Hello and happy Friday everyone. Today is a great day, I present to you Lonely Cat Games. This software company is one of my favorites as they are the developers of my favorite email client in the Symbian platform – Profimail. Its not secret and I’ve blogged about this consistently, this application rocks and fills a huge void in Symbian. LCG also makes Jukebox, Slick, one of the most popular freeware instant messaging clients, and off course X-plore, the premiere Symbian file manager. Without further ado, I present to you Michal, the owner and developer of Lonely Cat Games.

lcg post image Interview Loney Cat Games

Tell us a little bit about your background and what lead you to start developing Lonely Cat Games?

I’m software veteran, doing computer programs since some 1990. First these were games for C64 computer, later games for PC (3D shooter and such). LCG was started in 2000 with some work mates, in order to continue making PC games. Yet in around 2004 this lead to failure, so I switched to start experiments with mobile software. Most of our game developers were soon gone to other companies, and it was new beginning for LCG. At those times, Symbian was a child, and Java was mainstream. After making one simple Java game, I decided to continue with Symbian, which was using C++ and was much usable as platform.

Where you surprised with the success LCG has had?

Partially. We had big plans from beginning, and although the road was not straight, and LCG changed target audience on its way, today we’re happy with success of our mobile applications. I personally, as main developer and LCG programmer, had strong experience in complex applications, such as computer games with artificial intelligence, network communication and cool graphics. So starting with mobile development seemed to be like suddenly doing something easier. However, at present some LCG’s applications become pretty complex, such as ProfiMail.

Can you explain how you use your own application for our readers? Any favorite practices?

I mostly use ProfiMail for reading mail, but in an easy way – starting it and checking mail occasionally, no scheduled checks, Imap Idle mode or work hours settings. However I understand needs of our users, many of which are traveling and need these features. Another handy tool is X-plore, very helpful during testing on devices. LCG Jukebox and SmartMovie are leisure applications, and I use them as such – occasionally for listening to music, and sometimes on holiday I play movie on mobile phone.

lcg post image Interview Loney Cat Games

Can you share for our readers what developing or future integrations are on the horizon?

ProfiMail is in constant development. This is planned to be our flagship application also for future. There’re tons of features that our users ask, and there’s still room for improvements. It should be even better usable, for example integrating Junk mail filtering would be useful addiction.
SmartMovie is waiting for hardware acceleration support in Symbian phones (and also on Windows Mobile). Yet it seems impossible to utilize available hardware with current OS version, so we’re still hoping for this to be possible in a near future. A new application is not planned this year, let’s see if there’s some shine idea later.

What are your favorite Symbian applications? Can you list your top 5

Naturally our applications, but let’s look at others too:
Nokia maps
Google maps
Wefi
TomTom

That’s all on my mind, I don’t have many applications installed, just useful tools, and that’s what’s still installed on my phones.

What’s your favorite Twitter client for your smartphone and desktop and why?

None, frankly I heard about such thing just now from this question. After checking twitter.com, I’m now a bit educated, but I like my privacy to such level, as to not broadcast my mood or status to outside world. Yes, I use messengers, mostly ICQ, less frequently Facebook (just to look what my friends do, again not posting tons of photos about me. Well, real people are still a bit better for me than virtual J


What advice can you give to new programmers of new technologies?

Having proper education (self-education also works). And then doing the programming work absolutely precisely, not being lazy – reading books and articles from professionals, making projects for fun (this makes education and experience), testing, playing with code. Well, one must love the programming job much in order to play with it this way, but then results may look beautifully.

lcg post image Interview Loney Cat Games


Which Nokia phones have you used in the past?

In ancient times it was 3210, then first Symbian was 3650, and looking back in memory:6600, 6630, 6680, N80, 9300, E61, N95, now it’s 5800.


What are your two favorite Nokia smartphone of all time and which Nokia smartphone are looking forward to use.

Best ever was N95, now using actively 5800. Looking forward to get hands on N97.
I didn’t like touch screen phones, now phone market forced me to take 5800 as main phone (to tune LCG’s applications to it), and suddenly touch-screen phone doesn’t feel that bad.


What is your favorite color, movie, music band, and sport?

Color? All, but to choose one… blue.
Movie: Apocalypto (2006), and good thrillers, although I don’t watch movies much now
Music: Loreena Mckennitt (now), earlier it was all kind of rock bands
Sport: Swimming

Thank you soooo much Michal for sharing insights into LCG and yourself, it was my pleasure :)

So folks, if you’re having emailing problems, your solution is only a click away, I highly recommend Profimail, it has my approval rating of 5 mics and while your there check out LCG’s great product repertoire, its money well spent.

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