Sony Ericsson Developer World offers registered members a range of moderated discussion forums, with topics covering Java ME, Symbian OS/UIQ, Messaging, Browsing, Multimedia and general phone issues. The forums were given a face-lift in February 2006 with the introduction of a new forum engine, a new ranking and reward system, question tracking and RSS feeds.

To help you get the most from your forum postings, here's a "how to" guide covering:

• Reward System, reward your forum fellows for helpful answers
• Keeping an eye on your threads/questions
• Using watches to be notified by e-mail when a thread has been updated
• RSS feeds to subscribe on a thread, forum or user
• Changing your account details

The Reward System
One of the most important features of the Sony Ericsson Developer World discussion forums is the reward system.

The reward system has the functionality that a thread can be marked as a question. This gives the thread originator the ability to award points to forum members who contribute helpful answers.

To highlight a thread as a question, mark it as described below:

The thread identified as a question will be marked with this icon.  

When a forum member has replied to your thread, you can mark the answers as "Helpful" or "Very Helpful", this will award the poster of the reply with reward points. Two answers can be selected by the originator of the thread as "Helpful", giving the poster who posted the helpful answer 5 points. One answer can be selected as "very helpful" giving the poster 10 award points.

Your thread/question, when a forum member has posted an answer, it will look like this:

If the answer is helpful, you can give points to the originator by clicking "Helpful" (5 points) or "Very Helpful" (10 points). If it is not helpful, don't click at all.

When you have clicked on one of the reward buttons (helpful or very helpful) you will be asked to confirm your decision and if your question is answered. If you feel that you need some further answers, select the option "No, my question is still unanswered".

To proceed, click the "Mark message as Helpful" or "Mark message as Very Helpful" button. The image below shows this page.

The points awarded are then used in a level system to show the forum experience of that member.  Here are the levels:

When you have marked your question as answered, the thread will then be marked with this icon on the side of the thread.
 

Keeping an eye on your questions
If you have posted a lot of questions it can be hard to keep track of them. Fortunately there is a simple way of keeping track of this. In your Control Panel there is an option called Your Questions.

First click "My forum settings":

Then, select "My Questions"

By clicking on one of the two links above you will access the "Your Questions" page.

Here you can keep track of your unresolved and resolved questions:

When you log in to the forum you will also see this message if you have any unresolved questions.

RSS feeds
If you have a RSS feed reader you can subscribe to specific threads, announcements, messages, popular threads, threads and to your own threads.

Every forum page has a RSS link displayed with this icon  and this RSS XML link holds information to the specified page your on. If you click this link you will navigate to the RSS Feed page that has a lot of other RSS feeds options except the one you clicked on:

Using the RSS URLs in the right column, you can subscribe to list below from a specific forum or from all forums in a certain category:

• Announcements 
• Messages 
• Popular threads 
• Threads 
• Your messages 

If you click on one of the RSS URLs in the right column or "Get requested feed" link, you will navigate to the RSS XML page. To subscribe to this RSS feed you simply copy and paste the URL into your RSS reader. Some RSS readers will get this address automatically if you add a feed after you clicked on Get requested feed link:

There are many commercial and free RSS readers available on the web.

Using watches: be notified by e-mail when a thread has been updated
A watch automatically notifies you by e-mail if the thread you are interested in has been updated.

To add a thread, forum, category or user to your watch list, click on the "Watch This Thread" link at the top of the thread page. 

To see your watches, you need to enter your control panel and select the "Stop Watching Thread" to end the e-mail notifications.

 
After 30 days, inactive watches will automatically expire.

To see your current list of watches, click on "Your Control Panel" then "Watches". From this screen you can choose to receive e-mail notifications when new posts are made. Just select "Add Email Notification" next to the thread for which you want to be notified.

You can delete a watch by checking the "Delete" tick box for the watch you want to delete, then clicking the "Delete" button. 

Changing your account settings
If you need to change any of your account settings such as username, password, e-mail or something else, you need to change simply click My SE Account in the control panel.

This will redirect you to your Sony Ericsson Developer World account profile page. The settings below can be changed to whatever you desire but please remember to press the submit link in the bottom of the page (not visible in the picture).

More information:

• Visit the forums>>
• Forum RSS feeds>>
• "Forum face-lift, quick user guide" February 2006 news article>>