Year: 2004

A quick heads up from the gang in #FOAF: LiveJournal FOAF is live.  I even wrote up a quick entry in my stagnant journal about it.  FOAF data ends up on /users/username/data/foaf.  My LJ FOAF is here.  My geek FOAF is here.

Carry on.

Lots of new phone models are being announced.  Here’s a quick rundown of the ones that I’ve found this morning:

• InfoSync World: The Motorola A1000 (PDF fact sheet) (Symbian [UIQ], 3G/GSM/GPRS available Q42004) and the Motorola E1000 (PDF fact sheet) (similar form factor, less capability, proprietary OS, sometime in 2H2004).
• Mobiletracker: Motorola MPX (PDF fact sheet), a big bad flippy super phone running Windows Mobile (assuming 2003) with Wi-Fi, bluetooth, 2.8 inch display.  Availability: 2H2004. Brighthand has a nice pic of the interior of the MPX.
• MobileTracker: Motorola MPx100 (PDF fact sheet), a candy bar running Windows Mobile (howardchui says Smartphone 2003) has Bluetooth, IR, Java, and a 1.3 megapixel camera.  Availability: 2H2004.
• Phone Scoop: Panasonic introduces the X700, a flippy Series 60 smartphone with IR, Bluetooth, MiniSD (gah! another format!), Class 10 GPRS, and MIDP2.0.  Availability: this fall in Europe.
• Sendo: The M570 clamshell has 4MB of free memory and MIDP2.0.
• Sendo: The S600 has MIDP2.0 and a digital zoom.  Thanks to Dave for the Sendo links.
• PCPro: GSPDA unveils the Xplore G88.  They claim it to be the world’s smallest Palm-powered phone.  Brighthand has a picture of it.  I honestly don’t see this phone coming to mass market.

The Java emulator is smaller than the C++ emulator, but in the past the C++ emulators have been closer to the final product.  I was suprised when I installed the Java emulator.  It looks a lot more polished than the Series 90 Java emulator was when it was released.

Here’s a look at what the J2ME emulator looks like (click on the thumbnails for full size images):

The bootup screen

The desktop

Phone

Opera 6.x browser

Contacts

Word processor

Calendar

Clock

Office applications

The media folder

Image viewer

The tools folder

The control panel

Sync program

The new Series 80 is really growing on me.  Things seem to behave as they should for people with older Communicators, but at the same time, the look and feel is much more modern.  As evidenced by a screenshot on a device, the interface should be much more colourful and polished before the 9500 hits the streets.

Update: it appears as if they shipped the standard emulator with the J2ME toolkit.  I just finished downloading the C++ SDK and the emulator looks and feels the same.  Rock on.

O’Reilly Network Developer News:

The Subversion development team has announced the release of version 1.0 of their CVS replacement for source code version control. OSNews has a great run down of Subversion’s features and a quick tutorial to get up and running quickly.

Yaay!

There are lots of bits and pieces out there about the new Communicator, the 9500.  It has Wi-Fi and EDGE.  We’ll know more later after the official press release.  I’ll update the linkage as it comes in.  Here’s a link to the webcast at 3pm CET (which is 2pm GMT or 9am EDT or 6am PST).

• Via Russ, Time has an article called Innovate and Dominate.  Of interest is the comment on availability: “After all, the gadgets won’t be ready for trial until the summer, or for general commercial use until late in the year.”
• ZDNet: Nokia and IBM unpack new ‘brick’.  I love my 9290 brick and would carry one everywhere if it had Wi-Fi and EDGE was more affordable.  My favourite quote: “The new phone, which will sell at around 800 euros (£538) and is slightly shorter and lighter than earlier Communicators, flips open to unveil a keyboard and also has the ability to connect to wireless local networks, known as Wi-Fi or Wireless LAN.”
• The Wall Street Journal has a spot on the 9500, but I haven’t read it.
• www.nokia.com/phones/9500 has all of the specs.
• Frank has posted some highlights at Mobitopia.
• Forum Nokia: Nokia 9500.
• Forum Nokia: Series 80 Developer Platform 2.0: API Differences.  It looks at the differences between the oldskool 9200 series communicators, the 9500, and Series 90.  Designed for hardcore Symbian C++ heads.

Tools and SDKs for developers:

• Series 80 C++ SDK for the 9500.
• Java MIDP SDK for the 9500.
• Java Personal Profile Plug-in for the C++ SDK is an early look at Nokia’s Personal Profile implementation on top of the CDC.  It also includes support for the Personal Basis profile and Foundation Profile.  It requires IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer 5.6

I’m still not sure what I think about the 9500.  I think it’s great of course, but parts of it feel like a point release or product refresh rather than a big new thing.  The connectivity is great and foreshadows what is to come.  Choose your connection: GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.  This is the way it’s going to be.

Overall I like it.  It has a camera, the external phone is Series 40, etc.  I really wish that Nokia would have decided to put a corporate skin on top of Series 90 rather than continue on with Series 80.  Series 80 is great and has served well, but I think that it should be retired.  Since the 9500 is a corporate phone, I understand the decision to go with tried and true rather than bleeding edge.  At the same time, the 9500 is running on Symbian 7.0s, the same OS that Series 90 runs on.

It looks like corporate software developers will be able to do quite a bit with the platform.  I have not looked too deeply at the developer specs, but I see that the phone has MIDP2.0, and hopefully JSR-82 and other APIs neccesary to rock some corporate apps.  The 9500 also supports Personal Profile, which has the potential to be much more powerful than poor sandboxed MIDP apps.

At the same time I’m a bit dissapointed.  As I said before, I’d much rather see the new communicator running on Series 90, but I’ll have to get over that.  It’s very important to remember that the 9500 is designed for the corporate market and not the consumer market.  Corporate users want something stable that works, consumers want a cheap phone.  It also seems a bit like too little too late.  The Communicators have been stagnat for quite some time now.  I picked one up used from Craig’s List for $50 a few months ago.  I would have liked to see something with even a little less capability quite some time ago.  Why did it take so long?

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the now revitalized Communicator platform.  As long as the MIDP2.0 implementation is pretty good, I can see a lot of people making use of the platform.  At the same time, I hope that Nokia has a lot more up their sleeves.

3GSM World Congress 2004 begins today.  I’ll be doing most of my coverage on Mobitopia.  I’ve already posted about the announcement of OPL for UIQ, and will probably have another article or two up later today.

I apologize for the lack of content this week.  I’ve been recovering from a cold/flu and have generally not been running at full steam.  I picked up a very small Daytimers organizer/planner last night.  I know that’s pathetic, given that we’re in the digital data age.  I’ve been carrying around digital organizers of one sort or another for years now.  I’ve carried pocket digital organizers, Palm III’s, Palm IIIxe’s, PocketPC devices and symbian phones.

They’ve always been *so close* to being so completely and totally useful.  I’ve always found that when it gets down to the crunch, it’s easier to write a quick note on a scrap of paper rather than turn on the device, input data, file it appropriately, turn off device, etc.  I’m a Graffiti feind, and can probably input data about as fast as writing sloppily, with a fairly low error rate.

The problem is that I’ve never managed to stick with a digital organization system.  It’s probably just my slacker nature, but it works for a few months and then I stop carrying digital device X with me everywhere I go.  My pockets aren’t that big, and I only have so many pairs of cargo pants.  The last time I used Palm Desktop it was okay but left a lot to be desired.  I don’t use Outlook for my email (run away screaming!), and only have it on my laptop.  It’s great for organization, I’ve just never been able to ‘get into it.’

I’ve been carrying my satchel bag with me almost everywhere I go (home work school home work school home work school), so I’m hoping that a quick analog hack in my bag will keep me organized, prioritized, and less slacker-like.

We’ll see how it goes.

Via the LSN Blog, Webmonkey is no more.  I’m not suprised, but I am sad to see such a great resource go.  At one point I was visiting the site daily, checking out the latest tips and linkage.

Webmonkey: you will be missed.

Via NewsForge, Integration Developer News reports on a new WS- spec: WS-Discovery.  The spec is designed to make web services work among both wired and wireless devices on a local network.

When reading about WS-Discovery, I keep thinking of a similar technology that is already out there: Rendezvous/Zeroconf.  WS-Discovery seems like a very specialized solution that Rendezvous/Zeroconf may have already solved.  I’m sure that the way everything works is quite different, but on the surface it just “feels” the same.

I’m quite excited about what WS-Discovery might be able to do for mobile and context-specific applications.  For example:

mobile device: Hey!  I’m here!  What services are available to me?
WS-Discovery server: there is local access to the following services: foo, bar, baz.
mobile device: Sweet!  I know about baz.  I’m going to use it.  Thanks, WS-Discovery server! <cheezy grin>

Update: after some poking around, I managed to find the WS-Discovery spec at MSDN.  I already have a headache from a cold/flu, so I’m not going to read it in detail right now.  It looks just about as complex and painful as any other WS- spec that has come down the road.

Via Phonescoop, Cingular nabs AT&T Wireless for $41 billion:

Cingular Wireless LLC, a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS), announced today an agreement to acquire AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE), creating the premier wireless carrier in the United States. Today, the combined company would have 46 million customers and one of the most advanced digital networks in the U.S., with spectrum in 49 states and coverage in 97 of the top 100 markets. The combined 2003 annual revenues of the two companies would have exceeded $32 billion.

This really should be good news to everyone involved.  Cingular definitely seems committed to GSM technology, AT&T is the only one with EDGE nationwide.  With the combined capital and customer base, ATTular should be poised to take a jump at full-bore 3G as soon as it is an option.

I am a little worried about how this is going to affect roaming agreements with my carrier, T-Mobile.  I know that in several markets (San Francisco in particular) Cingular and T-Mobile share a lot of towers and coverage.  I’m worried about some of these roaming deals may dissapear.now that ATTular has the clout to do what it wishes.

It will also be interesting to see how the merger/takeover/purchase will affect phone and plan prices.  When my contract is up with T-Mobile, will it be worth switching over to them?  It would really take a lot to get me to switch over.  I’ve been nothing but impressed with T-Mobile since day 1.  Their customer support is quick and awesome, they don’t treat you like dirt at their retail stores (I’ve been treated very badly at Sprint stores and when asking questions at AT&T Wireless stores), and their coverage is good (but not perfect) and their billing is simple and consistent.

Once everything is figured out, this new company is going to be a force to reckon with.

Congrats on the press release, Russ and Wavemarket.

My body hasn’t quite figured out that it is now back in GMT-5.  Waking up this morning was hard.  Expect a slow couple of days while I decompress, digest, and recover from ETech.

Ewan and I managed to get a little touristy this afternoon.  We had lunch and beers at the Kansas City BBQ, also known as the bar from Top Gun.  They had great beer, excellent ribs, and everyone there was very nice.

We had to get the obligatory pictures, of course.  We even managed to leave behind a card.  Can you spot it?

I am sitting near the gate, next to a power outlet, and as close as I can get to the main terminal.  I am currently getting a weak signal from inside the United club, but still getting excellent throughput.  I snagged the non-dead tree version of this months JDJ journal, and hopefully I’ll have a chance to read it at some point between now and tomorrow morning when I make it back to DC.

Chris Heathcote is bringing up the rear of the conference with a talk on geolocation.

• no magic bullet
• GPS is not the solution
• appreciate the toolbox
• measures
• accuracy
• availability
• reliability, trust, etc
• What’s good enough?
• 20-50m?
• too much costs too much
• to little isn’t useful
• Here we go
• 0. assume: The Earth
• 1. the time: is it light? dark? what time is it here?
• 2-7. cultural clues: which cel phone operators? which wi-fi? phone number syntax? newspapers available? accuracy: country
• 8. Ask someone.  Accuracy: 10 meters (if you’re lucky)
• 9. Use a map.  Accuracy: 10 meters to 1 mile
• mobile tech
• 10. cell ID.  You have to go through the operator.  accuracy: 50m to 2 miles.
• 11. cell ID (local lookup): you’ve got to keep track of geo data youself
• 12. angle of arrival (AOA)
• 13. time distance of arrival (TDOA) 30-50m
• 14. observed time difference (OTD) 25-250m
• 15. assisted GPS: mainly in japan.  cel operator assists GPS chip with your location for more accuracy.
• Geo Tech
• 16. GPS: pretty good, but doesn’t work everywhere.  Are there satellites above me?  kills batteries.
• 17. WAAS: improves accuracy for GPS.  Even more sattelites required.  2m-25m
• 18.differential GPS: needs two receivers pretty close.  1-3m.
• street furniature
• 19.postcodes and zipcodes.  usefulness varies
• 20. street names.  Not all countries have street names.  hard to enter when mobile. 20m-hundreds of miles
• 20a. street corners, intersections provide more accuracy. 10m-miles
• 21. street numbers: great, if available.
• 22. biz names. go out of date really quickly.  lots of some types of businesses in some locations
• 23. landmarks and littlemarks.  what can you see?
• 24-26. public transport.  bus stops, street lamps, traffic lights.  bus stop UUIDs.  Data is proprietary
• 27. location street signs.  dedicated geolocation street signs.  10m accuracy.
• 28. geowarchalking.  rock!  pirate geo graffiti.  geolocate the world.
• emerging tech
• 29. dead reckoning. accelorometers, compasses, really accurate measurement of relative positions.  needs accurate location and time source to start with.
• 30. wi-fi triangulation. active campus
• 31. broadcast TV/radio triangulaton.  needs broadcast reception from three different locations.  not likely in many areas.
• IP lookup: great for a country or continent but not much better than that.  Varies.
• location advertising
• 33. encoding of location in access point name/location points.  part of SSID or whatever is advertised.
• 34. local servers/rendezvous: where am I. fixed machines that say where they are.
• 35. bluetooth.  dink.  here you are.
• bonus
• 36. RFID.  anything that transmits can give you location.  Is this scanner geolocated?  or in reverse, card senses if scanned and potential lookup
• a social future
• 37. who are you near?  where are they?
• 38. objects you are near. are they broadcasting their location?  what’s more accurate?  do something with it.
• 39. the road most traveled. recording and aggregate accurate flows.  time, speed, quantity of movement.  maps autogenerate themselves on the fly. better directions, see who has been where recently.  WAAG.
• winding down: location is important.  what if you want to be lost?

the presentation is here.  #geo on irc.oftc.net is another place to check out.  locative.net.  Become a geowanker.  Great presentation, Chris!

Edd is going over Dashboard.  It’s pre-alpha, runs under Linux in C# using Mono, and just all around rocks.  I’m really impressed with the information that it snags when you go to one of Edd’s page.

It’s sort of like jibot for the rest of your computing life.  It is absolutely brilliant.  I’ve been looking at screenshots of it for quite some time, but Edd’s presentation makes me want to go through the trouble of installing it.

As usual, dajobe is logging everything with realtime IRC notes in #foaf.  The notes are excellent as usual.

It’s off to the Plaza room for a hardware hacking session that sounds really interesting.

Andrew Huang, or “Bunny” has some suprisingly easy hardware hacks to share.  He’s the Hacking the XBox guy.  Right now he’s going over the basics of hardware hacking, reverse engineering, and the like.  Current slide: Is RE Legal? (Answer: Yes- but IANAL).  Hardware hacking and reverse engineering is sort of a a checks and balance system.  For example: does that computer indeed have the chipset in there that it says it does.

Watch out for the DMCA, it bites.

Why reverse engineer?  Why not?  It can be a curiosity.  Tweaking and and innovation is another reason to hack or RE.  Accountability is another reason.  Hacking is balance.

Printer cartridge ink chips suck.  Lock in sucks.  Hardware hackers can help by reverse engineering the chips and lock in system.  Get it out into the public.  Tweak your cars.  Chip your cars.  Why ship an engine but not enable all of its power?

Hardware hacking appears to not be as easy as it used to be, but it’s still pretty darn easy.

Emerging trends: circuit boards and dev boards are really cheap now.  They used to be really expensive, but now they’re cheap.  The barriers for entry still apear to be high, but are quite lower.  No single trend solves the problems of hackers, but several trends are here.

• cheap circuit boards.  You can send design files to a company, they make them, send them out without having someone touch the board in the process.  Breadboards were great, but these things are better.
• You can get really cheap PCBs which you can program and extend.  He has a list of sites up, but my eyesight is pretty bad so I can’t transcribe the URLs.  The talk should be online later.
• FPGAs are helping.  ASIC: Application Specific Integrated Circuits are great, but really specific and not good for general hacking.  FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chips are a hardware hackers friend.  They can do all kinds of stuff.  They can be really fast.
• Design tools are getting better.  For example, WebPack is free.
• Open Source hardware is here.  The tools and designs can be open.
• Soldering and desoldering is a lot easier than it appears.  ChipQuick has an alloy for easily removing chips from boards.
• Probing boards has gotten better.  The leads are really small, but the tools are definitely there.  Micrograbbers are less expensive and very efficient for hearing what an individual pin is doing.
• A lot of the stuff that costs $25,00 can be done with much lower tech and a few weeks time.
• IC Analysis is up and coming, getting easier.  The tech is a bit above my head, but cool no less.
• Back Doors.  It’s all about back doors.  Use the back doors, they are your friend.

I was hoping for some more practical hardware hacking, though the book Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks by Scott Fullam should cover a lot of that.  I’m excited about lower cost FPGAs and PCBs.  I must check in to that some more.

After a fine Denny’s breakfast with Ewan, I snuck in to the GeoURL session a few minutes late.  Right now Joshua Schachter is showing off a ton of cool sites that use the technology.  I really hope that the links from the talks are collected somewhere, because all of these sites are really cool and worth digging in to.

As with anything with google juice, spammers have been trying to take advantage of it, but Joshua is on the job, so don’t worry.  If your blog is not yet GeoURL aware, get with the program and add it now.

Joshua will be putting his presentation up on the web, I’ll link to it as soon as I find it.  Lots of amazing stuff has been built on top of the simple but effective GeoURL tag.

Danny O’Brien presented an excellent session on life hacks.  He sent out questionaires to alpha geeks who do work publicly and interpreted the results that he got back.  When he asked for screenshots of said alpha geek desktop, the most common theme was shells.

And shells, and shells, and shells, and shells…

The command line is the lowest common denominator when you work publicly.  The command line is also scriptable.

The other common trend was the use of a todo.txt file or something similar.  Alpha geeks tend to work with tools that they know, and todo.txt or otherwise organizing life in text files.  The common view among alpha geeks is to not trust your software more than you have thrown your computer in the past.

The email client is also an excellent organizational tool.  Alpha geeks use it a lot.  Private blogs and interntal/secret RSS feeds are also becoming more important, and often replacing email as an organizational tool.  Alpha Geeks are rapidly spending a fair amount of time in their RSS aggregators, and are using the software that they trust.

I was suprised that wiki didn’t come up as an organizational tool.

Scripting the daily life is also a common theme among Alphas.  Personal scripts tend to be short, for specific use, may have a limited use life, and are often embarrasingly encoded.  Often a script is written, used shortly, and promptly lost or forgotten.

Danny is an excellent speaker, and it was great to peer into the minds of alpha geeks in the public space.

I’m sitting near the back of the FOAF session.  Complete notes can be found in the #foaf log.  I’ll add my comments/notes here.

The big (but not really new) news is that Livejournal is rolling out a FOAF explorer, which could add another 2 million FOAFs.  Since Livejournal is such a community and friend driven site, I can only view this as a good thing.

Dan Brickley gave an overview of FOAF and there was some discussion about privacy concerns.  Edd Dumbill is currently demonstrating FOAFbot.