webOSroundup Developer Spotlight: Henk Jonas
This weeks Developer Spotlight is reaching way across the pond to Germany to cast its light on Henk Jonas. Henk has made many great contributions over the years to the Palm mobile community and has many more to come. Take a few minutes to get to know him better in this edition of the webOSroundup Developer Spotlight. You will be glad you did.
WOR: Where are you from?
HJ: I’m from Berlin, Germany.
WOR: What do you do for a living?
HJ: I’m a software developer in a company which produces solar cells.
WOR: When did you get interested in technology?
HJ: My first computer was a ZX Spectrum clone which wasn’t 100% hardware compatible with the original ZX Spectrum and therefore I had to hack each game I wanted to play to adjust the address of the joystick interface. Later I bought an Amiga 500 and started writing my own applications.
WOR: When and how did you connect with HP/Palm/webOS?
HJ: 2001 I bought my first Palm OS PDA and started writing apps for it. AT the end I joined the guys who ported old DOS games for it, like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and the even got Hexen2 running on it. PalmPDF which was a port of xpdf was surely one of the greatest port I did.
I bought the Palm Pre the day it arrived in Germany. I already had 2 apps in the catalog at that time.
WOR: What caused you to decide to develop mobile applications?
HJ: I use my phone every day and whenever I have a need for an app, I’m going to write it for my own use and eventually publish or even sell it.
WOR: What types of new webOS devices do you hope to see?
HJ: I’m looking for some successor of the Pixi with the specs of the Pre3. A large screen but with fixed keyboard beneath, in a solid metal case, thin but powerful with a decent battery life and would like to have some kind of navigation buttons back, they are more than needed for playing action games. If my Centro can play Hexen2 I would really like to have some decent shooter ported to the platform. But in my opion the touch-based controls aren’t that suitable for them.
WOR: What in the future of webOS is most exciting to you?
HJ: Maybe one day I can put my webOS phone next to my TouchPad and the apps I have open on the phone appear on the TouchPad’s screen. When I have to go, the open apps move back to my phone and I can just continue my work on the go where I left it on the desktop.
WOR: Are there any projects in particular you are working on that you would like the community to know about?
HJ: Actually I am working on a PamFax client for the TouchPad. There is already a working Mojo version which I did for phone users. I hope it gets published soon. After that I will make MapTool the best mapping app on the TouchPad too and even see a good reason to have an enhanced version of ImageWorker on it.
WOR: If you would like to follow Henk’s work you can find him in the following places:
Forums: MetaView
Twitter: @Metaview
Blog: http://www.metaviewsoft.de/wordpress
Developer Site: http://www.metaviewsoft.de/wordpress
Apps: ImageWorkerPro, MapToolPro, UberDict EngGer, UberRadio, UberAppCat, Save A Buck, Earworm Beta, and more
If you are a webOS developer who would like to be considered for the Developer Spotlight, or you have some favorite developers you would like to learn more about, please send your story, or the developers information to [email protected]
