Nokia Premium Developer Program for Asha – A Great Opportunity

 Hi,

 Here comes a great opportunity for developers: If you are having only two qualifying mobile applications published in any of the official store(e.g., Nokia Store, Windows Phone Store, Google Play, BlackBerry World, Apple App Store), then you can be a part of the Nokia Premium Developer Program for Asha.  This program has number of benefits including a free Nokia Asha 310 device, $500 (USD) in Nokia Ad Exchange (NAX) credits for use in creating external ad campaigns, free tech support tickets etc. I must say it’s a great opportunity for mobile application developers because you can target 675 million (and increasing) phones by targeting Nokia Asha platform.

After reading about this opportunity, I instantly sent my registration request which get approved in 24 hours and I received the Nokia Asha 310 device in a week. The Nokia Asha platform provides a great UX and one can develop applications for Asha phones using Nokia Java SDK or Nokia Web Tools.

I am always interested in trying new development tools especially the cross-platform ones. That’s why, I chose to play with MoSync SDK which is a free, open-source & cross-platform development tool with a support for Nokia Asha (JavaME) phones. It provides a rich cross-platform IDE with a C/C++ foundation and provides a large number of APIs that can help developers in building cross-platform applications easily. I gave it a go and found that JavaME applications developed using MoSync worked really well on Nokia Asha phones.

‘Blox Run’ is the game which I ported from Nokia Anna/Belle phone to Nokia Asha (JavaME) platform using MoSync. This game has a pretty simple game engine implementation which took me only two days to port it to MoSync. For graphics part, I use to create vector graphics using Adobe Flash or Adobe Illustrator which can be easily ported to lower or higher resolution phones by simply resizing them. That’s why, it took me only few hours to regenerate all the graphics for Asha phones having resolution of 240×400. Just add one more day to it for testing & optimization, so, in total four days my porting process was completed. If you want to try out the game, it is published in the Nokia Store.

At the end, I also like to mention that I told one of my fellow ‘Murtaza Ashraf’ (a Founder and CEO of Ioptime) about this program and now, he is having his own Nokia Asha phone (sent by this program). Moreover, I actually get impressed by the UX and performance of Asha Phones and that’s why, I decided to do more experiments soon. Stay Tuned!

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

“Tangle Craze” and “Blox Run” is now available on Windows Phone Marketplace

Hi,

Last year, i started working on Windows Phone platform and here you go, i just recently ported two of my titles from Qt to Silvelright (C#) and made them available on Windows Phone Marketplace.

Tangle Craze :

Description :

Tangle Craze, is an entertaining and addictive arcade-puzzle game.

Objective :

You have to take the glowing ball to the end of each level by overcoming a series of obstacles.

You need to apply your control skills to beat this game. So, are you ready… ?

It features :

* Intuitive gameplay

* Cute Graphics

* Smooth Animations

* Sound Effects

Download :

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-PK/store/app/tangle-craze/69c0e979-5177-482e-8ea6-32b6f1b49842

Blox Run :

Description :

Blox Run, is an entertaining, addictive and very colorful game. It features :

* Intuitive and Colorful game-play

* Cute Graphics & Animations

* Sound Effects

Download :

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-pk/store/app/blox-run/9962d0a3-930e-4fb3-a414-09ce68a73d1e

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

“Blox Run” is now available on BlackBerry World for FREE

Hi,

I was a part of a BlackBerry Qt App Porting Program in which i ported one of my QML game to BlackBerry 10 platform using BB10 Native SDK. I have to re-write a very small portion of code related to the UI as BB 10 has a relatively high resolution as compared to Symbian/MeeGo phones.

Description :

Blox Run, is an entertaining, addictive and very colorful game. It features :

* Intuitive and Colorful game-play

* Cute Graphics

* Smooth Animations

* Sound Effects

Download :

http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/22531883/

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

Porting Qt Applications to BlackBerry 10 Platform

Hi,

I played with BlackBerry 10 Alpha Device for quite sometime and as a result of it, i ported one of my Qt Symbian Application written in QML/JS to BlackBerry 10 platform.

The purpose of writing this article is to provide an easy approach to port Qt Applications written in QML/JS to BlackBerry 10 platform and a walk-through to publish your contents to BlackBerry World :

Setting up a Development Environment

Please, read the following articles that talks about downloading BlackBerry Native SDK, setting up simulator, getting signing keys and testing on real device.

http://n4bb.com/absolute-beginners-guide-to-developing-a-blackberry-10-app-part-1/

http://n4bb.com/absolute-beginners-guide-to-developing-a-blackberry-10-app-part-2/

Note: If you are interested in using Qt Creator for BlackBerry 10 development, you can read the following article:

http://qt-project.org/wiki/Qt-Creator-with-BlackBerry-10

However, Qt Creator is not mandatory for porting your application.

Porting QML application to BlackBerry 10

Follow these steps to port your QML/JS code to BlackBerry 10 platform:

1- Create a new Cascades Project (New->BlackBerry Project->Cascades).

2- Copy qmlapplicationviewer.cpp and qmlapplicationviewer.h (from your Qt Project which you are going to port) to <BlackBerry NDK Workspace>\<Your Cascades Project>\src .

3- Replace your <BlackBerry NDK Workspace>\<Your Cascades Project>\main.cpp with this code :

#include<QtGui/QApplication>

#include “qmlapplicationviewer.h”

Q_DECL_EXPORT int main(int argc, char **argv)

{    QApplication app(argc, argv);

QmlApplicationViewer viewer;

viewer.setMainQmlFile(“app/native/assets/main.qml”);

viewer.showFullScreen();

return app.exec();

}

4-  Copy all QML files from your Qt Project i.e. <Qt Workspace>\<Your Project>\qml\<Your Project Name>\*.* to <BlackBerry NDK Workspace>\<Your Cascades Project>\assets .

5-  That’s it. Now, you are ready to build and run your project.

Tweaking your Qt Application

Your code will work fine on BlackBerry 10 but you have to work on graphics part as there is a difference in resolution of BB10 devices and MeeGo/Symbian devices:

BlackBerry 10 full touch devices: 720×1280

BlackBerry 10 keyboard devices: 720×720

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices: 768×1280

Please, read the following article for better understanding of device resolution:

https://developer.blackberry.com/cascades/documentation/ui/resolution/

BlackBerry 10 full touch icon size is 114×114 and for Playbook icon size is 86×86.

Please, read the following article for better understanding of icon size/type:

https://developer.blackberry.com/design/bb10/application_icons.html

Packaging and Distributing your BB10 application to BlackBerry World

Once you are ready to deploy your application, open bar-descriptor.xml which is located in your <BlackBerry NDK Workspace>\<Your Cascades Project>\ in QNX IDE.

Set all the fields in bar-descriptor.xml i.e. Package Name, Package Version, Package Build ID, Author and Author ID (which can be set automatically by clicking “Set from Debug Token”).

To Package your application in .bar file, you have to build your project with “Device-Release” target first and then simply click “Export Release Build” from bar-descriptor.xml to create .bar file. The packaged .bar file will be found in < BlackBerry NDK Workspace>\<Your Cascades Project>\arm\o.le-v7\<Your App Name_version>.bar

To publish this .bar application file, you need to register at Vendor Portal for BlackBerry World:

https://appworld.blackberry.com/isvportal/login_input.do

Once you get registered, you are ready to put all the details of your app and submit it to BlackBerry World QA.

Hope it helps..

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

Happy New Year to all the readers & end-users

Hi,

Thanks you guys for being a part of my life. I hope all of you have a happy and prosperous time this year.

Stay Blessed, Happy New Year.

Those of you who are interested in our “Moments of 2012″. Here you go:

http://www.sajisoft.com/happynewyear/

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

Nokia Premium Developer Program is a Great Deal for Windows Phone developers

I just like to share this good news with those who didn’t hear about it. Here are the details :

Nokia Premium Developer Program

Nokia wants to help you get a good start with Windows Phone development, and we’ve put together a package to do just that – the Nokia Premium Developer Program. For just $99 (USD), you’ll be eligible for up to $1500 (USD) worth of benefits and services to enhance your Windows Phone development experience.

Windows Phone Dev Center
One year of Windows Phone Developer Center membership. A $99 (USD) retail value.

Telerik RadControls
A free license for Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone. A $99 (USD) retail value.

Buddy.com Cloud APIs
Up to 12 months’ worth of access to up to 1 million API calls per month with Buddy’s cloud APIs during your membership. Up to a $1200 (USD) retail value.

Tech Support
2 Nokia Tech Support tickets. A $198 (USD) value.

Source : https://www.developer.nokia.com/Developer_Programs/Premium_program.xhtml

I registered myself for this program, today and hopefully, one of my Windows Phone application is hitting the Windows Phone marketplace before the end of this year.

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum

“Blox Run” hits the Nokia Store

We just released a new colorful title “Blox Run” for Symbian 5th and Symbian^3 phones.

Description :

Blox Run, is an entertaining, addictive and very colorful game.

It features :
* Intuitive and Colorful game-play
* 15 levels of entertainment
* Cute Graphics
* Smooth Animations
* Sound Effects

Screenshots : 

Compatibility :

-  All Nokia Symbian 5th & Symbian^3 (Anna/Belle) phones

Download : 

http://store.ovi.com/content/307299 (Symbian 5th & Symbian^3 version)

Best Regards,

Sajid Ali Anjum