If you own an Android 2.2 (Froyo) device you must know that you can already start building (and testing!) your AIR 2.5 applications for Android. There’s more: if you are an FDT user like me you should be glad to know that is very easy to build and package our AIR4Android applications without even leaving our favorite tool!

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Nokia just announced the top 10 finalists for the Ovi app wizard prize category in the Calling All Innovator 2010 competition. All submissions were reviewed based on the following judging criteria: Innovativeness of the apps, Cumulative number of downloads on July 15th, Quality of your marketing materials.

Here the top 10 finalists for the Ovi app wizard prize category:

• Alessandro Pace: FlashLite4Nokia
• Dale Rankine: Toy Tragic
• Hany Gohary: GoNintendo
• Chintan Umraliya: MobApps.org
• Steve Litchfield: The Phones Show
• Oscar Iñiguez de la Torre Bernabeu: PickUp Lines
• Nur Nachman Eytan: Purple Cookie
• Jussi Soro: DJ Jussi Soro Application
• David Adhira: What Miami
• Jean-Francois Barsoum: Skeptical Science

A big congrats to all the finalists! …and GOOD LUCK!

Lucian Tomuta, from Forum Nokia, has just posted a really informative video showing the Nokia Qt SDK in action. The video shows how easy is to build and test a Qt application on both the desktop Qt simulator and on a real device.

The original article is available here.

The Forum Nokia Developer Summit will take place in London – September 14-15. This year the Nokia Developer Summit is held in conjunction with Nokia World. As Nokia’s biggest event, this offers you new opportunities to meet professionals from every part of the mobile industry. You’ll also find big-name guest speakers, business streams, and an Experience Lounge packed with the very latest products, services and solutions.

Take a look to the official event website for more info.

As from wikipedia: Cognitive radio is a paradigm for wireless communication in which either a network or a wireless node changes its transmission or reception parameters to communicate efficiently avoiding interference with licensed or unlicensed users.

This is one of the current core research topics of Nokia Research:

Cognitive radio is one of the core research topics of Nokia Research. Faster data transmission in Long-Term Evolution (LTE) will enable new mobile use cases and increase the quality of current services, but we are already taking steps to the future in cognitive radio. We aim to empower a new realm of devices and services through optimised connectivity, where devices use the available spectrum in a dynamic and flexible fashion.

Here’s a recent video looking at the work Nokia has been doing with cognitive radio, very interesting:

Read more about Nokia Research here.

Windows Phone 7 is not yet released and there are already some opinions that make me worried about this platform.

There’s no kind way to say it: Windows Phone 7  will be a failure. Announced to much bravado in February as the platform that would breathe life into Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, Windows Phone 7 looked based on very early previews as if it might bring something new and exciting to the table. Back then, I noted that I was impressed by what I saw — with the caveat “so far.”
No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.

Read more here about the overall impression of the upcoming Microsoft platform.

Google has just launched Google App Inventor:

From the App Inventor’s website:

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend’s faces. You can even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android’s text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

Apart from the coolness of the tool, the question that arises into my mind is: is there the need for these development tools for non-developers?

As I can’t imagine a developer using these tools, I can’t equally think of a non-developer even imagine that such a tool can exist: what do you think about it?

(via Scott) – Paul Trani posted a presentation about creating Flash Content for Mobile Devices. Enjoy:

Youtube mobile website got a major update today including a faster and more finger-friendly user interface. Youtube also announced that YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day, a good reason for a big update. Watch the presentation video below:

A new website for Nokia developers has just been launched: NokiaDevs.com

The website will feature daily conversations with Nokia developers: if you want to share your experience and thoughts about mobile development, talking about your mobile apps and projects, you can contact NokiaDevs team here.