But the things that I loved about it are: colors – amazing they are, transitions – they are so much cool, even cooler to an extent to what I have seen with QML.

Camera – Camera is much better than what I had on my Nokia N950. Better quality pictures and great camera app atleast in terms of seeing recently captured images.

Whats bad…

I can write a whole essay on it but unfortunately I’m not yet able to use this device in any way,

Micro SIM – I don’t know whom to blame for this but it made difficult for me switch SIM from my other phones.

Missing IP Support – Unable to set IP made it impossible for me to run internet on this device (For some reasons my ISP only runs internet when I set the secondary DNS). Even my Nokia N85 had this 2 years back.

Missing Mass Storage Support – Why the there is no Mass Storage Feature? Just to transfer a single song I have to download a useless ~400mb of software/updates.

No Bluetooth file transfer – No mass storage, no Bluetooth file transfer, this device can’t be used to transfer media unless you have Vuze installed or a good mobile internet.

Lack of options in status bar – Maybe this because I didn’t had a SIM on the device but I was not able get any menus pop-up on clicking status bar, it was strange for me!

No front camera – Seriously, I didn”t had any idea that Lumia 800 is not having front camera. Disappointing for a phone with this price tag!

No gestures – This thing doesn’t wake up on double tap which make it boring for me!

Finally…

I have been using Nokia N950 for a while now and at present it is really difficult for me to use any new phone. A lot of time I start tapping or swiping on my other phones and only to realize later that they don’t have MeeGo in them. I really had high expectations with Windows Phone 7 but all that have turned into disappointments within few days. This Lumia thing is more of a collectible for me till now. As I’m writing this post it has been over a day since I had even touched it!

For a phone priced at INR 29k in India, this thing doesn’t worth it. It lacks simple features which a INR 10k will be having. OS is so temperamental that it makes Symbian look a premier one. And I can say this proudly I will buy a Symbian phone over a WP7 any day! Nokia should stop cheating its customers with devices like these priced so high. Else we can buy a much better Android phone for half of its price with only problem that it will not have a Nokia branding and its trust…

FU Microsoft for f*cking with a brand which I loved once!

It took a while to get going with its source code but finally I made my way to CutePress. As we have limited fuctionalities with XML-RPC methods so can’t do much addition but I tried to simplify uploading images for adding into posts. I was not able to add stats feature in it as I was not able to use stats feature in original application as well. Hopefully, will be adding this in future and this will be just a start.

It has some issues with current release and you can find them ad more here: CutePress

I didn’t want to merge my code with WP for Nokia source right now as I don’t feel my code qualifies to be merge anywhere. IMHO its not that well written and my design sucks! Hopefully, in future it will be merged! For time being my code can be found here http://code.google.com/p/cutepress/

You can download it here:

- Fixed web browser: http://store.ovi.com/content/231403
- Nokia mobile browser: http://store.ovi.mobi/content/231403

Know more about CutePress

After rewriting UI in QML, the app is looking lot cooler. Loved the new components available for symbian and meego in Qt Quick 1.0 but still missing some major components like PinchArea and something similar to canvas for drawing. Looking forward to new releases for more interesting components!

Hopefully, this will be my first of many apps on Nokia store!

FlickrUp Downloads:
- Fixed web browser: http://store.ovi.com/content/212824
- Nokia mobile browser: http://store.ovi.mobi/content/212824

http://forum.meego.com/showpost.php?p=24933&postcount=14

Here, I got the idea what LandscapeEnabler is actually doing. I did ssh to my device and tried changing meegotouchhome.css file by setting:

MainWindowStyle{
  locked-orientation: "portrait";
}

but it didn’t worked and I was getting error: Permission denied. Some more searching and I found that “develsh” command can do the trick and it did. So, finally I disabled landscape mode on my N950!

What I did:

ssh root@localhost
Password: rootme
develsh cd /usr/share/themes/blanco/meegotouch/
rm -fr meegotouchhome /sbin/initctl
restart xsession/mthome

Hopefully, Nokia will remove this glitch in coming firmware updates and we will be able to use landscape orientation on homescreen and other apps.