Wednesday evening in Vienna: the bloggers @digiom, @thesandworm, @karli, @i_am_fabs and @thp4 met with developers to mobilize their blogs with the help of the Ovi AppWizard (http://www.ovi.com/appwizard).
Within an hour (bloggers needed 15min :-)) you can convert any website with a feed using this web-based tool into a mobile App for Nokia smartphones. With http://promotions.ovi.com/omt you can also generate web banners to promote the download of your app.
The workshop was supported by:
Florian Angulanza, pro developer for Symbian, Qt, Java and Android www.utilo.eu
Claudia Poepperl and Michael Schneider from the award-winning app company www.adaffix.com
And Alexander Lamatsch from www.nokia.at
And because the tool and the idea is so cool, we do a competition around it:
The competition
Create an app from your blog with the Ovi app wizard and get the chance to win the brand new Nokia N8!
This is how the competition works:
- Create an app with the Ovi app wizard at http://www.ovi.com/appwizard
- Register and publish the app in Ovi Store.Post the name of the app, your name as the publisher and the link to the app in Ovi Store as a comment to this post or send the info to oviappwizard@ovi.com to be registered to the lottery.
- Promote your app as hard as you can. At http://promotions.ovi.com/omt you can create promotional banners for your app for free.
- Each download is one fortune in the lottery. Thus, the more downloads you achieve, the higher your chances to win.
- The winner is drawn among all participants in the challenge on November 19, 8.00 p.m. CET. The winner of the Nokia N8 will be contacted directly.*
Good luck!
* Resorting to the general courts of law is excluded, no cash out of prize.
The app gen works smoothly, from a technical point of view – I tried it myself, I’m not a fan of the general concept though: why create an app for every single blog? I don’t know about the current app situation for Symbian phones, but I’m sure some kind of RSS-reader is available.
But generally, I’d much rather use a mobile themes like WP-Touch (for Androids, iPhones and touch Nokias), WP-Mobile based on Carrington Core for oldskool phones plus WordPad for tablets. This current app hype will fade away very quickly – nothing against apps in general, but a website is website, wether used on a desktop, on a netbook or on a mobile. This is just like running a blog and offering installable software clients for Windows, Mac and Linux (that offer less functionality than the original site btw, e.g. commenting).
I understand that this is an easy way to increase the numbers of the app store, but like I said: from a blogger’s viewpoint, including as many potential visitors and devices as possible is very important – mobilizing your theme is a better option than offering apps for all popular mobile operating systems.
That being said, if you want to install my datenschmutz app (in German), it’s listed in the store:
http://store.ovi.com/content/35090
nice. but the best of all ovi blog apps is:
http://store.ovi.com/content/65220
Fully agree with u when it comes to content apps, like blogs. Generally also functional apps will lose importance as html5 gets more traction. Apps will be then important only when u need interaction with the phone functions that html5 cannot grant (lets c how the standard will advance).
Still, there are some advantages of apps in he long run:
1) shopping / browsing experience in the stores
2) build-in recommendation and “send-to-a-friend”
3) no URL typing needed, but a logo to access
My personal view is that we will see in the long run a lot of apps, that r just fancy logos on ur main menue or widgets running on the homescreen and if u open them they will lead u 2 a rich, device-agnostic and powerfull html5 page.
My Nokia – CTO, on that path: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJLptXE6DSM
BTW: Apps from the above mentioned Ovi App-date Workshop already published:
@thesandworm http://store.ovi.com/content/63384
@digiom http://store.ovi.com/content/63395
and http://store.ovi.com/content/63370 from Fabian Pimminger
Finally mine is publicly available too http://store.ovi.com/content/66888