About Mobility Weblog

A reminder that next Monday July 14th is our next Austin MobileMonday session.

A very interesting topic, come see Nikunj Mehta, tech lead for Oracle’s AtomDB project, talk about an emergent approach to mobile applications and browser-embedded databases, involving the use of the Atom publishing protocol for application programming as well as data synchronization, and areas of future work in off-line data for Web applications.

This event is sponsored by Oracle.

For more information see the MobileMonday Austin website.

Hope to see you there!

ceo

What began as a colorful Internet fluke has blossomed into a full-fledged political movement - one that Republicans and Democrats alike are reluctantly having to acknowledge.

See The C. Enrique Ortiz Phenomenon:

ceo
(P.S. Thanks to my brother Carlos)

Some videos of the RoboCup Japan Open 2008 competition this past May (via Robot Dreams):

Various Competitions:

Robot Sprints:

Robot Fights:

Have you heard about Bondi? It is OMTP’s initiative to extend the mobile browser to provide AJAX-like capabilities and access to local functionality on the handset.

From the OMTP website:

The OMTP BONDI initiative is addressing the problem that an application written for one phone must be rewritten again and again if it is to work on all phones. This is the mobile platform fragmentation problem. The cost to the mobile industry of this inefficiency is huge. It slows down time to market, limits market size and increases customer confusion; hence impedes uptake of services.

OMTP seeks to remedy this problem by helping to address the way in which the existing web 2.0 environment is moved onto mobile devices. Mobile devices offer new capabilities to web service developers which make them very desirable, but present new security issues. OMTP is defining the key interfaces that enable the mobile web platform to access sensitive functions on the mobile device. OMTP is defining appropriate security that will enable new services and create user trust.

It is very cool to see this initiative happening, as this is in part the result of a study performed earlier this year for the OMTP by Ajit, Tony Fish, and others, including myself, and with input from Industry experts who were interviewed including James Pearce, Barbara Ballard, Tom Hume, Paul Golding, Mike Rowehl, Thomas Landspurg, Jason Delport, Brian Lee, and many others. I think of the study as a success, and a goldmine of captured knowledge, and seeing Bondi is great…

As expected, the top concern with Bondi is security — from the OMTP says mobile Web 2.0 is a beach (The Register) article:

Yesterday saw the first meeting of the Bondi working group, who will be deciding how much freedom is too much for untrusted applications, and how to identify those applications that deserve a little more trust. Apparently digital signatures will be on the agenda, but accompanied by the domain listing approach, where access to the APIs is restricted to scripts loaded from known sites.

So I’m looking forward to see how they will solve that security problem — best answer, let the user decide! Prompt the user for permission, and go…

If this OMTP project is successful, we will be MUCH closer to next level of mobile applications based on Web Runtimes — see Mobile Internet Programming: Browser, Web Runtime, Local-based Applications.

ceo

A great summary of Public Resources about Mobile OSGi (courtesy of Jo Ritter, Mobile OSGi Blog).

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The GSMA Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative is alive and moving forward w.r.t. NFC standardization, in this case, w.r.t. secure elements for NFC applications.

Developed by the 45 operators globally supporting the GSMA’s Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative, the requirements will help handset manufacturers to develop NFC-enabled phones that are compatible with operators’ planned NFC services.

:

The requirements build on the standardisation work completed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which has selected the Single Wire Protocol to provide the interface between the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) — recommended by the GSMA as the Secure Element for NFC applications — and the NFC chipset embedded in the handset.

Pay-Buy-Mobile was announced a year ago at the 2007 GSMA World.

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Read more at Roger Brinkley’s Blog — Mobile & Embedded Community Governance Board Nominations Open.

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Mike Rowehl has joined Skyfire, the mobile browser company… I got to see Skyfire in action earlier this year when Raj Singh showed it to me at a MobileMonday Austin event; I was impressed with it, and even blogged about it — see the Skyfire Mobile Browse.

MikeR has joined as Scalability Architect, a very interesting position…

…I know of another company that really needs an Scalability Architect… guess which one? Yeap, Twitter.

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Wow… OPWV is selling it’s mobile browser and messaging business…

Do you remember when OPWV was all the rave? Do you remember Phone.com and the Phone.com conference? Man, those were cool days. The early days, (late 1990s and early 2000s) when Mobile Web really got started; HDML, HTML, WAP, cHTML, the WAP gateway security gap. Heh… who remember those days?

And today we are still complaining about the mobility and the mobile web. As my friend James Pearce says, enough bitching about mobility! (OK, he says it in a much nicer way), and do/deliver something…

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One of our roles as computer scientists, technologists and enthusiasts, is to help educate the next generation of computer scientists, technologists and enthusiasts.

Reading today that Fewer students pursue computer-related degrees really concerns me — it is a no brainer that today and the future, computing will be at the center of economics, communication, science, and many other. And as a consequence, there is money to be made in computing.

So what could it be that fewer students pursue computer-related degrees?

It must be related to the feeling of insecurity. Too much noise about Off-shoring? Out-sourcing? I understand, it is easy to be concerned, especially for young kids…

But hell, all jobs are insecure today, from IBM to whatnot.

So join a startup, or start your own — there you can learn a whole lot, make good money while on it, and make tons of money if the company executes well.

In Austin alone, technologists in general are making good money, as a recent article on the local paper read: Austin may have lost thousands of high-tech jobs, but remaining ones pay well — Austin’s average tech wage is $100,500 (Austin was 3rd on the list, with San Jose/Silicon Valley at $144,828, and San Francisco at $118,518 — of course, with the cost of living in the west coast, it really is like making 1/2 that). Austin is great though, and you should visit and see for yourself ;-).

Some companies, such as eZee don’t off-shore; it is all built in house. There are many companies, large and small, just like that. Join one.

So for those of us, the older generation, let’s do something about it… help educate, help prepare the next generation. How? Be vocal, hire, mentor, write an article, a book, give a speech (at MobileMonday we all the time are looking for speakers) — but do something…

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See my latest article — an introduction to the NFC API for Java…

Near-field Communication (NFC) is characterized as a very short-range radio communication technology with a lot of potential, especially when applied to mobile handsets. Imagine yourself using your cellphone to interact with posters, magazines, and even with products while at the store, and with such interaction initiating a request or search for related information in real-time. Other usages of NFC include the electronic wallet to make payments using your handset, the same way you do with your credit card. With NFC all this is possible. But NFC is still a young technology. That said, NFC-enabled handsets are being introduced into the market, and deployments and pilots around the world are occurring. This article explores NFC and how you can leverage it in your Java application by using the Contactless Communications API.

See An Introduction to Near-Field Communication and the Contactless Communication API (Sun Mobility Website).

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Another MVNO “bites the dust”; not exactly for Helio as it is being rescued by Virgin Mobile. At $39M it is a bargain for Virgin Mobile, compared to all the cash SK Telecom et al. have put into it…

It is SO hard and expensive to run an MVNO.

Helio was/is a very innovative group of folks, who entered and intertwined the space of mobility and social networks as never done before.

I know folks, good folks at Helio, and I wish them the best…

ceo

Nice interview of Thomas Landspurg, founder of 8Motions, and a friend from France, on the importance and use of Cell-IDs for location-based mobile applications.

Thomas is the creator of the OpenCellId project:

This project is an open source project, aiming to create a complete database of CellID worlwide, with their locations. The project provides free access to tools, data to not only create this database, but also retrieve location information. OpenCell-ID provides:

• A way to collect samples that will feed the Cell-ID database
• A way to look-up the ID of an already known cell with its position
• All data can be downloaded for free, and even the source code for the application is open source

See the article Towards free location on all devices (Telematics Update).

See the OpenCellID website.

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A very interesting topic, come see Nikunj Mehta, tech lead for Oracle’s AtomDB project, talk about an emergent approach to mobile applications and browser-embedded databases, involving the use of the Atom publishing protocol for application programming as well as data synchronization, and areas of future work in off-line data for Web applications.

This event is sponsored by Oracle.

Talk synopsis:

There is heavy latent demand for mobile applications and recent industry events have heightened interest in mobile Web applications. Mobile application developers face a number of inherent challenges of mobility such as form factor and user interaction. Besides these, they are also forced to deal with incidental issues such as platform fragmentation and unreliable connectivity. Various “Rich Internet Application” platforms are currently targeting these problems. Oracle, of these, is interested primarily in standards-based platforms, i.e., Web browsers and AJAX. Therefore, Oracle has developed a solution to the network unreliability problem in the context of Web browsers, Oracle’s AtomDB . This technology provides a transparent, local, read-write cache for application data that is synchronized with data sources using the same REST APIs used by AJAX applications to access their data. This talk will focus on the dual use of IETF’s Atom publishing protocol for application programming as well as data synchronization. He will also discuss areas of future work in off line data for Web applications.

Speaker bio:

Since his early days, Nikunj has been working in the crosshairs of mobile and Web as well as business and data. He is an entrepreneur at heart and an architect at work. Nikunj leads the AtomDB project at Oracle and helps shape Oracle’s strategy in distributed applications, mobile technology, and Web databases. He works in Oracle’s Database Advanced Development Group. His doctoral thesis focused on implementation primitives for distributed software architecture styles. He dons the colors of USC and University of Mumbai, both in computer science.

His blog is o-micron.blogspot.com

When: July 14th, 2008, 6 - 8 PM

Cost: Zero, nada, free! But seating is limited; please RSVP by sending an email to rsvp@austinwirelessalliance.org, indicating your name and affiliation

Where:

Oracle/Austin offices
9600 North MO-Pac
Seventh Floor
Austin, TX 78759
Main Phone: 512.671.5100
Main Fax: 512.671.5600

For more information see the MobileMonday Austin website.

ceo

I’ve joined (invited to join) the governance body (Board of Directors) of the Mobile & Embedded Community. As a board member, some of my responsibilities will include:

• Ensure all contributions represent the values of the majority of the community and not simply the views of a small group.
• Ensure collaboration and peer review across the community.
• Manage and resolve conflicts, governance, branding and other non-technical issues related to the projects in the community.
• Amend the governance model of the community when needed.
• Ratify processes and procedures to be used by the entire community.
• Support and empower community participation for all projects.
• Approve project graduation against published criteria.

My personal goal is continue being an active member of the mobility community, and help improve and open the processes and promote collaboration, for the good of the mobile and embedded community…

ceo