This week's Carnival of the Mobilist is at SmartMobs… Judy has
done a wonderful job compiling this week's carnival, which is getting better and better each week.
Also this week, the Khosla Ventures winners of last month's Carnival were announced – congrats to the winners Rudy De Waele and Stephanie Rieger. My entry The Mobile Perimeter was so close to winning… oh well, maybe next time….
ceo
I've to admit, I love computer animations… I admire the folks that have the talent to create virtual worlds that transcend reality. And I love computer animations with music… If you too, checkout Animusic — it is pretty awesome…
STARSHIP GROOVE
POGO STICKS
ceo
Google has introduced Google Code Project Hosting… their open source project hosting offering that competes with SourceForge.
Google… Google… they know our searching patterns and web content (Google search), our email (Gmail) and IM (Google Talk) conversations, our blogs preferences (Google Reader) and calendar events (Google Calendar), the groups we publish or follow (Google Groups), and our personal information (Google AdSense and AdWords), the information we care about (Google Personalized page), and our buying habits (Google Store).
And now our code too? Wait a minute — that's crossing the line! 
On a serious note… all this information centralized within their premises, easily accessible for profiling – I'm not concerned about the good guys, but what could happen if the bad guys, or even the government, gets access to it without permission. Think about it. It is hard not to be paranoid.
ceo
One of “new” JSRs in the block is the Mobile Internationalization API (JSR 238). This specification defines localization resource file formats and their organization, and of course, the API itself to manage the resources.
With the Mobile Services Architecture specification (JSR 248), the mobile internationalization API is one of the mandatory JSRs to be present on handsets… but this is only true for the full MSA stack, and not for the MSA subset stack — recall that MSA defines a full stack and a subset stack.
So how can developers handle this situation, where the internationalization API may or not be present on the handset? This is when projects like Mary Jane Soft's MicroI18N (under LGPL license) comes to the rescue. With such solution available to us, by implementing some logic (runtime or build/deployment), the developer can use the device's native JSR 238 implementation if available (i.e. full MSA stack), and use/embed MicroI18N within the application for handsets that don't include JSR 238 (i.e. subset MSA).
ceo
From W3C:
Participants in the International Workshop on the Implementation of a Device Description Repository have published their report.
... the workshop participants debated the expected nature of the Device Description Repository (DDR). All agreed it should be simple. The API and a vocabulary of essential properties are high priorities. The DDR should not merely gather data from other sources, but be a bridge to those sources. Avoid replicating past efforts. Instead, build on them. Re-use where possible. While the architecture of the DDR framework is important, the participants felt that the emphasis should be on the API, creating an initial vocabulary, supporting extensibility and demonstrating the utility of the solution. The DDWG should concentrate on how the data is moved around (e.g. queries, updates etc.) and not on how the data is stored. The general feeling that the DDR framework will be distributed in nature will need more careful examination, possibly outside W3C, but not necessarily in the second charter.
From my perspective: fix device repositories… How? Choose a format (UAProf vs. CC/PP). Choose a header (Profile vs. x-wap-profile header). And fix the vocabulary – the contents of the device descriptors are not consistent. Do we need an API? I am happy right now with a complete, well defined device profile – but I'll take the API as well, if simple, useful and well defined. Keep the DDR distributed – keep pushing the description to the manufacturers, but let's enforce the existence of device descriptions (headers and profiles), and make them complete and consistent. Keep it simple but effective!
Both Luca Passani and Andrea Trasatti, of the WURFL project, were part of the W3C DDR workshop, so that is good – they should bring some balance and reality check to DDR.
ceo
Just read via Wendong's Smart Phone Weblog that Sony Ericsson has released
Mobile JUnit 1.0 for Java ME CLDC phones.
ceo
If you have an MMS application that you want to put it front of Cingular's marketing folks, do the following:
Send the above in an e-mail with “MMS Application” in the subject line to developer.program@cingular.com.
ceo
The date was July 20, 1969. The mission was Apollo 11. A day like today, 37 years ago, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon…
Forgotten by many, the trio of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, together with thousands of other people who worked on the mission, made history like it was never done before, and will never be done again – the first time a human being walked on another planetary body – one of the most awesome events in our human history… An event like no other…
Click to visit NASA's Remembering Apollo 11 web page
ceo
The act of coding vs. the act of deploying… Is coding deploying in Java ME really a pain?
Previously I wrote Is coding in Java ME really a pain? where I bring up a couple of points on that topic. But I've been recently reminded — the real pain is not the coding part, but the deployment of the mobile application (pain that is not particular to Java ME) – all the hoops to jump and the cost associated with deploying: signing the application, testing across multiple handsets and the cost of buying many different handsets, certification, the distribution channels, and so on. It is a real challenge.
As the Mobile Service Architecture (MSA) comes closer to reality, so is the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP3), we are going to have for the first time a very rich Java platform that encompasses APIs from A to Z – you name it, from advanced graphics, location, Bluetooth, multimedia, messaging, PIM and file, security and trust, web services, the core profile APIs (MIDP), and so on – read my post The Mobile Services Architecture (Proposed) Final Specification for more information. The result is that we are going to have a more consistent Java runtime across handsets from different vendors, which is a very good thing for all of us, including our customers.
But the problem that will remain is the pain of deploying, the pain of dealing with different carriers in different ways, (the cost of) signing and certifying and testing for different network carriers and many different handsets, because if you don't, you don't get access to the really useful APIs – this is the pain of deploying.
Coincidentally, John Kern wrote about this same issue, and he puts it nicely in his blog:
"The costs of testing, signing and deploying via carriers is large in comparison. From a software engineering perspective, this limits the number of releases to add features and fix bugs."
Yes sir, that is the case…
ceo
The commercial (Java) IDE market has been going through a transformation that started more than 3 years ago. And it all started with the introduction of NetBeans and Eclipse free IDEs.
I remember (and experienced in person) the love-hate relationship between Metrowerks and Sun, with the CodeWarrior (CW) folks creating the CodeWarrior for Wireless product, and saying “we are investing in tools that help sell more Java, but Sun is not helping us here with their free tools”. Eventually Metrowerks decided to drop from the Java IDE race – a hard but smart move by Metrowerks.
Today Borland announced they are set to sell their IDE business.
Any commercial IDE will see its market share erode over time. It takes big cojones to enter the IDE market today. It is just too hard to compete against free tools. Even if the commercial tool has unique features, it is a matter of time before similar features will show up in the free tool(s). IntelliJ has done awesome, and has a large number of followers, but its market share will erode over time as well.
Back in 2002 my team at AGEA created extensions for CW and NetBeans that allowed developers create MIDP applications for the enterprise. I believed back then, and I believe now, that from the tools developer perspective, plug-ins to existing IDEs are the way to go.
ceo
OMG! A friend sent me these in an email… but there was no attribution. I don't know who created these sequences, but whoever did, thank you! This is so funny! If you know who created these, please leave a comment with the information, so that I can give proper attribution… Depending on how much downloads/bandwidth these will consume (which cost me money), I may decide to disable the page in the future – please don't Digg…
See – The (Relative) Truth behind Zinedine Zidane (Zizou) Head-butt World Cup Incident
The Texas Independent Game Conference takes place in Austin on July 22nd/23rd and attendees will get the chance to hear from indie veterans willing to share their successes and their experience as well as presentations addressing market trends, distribution, on-line security, development tools, IP protection, structuring a deal and the opportunities in the mobile and casual game segments.
Highlights include keynotes from Warren Spector and Greg Costikyan and sessions from Gordon Walton (Bioware), Jay Moore (Garage Games), Dan Prigg (Real Networks) and Jessica Tams (Casual Game Association). A Game Demo Party has been added to the program and attendees are encouraged to bring their games and get direct feedback from other developers and publishers. The full program is available at www.txindiegamecon.com and registration for the event is just $105.
ceo
Just wanted to congratulate the Italians, 2006 FIFA World Cup Champions…
Congratulations also to France and Germany…
ceo
[Flags Credit: CIA World Factbook]
Development tools are getting very sophisticated, helping developers generate UI, base code structure, and more.
But do you like using code generators? Or do you prefer to crank out all your code manually?
I've put together a poll to see if developers are using code generators.
You can find the poll by going to my mobility website
or on the right side column of my weblog.
ceo
"Great individuals invent their own values and create the very terms under which they excel." -Kierkegaard and Nietzsche