Nimbuzz: The Instant Messaging Giant

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Its with great pleasure that I introduce to you Joost de Moel, Nimbuzz’s lead developer for Symbian. As many of you know Nimbuzz is my favorite Instant Messaging client. Its an application that needs very little introduction as its probably the most used instant messaging client in the Symbian community. Also I would like to thank Tobias Kemper, thanks for all your prompt responses as well.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what lead you to start developing Symbian applications.

I studied Information Technology and worked as a Software Engineer at a couple of different companies. At one point in time I was working for a company that developed software for Pocket PCs. They were making software for medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies. Mainly surveys and tools that helped them in their profession. They wanted to start development for Symbian phones as well and asked me if I wanted to do that. It seemed like an interesting platform to me and a nice chance to learn something new, so I agreed. That was for UIQ phones, the Sony-Ericsson P800 and P900.
Later on I got to work for Nimbuzz and developed Nimbuzz for Series 60 phones.

Nimbuzz was developed in C++

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

I use it for chatting mainly and calling occasionally, to stay in touch with friends and colleagues. We use Nimbuzz extensively within our company, so that we can quickly communicate with each other. All my colleagues are usually online the whole day.
I find it really handy that I can use one application to communicate with people who use all kinds of different applications themselves, like Google Talk or Windows Live. I can also call people for free when I’m abroad, which I quite like.

How much time did it take to develop your application, as far as coding the actual application and what programming language was used.

Nimbuzz was developed in C++. I think it took more than a year before we released the first version. That was mainly because we kept on adding new features and wanted to have a really great working product before we released it.

Can you share for our reader what developing is on the horizon?

Well actually, just an hour ago we released Nimbuzz for the Nokia 5800, adding support for the touch screen. We’ve made changes to the user interface using some new features of the Series 60 5^th edition SDK to ensure our product is really great to use on touch screen devices.

Other than that, we’re redesigning some parts of our application so that we can offer an even better experience to the users. And we’re adding some really cool new features. I can’t say too much about, but they will really add value to Nimbuzz.

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

Nothing too special here I guess, but I’ve used these applications a lot:
- Opera Mini
- Google Maps
- Gmail
- FExplorer (on 2^nd edition mainly)
- Nokia’s Internet Radio

Are you joining the Symbian Foundation? And What are your thoughts on the future of the Symbian Foundation.

Well we certainly want to join it. I think it’s a good initiative and will enable Symbian to continue in the future. I think going open source will eventually help to add quality to the platform.

What advice can you give to new developers?

Well, just read a couple of good books about Symbian, get familiar with the cleanup stack and all those different descriptor types and start developing!

Which Nokia phones have you used in the past?

I’ve mainly used an E70 and a N78 for personal usage. But occasionally we get new devices here at Nimbuzz, which I then use for a while to try them out like the N96 and the 5800 XpressMusic.

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

I quite liked the E70 because it’s not too big, but still has a full keyboard. But nowadays there are other phones which have much better performance. I still stick to the N78 at this moment because it’s not as big as the N95 or N96 but is still quite complete as far as features go.I quite look forward to the N97 which promises to be a really cool phone.

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

I don’t really have any preferences as far as colors go. I guess it depends on where you put them on. Silver cars are quite boring for example, but silver phones are not too bad. I have a blue car which is a lot better I think. In case you really want to know, some of the walls in my home I painted red and others white.
I’m really into music. I guess my favorite bands are Sonic Youth and Genesis. I used to be really into progrock, but nowadays I like all kinds of music. I think Sonic Youth are really intense and original. I really like the noise they produce which seems to fit my state of mind quite often. But they also have good melodies and have produced some quite crude rock music.
Not sure about my favorite movies. I quite like Tarantino movies mainly because of the atmosphere and the music. But there are several other movies I liked a lot like Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption and Into the Wild.
I don’t really watch sports that much, but I do practice it. I cycle a lot and play some tennis from time to time.