Archive for April, 2007

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The Dojo Offline Toolkit, and its relationship to Mobile Web

Saturday, April 28th, 2007

Dojo Offline

The Dojo offline toolkit allows for web applications to work offline. It consists of a JavaScript library (bundled within the web page) and a ~300K download with the logic to cache a web application's user-interface for offline use.

How is Dojo offline related to mobile web? Right at this moment, not directly.

But Dojo offline touches on a very important and needed characteristic, a key feature that future mobile web browsers must support:


“The ability to work disconnected”, or “Support for disconnected or offline browsing (cache), allowing the Mobile Web application operate as an occasionally connected application”

See the Mobile Web FAQ for more information about the Mobile Web, and about other characteristics that future mobile browsers must exhibit.

From the mobile perspective, the 300KB+ Dojo offline download is pretty stiff, and again, caching is of great importance.

ceo

Posted in MobileWeb | No Comments »

Save the Internet Radio

Friday, April 27th, 2007

Save Net Radio

I am an Internet Radio listener – I listen to it on a daily basis, and am listening to it as I write this. I even contribute $ to it.

If you are an Internet Radio listener, I encourage you to go to the SaveNetRadio.org web site and show your support. Even if you are not an Internet Radio user, I encourage you to support it — the ideal goes beyond Radio, and it is about Choice… On this age, on which the Internet is part of our daily lives, Net music must go on…

From the SaveNetRadio.org web site:


“The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on May 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). If the increased rates remain unchanged, the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date. Internet radio needs your help! H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act was introduced by Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL ) to save the Internet radio industry. Please call your congressperson to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2060″.

ceo

Posted in General | No Comments »

GNOME Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE)

Friday, April 27th, 2007

The GNOME Mobile Platform is a subset of the GNOME Platform.
It goal is to “advance the use, development and commercialization of GNOME components as a mobile and embedded user experience platform”.

Founding organizations today include GNOME Foundation supporters ACCESS, Canonical, Debian, Igalia, Imendio, Intel, Nokia, OLPC, OpenedHand and Red Hat, and GMAE contributors CodeThink, Collabora, FIC, Fluendo, Kernel Concepts, Movial, Nomovok, Openismus, Vernier, Waugh Partners and Wolfson Microelectronics.

Related Open Source projects include Avahi, BlueZ, Cairo, GNOME, GPE, GStreamer, GTK+, Hildon, Maemo, Matchbox, OpenMoko, Telepathy and Tinymail; and industry organisations CELF, the Linux Foundation and LiPS.

More:


> Read the GMAE press release


> Read a good writeup by DougT

ceo

Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

Nokia 6131 NFC

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

I (finally) got my hands on a Nokia 6131 NFC handset with which I have been playing with. This handset is to be released later this year (summer) here in the U.S.

The 6131 NFC is a Series 40 3rd Edition (FP1) handset with support for the following Java APIs:

  • MIDP 2.0 / CLDC 1.1
  • Advanced Multimedia Supplements
  • Bluetooth API
  • File Connection and PIM API
  • JTWI clarifications
  • MMAPI
  • Mobile 3D Graphics API
  • Mobile Internationalization API
  • Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API
  • WMA 2.0, 1.0
  • Web Services Specification
  • Contactless Communication API

…a pretty good list of supported APIs, and support for WAP 2.0
.

It's primary display has a resolution of 240 x 320 with a color depth of 24 bits, and a secondary display with a resolution of 128 x 160 with a color depth of 18 bits. The handset's display is crisp; very clear.

Memory storage holds 11 MB, with JAR files up to 1MB. It has a Micro SD slot.

Connectivity-wise the handset supports EGPRS, GPRS, HSCSD, CSD (GSM 850 900, 1800, 1900), Bluetooth, Infrared, USB, and well as NFC.

The handset supports the following video formats: 3GPP formats (H.263), H.264/AVC, MPEG-4. The following audio formats are supported: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MP4, WMA, Mobile XMF, SP-MIDI, AMR (NB-AMR), MIDI Tones (poly 64), True tones (WB-AMR), and it comes with an AAC/MP3 player and FM radio.

But the real treat for me is its support for NFC, or Near Field Communication, which I believe will totally take off, and will be pervasive on all handsets, as pervasive as Bluetooth is today; but we are a couple of years away from the “NFC sweet spot”. But to get there, we must start today. The Nokia 6131 NFC SDK 1.0 is available from Forum Nokia. The Forum Nokia Wiki has a Nokia 6131 NFC FAQ and other very good information.

Of interest is the handset's support for the Contactless Communication API (JSR-257), which is the enabler for NFC “smartcard” I/O from Java; exciting – more on this later on…

The 6131 NFC SDK

6131 NFC SDK

Overall, I like the handset; its form factor, weight, its crisp display, and its overall features, oh and of course, its support for NFC… And Nokia has done a good job with documentation, resources and tools.

ceo

Posted in Handsets | 4 Comments »

The Blogosphere 2005 – Present

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

Very funny, and so true!



Click to Enlarge (go to The Gaping Void)

ceo

Posted in SocialSoftware | No Comments »

slideshare – a place to share and discover presentations

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

slideshare

I just discovered slideshare. I would categorize slideshare as “YouTube” but for presentations.

I like the website a whole lot — wealth of information / user generated content, on lots of different topics; there is good stuff, such as Conference presentations, and great technical slides, and there is less useful stuff as well. Presentations are organized by topics, are tagged and commented on. Check it out.

ceo

Posted in General | No Comments »

The BlackBerry Outage

Saturday, April 21st, 2007

The BlackBerry outage… reports here and reports there, this and that…

…speculations, leaks, cover ups…

Or is it just plain inconvenience?

Shit happens.

It is just email.

Don't put all your communication “eggs” in one basket…

Life goes on…

ceo

Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

In Memoriam | Virginia Tech

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

So many lives lost.


Such a wasteful incident.


So many lives affected.


Students, professors,


friends, and families.


From different races,


and different cultures,


and different believes,


and different places.


From Indonesia,


to South America,


here the United States,


and even Puerto Rico.


All equally effected.


So many beautiful people.


So many bright people.


Such as sad incident.


Such a tragedy.


Let's remember all of them.


All rest in peace.

Remembering the Victims of April 16, 2007:


Ross Abdallah Alameddine


Christopher James Bishop


Brian Roy Bluhm


Ryan Christopher Clark


Austin Michelle Cloyd


Jocelyne Couture-Nowak


Kevin P. Granata


Matthew Gregory Gwaltney


Caitlin Millar Hammaren


Jeremy Michael Herbstritt


Emily Jane Hilscher


Jarrett Lee Lane


Matthew Joseph La Porte


Henry J. Lee


Liviu Librescu


Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan


Lauren Ashley McCain


Daniel Patrick O'Neil


J. Ortiz-Ortiz


Minal Hiralal Panchal


Daniel Alejandro Perez


Erin Nicole Peterson


Michael Steven Pohle, Jr.


Julia Kathleen Pryde


Mary Karen Read


Reema Joseph Samaha


Waleed Mohamed Shaalan


Leslie Geraldine Sherman


Maxine Shelly Turner


Nicole White

/by C. Enrique Ortiz

Posted in General | No Comments »

Mowser

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Mowser

Russ Beattie has introduced Mowser web content translation technology for mobile web. Neat… there is so much to be done in this space of “proper web content translation for mobile web”… I tackled this problem many years ago, on a different but related problem-area, and I'll tell you that it is good to see Russ tackling and solving this problem-space…

ceo

Posted in MobileWeb | No Comments »

Twitlet: A Java ME Front-end to Twitter

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

My buddies @ Paxmodept Jason and Steve have released a Java ME-based front-end to Twitter called Twitlet; cool name… Check it out… These guys are building very cool stuff, front and back — keep an eye on them…

Twitlet

You can try it by pointing your mobile browser at the following URL:
mobile.paxmodept.com

Read more:

> >
Twitlet: A Java ME Mobile Twitter Application

> >
Twitlet Interface Design Decisions

Related to this, I learned via Anders about TinyTwitter, another Twitter-client for Java ME.
Also, Anders just published Jitter, his own Twitter Java ME client!

ceo

Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

Great MoMo session on mobile app design – thanks to Frog and Little Springs Design

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Just wanted to quickly say thank you to Barbara Ballard of Little Springs Design (who came all the way from Kansas), and to Denise Burton and Matt Howell of Frog Design for speaking at last night's Mobile Monday Austin event… It was an awesome session and we had a full house… Barbara's presentation on device diversity and the carry principle was great, and Frog presented on their design work of the Celltop, which both Matt and Denise led; very cool to see this from the designers themselves. Thanks to Frog for sponsoring the event.

Later on I will write about what was covered/discussed…

Next month's topic is “MVNO and Social Networking” with Helio and Professor Sanjay Shakkottai, Univ. of Texas; stay tuned…

ceo

P.S. Blogging and have been and will be light for the next days or more, as I'm extremely busy completing some deliverables…

Posted in MobileMonday Austin | No Comments »

About Mobile Web 2.0 Practice, Theory and Timeframes

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

Good set of posts from Ajit and Paul on Mobile Web 2.0:

Ajit writes about Mobile Web 2.0, and what it is in his opinion. Paul writes responds about such definition not real and is all hype. Anders argues that it can't be defined…

And all these disagreements, in my opinion, boils down to timeframes, and thought differences between theory and practice. Remember that “…in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is”, said Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut. Around this I wrote sometime ago The Web 2.0 From a Practical Perspective, which also applies to the Mobile Web.

Paul also writes about other approaches to mobility, such as buddy-centric, which I call people-centric mobile computing, approach on which I believe.

At first, I too argued about Ajit's views (I'm not going to rehash it here), but over time I came to realize that his ideas are about the future, about the potential of Mobile Web, maybe not in a too distant future; time will tell. The Mobile Web will become a predominant form for delivering mobile applications, once the standards and certain browser techniques (see Mobile Web FAQ) become consistent across vendors and handsets.

If we were to talk about mobility and the present, and future as well, Paul is right as well.

At the end, both are right, and the whole discussion really is about timeframes.

Mobile is and will continue to be multi-channel, and people-centric. This is why Java, native, texting, Web, Widgets, and voice and other, are all channels for delivering these mobile experiences and solutions. And, it doesn't matter the delivery “platform” for mobile applications, when talking about handsets, they all will be second to voice…

When talking about mobility, let's always frame the discussion around availability, now vs. future, so that expectations are understood.

ceo

Posted in Mobility | No Comments »

NCAA Basketball 2007: Barton vs. Winona St. What an ending!

Thursday, April 12th, 2007

I meant to publish this before… but it is never too late to see an ending like this… While NCAA Division I Basketball gets most of the attention, games like the one below is what makes college basketball exciting… you have to see the clip below of the the final 45 seconds of the Division II Basketball Championship 2007 between Barton and Winona St.

ceo

Posted in General | No Comments »

Carnival of the Mobilists #68

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists, number 68, is at Chetan Sharma's Always On Real-Time Access. A great edition it is, go check it out. My apologizes for not participating this week — busy, busy…

ceo

Posted in Carnival Of The Mobilists | No Comments »

AB5k Java-based Widgets for Desktop

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

AB5k Widgets

AB5k Widgets is a Java-based Widget or Desklets runtime.

ceo

Posted in Widgets | No Comments »

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