Disambiguating the brand
I met some lovely people at the Traveling Geeks party at a London venue Sunday night. I was looking forward to speaking with this Silicon Valley group that I had heard about. Admittedly I had an agenda which was to make sure that they knew what Symbian Foundation was and why it mattered, other than to provide black t-shirts with ducks on them at the event.
JD & me
When I met Geek JD Lasica we chatted for a few minutes before I mentioned how Symbian had recently changed by going open source etc; I was inspired to mention this by the fact that he described us as ‘Symbian Ltd a software licensing company’ in a blog post. I was surprised at how one of the Geeks could get this wrong but of course it turns out it’s our own fault – JD looked up Symbian in Wikipedia and copied a description of the old Symbian without a link to the new. What’s worse, when you look up ‘Symbian OS’ it doesn’t link it to Symbian Foundation and if you look up ‘Symbian Foundation’ you find an advertisement, no doubt posted last year on June 24th by a marketer when founding members first announced it.
So friends, here’s a quick explanation of the relevant past & new brands:
» The brand – it’s ‘Symbian’ when describing the foundation, the platform in general, applications and devices e.g. I work for Symbian, this is a Symbian application or device, etc. We only use Symbian Foundation for official stuff such as legal docs and reception voicemail.
» When speaking of a specific release – we say Symbian ^2, (the name is mostly important for developers and is pronounced Symbian 2). We’ve just released the first PDK (Product Development Kit) for Symbian ^2 which generally includes the following technologies:
1.» Symbian OS – the world’s leading mobile operating for smartphones, contributed to Symbian and owned by Nokia
2.» S60 (the brand will soon cease to exist & FYI S60.com has closed), also contributed and owned by Nokia
3.» parts of NTT DOCOMO’s platform technologies, contributed and owned by NTT DOCOMO
4.» parts of Sony Ericsson’s platform technologies, contributed and owned by Sony Ericsson
» To help development of phones and applications, Symbian will release two platform versions per year but technologies will be added intermittently. Each version will include new contributions from the community. Alten is the first company that is not a founding member to contribute and there are more in the pipeline
» The next release, Symbian ^3, will be in the autumn
Other facts:
» Symbian OS trademarks are owned by Nokia, you won’t see Nokia referring to the brand except in previous device specs
» The first compatible Symbian devices are Nokia 97, Nokia 5800, Nokia 5530, Samsung i8910HD and the Sony Ericsson Satio
To help disambiguate the old and new Symbian brand, I offer an old as well as a new Symbian t-shirt for he or she who re-writes the entries for all things Symbian in Wikipedia! Is there anybody out there?
In the meantime, here are a few minutes with JD on exciting times in technology, Symbian and open source, taken on my Samsung i8910HD.
JD Lasica, Traveling Geek interview by Anatolie Papas, Symbian Foundation
A few minutes with JD Lasica on exciting times in technology, Symbian and open source. Taken on Symbian based Samsung i8910HD at the July 5th TweetUp in London.
JD & me
When I met Geek JD Lasica we chatted for a few minutes before I mentioned how Symbian had recently changed by going open source etc; I was inspired to mention this by the fact that he described us as ‘Symbian Ltd a software licensing company’ in a blog post. I was surprised at how one of the Geeks could get this wrong but of course it turns out it’s our own fault – JD looked up Symbian in Wikipedia and copied a description of the old Symbian without a link to the new. What’s worse, when you look up ‘Symbian OS’ it doesn’t link it to Symbian Foundation and if you look up ‘Symbian Foundation’ you find an advertisement, no doubt posted last year on June 24th by a marketer when founding members first announced it.
So friends, here’s a quick explanation of the relevant past & new brands:
» The brand – it’s ‘Symbian’ when describing the foundation, the platform in general, applications and devices e.g. I work for Symbian, this is a Symbian application or device, etc. We only use Symbian Foundation for official stuff such as legal docs and reception voicemail.
» When speaking of a specific release – we say Symbian ^2, (the name is mostly important for developers and is pronounced Symbian 2). We’ve just released the first PDK (Product Development Kit) for Symbian ^2 which generally includes the following technologies:
1.» Symbian OS – the world’s leading mobile operating for smartphones, contributed to Symbian and owned by Nokia
2.» S60 (the brand will soon cease to exist & FYI S60.com has closed), also contributed and owned by Nokia
3.» parts of NTT DOCOMO’s platform technologies, contributed and owned by NTT DOCOMO
4.» parts of Sony Ericsson’s platform technologies, contributed and owned by Sony Ericsson
» To help development of phones and applications, Symbian will release two platform versions per year but technologies will be added intermittently. Each version will include new contributions from the community. Alten is the first company that is not a founding member to contribute and there are more in the pipeline
» The next release, Symbian ^3, will be in the autumn
Other facts:
» Symbian OS trademarks are owned by Nokia, you won’t see Nokia referring to the brand except in previous device specs
» The first compatible Symbian devices are Nokia 97, Nokia 5800, Nokia 5530, Samsung i8910HD and the Sony Ericsson Satio
To help disambiguate the old and new Symbian brand, I offer an old as well as a new Symbian t-shirt for he or she who re-writes the entries for all things Symbian in Wikipedia! Is there anybody out there?
In the meantime, here are a few minutes with JD on exciting times in technology, Symbian and open source, taken on my Samsung i8910HD.
JD Lasica, Traveling Geek interview by Anatolie Papas, Symbian Foundation
A few minutes with JD Lasica on exciting times in technology, Symbian and open source. Taken on Symbian based Samsung i8910HD at the July 5th TweetUp in London.
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