Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Like the title says.
Alot of the apps in Ovi store are either non optified ,Wikisuvival ect, or have dual library dependancies. Then theres the MMS pictures for sale and music that cannot be played.
So many of these "Apps" would not even make it through the extras QA.
Surely someone should be moderating this store.
In some respects its worse for end users to download from there than from Extras-Dev.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I never thought of it that way but yes, you're right. I remember before the Ovi disaster started, I read between the lines here how some people felt they'd need to really improve quality in Extras so the community repository wouldn't be too far behind its big brother.

No that we look at the Ovi store... Let's invite people to go to Extras-devil instead.

(I'm not saying that the effort to improve the quality in Extras was unnecessary, of course. It's always good to go for quality.)

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Nokia hired a team of Oompa-Loompas from Wonka's factory and enrolled them in a three-day full-immersion course in software engineering, quality assurance and marketing.

I think course teachers should be blamed.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

lol, the Maemo store here is the best !!

I think you should have a second repo for trial & paid for apps, Maemo beats the ovi "disaster" store hands down !!

Perhaps something to think about :)

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I don't understand how it can be so hard to get the Ovi Store to work properly? I mean they have direct counterparts they could (SHOULD) copy to get a functioning store. After it works start making it more "Nokiaish".

I have never facepalmed so much as when following the progress of the whole Ovi platform.
I'm not sure which is getting less love from Nokia; the N900 or the Ovi services.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

What I find fascinating that Ovi Store surpassed iTMS in Latin America and Asia...

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

One thing to note, though - originally QA was not their job. There are various certification procedures (starting with symbian signed or it's Java equivalent, etc), however, there is no 'other' company to do certification (like there were with Java and Symbian), so now they have to scramble. It really is a new experience for them in that way (not an excuse, just saying this to grasp the bigger picture).

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I've complained so many times to Ovi and left so moany comments on Ovi blog.. you'd almost imagine that Ovi are not aware that there is a n900 or indeed that there are phones out there not powered by Symbian s60.

I vote all new n900s come with the Ovi shortcuts on desktop and browser removed, and instead have shortcuts to the downloads section of maemo.org ;)

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Well, the other half of it was that we wanted to get Extras shipped enabled by default. To do that we needed to make sure Extras would meet certain quality standards. It's ironic that these QA requirements don't apply to Ovi. Perhaps we should email them a link to the wiki page? ;)

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Hmm... Maybe I should start making apps for Ovi Store. They seem to be much less fuzzy about quality issues... :p

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Oh, I just got a brilliant idea! All the apps that fail Extras-testing could automatically be demoted to Ovi Store!!! :D:D:D

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

good idea :D

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Yup, I responded to this much the same way in another thread not so long ago..

>> http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=12

In the case of the WikiHow application, I even commented in the space provided in OVI Store...

>> http://store.ovi.com/content/23151?c.../23151/reviews

The immediate problem for many is that since the warning about optification first went out back in September or so, many good members have posted in advice or How To's in other fora that Maemo "Select" and OVI Store apps are safe for the N900.

If "WiKiHow was installed on the the phone prior to the recent update, I don't think there would have even been enough room to complete the update when it became available.

Nokia may not care about its reputation on the forums... but many of us do care about our own.

Until Nokia comes back with a definite statement about OVI and the N900 that recognizes these and other problems and short comings, AND outlines a plan to correct them; I believe I'm going to slow down or even stop any evangelistic, N900 posts on other forums.

Most people like myself hate retracting past statements. Because of that dislike we verify as much as possible but when installing every piece of software is not feasible, we rely on trusted sources. In this regard, Nokia is not as trusted anymore.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I wouldn't go so far as to say Nokia as a whole isn't trustworthy: it's a huge corporation, and as far as I can see there are some bits that are a lot less trustworthy than others. Ovi store and Nokia Care being top of the list.

Certainly I wouldn't recommend any ordinary n900 end user d/l stuff from anywhere except maemo.org extras. Suggesting getting stuff from ovi is 'safe' is just inaccurate.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Seeing how bad ovi is must be turning so many developers away from porting stuff or making new things for the n900, or well all nokia devices.. I find it funny that as the Ovi Store is so bad, application developers have made their own appstores where they sell N900 applications.

The only way to make it more unappealing for developers to do stuff would be if the developers would have to pay money to the people who buy their applications.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Don't be giving them any ideas... :rolleyes:

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

No ish... Now that can be said. How would you have responded if asked in October; "What are the 'safe' repositories for my new N900 and where can I find good programs?"

>> http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1578077

...and you knew this how and posted it when?

And BTW, I post a lot of stuff and I agree that if I make an innacurate post it does not mean all my posts are innacurate. But, I believe it reflects negatively and therefore I endeavor to maintain 100% accuracy.
Nokia should do this as well.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

HEHE, TOLD YOU SO.

(sorry, I just had to make this comment :))

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I guess I came to the conclusion after I complained that they were selling things that are unsuitable and nobody did anything. I wasn't aware about the optification issue until today. Paying for something you can't use fits my definition of 'unsafe'.

If you'd asked me back in October I'd have known nothing - not even that Nokia's app store was called Ovi. :D If you'd asked me in November or December, I'd have taken it for granted that by the time the Ovi store opened, Nokia would be on the ball. Now I know better.

Personally, I suppose my post comes out of a deep sense of disappointment. Here's a whole department of Nokia which could have got on board, shared the excitement of the next step in Maemo, and enhanced the experience: instead we have a 'store' who clearly know nothing about the device they're trying to sell stuff for - apparently haven't even seen one. And their quality standards apparently aren't a patch on those applied in the volunteer community.

So yeah, I didn't know how bad it was back then. I do now - and the more I hear, the worse it is. I no longer recommend Ovi. And that's sad. :(

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

It's interesting to see how will OVI store 2.0 do. That Nokia at least says has been in the works since OVI store launched.

With S60 phones i used OVI store time to time, but with Maemo... once when i downloaded Angry Birds and the level pack. It sure shouldn't be like that.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Well, as a bright spot, at least Ovi isn't the only source of applications for the N900, unlike certain other phones.

But I'm amazed that, even with all of the delays, that Nokia has managed to shoot themselves in the foot multiple times on this. Then again, working in the software engineering field, I shouldn't be. The people who usually know what the best way of doing things are often not the ones who have the power to do anything about it.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Ovi store isn't the only source of applications for any phone.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

I suppose that meant iAppstore....

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

If you Don't know what the Word beta means dont use the service.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Ovi Store is beta, Ovi Suite doesn't even support N900 on 2.1 beta version, Ovi Maps lacks navigation, etc...

Nokia should have named our phone "N900 BETA"!! ;-)

Not that wouldn't use it anyway, but at least I would have waited a bit for the price gets lower instead of pre-ordering.

Feels like buying a Ferrari and the road to accelerate to its limit is still being pavimented. If at least N900 would attract the same attention from the ladies.... :D

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Um...
The OVI Store page hasn't had the word "beta" on it for awhile dude.

http://store.ovi.com/

Maybe that is why some of us are posting about this now and not then. :)

Also:
When it did say beta on the OVI site no where did it ever say that the beta Service was providing beta quality software. In fact, the Nokia Select site says that some of the "best" software for the N900 can be found in the OVI store.

The OVI service that Nokia provides now and in the future is not the point... The point is QA.

One would hope that a corporation that profits from its sale would at least have the same standards of QA for the software it promotes for the dang thing that a non-profit users group like maemo.org has.

Right now an independent developer could deduce that it would be easier to get his program promoted in OVI then it would be in maemo.org "extras"... or worse, just pay the fee to be a "Nokia Partner" or some such and skip QA altogether. :eek:

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

What ovi store are you guys talking about ? Since a couple of weeks the ovi store app link on 51.1 sends me to a static page telling me i need to upgrade maemo5 and store.ovi.com tells me my device isn't supported.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

You need to install the Maemo firmware update first, then you'll get past that splash page

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

go to ovi store via your n900 it clearly says BETA.
its not the software on there whats the problem its the QA process of the maemo beta store

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

That wasn't it, hide user agent went back to default (hide) and that was confusing ovi store.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Oh, my bad. You are saying once the service is out of beta for the N900 all the submitted apps will become magically optified and the world will be as one. :rolleyes:

When do you imagine that happening?

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

i'm not saying that at all
talk about trying to put words in my mouth just b/c i proved it was a beta and you was wrong, so now you move on to something else to try and win a argument that never was.
no wonder lot of people complain about you old guys trying to make newbies look stupid.
its still early and theres no documentation as of yet for publishing in ovi store for maemo, so the developers cant be blamed for it. once the store for maemo is little more mature and guidelines are in place then we will see optifying become a standard requirement.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Wow!
I have never seen a complaint about older members trying to make anyone look stupid.

Rather I have seen plenty of complaints about cryptic one line posts like this...

... that appear to dismiss 2 pages of discussion as just a bunch of people not understanding what a word means...

Now you want me to move on after making a baseless statement about complaints against old dude's. Well, on behalf of old dudes everywhere I respectfully decline your invitation. :)

***

You are right, apparently the only way you will see the word BETA on the OVI site is when you access it from an N900. If on the other hand, you access it from your desktop browser you wont see BETA, even when you identify the N900 as your device.

However, if my response made you feel stupid or; you were attempting to make everyone else look stupid for simply not understanding the meaning of a word, is all besides the point.

The point that I had hoped was being developed in this thread was:

Nokia's Maemo team communicated the need to optify applications to maemo.org months ago. As a result, maemo.org has made extraordinary efforts to communicate this need to both developers and members alike. A QA methodology has been developed and installed within maemo.org that although may not be perfect, certainly is robust and addresses the concearns expressed by Nokia's Maemo team.

I don't know for a fact if there is no documentation yet for publishing in OVI store. Even if there isn't, I doubt you think any old app should be pushed by OVI.

The question posed by the OP was "Who manages the Ovi Store?". The body of the original post questioned the quality of the applications that were found there. The quality of the products a store sells is one of the things that is managed.

Now on the face of it, it appears as if either the Nokia Maemo team did not communicate with the Nokia OVI team about the need for optification or,
the Nokia OVI team didn't take what was said as seriously, and with the same sense of urgency as maemo.org did.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

What are the apps not meeting quality standards? Do you mind listing them at http://wiki.maemo.org/Ovi_Store_publishing with the problems you are finding?

This wiki page needs update but it's the one and only that I have been pushing to the Ovi team directly.

Re: Who manages the Ovi Store?
 

Cheers Qgil have started updating the questions on the wiki. Can everyone else update their experiences of the Ovi store there. hopefully they might read it.