Forum Nokia has launched Problem of the Month, a competition for S60 developers. This month’s problem: Design and implement a framework that unifies S60 runtimes. The goal is the intercommunication of runtimes, such as Symbian C++, Java, Flash, Python, and Web Runtimes. With this kind of runtime interaction, it is possible to access new features and reuse existing solutions in new and exciting ways.

To enter, provide your framework implementation and at least one working example of the runtime’s internetworking. If you don’t have time to implement all the necessary parts, at least present your ideas and planned design to score more points in the contest.

Solve the S60 problem of the month; the deadline is February 15.

Good news for developers, who use to work with open-source IDEs NetBeans and Eclipse. The latest Nokia Series 40 and S60 SDKs now supports integrations with both of IDEs. Combined with Nokia PC Suite and a Series 40 or S60 SDK, NetBeans offers an easy route to mobilizing your Java skills.

Download NetBeans and the NetBeans Mobility Pack here (http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/java/netbeans.html?cp-1207A&entry=NetBeansArticle3CTA).

When software giant Oracle Corporation acquired Sleepycat Software last year, company officials knew they were also gaining a product — Sleepycat’s Berkeley DB — that would be perfect for mobile devices running Symbian OS. But Oracle developers knew that porting Berkeley DB’s thousands of lines of C code to a new OS could be a challenge. The solution came from Nokia’s Open C plug-in for the S60 3rd Edition SDK. By providing a standard interface with pthreads and key POSIX functions, the Nokia kit saved Oracle about one-third of porting development effort. In fact, thanks to Nokia’s Open C plug-in, Oracle only needed to redesign fewer than 1,000 lines of code, and the entire porting process took only 10 man-days. The result: Berkeley DB’s simple key-value structure can now be used for a wide range of S60 applications, such as a message store for SMS, MMS, and mails; a contact or calendar database; and a multimedia store.
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Developers will soon be able to develop applications that comply with the Mobile Operational Management JSR 232 standard (OSGi) and use SNAP Mobile in less-than-optimum networks, according to two announcements made by Nokia at JavaOne 2007.

Nokia is collaborating with Sprint to develop the JSR 232 Mobile Operational Management specification. Sprint says it will use OSGi technology in advanced 3G environments and consider the technology for future 4G environments. Separately, developers can expect more robust handling of networks that have less-than-optimum performance from the forthcoming SNAP Mobile SDK 1.4. The release is scheduled for the second quarter. The SNAP Mobile SDK is a suite of free developer tools, documentation, and sample code for creating connected Java mobile games that run on the SNAP Mobile platform; this latest update is backward-compatible with previous SDK releases.

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Developers can download the new Open C SDK Plug-in for S60 to add POSIX, OpenSSL, and other libraries to their S60 development environments. The SDK easily extends the Carbide.c++ IDE, and is compatible with other environments, as well. Open C for S60 on Symbian will make porting Linux and other open source projects to Nokia S60 devices easier than ever. Because Open C is based on popular open-source projects, it offers a fast, flexible, and familiar development environment that is easier to learn than native Symbian C++.

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