Star app hits Ovi
Prem Chand, general manager of Nokia, EA speaks at the event.Photo: STAR
Since the inception of smartphone revolution, mobile widgets became one of its most crucial tools to add versatility. Mobile widgets are applications that can be installed on mobile phones or mobile devices to add useful functionality to the device. Mobile widgets provide various functions that make life a lot easier. Nokia, world's leading mobile handset manufacturer, has a strategic business unit -- Ovi store that has hundreds of widgets of various kinds. Some of them are free and some are paid applications. Apart from widgets, the store offers a range of contents including applications, games, videos, podcasts, location-based services and personalised contents. Nokia on Wednesday, in association with The Daily Star launched a mobile news application -- The Daily Star Widget, the first of its kind in the Southeast and Asia Pacific region. Prem Chand, general manager of Nokia Emerging Asia and Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star officially inaugurated the app at an event. "Users can download and install The Daily Star Widget from Ovi Store on their Nokia smaprtphones," said Sajid Rizwan Matin, acting head of marketing, Nokia Emerging Asia at the event. "After installation readers will get to choose their favourite news category from 12 categories to be displayed on the home screen of the app that includes top news, business, sports, entertainment etc," said Nafid Imran Ahmed, IT strategist and in-charge, online edition and IT page during a presentation. "The widget also offers live stock and weather updates along with a photo gallery," he added. JadeWits Limited, a local software company developed the widget along with The Daily Star and Nokia. Jamil Ahmed, director of technical and development division of JadeWits Limited, said the company is focusing more on mobile application development recently due to the increasing demand in the industry. "Since the initiation of Web Runtime (WRT) platform, we were looking for an opportunity to develop an application based on it. The Daily Star and Nokia provided us the opportunity", said Jamil. "We observed that developing applications on Nokia platform is quite simple and we must thank Forum Nokia, a community of developers related to development of Nokia applications, for their help on developing the widget," said Jamil. He said local developers may eye mobile app development as this is going to be the next big thing in the industry. Jamil also cautioned that before installing it, users should update their device to latest operating system version through 'Device Update' option, in order to get best output of the widget. There might be a chance that the widget might not perform well if the device has not been updated. The application will presently work on Nokia smartphones running Symbian 3 and series 60-third edition OS models such as N8, N97, N97 mini, X6, C3, E72, 5800 and so on primarily. The Daily Star and Nokia are now working together to offer the service for cheaper series 40 devices which should be available by the end of the year.
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