Matt Croydon::Postneo

Author: Matt Croydon

  • On the Way Out the Door

    Here are a few quick links before I head out the door:

    • BBC: The MER is on six wheels and ready to roll down exit #2.  Woohoo!  Did it make that transformer noise?
    • NewsForge: Knoppix gets full-on NTFS support.
    • NewsForge: people are hacking away on an iTunes Linux server.
    • There’s just too much going on at CES to keep track of.
    • Gizmodo: Two new entry level phones from Seimens.
    • Nelson is speaking at ETech.
    • Slashdot brings the sad news that Lego is discountinuing Mindstorms.

    I’m back for a few and have a few more links to add:

    • Christoph Cemper is writing an article for JDJ.  Congrats!
    • Christoph also points to TimeCore, a free time management app for Windows.
    • Via Matt, for $29.95/year subscription, SourceBeat looks like it might be a good deal for those ever volatile tech books.

  • The Pocketsurfer

    The gadget at the top of this Gizmodo report reminds me a lot of my Nokia 9290.  The $200 Pocketsurfer allows you to surf the web in 640 pixels wide, but I’m not convinced that it is 480 pixels tall.  If it is 480 pixels tall, that is going to make for some tiny text in such a rectangular screen.  My 9290 is 640×320, which is quite passable for most things, but surfing is just too slow to be usable ona  daily basis.  The Pocketsurfer allows you to connect to the internet from your mobile phone via Bluetooth.

    I’m not sure if it is worth $200, but the Pocketsurfer is a cool gadget indeed.  I would most likely spend a hundred or so more to get a PDA with bluetooth and perhaps Wi-Fi expandability.

    I’m still holding out for those inexpensive internet tablets that everyone promised me during the dot-com boom.  I stopped holding my breath though.

  • Lamo Pleads Guilty, Faces 6-12 Months Prison

    SFGate:

    Under the terms of a plea bargain entered in U.S. District Court in New York City, Lamo faces a recommended sentence of six to 12 months in prison or another form of detention. His sentencing is scheduled for April 8.

    Six to twelve months in prison is much more than everyone seems to have been expecting.  The consensus was that Lamo would face up to six months of home detention.

    We’ll see how this plays out, but it doesn’t look good.

  • Gentoo for Zaurus

    Newsforge points to Gentoo for Zaurus.

    Dude, that’s sick.

  • SOAPScope 3.0

    Via Ingo Rammer, Mindreef’s SOAPScope turns 3.0.  SOAPScope is designed to save your sanity while debugging web services.  SOAPScope rocked even before its first public release.  I give it high marks.

    For those of you on a budget, I’d suggest TCPTrace by Simon Fell, which is free as in beer.  SOAPScope is worth every penny though.

  • JDJ and J2ME, or Lack Thereof

    The electronic version of Java Developer’s Journal showed up in my inbox today.  I must say that overall I love the redesign, except for the lack of a J2ME section.  With the redesign comes four sections: Home (introductory and departments), Enterprise, Core, and Desktop.  The previous organization of the magazine included a J2ME section.

    So why did JDJ drop J2ME from its lineup?  There simply were not enough articles to fill the section.  There always seem to be enough J2EE or J2SE articles, but never enough J2ME.  It is not as if everything there is to say about J2ME has been said.  Quite the opposite.  J2ME may no longer be in its infancy, but it is still quite young.  New JSRs are constantly coming out that pertain to J2ME.  Just check out Sun’s J2ME page and look at all of them.

    J2ME continues to evolve, and at the same time many people use and develop for J2ME on a daily basis.  There have already been two major releases on the CLDC/MIDP side with things seeming to stagnate a bit on the CDC side.  And then there’s the EOLing of PersonalJava, but that’s another story.

    There continue to be excellent articles at java.com, many J2ME articles at IBM DeveloperWorks, and Erik also keeps track of a lot of J2ME articles and blog entries.  This is great, however I am still dissapointed at the lack of J2ME articles appearing in print.  I have also noticed that J2ME has been around long enough to have a fair amount of outdated material and stagnant software.  If we are not careful, stagnation and a lack of publications could cause major problems for J2ME

  • Linux Kernel 2.6.1

    It’s old news by now, but the 2.6.1. kernel is out.  The changelog indicates lots of bugfixes and updates.

  • On Mobile Data Synchronization

    This article by Sean Reifschneider at ONLamp got me to thinking: us pocket warriors need more utilities like UUCP and NNTP to be available from our mobile phone/mobile device.  It is fairly impractical to transfer the command line UNIX toolbox to mobile phones, but I think we need some more support for some of the various protocols out there.

    I searched Handango for both UUCP and NNTP and came up with zero results for any of the mobile platforms (save for some NNTP readers for Palm and Windows CE).  Of course there might be some obscure open source project out there, but it’s sure as hell not in the channel.

    While I’m at it, another thing that mobile phones could use is rsync.  Yes, of course we already have SyncML for most mobile phone platforms, but as Frank points out, it is not used widely, and even when it is, there are some issues that must be dealt with.

    Rsync or a similar solution could really help me keep my sanity.  On a typical computing day, I might find myself needing similar or identical information/data/files on my home dekstop, my laptop, a work desktop, my 3650 or my 9290.  Currently one of the easiest ways to bridge my desktops and mobiles is via email.  Each phone has its own email address (useful for sending programs) and I also have a generic mobile email address that is shared between the phones.  I tend to use IMAP over POP everywhere, because that way the information is stored server-side and I can access it whenever needed.  I would probably use LDAP to sync my contacts, but I haven’t bothered to set up an LDAP server yet.

    Several things could satisfy my need to sync files, data, information, and other stuff.  SyncML might do it, but most current SyncML implementations seem to be written to sync mobile data to a server and possibly retreive the data with a desktop.  I would ideally like to access a particular subset of my data from any of the many access methods I find myself using.  I have not looked in to it thoroughly, but rsync might just do the trick.  All I need now is a mobile client.  A lightweight approximation of Groove, iDisk, or iSync might do it, but alas, I am currently stuck in the world of OS9.x on the mac side.  It would be an extra bonus to reuse an existing technology or protocol, so that I could leverage existing software or frameworks.  I keep thinking that rsync would be ideal because there are already good clients for Linux, Windows, and Mac.  The only thing lacking right now seems to be on the mobile side.

    I think I read on more than one list that 2004 is going to be a major year for device convergence and synchronization of data.  I’m ready for that to happen.

  • No Boundaries Or Rules

    Yahoo/AP:

    SAN FRANCISCO – A few hundred thousand lines of computer code could revolutionize the way people interact with computers, say its unlikely inventor and his backers.

    The software is called No Boundaries Or Rules, or NBOR for short.  Denny Jaeger has been working on it for over 10 years.  I tend to be skeptical about anything that claims to be revolutionary, even more so after the hype and letdown of the Segway.  Don’t get me wrong, I think the Segway totally rocks, but outside of the StupidRich, it’s not practical.  The Segway isn’t exactly changing the way we do things as it was supposed to.

    NBOR and its main application, Blackspace does have a lot going for it.  The full version is $299, which is quite reasonable if it is as revolutionary as the claims make it out to be.  The developers are also releasing a free as in beer trial version.  They also get props from me for a program that runs on Windows 2000/XP, Mac AND Linux.  It looks like the Windows version will ship first, followed by the Linux port and then the Mac version.

    It appears that NBOR/Blackspace is hard to explain.

    The NBOR site is running extremely slowly, and I don’t think that it has been slashdotted yet.  The developer in me really wants to know about what is under the hood of this program, but for now I’ll have to live with hype, PR, and news coverage.  It appears that the entire program takes up only about 8 megs of space.

    The free demo will be out January 15.  I’ll be there.

  • Joe Gibbs to Return to the Redskins!

    This may not be big news to the world, but it’s huge here in the DC area:

    High-level Redskins sources told SportsLine.com that Washington Redskins great Joe Gibbs has accepted a deal to become the Redskins new head coach. Terms of the deal were not immediately available, but the sources said he accepted late Tuesday.

    This is easily the best news in the last decade of Redskins football (the kind we play in the US).  They must have made him an absurd offer, because since leaving the NFL for NASCAR, he has constantly been asked about coming back, and until today the answer has always been “no.”

    It looks like we’re picking up an excellent defensive coordinator too.

    It’s cold in DC today, but we’re all doing a happy dance.

  • Macworld Coverage

    • Mini iPod: way too expensive.
    • G5 cluster: cool!
    • Garage Band: neat.  John Mayer rocks too.
    • The rest of iLife is cool and all.  $49 for the bundle is a good deal.
    • Drink more Pepsi.  One in three gets an iTune.
    • Office:Mac has some new features that are in Office 2003 for Windows, plus some other neat Mac-only stuff.
    • Transitions are ugly no matter how you slice it.

    Overall I was underwhelmed.  The stuff is cool and all, we just got our hearts set on a mini-iPod at the $99 price point.  We didn’t get it.  $249 is way too high.  You can get 15 gigs for $299 or 4 gigs for $249.  Do the math.

    I was also a bit dissapointed by Akamai, which handled the stream.  I got a ‘not enough bandwidth’ error several times throughout the keynote, and I’m not alone.  It looked fine for most people.  Rael even watched the whole thing over GPRS.

  • Macworld Warmup

    It’s that time again.  The infamous “mini-iPod” is the rumor de jour.  I would really like to see something like an affordable $99-$199 2-4 gig mini-iPod, but would not be suprised if this rumor goes either way.  Of course standard rumors also apply: updated G5 desktops, and iLife update, maybe a rev to one of the notebook lines (though we’re probably some time away from a G5 lappy).  Then in the left wings we also have the standard far-out rumors like the second coming of Newton and something like an iTablet.

    Here’s a quick selection of news sites that will be covering the event.  You can also watch for yourself via the Quicktime feed:

    • Mac News Network will have a dedicated page listing updates as they happen.
    • Mac OS Rumors is speculating as usual.
    • Mac Central has a list of product announcements and such.
    • Think Secret seems to be speculating a little less than usual this time around.
    • Macintouch is gearing up for coverage.
    • MacMinute plans to have live coverage of they keynote.
    • I’m sure that Macsurfer will be covering the event, but there are just so many links on the page.

  • openMosix Summit 2004

    Newsforge:

    Brussels (January 5, 2004) – The openMosix Summit for 2004 will take place within the FOSDEM conference. FOSDEM, the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting is an event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use of Free and Open Source software.

    openMosix is probably the coolest clustering technology that I’ve seen in recent years.  I’m glad to hear that there is still interest and development in the project.  I was able to set up an openMosix test environment in under an hour or so at home, using older commodity hardware and my local network.

    Hopefully someone will attend the openMosix Summit and report back so that us common folk can hear about it.

  • Martian Links

    I’ve been following the news from Mars this morning.  Everything looks good, but the rover won’t be heading out for another 7-9 days.  You’ve got to power up and check out the skateboard, after all.  Here are the links that I have been using to keep myself informed:

    The MER is sceduled to wheel around mars for 90 days, but scientists hope that the rover will last longer than that.  Sojurner was designed to last 30 days and lasted around 90 IIRC.  Another rover will be attempting bounce-down in less than a month in a different location.  Hopefully we can decrease the near 2/3 failure rate of Martian probes.

  • A Successful Six Minutes

    Wow.  It looks like NASA’s latest rover managed to touch down after a Rube Goldberg-like landing sequence.  There was a lot that could go wrong in those crazy six minutes.  I’m glad everything went as planned.

    It’s going to be several days of diagnostics and power-ups.  Release the skateboard!

  • Blojsom 2.07

    I must have blinked, because a new blojsom release is out.

  • Roundup: Clearing the Buffer

    Yep, windows and tabs have been accumulating again.  It’s time to clear them out:

    • UMLet 2 ” is an open-source lightweight Java tool for rapidly drawing UML diagrams, with a focus on a sound and pop-up-free user interface.”
    • Edd has quite a conference lineup this year.
    • The 8bitpeoples have some awesome retro-fun mp3 albums, including some excellent Christmas interpretations.
    • It looks like Groovy is filling out quite nicely.
    • I need to set up an account on Mobile RSS so I can keep track of things on the go.
    • PDAPortal.us currently lists 463 PDA-friendly sites.  It looks like Opera on a mobile phone would rock with some of these sites.
    • Russ lists the apps on his 6600 that he uses all the time.  I need to compile a similar list for my 9290, retro as it is.
    • Best. Panoramic of Times Square. Evar!
    • OPL Wiki: Dialogs.  They’re currently in the 1.0 release for Nokia Communicators, and should be arriving on S60 in the next few months.  I can’t wait.
    • As pointed out on #mobitopia, WiGLE.net is a place to dump and search your raw wi-fi stumbling data.
    • Todays Get Fuzzy is funny… and not.  So true.  Right now I’m getting double doses of Get Fuzzy every morning… one in my aggregator and another on the ‘Scratch a Day’ desk calendar.

    *Whew*  The buffer has been cleared and culled.  I hope that everyone is doing well in the new year.

  • Wi-Fi Free Spot

    Wi-Fi Free Spot is a listing of commercial but free (as in beer) Wi-Fi hotspots.  See also the Wi-Fi Free Spot Weblog.  They seem to have the obvious things listed in my area.  YMMV, of course.

  • Happy New Year!

    Yep, it’s a few hours belated in GMT-5, but happy new year to all!

  • Itty Bitty NetBSD

    RootPrompt points to a BSDnewsletter article on building NetBSD for small and embedded systems.