Psiloc Official Blog

New Psiloc HQ

Kacper Sulisz, Product Manager — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Aren't we all lucky here at Psiloc!

This week marks a big day in our company's history.

We have moved to a new headquarters. The new office is located in the strict city center, in a A-class office building located at the XII floor of the Eqator Building at the exact address:
Al. Jerozolimskie 94
Warsaw, Poland

The post code is 00-807 in case you might need it by any chance.

You can see it on Google maps here

You can check out the collection of photos from the new HQ below.

GSync has died, Long Live XSync

Kacper Sulisz, Product Manager — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:00:00 GMT

As of today the 30th of June we are introducing a makeover of one of our products, the famous GSync. Psiloc's new child takes the name of XSync.

XSync becomes GSync to infinity, a universal tool for archiving all your SMS and MMS messages to any of your e-mail accounts.

XSync can sync your messages to any e-mail account supporting SMTP (currently most e-mail providers support this technology). The most popular accounts (that is GMail, AOL, Hotmail and MSN) have predefined settings, so it's easier to use them just after switching the application on.

You can download a brand new trial copy from our shop.

Never lose those messages again!

MobileMonday Poland

Jakub Lipiński, CTO — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Psiloc as one of the Polish mobile market pioneers is co-founding the MobileMonday events in Poland, known simply as the MobileMonday Poland. We strongly believe this will of benefit to the whole of the mobile industry.

Just as a quick note, the first ever MobileMonday Poland is taking place today, the 26th of May. If you happen to be in Warsaw do drop by! We're starting at 6 pm at the Melodia Club on Nowy Swiat Street. You can refer to this blog as an invitation at the entrance.

See you there!

The road to Connect

Łukasz Grabiec, Senior Software Developer — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Nokia phones are known for their user friendliness, at least that's what everyone is convinced. However things have changed a bit since they were last redesigned and the S60 was created in a differernt reality than we have now. One of the things that has been lacking considerable improvement, is the way we connect to the Internet on those devices. With the Internet nowadays being everywhere, and with the users increasingly needing access to the Internet on the go, to check their e-mail, their favourite websites, the RSS reader, to make a post on their blogs, or to check what their friends are up to on their social networks, the connectivity becomes a must. Whether it's WiFi, HSPDA, UMTS or the crawling EDGE, Nokia manages to squeeze them all into those shiny new devices, however it forgets about bundling it all with some ease of use and user experience. Yes, the connection is established in a snap on the S60 devices, yes, the connection is stable, but it's a bit awkward to get it set up in all those applications. You need to actually know which access point you need to use, and the phone usually comes with several of those, all of them with some hi-tech names. Besides that, you additionally need to know which ones are WiFi access points and how to define them, if you don't want to toss all that money on Internet access.

Now up till some time ago, everyone was pretty content with the state of things, judging that, if you want to use advanced technologies, you need to have at least the basic knowledge of what you are doing, so everybody went by with this, and took it for granted. Up until one device shook the industry upside-down. The idea behind it when it commes to connectivity was, that it really shouldn't be the users concern which access point is the optimal at the moment, nor was the user expected to know which WiFi is in range at the moment and which one has the strongest signal. The users should not be bothered with switching the access points whenever they leave their houses or workplaces. The connectivity on the S60 could use some improvement and Psiloc thought this is exactly the job for it, using this opportunity to create "Psiloc Connect".

Psiloc Connect is the application that needed a proof of concept before we engaged in it. After some time when we were almost certain that this could really work, we started making some buzz to prepare it's launch. That's how Psiloc What? was born, which by itself is a topic for another post. Since the functionality build into Psiloc Connect is not what the platform was designed in mind for, some really heavy testing was required. The testing phase took a lot of time, and we experienced some unexpected hick ups. In the end though, we did manage to get everything ironed out.

So how did we go about it technically? Well the road there wasn't all paved with roses, but in a life of a software developer, you know that nothing is. Calling rarely ever used methods, finding workarounds for simple stuff, getting those internal modules to work as required, it was a journey to the moon and back! Sometimes days had gone past without any progress, but then you put that extra flag in there and it all starts working again!

The Connect engine is really made of two separate entities, an agent working in the esock/nifman system process, which is responsible for instantiating the connection. It's there asleep most of the time, up until the point the user chooses the "Psiloc Connect" access point. The second module is the application's daemon, it's responsible for searching your surroundings for WiFi access points and picking the optimal one, if none are found, it'll use the 3G/GSM network, that is if you want it to do that. It then hands over the correct settings to the Psiloc Connect access point, and off you go!

iQuickBlock for iPhone

Kamil Trzciński, Software Developer — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:00:00 GMT

iQuickBlock is a simple, intuitive yet extremely addictive iPhone game. It has been developed in a few hours of programming time during the Newest Mobile Technologies Lab at the Warsaw Technical University. It is one of the first Polish iPhone applications, and to our knowledge the very first Polish game written for this device. It has reached up to this day an astonishing 82331 (still counting) of downloads!

This might be even more surprising if you consider that the game was written specifically for the needs of explaining Objective-C and iPhone Dev to other BRAMA members. The total development time was only 6 hours, using the Cygwin iPhone Toolchain and Notepad++. The testing phase using WinSCP and PuTTY included.

From the technical side all the rendering is being carried out using the UIImageView, whose state is refreshed several times (on the order of tens) per second. The smooth graphics rendering was left to the hardware acceleration, it handled it with astonishing grace. Having some experience in GUI coding, I found the iPhone "way of doing things" much simpler than for example the S60 AVKON.

For example, popping up a dialogue asking for the player name is just a matter of the following few lines:


NSArray *buttons = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"OK", nil];

UIAlertSheet *alertSheet = [[UIAlertSheet alloc] initWithTitle:@"Game over" buttons:buttons defaultButtonIndex:1 delegate:self context:self];

[alertSheet setBodyText:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"Your time is %.1f second(s)", m_gameTime]];

[alertSheet addTextFieldWithValue:nil label:@"Your name"];

[alertSheet popupAlertAnimated:YES];

The same is true for the iPhone smooth transition effects, using the UITransitionView class:


typedef enum {  

UITransitionShiftImmediate = 0,

UITransitionShiftLeft = 1,

UITransitionShiftRight = 2,

UITransitionShiftUp = 3,

UITransitionFade = 6,

UITransitionShiftDown = 7

 } UITransitionStyle;

[m_transitionView transition:UITransitionFade toView:m_menuView];

This seems unbelievably straightforward if you consider the visual effect on the screen itself.

Have fun coding, have fun playing!

Credits for the game idea go to Mariusz Ostrowski and Marcin Maksymiuk who developed the game for UIQ some time ago. You can read about it here

Psiloc What?

Kacper Sulisz, Software Developer — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:00:00 GMT

As you are reading this, a new peculiar application has already been sent out across the globe by Psiloc.

The application is called Psiloc What? (it's not a question, seriously...that's what we called it).

What is this all about?

We will be launching a new application in a week or two, let's call it "Psiloc C". We are polishing it off now. It's an application we believe many people will find extremely useful.

We thought it would be nice to have fun while launching it. A sort of competition if you may. This is where "What?" comes into play. Each day you will be able to update the status of the "What?" application. In each new status, there will be hints on what the "Psiloc C" is made of. What purpose it serves.

Any time you feel like having a go at the competition, you can guess what according to your opinion the application is, what it's called, what it does etc. By the end of the competition, we will pick a dozen of best/funniest/interesting guesses and send out free licences for "Psiloc C" to those people.

Go check "What?" here. We dare you! The competition is ON!

The Latest Mobile Technologies Laboratory

Jakub Lipiński, CTO — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:00:00 GMT

At Psiloc, we always try to keep up to date with all the mobile software platforms. Although Symbian currently has the largest piece of the smartphone market pie, we are always looking beyond the leader. We enthusiastically welcomed the arrival of the two most recent mobile development platforms. New challenges and competition on the market mean that as a result end-users receive even better devices and software.

iPhone's success, gaining 20% of the US smartphones market and entering the Top 10 of mobile hardware manufactures within only 6 months since its launch, makes this platform very interesting from the developer’s point of view. The usability driven approach to the phone’s user interface is a big challenge for every coder. On the other hand, the Android platform attracts programmers because of the big players involved in the project and with Google in the lead.

There is no SDK for iPhone (as of March 4rd), but there are already devices on the market. There are no Android toys yet, but the SDK is already available. Despite these small obstacles we have decided to research both environments right now. Together with the Mobile Systems and Applications Research and Development Laboratory at Warsaw University of Technology we have started The Latest Mobile Technologies Laboratory, which is looking into the iPhone and Android platforms. There are currently 25 people, both from the University and Psiloc, taking part in the initiative. The group meets every other week and to share its experience regarding the achievements and pitfalls encountered during the research. It also contributes to the web-based collaboration environment helping us to keep all the knowledge in one place. If you want to join us in our struggle, please apply for membership at the laboratory discussion group.

Stay tuned for more news regarding our progress…

Meet us in Barcelona!

Kacper Sulisz, Software Developer — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:57:01 GMT

As you are probably very well aware, in a few weeks time, comes the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM), a Mecca for the mobile business.

If you just happen to be there, be sure to come by our stand and say hello! We would like to meet up and have a chat with you.

Psiloc will be exhibiting it's products on our few square metres on the ground floor of hall 2 at stand 2A25.

See you around!

My internship at Psiloc

Szymon Piechowicz, Intern — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Having done my last year of college, having my exams passed and my uni of choice sorted out I had the whole three months of summer holidays ahead of me. Millions of ideas orbiting my head whispering in my ear.

Being that kind of a person that always looks two steps ahead, I also knew that at some point during my studies I will have to get my internships out of the way moreover since my money wouldn't last me for all the things I wanted to do during the holidays I had to find some source of cash flow.

Thus I decided to outwit everyone and get these things done with one shot, I started looking for some summer internships in the mobile business (I always had a passion for mobility and everything that concerns mobile technologies). There were plenty of offers available through my university, unfortunately all were down to earth offers without any real practical value...downright boring to be honest. Thus I was even more motivated to start looking for an internship by myself. Shortly after sending approximately a dozen e-mails, I received a reply from Psiloc - a mobile solutions company. I always regarded mobile technologies as a sign of things to come. So an internship at Psiloc was simply an offer I couldn't refuse.

The more I dug into the subject, the more interesting the topic looked, with the biggest international giants (and I'm not only talking about the IT sector) jumping on the mobile bandwagon. Psiloc seemed like a far out place to have an internship for college graduate due to the complex projects they take on, but I gave it a shot. After something more than two weeks I was invited by the CTO to join their company for the summer period.

I was assigned to a new project, that was just being started the week I came, it was more of a research and development project at first and with internal usage in mind, that if successful, could be pushed to a wider audience. The project was however so fresh in the minds of everyone that there was still no clear vision on how the project were to look or if it will even be accepted by the mobile community.

I was responsible for the mobile (Symbian S60) client, but that’s not where it ended, I quickly got involved in the decision making process of the project internally codenamed GeoLogger … some of you today may know it better by the name of Locatik.

The idea behind Locatik was innovative in many ways. For the company extending it’s field of expertise into the ever more popular Web2.0 space was new, Locatik itself was a product like no other.

The resulting work of my summer internship in the end gave way for a completely new project at the company. Involving a team of people including frequent meetings with the company management. Today when I’m studying at my uni, whenever an opportunity is around I visit Psiloc and see what’s going on at Psiloc and how Locatik is doing. I really miss being part of that project and hope to come back for the next summer holidays for even more exciting stuff!

Good luck Locatik team!

Locatik Widget

Kacper Sulisz, Software Engineer — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:00:00 GMT

If you are reading this from a RSS reader, some content might not display depending on your reader, we thus recommend you go directly to our blog to fully view this post

We are just about to release the newest Locatik version 0.91. This incorporates some changes we've made to Locatik over the past few weeks. You can read in detail about the changes in the Learn More section of www.locatik.com. However, since a picture speaks a thousand words, thus we decided to show you a sneak preview of how the new Locatik Widget thing works. Below is a widget we've embedded into our website, it shows my current position.

You can do the same on your website, just follow the next few steps to configure it for your account:


           <div id='map' style='display: none; position: relative'>
 
           <script type="text/javascript" id="LocatikWigdet" src="http://www.locatik.com/widget/locatikwigdet.js"

                Login  = "LocatikUser"

                GoogleMapsKey = "ABQIAAAAjqkz2ar4PsujYDwDUa_-fRTGS3GA8Z0MfJHIB4MmwwFNHtl6ZhTHcEXQyNLEaztopNJMxQo5mjGqRQ"

                MapWidth  = "400px"

                MapHeight = "400px"

                MapType = "G_NORMAL_MAP"

                ZoomControl = "off"

                TypeControl = "off"

                ScaleControl= "off"

                OverviewMapControl = "off"

                DefaultZoomLevel = "10"

           ></script>

        </div>

The Map as you can see in the example is embedded in "<div id='map' style='display: none;' class='map'>" element, so you can easily use your own style sheet to change the position of the map. Just create your own CSS class named 'map' and put it in your CSS file in your service. You can also do it by using style attributes,

e.g.: "<div id='map' style='display: none; display:absolute; top:200px; left:100px'>"

The elements of this widget are explained below:

Login - This is the user that the Locatik widget will display (This obviously requires you to have an active Locatik account).

GoogleMapsKey - this is the maps key you obtain from google if you wish to use their maps. You have to get one individually for your widget, go here to learn more. The one thing you cannot forget, is that the resulting KEY IS CASE SENSITIVE.

MapWidth - this is the width of the widget you are placing on your site in pixels, you may adjust this value at will to suite your needs.

MapHeight - this is the height of the widget you are placing on your site in pixels, you may adjust this value at will to suite your needs.

MapType - the value of this property defines how your widget will look, you have several predefined options yo choose from:

G_NORMAL_MAP displays the normal, default 2D tiles of Google Maps
G_SATELLITE_MAP displays photographic tiles
G_HYBRID_MAP displays a mix of photographic tiles and a tile layer for prominent features (roads, city names)
G_PHYSICAL_MAP displays physical map tiles based on terrain information

ZoomControl - this can be either "on" or "off", determining if the zoom in, zoom out controls known from Google maps are shown on your widget.

TypeControl - this can be either "on" or "off", determining if the map types controls (Satellite/Maps/Hybrid/Terrain) known from Google maps are shown on your widget.

ScaleControl - this can be either "on" or "off", determining if the map scale is shown at the bottom of the screen on your widget.

OverviewMapControl - this can be either "on" or "off", determining if the collapsible map overview known from Google maps is shown on your widget.

DefaultZoomLevel - Each map contains a zoom level, which defines the resolution of the current view. Zoom levels between 0 (the lowest zoom level, in which the entire world can be seen in one widget) to 17 (the highest zoom level, down to individual buildings) are possible within the normal maps view. Zoom levels vary depending on where in the world you're looking, as data in some parts of the globe is more defined than in others.

Hope this explains the Widget clearly. In case you have any problems with the Widget, do let us know.

irRemote Development Challenges

Kamil Trzciński, Software Engineer — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 23:00:00 GMT

Two years have passed since irRemote was last seen on S60 2nd edition. Since then irRemote was one of the most awaited applications for S60 3rd edition. The biggest problem in developing the application for the new S60, were the changes in the security architecture of Symbian OS as well as in the handling of the infra-red port. The infra-red port was the main delaying factor in the development and market release of the application. In order to send proper IR codes we had to access the hardware driver. Only this enabled us to send IR codes using the infra-red port with acceptable time tolerance and with the signal as verbatim as the original remote control. Another problem we faced, was the poor resolution of the system timer. This in turn stood in the way of sending well calibrated IR signals. That's why we had to manually determine the exact time and here is the piece of code we used to achieve needed timing:


void CIrEngine9::CalcPerfL() { 

    RThread().SetPriority(EPriorityAbsoluteHigh); 


    iCounterPerMicroSeconds = 1;

    TUint64 initialCounter = 65536;


    FOREVER {

        TUint ticks1, ticks2;


        // Start at the beginning of 15ms period (resolution of the clock)

        ticks2 = User::NTickCount();

        do {

            ticks1 = User::NTickCount();

        }

        while(ticks2 == ticks1);

       

        TUint64 iCounter = initialCounter;


        ticks1 = User::NTickCount();

        // Run perf loop

        TInt h = 0;

        while(iCounter--) {

            h ^= iTempValue;

        }

        iTempValue = h;

        ticks2 = User::NTickCount();


        // Calculate results

        TUint dTicks = ticks2 - ticks1;

        if(dTicks != 0) {

            iCounterPerMicroSeconds = initialCounter / (dTicks * 1000);

            break;

        }

       

        initialCounter <<= 2;

    }


    RThread().SetPriority(EPriorityNormal);

}


void CIrEngine9::PerfAfter(TUint iMicroSeconds) {

    TUint64 counter = iCounterPerMicroSeconds * iMicroSeconds;

    TInt h = 0;

    while(counter--) {

        h ^= iTempValue;

    }

    iTempValue = h;   

}

After we finished the new irRemote engine we switched to the application interface and logic.

We knew very well that the biggest disadvantage of the previous irRemote was the non-modifiable bundled remotes database that came with the application. We thus decided to take on the popular community approach this time. Now anyone can easily upload remotes to our database using a simple and intuitive wizard. What's more, by rating the remotes all irRemote users can now decide which remotes to make a go for. This proved to be just what the users wanted and the numbers speak for themselves, over 500 different devices were uploaded in the first week of the public tests. We hope many more devices will be uploaded to the database, so that there won't be a device irRemote can't handle.

Smartphone Show Stand 16

Kacper Sulisz, Software Engineer — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:00:00 GMT

For us as a company this years Smartphone Show was unique for various reasons. This year unlike in the previous ones, we decided to make a go for it with only one product. Some of you closely following the ongoings here at Psiloc can already make an educated guess it was Locatik. This makes me especially content being part of the Locatik Team. Although it is a project in it's very early stages of development (barely 3 weeks since the launch of our private beta programme) we feel strongly about the idea behind Locatik and what it represents, to the extent that we decided not to choose other equally if not more appreciated and awaited products such as irRemote. Unique also in the way that Locatik never meant to come out of our R&D. It was a project made for internal purposes that started as a test of the quality of GPS enabled devices that appeared on the market. Unique once again because the approach we took on is a fresh one for us. A service, that is completely free for the end user and one having a web interface is not what we do for living.

Surrounded by the Symbian developer area to our right and the huge Samsung stand to our left, we were worried that our little stand may just simply not be noticed in the shadows of the giants. However to our pleasant surprise we attracted a lot of passers and our presentation managed to turn a lot of heads. We had multiple guests arriving at our stand asking what Locatik is all about. Visitors, the press, industry people (though these came mostly during the second day of the show) as well as the guys from the blogosphere. We had a nice chat with Zach, Rafe and even managed to talk Stefan over to our stand. The positive phenomenon we've noticed is that the younger mobile users seemed to consume the whole idea thumbs up within seconds, the older and more experienced users generally took longer to see the potential behind this service, usually asking more questions and having more concerns about sharing their location. This is a good trait to observe. Although LBS was a buzzword at this years Smartphone Show, with even one full seminar dedicated to the topic, as far as I recall (and correct me if I'm wrong) we were the only ones displaying this kind of service. The interest has been satisfying, with tens of people walking up to us and asking for an invite flashing a GPS enabled device every day of the show.

No more where are you's – introducing Locatik

Jakub Lipiński, CTO — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:00:00 GMT

It all started from the Bruce Sterling's futuristic vision Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future published in the July issue of Wired. The story he depicts is about to happen in 2017 and is a set of geo-blog posts about technology, media and society of that time. And then, I reached the passage:

The best thing about being a top-tier geo blogger is that everyone knows where you are. When the buddy list tells folks you're in town, they ping to offer you dinner and invite you to sleep on the couch. They're my homies in a world where the entire planet is home.

It made me think. The possibility of sharing your current geographical location with your relatives seemed so tempting. But why I have to wait until 2017? I would love to have it right now.

Today we are announcing the beta version of Locatik. It lets whomever you want to see where you are now. It currently shows the location of happy owners of GPS-enabled devices but in the future will be able to display the approximate position of people with less equipped phones. The service is currently in private beta stage meaning that you need an invitation to use it.

The most frequent first phrase during a phone call is “Where are you?”. We want you to be able to start your conversation with something nicer, like: “Hey, you're just around the corner. What about coffee?”

Introducing DRM Common Solutions 3.0

Jakub Lipinski, CTO — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 22:00:00 GMT

We have been working hard on the 3rd major release of the common library used by all Psiloc (and some third-party) applications. DRM Common Solutions 3.0 introduces some new features I would like to describe further:

The newest version of the library is more stable and error-proof. We have gathered the feedback from our end-users and simplified the User Interface displayed after pressing License button in the main application view. All the options are divided into functional groups and are accessible much faster
We have introduced a feedback mechanism which allows us to collect anonymous data about the behaviour of Psiloc applications. This data can contain information on frequency of usage of particular features or the descriptions of the problems encountered. The data is sent to us and thanks to your help we can develop better applications. The participation in the Quality Feedback is voluntary and is OFF by default
We have redesigned our loyalty program. Psiloc Cash allows you to get a free license for Psiloc applications either by spreading the word about our applications among your friends or by helping us to develop better applications by turning the Quality Feedback ON
The latest version of the library takes advantage of the solution for lack of the SISSYSTEM parameter in Symbian 9 PKG. Now, when you uninstall any of Psiloc application, other will still work and you don't have to reinstall them.
DRM Common Solutions 3.0 is incompatible with the previous versions. For you it means that if you upgrade any of the applications to a version containing the new Commom Solutions (which is recommended), you also need to update all other Psiloc applications. You might also need to restart you phone after upgrade

S60 Theme Design Tips and Tricks

Mariusz Ostrowski, Head Graphics Designer — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT

The internet offers the S60 community a vast number of often free Themes. Unfortunately in most cases Theme's personalization regards only the wallpaper, which in addition is a dreaded bitmap. Not good that S60 3rd Edition user interface is based entirely on SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). This was an excellent strategic move by Nokia; as the number of device types and screens grew rapidly, and the format allowed one Theme to work (or if you prefer: to sale) perfectly on various S60 devices. This however made life far more difficult for homegrown Theme designers. Three main versions of the SVG format can be distinguished: SVG, SVG Basic, SVG Tiny (or SVG-T). The latter further subdivided into the Plus version (supporting gradients and transparency effects). It is precisely this (SVG Tiny Plus) format that the S60 platform uses for Themes. There are a couple of SVG tools that can be used for S60 design. The famous Adobe Illustrator CS2/3 and a freeware tool Inkscape are among the best. I would strongly advise using Inkscape as it (apart form being freeware) additionally provides an XML editor, allowing for minute corrections and optimization of SVG files. With that in mind, I would like to share some tips for current and hopefully future S60 Theme designers:

Always make your Themes 100% SVG (non-problematic use of same Theme on different devices)
Try to get the idea of the theme's look beforehand. Draw it out on a piece of paper, do a rough design on a napkin - whatever flicks your switch.
Check how the chosen colors and contrast display on the device side by side. Do they look as good as you thought? Are they crisp and clear? Are you happy with them?
When putting the created graphics together always remember to use the latest version of Carbide.UI.
Optimise your SVG files! This I cannot stop repeating this. What may seem as an insignificant optimization here and there, adds up to processing time on the device. That in turn translates to user experience...need I say more?

When creating graphics you also need to keep in mind that:

SVG-T cannot share gradients (the xlink:href attribute) ... so if you are using 5 objects, then you have to use have 5 gradients
The height and width must be declared percentage wise, it is this that enables scaling of objects, so:

svg baseProfile="tiny" height="100%" viewBox="0 0 68 68" width="100%" zoomAndPan="magnify"

There are some limitations with theme creation on the S60 platform. The most obvious problems and the ones impossible to get rid of are with hardcoding certain values and objects in the code. Many system icons are hardcoded and unfortunately there is no way of working around this. Even worse some of the colors are hardcoded as well (eg. in some places the fonts are hardcoded to be black). For me as a designer, this unfortunately comes down to a choice between having a theme look patchy at times or being limited in my choice of colors to make the theme look its best. Therefore some thorough planning is required prior to getting your hands dirty with Theme design to eventually release a hit.

DRM Common Solutions - Part I

Jakub Lipinski, CTO — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT

During the company growth we often found that every once in a while we needed a little this-and-that functionality logically separated from the application itself that would be attached to every application release. So in time we found ourselves developing a module for advanced security. One for licensing our applications and another for payment and distribution etc. There came a time when we decided to merge all these developed solutions and any possible future ones into something that now goes by the name DRM Common Solutions. The need for such a solution can be economically justified by the fact that the platform is nowadays licensed by other mobile software companies and even major handset manufacturers.

DRM Common Solutions is not only about anti-piracy. It's rather a two-way communication channel between us and our applications' users. In this series I would like to go through all the current features of our common library and describe them. Up to date, DRM Common Solutions consists of following functionalities:

Common Security (to be introduced in version 3.0) protects the valuable binary code against reverse engineering
Common Licensing which allows the application to be licensed either by providing the license code or by opening the license file after downloading it from a web page or transferring from the PC. The license for the application can be limited by time, usage count or basically unlimited. The end-users who already activated the application and for some reason lost their license can restore it without need to provide the license code again.
Common Payment is a part of a solution allowing purchase of the application directly from the mobile phone. Integration between DRM Common Solutions and Psiloc Webshop enables quick and safe payment for the application and licensing it without any end-user intervention
"Check for update" is a simple yet powerful feature which checks if the version of the application installed on the end-user's device is the latest one and - if it's outdated - proposes the upgrade
Quality Feedback (available starting from version 3.0) is an embedded opt in/out reporting mechanism which sends some statistical data regarding the application usage. Such data let us know our clients better and react to the way how end-users utilize our applications
Mobile Marketing are simple text ads added to the standard Common Solutions messages allowing us to spread the news about new solutions provided by Psiloc
Loyalty Program is yet another marketing tool which rewards the end-users who share our applications with their friends and by the power of word-of-mouth convince them to buy them. Turning on the quality feedback also rewards the loyalty account and can be later turned into application licenses.

The integral part of the whole solution is the server-side back-end which communicates with all the clients and is where all the licenses are stored.

The next parts of the series will discuss each of the below elements in more a detailed way.

Installing shared libraries on Symbian 9

Paweł Polański, Software Engineer — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Having a strong infrastructural solution for all our applications includes support for such features as advanced security, licencing, payment and advertising requires, a shared library for all of the applications to make use of.

On pre v9.0 Symbian devices the development of such a shared library was a non-issue. It all came down to building a SIS file with our Shared Library (SharedLib) and setting the SISSYSTEM parameter in the PKG to emphasise that it contains a shared component such as a DLL or OPX which may be used by a number of applications. Each new application additionally contained the SharedLib package, which would install or update the version on the device if needed. This shared component of ours would be reference counted and automatically uninstalled with the removal of the last Psiloc application on the device.

All of this however changed with the introduction of version 9.0 Symbian devices. To summarize, Symbian introduced a completely new set of platform security features. In the myriad of changes, the SISSYSTEM has been removed from the PKG file syntax. This required a rapid adaptational shift in SharedLib mechanisms. Since a dependency system was left intact we could therefore create a package file making our Psiloc application dependent on any other application by adding the following to the PKG:

(0xXXXXXXXX),0,0,0,{"Shared Library"}

where X is a hexadecimal value.

The shared application needs to be present before installation of the Psiloc application. Since it is a program embedded within a SIS file it will be removed just like any other embedded file along with its base package during the uninstallation process. We have at this point recreated the solution from the pre 9.0 version of Symbian with one flaw, that is whenever we wish to uninstall a Psiloc application, the SharedLib is automatically uninstalled by the Symbian build-in application manager, thus causing any applications dependant on SharedLib to have crippled functionality.

We have however also found a workaround to this problem, in a way that we create a small SharedLibInstaller executable file. The only purpose of this executable is to install SharedLib.sis which is added to SharedLib package as an ordinary file:

"SharedLib.sis" -"c:\SharedLib.sis"

Now we place our SharedLibInstaller.exe at the end of our main application's PKG file as embedded resource and mark it to autostart at the end of the installation and copy itself with a different name onto the device:

"SharedLibInstaller.exe" -"c:\sys\bin\different_name_every_time.exe" , FR, RI

Without the different_name_every_time.exe trick the installer would simply panic, treating the installation as a violation of platform security (attempt to install a same filename, same UID file onto the device).

When the sis file of the main application is launched the SharedLibInstaller.exe will be executed. The SharedLibInstaller will in turn lunch a silent installation of SharedLib.sis. From now on our SharedLib application becomes independent. When we uninstall the Psiloc application the SharedLibInstaller.exe will be removed but SharedLib will be left unharmed on the device.

Welcome to the Official Psiloc Blog

Marek Filipiak, CEO and Founder — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT

As the founder and CEO of Psiloc, the pleasure of writing the introductory blog post fell upon my humble person.

As some of you are aware this company was founded long before Symbian had even been established, in the times when Psion was the cream of the crop. For those of you that never heard of Psion I would suggest reading the following article. Psion at the time was a state of the art operating system, and a hobby of mine. Fast forward some time into the future and you will witness a very important regrouping which changed Psion's name into Symbian and its owners to the biggest handset manufacturers of the time, a move that turned a hobby of mine into a full-on business that proved to be one of the most successful of its kind.

With the launch of our new website we thought it would be straight rude not to include an official company blog as a communication medium with our customers. We see this blog as a way of communicating our mobile ideas, tips and tricks regarding the not so trivial mobile device development, some Public Relations as well as marketing posts whenever we feel there is something of value to pass or something we feel especially strongly proud of. From time to time we would also like to publish coverage of some of our internal social events which are quite popular and not so rare here at Psiloc. We would love to hear your comments and suggestions which we find extremely valuable to us and welcome at .Drop us a quick line whenever you feel like it. You can view this blog directly from our company website or you can subscribe to our RSS feed using the link in the top right hand corner.

Don't expect to see a lot of posts from me in the future though, running a company as dynamic as Psiloc does require a lot of effort. You can be sure though that I'll be watching this blog closely and committing behind the scenes.