We have got three new winners in our competetion Best Local Apps:
Locago – Idevio
Kilut Oy – Speedometer Maemo
Tommi Laukkanen – Blockers
Tommi is an independent publisher who is really drawing attention to himself through Ovi Store. We asked him to tell us a bit more about himself and his view on Ovi. We got this really nice letter in return som we decided to publish it here, unedited. Here is Tommis story.
Hi,
My name is Tommi Laukkanen. I’m 32 years old software artisan and family man with two sons to raise. I’ve been interested in mobile gadgets and mobile software development for almost a decade.
I have developed apps on Nokia platforms ever since I got my first Java ME compatible Nokia phone. That phone was probably Nokia 7650, which I still have in my desktop drawer and it still works when powered on!
Since then I have created many applications for my own needs and shared most of them through my site as Open Source. A few of the most popular Java ME apps have been GPS based Mobile Trail Explorer and Twitter client Twim.
In 2010 I bought the Nokia N900 and first started developing apps with Python but then got interested in Web Runtime development in the summer when first technical preview of Qt Web Runtime was released on the device. One of the apps I crafted on N900 was TwimGo (http://twimgo.com) which is a simple Twitter client. One of the games that I created, was a simple puzzle game called BlockGo which I converted easily to Symbian WRT as I wanted to try out the Ovi Store as a distribution channel for my apps.
I was quite amazed of the Ovi Store scale as my game, Blockers, was already downloaded over 10k times in less then a week after it was published! Now that it is this easy for individual developers to publish apps to this huge audience it’s a no-brainer to think how to distribute your next apps in the future. Nowadays I’m putting effort on learning QML and Qt Quick stuff which enables really nice fluid user interfaces and rapid application development. Now that I also have brand new N8 in my hands I will most definitely be doing Qt apps that’ll work on both Maemo/MeeGo devices along with latest Symbian phones.
Regards
Tommi Laukkanen
