Long version: Here's a hypothetical scenario. I visit a city in Nigeria for the first time and I'm looking for things to do and places to go. I have very little or no friends in this strange city, so asking them for ideas is not an option. I'm gonna have to check a site, city guide or something at least. What's the first name that comes to mind? Nothing? That's the void LoungeScape aims to fill. LoungeScape is essentially a city guide which I started working on in March. It's meant to feature points of interests and hotels for tourists, newcomers and even residents of a city that don't know places that exist close to them. I haven't exactly dedicated all of my time to it, but it's coming along quite nicely.

It's been years since I did any web development so it's almost hilarious discovering all sorts of browser quirks which remind me of why I stopped web dev the first place. Here's a good one, Javascript code breaks in IE9 if you make use of console.log when F12 developer tools is not open. All that is unimportant though. I have the beta up and running at www.loungesca.pe, and I hope to have it fully functional by the end of June. I'm also gonna have to write a few articles, and it's been a rather long time since I did proper essay writing (blog posts don't count). It's currently beta, and I'll be adding incremental  updates as time goes on. I was thinking of doing a "Building LoungeScape" series of posts which will detail major updates and new features, but like other things, I'm just gonna go with "let's see how it goes."

If you've made it to this point without looking at the site yet (it's here just in case you missed it), here are some screenshots for you to feast your eyes on!

Interested in writing articles for LoungeScape? Shoot me an email. If you'd just like to contribute by adding listings or hotels, check out the Contribute column in the footer. Submissions will have to be approved though, cos we can't let spammers ruin all the fun now, can we? For people not interesting in writing nor contributing, you can still support by simply liking the LoungeScape Facebook page or following @LoungeScape on Twitter! There's a LoungeScape Google+ page as well, but it doesn't get automatically updated due to the Google+ API providing read-only access for now.

PS. Too many links to the same page in this post. It almost looks like an annoying ad!

Now that I have my device unlocked, I'm going crazy with ideas! Developing for the platform is a fantastic experience. I'm no Microsoft shill, but this is really good stuff, and dare I say it's the best mobile platform to develop for. Then again, I've always liked using C# for development and I thought Silverlight was pretty neat when it was first launched. I'm quite happy to develop for the platform, but not completely, due to restrictions. Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions, restrictions. Currently, I can only publish free apps to the Marketplace. Second of all, Windows Phone still doesn't do proper multitasking. I'm still investigating background tasks, but it doesn't seem promising for maintaining socket connections, considering my first (technically, second since I do have to polish and publish the 3-day app for a shot at another Lumia from Nokia) order of business is to port SimpleIRC to the platform.

And just in case you haven't heard, I finally ported Ultimate Stopwatch to Qt and got it published for Symbian Belle devices. It's available from the Nokia Store at http://store.ovi.com/content/262281. The MeeGo version will be published soon.

The UI is slick. Really slick. And responsive, too. There is no lag, at all. My Nokia N9 does lag once in a while but that's probably due to the number of apps I have open. The tiles are also very neat and straightforward, but I still prefer the Swipe experience on the N9. I can assure you, however, that Windows Phone 7 is no slouch. The user experience is a great one, and I can say Microsoft did a very good job here. The other thing I love about the phone is the email client. Never before have I wanted to read emails almost all the time. For the first few days, I found myself constantly launching the email client just to admire how beautiful the emails were, which was just ridiculous. And that's all there was to love.

Now, the bad news. I find the lack of options for a few things really disappointing. For example, I cannot turn off the animation for the People tile, nor do I have the option of enabling images to always show up in the email client. I have to manually download pictures for every HTML email I open, which I find rather inconvenient. I'd also like to be able to exclusively specify if I wanted to use 2G or 3G network connectivity. The way the options are presented, you're only allowed you to specify 2G or dual mode.

I also don't like the fact that I cannot access the filesystem on the phone directly, or using USB mass storage mode. Getting media on and off the device is only achievable using the Zune software, or cloud services (SkyDrive, Facebook, Twitter, etc). I also can't transfer files using Bluetooth. Yes, we do a lot of Bluetooth transfers over here. Plus the lack of proper multitasking (see: MeeGo/Harmattan on the N9 for how multitasking should be done). These limitations are the main reason I've always avoided the iPhone, and I find it sad that Windows Phone 7 is this way, but I really hope these features get added in future updates.

My final gripe, which I just discovered recently, is the red-eye effect in photos. I don't usually use cameras on phones, but it's 2012. I shouldn't have to deal editing quick photos that I take with my smartphone. I read somewhere that red-eye reduction is one of features of the camera app, but I can't find it anywhere. Maybe I need to do some more digging.

Oh, and yeah, the Lumia 800 is a really sexy device. Well, considering it's based on the N9 design, obviously.

And nothing happened. I have the weirdest dreams.

2011's almost over! The year didn't go exactly as planned, but it still turned out alright. Trust me when I say this, 2012 is the game changer. That, and the world is probably gonna end in 12 months. Meanwhile, I've got to say, what's up will all the bombings going on in Nigeria? It's starting to get silly. And the president says it's a burden we must live with. Really? That sucks.

I published a few apps for the Nokia N9: Football Live Scores, TopVideo and the SimpleIRC port. The first two are free, so go download them if you own an N9. I've been busy fixing bugs on the Symbian version of SimpleIRC, but I've not been able to add any of the planned features yet (chat logging, SASL support and DCC file transfers). I shall be working on these features next year. Thankfully, the codebase for the MeeGo/Harmattan and Symbian versions is shared so it shouldn't be a major problem bringing the new features to both platforms. I'm also working on a couple of game ideas I hope I can complete in the next year.

Here's to 2012, folks!

It's available for free from the Nokia Store at http://store.ovi.com/content/214062

Apart from the SimpleIRC port (which is not as easy as I thought it would be), I'll be working on a number of other nifty apps for the N9, so stay tuned.

Well, there are quite a number of reviews for the device all over the Internet so I'll just run through this. I played with the device much earlier but I was too lazy to write about it. The swipe UI is rather brilliant. It just feels natural once you figure it out. If anything, the N9 is an example of how devices are meant to be built. The hardware also feels very solid and well built. Did I mention it's sexy? The screen is gorgeous. Video playback is amazing. The UI is fast and responsive.

I have a few qualms with the device though. The WiFi radio seems to be a bit flaky. It doesn't pick up as much signal strength as my other devices in the same room. Contacts don't automatically get merged, which is bad considering certain details were pretty much the same (first name, mobile number and email for instance). I configured the device to sync with my contacts using Ovi, and then I imported contacts from my E7. Since the E7 was also synchronised with Ovi, this ended up creating duplicates. Having to manually merge 100 contacts is no fun at all. I also can't set the number of emails to be stored on the device from my Gmail account. This is weird considering I can do so for other mail accounts. I'd also like to be able to add feeds from other sources to the Notifications/Feed home screen. There are software updates coming though, so I hope these issues will get addressed.

Overall, the good outweighs the bad and I'm very pleased. I'll be porting SimpleIRC to the platform and I'm also working on a few app ideas. Sure, it's a DOA product (Why, Nokia? Why?!), but that doesn't mean I can't have fun with it.

It's not all bad, however. I paid for the 2Mbps plan and that speed most of the time. My Steam downloads are relatively quicker, I don't have to wait forever for Youtube videos to buffer, and it's a generally good experience. There are still hiccups from time to time though, and this can be really annoying. Like that one time I lost a very shiny ship in EVE during combat. The other plus is you're assigned an IP address so you don't have to deal with all sorts of bullshit that comes with being behind a NAT (so I'm not left to wonder how I'm banned from a random site I've never visited in my life). I'm probably gonna stick with them though, because faster downloads make the world go round.

In other news, the N9 is a gorgeous piece of hardware. I shall be picking the 64GB version up within the next week or two.

Oh, by the way, in case you didn't notice, I finally sold out. I've installed WordPress. I just didn't have the will to continue working on my home-made blog software. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to continue with my theme and plugin search.

I downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview in a VirtualBox VM and I have to say it looks pretty good. Being able to access a proper desktop is nice, but I wish there was a way to get rid of Metro and revert to the classic Start Menu. Alas, whenever you click on the Start button, it takes you to the Metro interface.

I've had a few issues with the VM installation: the display drivers don't work and Internet Explorer 10 hangs when I open up the About screen, or whenever I try to open a URL, and Tweet@rama sometimes hangs the entire system on start up. We'll see how it goes as I'm still trying to break more things, but so far so good, I'm impressed.

I've got a couple of apps I need to port to Qt: Ultimate Stopwatch and Sliding8. Just haven't had the time to do so due to other commitments. However, I managed to release a new app called NSM. It's a free utility for checking daily stock prices on the Nigerian Stock Market at the close of trade for the day. It was meant to be an entry for a Nokia App Challenge organised locally. Be sure to check it out!

A lot has happened since my last post, so I'm just gonna summarise. Have you seen the N9? Now, that's what you call a sexy piece of hardware. I intend to get the 64GB version once it's available. I particularly like the ease of use of the whole "Swipe" interface and . It's a shame that Nokia dumped MeeGo though. Considering the praise that the N9's been getting (even from the US media), I suppose it's safe to assume they had a winner on their hands.

I'm still skeptical about Windows Phone 7, but maybe when I actually get to use one of the devices, I might change my mind. Also, Microsoft, what's up with Nigeria not being on the list of Windows Marketplace countries? I'd like to publish WP7 apps, you see, but it looks like you don't want me to.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution caught my eyes these past couple of weeks, and considering I hadn't been paying attention to the game series, I was pretty surprised. So I finally decided to stop procrastinating about playing the first one, but I just can't seem to get into it and I don't know why. Maybe everyone hyped it up a bit too much? However, Human Revolution is a sure buy for me once I get the cash.

Till next time.

Since these were my first Qt app submissions, I exclusively selected the Symbian^3 target in my builds. This however caused failure on the Symbian^1 devices during the QA process. Apparently, I should've targeted Symbian^1 so the binaries could work on both Symbian^1 and ^3 devices, but I guess I had to find out the hard way. The new builds are currently in the QA process so they should be available on the store within the next couple of weeks at most.

In other news, I've got this neat idea that I'd like to enter for the Sub-Saharan Africa Android Developer Challenge but if I told you, I'd have to kill you. At least, until I've got my submission in.

I finally finished up with the new and improved SimpleIRC and submitted it to Ovi Publish. It should be appearing on the Ovi Store anytime soon. I also developed a new application called NSM which essentially means Nigerian Stock Market. As the name implies, it's an application for viewing stock market prices at the end of each stock trading day. It's also been submitted to Ovi Publish, and it's free. You can find screenshots here. I intend to extend the functionality to include price histories, charts and basic portfolio tracking.

So I've got this contract which requires me to extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for a client, which means I may not be able to publish new applications for a couple of months. I'm hoping I should be able to finish up with the Qt version of TopVideo within the next few weeks though. It's also gonna be a free application, with the ability to watch the videos within the app itself. We'll see how that goes.

I redecorated the screen of my E7 and it looked great. I should've taken pictures but I was too sad to think about it at that point. Either way, I'll have to wait till it makes it out of Nokia Care. At least, I've still got my trusty N8 which serves me well.

On to video games, I still have a few to beat - Borderlands, Fallout: New Vegas, Metro 2033. This is just sad as I haven't booted my gaming PC in a while (thanks to EVE Online running quite nicely on my HP Envy). I did finish Portal 2 within a week after I got it though. It's pretty cool but some of the puzzles kinda got frustrating. Maybe I'm just getting too old for that sort of shit. However, Spaaaaaaaaaace!

Happy Africa Day!

I've also been able to add nifty new features: The ability to open links in your device browser directly from chat, auto-join channels on a per-server basis and UTF-8 support. DCC file transfer support is still in the works. I just can't for the life of me figure out the protocol properly.

Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without screenshots. First of all, the basic stuff. Here's the main UI showing just a status tab and the main menu. All shots were taken in portrait mode but the UI auto-adjusts nicely when the screen orientation changes.

Revamped settings and servers configuration sreens built using QML. The QML views are actually integrated with the application UI using a dialog.

Links are underlined in the chat window and will be launched with the native device browser when pressed.

Other fancy stuff: editing servers, error and confirmation dialogs, copying text and UTF-8.

Overall, this is a very, very nice improvement from the Java version. I'm looking to finish it up within the next week so I can get it published once the Ovi Store starts accepting Qt 4.7 applications (within about 2 weeks from what I've heard). As usual, comments and feedback are appreciated.

Nokia announced a switch to Windows Phone 7 for smartphones and Qt is not going to be one of the development platforms going forward. Now, I'm a bit familiar with Windows Phone 7 development, and it's nice, but I feel like I wasted quite a bit of my time learning Qt. It's not all bad however since there's Qt Quick which is fairly straightforward and easy to use, and I'm liking it. It's probably what I'll solely be using to develop applications for Symbian devices going forward. I also will be getting a free E7 as a Forum Nokia Launchpad member, then a Nokia Windows Phone 7 when they start shipping as encouragement to keep developing for Nokida devices. Sounds like bribery, but hey, I'll take it!

I haven't been doing much development work lately as I've been feeling a bit off, but I should get past that phase in a bit.

First off, I finally took the plunge and purchased the HP Envy 14 after the Radiance displays were made available for a limited time (they initially ran out of stock). It's got a Core i5-560M processor with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk drive along with an AMD 5650HD graphics chip for high performance gaming. It's gonna make me productive.

I changed my ISP again. This time, I switched to SWIFT Networks and they've been pretty good so far. Current max download I've got is ~200KB/s which is good enough for my 10GB+ Steam downloads. At least, I don't have to wait days to complete them anymore. See:

I've also recently got back into EVE after taking a break for a whole year. The new character creator is pretty. My new character portrait is pretty. I'm currently focusing on PvP in faction wars which is pretty fun for the most part. I've still got quite a lot of skills to train though before I become a deadly pilot.

I haven't started with university yet. There was a bunch of delays which resulted in me having to move my departure from Nigeria forward to August. Meanwhile, I've got a few things to look forward to while I'm still here, like Nokia organised programmes for Ovi publishers.

So yeah, things are looking good. 2011 looks like it's gonna be awesome. And don't forget, the world ends next year!

First game is meant to be a collection of five card games called Five Card Games. Maybe I'll just add in Classic there somewhere. I'm very creative, I know! The other's gonna be a clone of Paratrooper which is an old DOS game. It's gonna have improved graphics, of course. Five Card Games will consist of Solitaire (Klondike), Last Card, Hearts, Twenty-One (Blackjack) and Texas Hold 'em Poker. There will be single-player and multiplayer options available through peer-to-peer (bluetooth) or Internet servers (3G or WiFi). Obviously, there won't be a multiplayer Solitaire option, but on second thought, that sounds like an interesting game mode. Co-op solitaire, anyone?

You'd think coding card games should be a very easy task. Let me tell you, it isn't. But that probably has more to do with the fact that I'm just learning OpenGL ES. I haven't touched any form of OpenGL in years now, so I barely remember anything.

I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum which is rather good. You should watch me break several mice as I try to fight off up to 10 baddies at a time! My progress is very slow though since I've got a lot of work to do. And regarding games I'm looking forward to, there is only one (sorry, Dragon Age 2 but this is my first love).

Windows Phone 7 phones were announced and Windows Phone 7 launched. I particularly like the Samsung Omnia 7, but I'm personally waiting for the first wave of updates before I get one. I still don't like the fact that basic features like copy-and-paste and proper multitasking are missing from the OS but since Microsoft has promised good updates, we'll see how it goes.

I got called up by Nokia yesterday which I thought was interesting. I didn't even know they had an office over here! But I suppose we learn something new every day. Basically, they're reaching out to developers because they want to do everything they can to support us to write apps and publish to Ovi. It was completely unexpected and was very nice. I also got to do an impromptu presentation today about the apps that I published and it went quite well, considering I don't usually do presentations. Funny enough, I've never actually done a real life presentation before. Based on this, I believe we can safely conclude that I've clearly got skills. No, I didn't get a free N8. So yeah, I was impressed and excited about the whole thing and it actually made me reflect on the apps I wrote in Java ME and the planned features considering all the limitations. Here's the good thing though, Qt is my new friend. So my old applications will be ported, I shall develop and launch new applications, and they will all sell millions of copies. Gotta take care of the revenue disparity first, though.

Speaking of the Ovi Store, a lot has changed (for the better) since my initial Publishing to the Ovi Store post so I intend to post an update detailing the current process. The applications I published are currently not available for purchase due to the code signing certificate expiring and a hiccup I experienced while trying to renew. Thankfully, Nokia signs apps for free now (refer to future post) so I don't have to bother with that anymore.

Back to the GTX 460 goodness I was talking about, Prototype is pretty awesome. You can fly! Yes, I know it's just gliding. BUT YOU CAN FLY! And kick helicopters out of the sky. Any game which allows you to kick helicopters out of the sky is a proper definition of awesome in my book. There's no dispute about that. I've also been playing Borderlands which is quite good and Dragon Age: Origins which I've beaten once. I quite liked the story in Dragon Age, but the sex scenes were pretty lame. I think everyone who decides to put sex in a game should use Fahrenheit as a point of reference from now on.

Lastly, I bought Fallout: New Vegas today, which is funny because I decided I wasn't going to buy any more games this year (after the spending spree on Steam summer discounts), but you know, it's Fallout. It's meant to be great by default. It's gonna take about 4 days(!) to download all 7GB of it on Steam, but I'll manage as usual. I am still in desperate need of a high speed Internet connection. Anyone?

My C++ is still absolute rubbish. Or just the bit that has to do with pointers and references. I've been thinking of buying C++ Primer for a long time now (~3 to 4 years) and I think it's about time that I actually do that. The other development option is PyQt which uses Python, and I may be wrong, but I believe it requires some additional libraries to be installed on the target device before your applications can run.

I finished up at 15th place in the develompent track of the 2010 TopCoder Open, which means I qualified but since my visa application was refused, I won't be able to attend. The interview official this time around was an even bigger douche than the one I was stuck with last year which I found hilarious. Eventually. In any case, looks like I should be looking forward to next year's experience.

Meanwhile, I have a lot of games to keep me occupied at the moment while I'm still stuck in this country saving up for university. My ultimate departure's getting close. I can feel it. But before that, I have to acquire an HP Envy 14 and a GTX 460 graphics card.

And just to let everyone know I haven't been living under a rock
The greats: Inception, The Expendables (I haven't seen it yet, but it automatically qualifies), current Burn Notice season, N900 PR 1.2 update
The good: Caprica (first episode is quite rubbish, but trust me, it gets better albeit slow), current True Blood season, N97 v22 firmware update
The funnies: iPhone 4 antenna issues (aka Antennagate)
The fails: Apple's Antennagate response, Windows Marketplace doesn't have Nigeria in the list of countries for developer registration

My TCO qualification rush is over so I should be posting more regularly now. Stay tuned!

Actually, I've been mostly occupied with trying to qualify as a finalist for the component development track of the 2010 TopCoder Open. I'm currently placed 20 and they're only taking the top 15. It's not been very easy as I've been on a second-place streak. To put things in perspective, 1st place winners get a significantly greater amount of points. I actually managed to get two first place wins, but I was moved to second place for one of them because my score was tied with a developer who had a higher rating (you're interested in the DR points column). However, I remain the true winner for that component irrespective of what they say. I bet I currently hold the record for the most second places during a qualification period.

I went against my principles and purchased a Blackberry Bold 9700. Blackberry devices are overhyped. However, the unlimited (yes, it's truly unlimited) plan for always-on connectivity (at ~$33 a month) on MTN is actually very useful. Apart from the obvious Blackberry Messenger usage, you also get normal access to the Internet. I'm not sure if this works with tethering as I've never bothered to try it, but the mobile browser is good enough. I haven't tried downloading large files though. I'll see how that goes when I can get around to it. There's another side of the story as to why I got a Blackberry, but I'm not telling you.

Meanwhile, the Steam summer sales which ended yesterday were pretty awesome! I think I bought about 1000 games for ~$200. Okay, so maybe just about 62 games which include Just Cause 2 (which I hear is the funnest game ever), Batman: Arkham Asylum, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, Prototype, Dragon Age: Origins, Red Faction: Guerilla and Borderlands. Tell me that's not an awesome deal. All in all, I have a long list of games to play once I have plenty of free time.

Other important notes: The Nokia Qt SDK is pretty rad and vuvuzelas are officially the worst invention, ever. I'm not even going to say anything about Nigeria's performance at the World Cup. Just know this, there's a certain individual who missed a clear cut goal chance, he's the new poster child of epic fail.

Till next time.

Or if you prefer the long version: I picked up a Nokia N900 about a week ago (after several months of resistance which turned out to be clearly futile) and it has effectively replaced my N97 as my primary mobile device. I'm not going to go into details in this post, so I'll just outline the main points I've observed in this speedy review. Also, I haven't used the camera yet (sorry, folks!) but I probably will when I get out more.

The Good
- Maemo 5 is very fast and responsive and the interface is very nice. I've read a few posts saying that the interface is unintuitive, but I don't see anything unintuitive about this.
- Conversations. This is by far the best feature in my opinion. Particularly useful for SMS messages as they are treated like IMs. Basically, SMS messages from the same sender are grouped in a single view with your replies to that sender. It's also used for IMs which function like, well, IMs.
- Seamless integration with VoIP and IM accounts in the Phone application and Contacts view. Only Google Talk, Skype, Ovi and Jabber are supported but it's nice being able to make a call using any of these options when you open up the Contact View.
- Web browsing experience is superb. But then again, everyone already knows this.
- Desktop widgets and shortcuts. Quick access to anything and everything.
- Media Player plays practically everything. Or at least all the different audio and video file formats I have.

The Bad
- The touchscreen became unresponsive on me once which led to having to reboot the device. I've not experienced this again, though.
- Can't resume firmware updates if the connection breaks, but my slow connection takes most of the blame for this. Resume functionality would be nice, though.
- Email application could use pagination settings. Not being able to set the number of emails to display at once isn't ideal.
- Maps application is limited. It'd be very nice to have the S60 Ovi Maps edition on this with free navigation.
- No Ovi Suite support.

The Ugly
- Phone application doesn't support USSD out-of-the-box. To perform operator requests (those numbers that contain * and #), I have to run a script on the terminal or use a 3rd party desktop widget.
- Can't create playlists with the Media Player.
- Based on some posts I've seen, I'm scared the USB port might come off at any time. But let's hope it doesn't.

Overall, I think it's a well-rounded device that does just about everything. I'm hoping for firmware updates that will fix the feature omissions and USSD issues.

Over the next few weeks, I plan on doing a series of reviews of ISPs in Nigeria. I'm also thinking of setting up a community forum on antinormal. Because I can. And all the cool kids have one.

This is probably a response to Google's free navigation service available on Android devices, but Ovi Maps is a better option for me considering it's available in my country (Google is only limited to the United States as far as I know) and it doesn't require a data connection since you can preload maps onto your device.

The N97 currently isn't on the list of supported devices, though, which was a bit of a downer. They're delaying it till the 28th but there's a workaround for people like me who are completely incapable of waiting, sometimes. You need to have at least 20MB of free space on C:. I only had 19.7MB free but I coincidentally discovered the Memory Reorganiser update (from the phone's Software Updates application) for my phone which was able to free up about 5MB of space.

When you've got 20MB of free space on C:, you can use this installer to get all the Ovi Maps 3.3 goodness you've ever wanted. They've also improved on the interface which is very nice. And there's the English voice with street names, which in theory is meant to call out the names of streets during navigation. It's going to be hilarious listening to this with Nigerian street names, if it works.

Meanwhile, I picked up an LG 42PQ30 yesterday which happens to be my first HDTV purchase. And in case you're wondering why I picked plasma over LCD, it was cheaper. What can I say? I'm a slow and cheap adopter of new technology.