Inspirated

Fate has a curious sense of humor. After having 8 of my proposals rejected in past 3 years for Google Summer of Code, I had 2 of them selected in the same year. In GSoC terminology, I became a “duplicate” student. Now, the standard practice for such cases is that the administrators of both organizations interested in the student get together in a “deduplication” meeting and resolve the conflict. However, Maria Randazzo (the program administrator from the Ubuntu organization) was kind enough to ask my preference regarding the project I’d like to work upon.

This put me in a rather uneasy position as mentors from both organizations (Bryce Harrington from Ubuntu & Alexey Khoroshilov from The Linux Foundation) had been really helpful during the application process. In the end however, I chose Ubuntu since its proposal focused on Arsenal and Python which I found relatively more familiar than Alien and Perl. I had also already collaborated with Bryce for some Arsenal patches before so it was easier for me to get up-to-speed with the Ubuntu proposal.

The proposal itself is in fact publicly viewable at this link. Summarizing my feelings, I’ve never looked forward to a summer as much as this one.

“If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance code.” —Bern Williams

It’s fairly simple in PyS60 to get the sender’s details whenever a new SMS is received. However, if the sender has an entry in your address book these details translate to just the contact name. That way, if the contact has multiple numbers you have no idea which number was used to send the text. Here’s an ugly little workaround for this issue:

received-sms-number.py

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def message_received(id, box):
    box.sms_messages()
    sender = box.address(id)
 
    if sender[0] != '+' or sender[1:].isdigit() == False:
        # Try to find the sender's number from log.
        logged_sms = logs.sms(mode = 'in')[0]
 
        # To confirm that the log entry is the same one we're concerned
        # about, do some checks.
        if logged_sms['subject'] == sms_text[:64]:
            number = logged_sms['number']
            contacts_db = contacts.open()
            found_contact = contacts_db.find(number)
            if found_contact:
                title_match = True
                for token in sender.split():
                    if found_contact[0].title.find(token) == -1:
                        title_match = False
                if title_match:
                    sender = number
 
    print "SMS Received from: ", sender

You can use this little snippet of code to reply back to the sender even when there’s a matching entry in the contacts database. This in turn opens up a whole new range of interesting ideas for auto-responding applications.

While I would have sold my clothes, PS2 as well as my soul to get my hands on a N900, I couldn’t strike a practical deal and in the end had to settle for E71. Now, while E71 does not ooze s** by running a full-fledged Linux distro it still does a pretty good job of running Symbian. The specs are fun, the keypad is great and the build quality is nothing but ergonomic love.

After completing 71 days of tinkering with the new phone, I have settled on the choice of apps which would become an integral part of my digital life. I’m listing the top ten here, but the arrangement is in no way meant to be indicative as an absolute index of application quality. These are just the ones that I found useful.

10. ScreenSnap — Honorary Mention

It would be a bit unfair to not list the very application that powers the visual aspects of this post. So here we are with the self-referential snap:

9. SmsOne — Hassle-Free Flash SMS

“Flash” texts — the ones which always instantly show up on the recipient’s cell and are not saved in the inbox unless specifically made to — have always been a speciality of applications with poor interfaces as well as poorer integration with the rest of the phone. SmsOne, on the other hand, has a simple interface with excellent phonebook integration for making the job as simple as possible.

8. Mobipocket MobiReader — eBooks Made Fun

Reading a large PDF file on your E71 is indeed possible, but it takes away any fun whatsoever by forcing you to deal with redundant scrolling and weird font sizes. MobiReader combined with the desktop software Calibre is the ultimate eBook reading experience on Symbian phones.

7. Gravity — Pulling Tweets Consistently

The one word for summarizing Gravity would be: slick. Of all the Twitter applications for Symbian — and there are quite a lot — Gravity is the most organized, reliable and pretty-looking competitor around.

6. PuTTY — That Insane Power in Your Hands

I’m lying down in my bedroom and I want to play this song on the speakers in my drawing room. I’m in my university and I want to start this download on my laptop which is unfortunately back at home. I’m in another city and I want to see the contents of this file which is in my home PC.

I can. Because I have that command-line access at my fingertips:

5. mIRGGI — IRC Never Dies

Open-source — being the distributive collaboration that it is — depends heavily on mailing lists and IRC channels for communication. For the latter, mIRGGI works flawlessly. In fact, you can even do fancy stuff like using different network connections for different channels.

4. Python — “It’s …”

For all the comparisons made over the years between Perl and line-noise, Symbian C++ easily beats both by a mile. Which is why your choices are rather limited if you want to program for Nokia phones while preserving your sanity at the same time. Your best bet is to go for Maemo. Unfortunately, that ain’t exactly an affordable option for everyone. The other way is to use PyS60 rely on that programming language which makes every other alternative pine for the fjords.

3. MSDict Viewer — Dictionaries which Help

A dictionary is one of the least useful things you can carry around. Even with one of them installed on your phone, they rarely get used. Similarly, the pronunciation guides used in those dictionaries are cryptic symbols at best. Add the ability of audio pronunciations and you suddenly have a lovely app referring which almost becomes an addiction.

2. Google Maps — Never Lose Yourself

For people who’re not especially good with directions, there couldn’t have ever been a better solution:

1. Opera Mobile — Synonym for Excellence

Even if this list is tailored more to my requirement, get some hundred people to make similar ones and Opera will be the topper in majority of the rankings. Opera bridges that gap between mobile browsing and real browsing and is one of those applications which epitomize how software should be engineered.