Symbian published a 4rd installment of it’s Multi-Language Programming series. Notice Part 3 was written by no other than Filipe Andrade. (:

Multi-Language Programming - Part 4

This is the fourth and final paper in a series examining the possibilities of building Symbian OS applications by mixing multiple languages and runtime environments. In this paper we focus on Widgets, applications that use the Web Runtime (WRT). The Web Runtime is new to mobile but provides an environment similar to that of Apple OS X Dashboard Widgets or Windows Vista Gadgets. Widgets essentially use the web technologies of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript to provide a familiar environment for web designers and programmers. Widgets can be used to their full potential as thin clients for Web Services on the Internet. Download PDF

Previous articles in the series are:
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mGBL (mobile Game-Based Learning) is an academic open source project that offer a system for quickly building decision-based games in j2me. The project site is full with academic information and it’s clear the researchers are taking this project very seriously.

The project homepage describe it in these words:

Within the mobile Game-Based Learning project (mGBL) eleven partner organisations from Austria, Croatia, Great Britain, Italy, and Slovenia have joined forces to work on the development of a platform for the presentation of educational content in a playful and emotional way on mobile devices.

The biggest challenge within this project is to engage a diversity of audiences in the fields of career guidance, e-Health and e-Commerce in to the development of decision-making skills for use in critical situations. Building on the latest innovations in the field of m-learning (mobile learning) and on the latest research results from the field of didactics, new approaches to game-based learning are developed for use on mobile phones.

In addition you could also download progress reports and sample games.

(hat tip: Arjan from MGB)

There are a few limitations in the current version. For example, the screen size is set to a non-standard 176×192 resolution. "I’ve tried the HW scaled resolution of 176×208" writes David, the developer, in the project’s page. "but it was visually inacceptable (the NDS roto scaller simply discards some lines instead of making the pixel interpolation)".

In addition, MIDP 2.0 applications has better chance to run as there is no support yet for Nokia UI API.

Appearntly, David started the project a conversion of Torlus‘ Java4GBA - "I took Torlus’s Java port for GBA and modded it to work on NDS with DLDI". Ole later added the use of Pstros into the system, thus allowing conversion of MIDP J2ME apps as well.

Pstros is a project that allows your MIDP java code to run in J2SE. It’s not an emulator, it just compiles stright to standard Java. There is a similar project for Doja over here as well called Jade.

Quite an interesting project. If you guys manage to run your games on the DS post some screenshots on the forum!

CasualGaming.Biz had posted 3 new installments in their on-going series Casual Biz Models. The new articles cover:

Casual Biz Model 6 - Subscription

Casual Biz Model 7 - Mobile

Casual Biz Model 8 - Microtransactions

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Forum Nokia published a pack of Open C/C++ Plug-ins for S60 3rd Edition installer, which will provide developers with access to a comprehensive range of standard C/C++ libraries. Download here (41 MB).

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Symbian-Guru reports that firmware version v20.2.011 is finally available for the Nokia N95-3.

It adds Flash Lite 3 (which allows you to view flash video), WRT (which allows WRT widgets) but is still missing ASR (auto screen rotation) and UDP (User Data Preservation).

Start-up time should be improved as well as an over-all speed performance and memory usage. Camera should be grabbing images faster, too.

You can grab the update can be downloaded through the Nokia Software Updater which is part of you PC Suite. Have fun! 

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Apple released the iPhone SDK beta 4 which now includes Xcode IDE, iPhone simulator with Open GL ES support, Interface Builder, Instruments, frameworks and samples, compilers, and Shark analysis
tool.

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G700 and G900 deliver touchscreen and innovative organiser capabilities for a broad appeal

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Seems you can run Palm OS Garnet VM on your Nokia N-series N770, N800, or N810 tablet.

(via Engaget)

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Seems the scene is getting warmer for game developers lately. Hands-On Mobile had just announced today an Indie Developer Program which will "both recognise and promote the best independent developers of mobile games".

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