Matt Croydon::postneo

Asphalt: Urban GT

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 17:02:17 GMT

All About N-Gage have the dirt on a game that looks like it has a lot of potential: Asphalt: Urban GT. I can't say that I've played much more than some FIFA and other random stuff on the N-Gage, but a good racer can add a lot of value to a gaming platform. Of course I'm still waiting to see if Call of Duty rocks as much as it should.

Birthday Book

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:40:27 GMT

My wonderful wife gave me my birthday present early this year: Wireless Java: Developing with J2ME (the second edition of course). It's on my shortlist of J2ME books that I've thumbed through but wanted to have on hand. I've thumbed through it a few times but it's great to have it here on my desk. I've got a lot of reading ahead of me!

The Design of Sites

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:58:04 GMT

In addition to picking up a book for the fall semester, I ordered The Design of Sites (subtitle: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience) from Bookpool last week. I'm still reading through the first chapter in my spare time, but this looks like a good read. Common sense seems to be a major component of a lot of the observations so far, but they're definitely on the right track. This could definitely be a textbook for an upper level college class on usability and site design. I guess I'll take that as a good sign.

I apologize for the light updates this month, August seems to be pretty much a wash. I'm getting organized for the new semester and should hopefully be able to bring this weblog back in to the workflow. I've also been suffering without a news aggregator for the past few weeks. That is something I need to fix immediately before I go insane.

Back to work!

A Little Bit of Jill Sobule in Ashlee Simpson

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:53:59 GMT

I had MTV on in the background this morning as obscure Olympic coverage on Bravo and MSNBC was a bit lacking. Among the videos that flew by was an Ashlee Simpson video, which I'm sure isn't new but it was new to me. I kept thinking one thing over and over while listening to the video for "Pieces of Me": Jill Sobule.

Jill Sobule is an obscure almost-mainstream pop/folk girl whose big hit was "I kissed a girl" and also sung "Supermodel" on the Clueless soundtrack. She's a pretty amazing artist and the stuff that has never hit the airwaves is so much better. I've got all but one of her albums and have seen her a few times at little coffee houses and college campuses.

I haven't heard Ashlee Simpson's entire album, but a few snippets remind me a lot of Sobule, while overall she's got a sound quite her own.

Business2: O'Reilly and Textbooks

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 09:21:57 GMT

If Tim O'Reilly is doing it, you can be sure that it's probably a few years ahead of its time. In that case, in a few years I should expect that most of not all college professors will be rolling their own textbooks from a vast catalogue of content.

I'm a college student, and I've had to pay for my fair share of really expensive textbooks that have either sucked beyond repair or that I've just not used. That said, I hope that someday my textbook comes from SafariU.

The full article at Business 2.0 is going to be behind the paying subscriber firewall for another month or so, but it's an excellent read. (When I subscribed it cost me all of a buck an issue.)

When in doubt, follow the alpha geeks.

Amazon Web Services 4.0

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:35:15 GMT

Amazon has unveiled a beta version of their web servies. The beta allows access to more categories, boasts improved search capabilities, and a lot more. I don't see anything earth shattering here, but there are a lot of little improvements all over the place. Feel free to sign up for the beta and play around.

PearPC 0.3.0

Sat, 14 Aug 2004 13:49:20 GMT

Excellent! There is a new release of PearPC out. It's great to see things like idle-sleep, SDL, and speed enhancements hit a mainstream release. I've been using pre-built 0.3.0-pre binaries for awhile now, but I'm always excited when stuff like this sees the light of day. I absolutely love the fact that my laptop is no longer on fire while I've got PearPC running but idle. For more info, check out the changelog. It looks like they've tweaked the config file format just a bit, but you can handle it. After you've looked at that stuff, snag it and run.

Novell Shipping Linux Technical Resource Kits

Sat, 14 Aug 2004 02:10:56 GMT

I was pleasantly suprised to see an automated email from Novell in my inbox this evening. A few weeks ago I applied for the free Linux Technical Resource Kit, which will supposedly have a bunch of Novell, SuSE, and Ximian goodies in it. It looks like demand for these kits has far exceeded Novell's expectations, but I'm glad that they're making good on the offer and getting their stuff in front of as many eager eyes as possible. They held off shipping the kits for a bit so that they could include an eval version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, which I can't wait to throw on a box.

I'll be waiting for my care package in the mailbox. Thanks Novell!

Charlie

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:06:27 GMT

I can tell you from personal experience that Hurricane Charlie is causing all kinds of problems with our air travel system. Flights to a better part of Florida are bein delayed or canceled, and the effects of that can be felt on the other side of the country. Needless to say it's going to be a late night at the airport tonight.

Ebay Nibbles on Craigslist

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 20:57:26 GMT

Slashdot brings news that Ebay has picked up a stake in Craigslist. I really hope that this doesn't impact the awesome atmosphere at Craigslist. I've snagged quite a few deals from Craigslist over the past year or so and am quite greatful for it. I hope that it continues on in its community-friendly rocking classified ad form.

mOlympics

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:30:42 GMT

Yesterday Russ unveiled his mOlympics site yesterday. I wish that I had been able to dedicate more time to help Russ out, though I'm glad that he was able to stay up late and pound out the code. Spreat the word! mOlympics is a great site to catch up on news from the Olympics. I've found myself checking it out quite a bit over the past day or so in my downtime. It's a great shift from my usual poke around the BBC News WAP site (which can get stale if I visit it too much).

So go check it out (especially on a modern mobile), I think you'll like it.

MMSlib: Encode and Decode MMSes with PHP

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 17:01:32 GMT

Via freshmeat, I spotted MMSlib this afternoon:

Mmslib is a PHP library for encoding and decoding MMS:es. MMS is short for Multimedia Messaging Service. In short it is the successor of SMS (Short Message Service) with the enhancements that you can not only send text but basically any content type your phone can handle such as images, text, videos, ring signals and audio clips.

I'm going to file this one away for a rainy day when I'm hacking on code at three in the morning and need to deal with MMSes in a LAMP environment. This looks like a great little library.

Open Source Exchange Killers

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 02:14:22 GMT

Slashdot:

Netline Internet Service announced today that it would contribute its OPEN-XCHANGE Server, the core technology underlying the industry's top-selling Linux-based groupware, collaboration, and messaging application, under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

This is definitely good news. I saw an OpenExchange sales pitch a few years ago at Linux World New York and I must say that I was impressed. The online demo looks pretty good, but having Outlook "just work" is killer. And that should be no problem according to an article at ZDNet. The web interface feels a bit less cluttered than OpenGroupware, and I'm hoping that it rocks. I hope to find the time to take a look at this bad boy.

Motorola A780: A Killer Phone Lurking?

Sat, 31 Jul 2004 12:22:20 GMT

PhoneScoop has some play time at MotoSummer 2004. They took a look at the A780 and I think they see as much potential in it as I do. The A780 isn't the sexy RAZR V3, but it's the smartest of a new crop of phones from them. I that that is has the serious potential to be the next really big thing.

One of the things that I like about the design is that it's both a one-handed and a two-handed phone. It's sort of like an oldschool Treo but small enough to actually fit in your pocket. It's one handed when all you need is a phone. It's a candybar phone actually when used one-handed. When you need some smarter features, pop open the flip and you've got a QVGA touch screen ready to rock.

I have a feeling that Moto is going to cripple developers and only allow them access to the phone through MIDP 2.0 with a bunch of extra JSRs and APIs. That is dissapointing, but it's the "safe" decision that probably makes carriers and Moto themselves a lot less nervous. I can hear the tech support call now: "what does core dump mean?"

I hope that Moto puts up some developer info or releases an SDK at Motocoder pretty soon. I'm pretty sure that there are a bunch of developers out there who are chomping at the bit to code for and learn about this phone.