MomoLondon: Demo Night

A brilliant evening in a beautiful venue, with a fantastic view to round off the evening. Demo nights are one of the things that makes Mobile Monday great. 14 different presentations, most of which involving hands-on demonstrations and all for real, shipping, mobile software with plenty of ideas to inspire. Sure, some of the apps weren’t exactly new (ReVoice presented way back in 2007) and not all were particularly exciting, but with so many people presenting their ideas, you’re sure to pick up some valuable nuggets.

Here’s the presentations, with the tidbits that caught my attention:

Do Tank Studios: Photo Fit iPhone app

Adam Hoyle

Take a photo of several people and mix them up like a game of consequences: a forehead from Fred, the eyes of Isabelle, the nose of Norbert, the mouth of Millie and the chin of Charles. The app lets you take photos or source them from your photo album, and line them up using basic eye and mouth alignment. Shake to mix up further, or slide to choose your mix. Simple and fun.

Adam runs a design agency and this app is a hobby app to show that they can produce iPhone apps. They’ve mostly been focussing on a fashion app, which is currently waiting for app store approval. They were going to make Photo Fit free, but there was already an app on the store that did something similar for £1.20, so they put it in the store for the next price point down. Apparently they’ve made enough to have a few beers.

Total Hotspots

Alex Housley @ahousley

• Global Wirefree Community — help people find the best WiFi connectivity
• partnered with Rummble in October 2008
• iPhone app rummbles to twitter and Total Hotspots website (using Yahoo GeoPlanet to show surroundings and identify location name)
• had a few thousand downloads from iPhone store at £3 each
• also working with Microsoft
• Alex worked at multimap for a while while they were being taken over by Microsoft
• Total Hotspots’ database includes data direct from service providers
• cf. WeFi: client connection software, that has background app that does WiFi collection as you walk down the street — picks up personal and corporate wifi (mostly secured)

Audioboo

Mark Rock

“as used by Stephen Fry…”

• geolocation embedded in the meta-data of the audio
• will be releasing API in about 3 weeks
• business plan:
  • there’ll always a free version
  • plus version: £2.95 a month
    • longer recording time
    • queuing recording
  • pro version: for companies
    • just signed first customer: British Library
• community auditing of inappropriate content
  • had to put this in place before the app was accepted in the iPhone store

Artilium

Dave Hodder

• software for mobile network operators
• previously solely in Belgium
• acquired location company that uses app on SIM or device to identify accurate location using nearby cell strengths as well as current cell tower location (TILS)
• in London tends to be sub 100 metres accuracy
  • lower resolution outside built-up areas
• work with mobile operators — have their mast data
  • also drive around the area
  • improve with usage too
• gets better accuracy than Google Maps for Mobile (using cell ID only)
• end customer is mobile operators
• will probably implement GSM ONE API when it gets more developed (i.e. has more event-based APIs)

Proxama

James Norris

• payWave credit cards on an NFC phone
• working with MasterCard
• can change PIN over the net (combined with the secure element)
• they use J2MEPolish for their JavaME apps
• integrates with secure element in SIM
• person to person payment is not supported with existing terminals & framework
• upcoming NFC devices:
  • Nokia 6216 — has secure element on SIM
  • Samsung & LG also coming out this year (also USIM-based)

OOKL

Dan Phillips

• mobile learning service
• clients are schools & cultural venues
  • have 25 venues signed up
• provide hardware and software
  • old Nokia phones that you can buy for £50
• every object in the physical environment is labelled with a shortcode (two-letter code)
• type it in on the phone to see and hear content
• can write why collecting it
• find out who else collected it
• take photos or record audio to annotate it
• all info collected is uploaded to a shared space to consider later

Synchro Arts’ ReVoice Karaoke

Jeff Bloom

As mentioned above, these guys have been around for several years now selling essentially the same thing, but the demo always gets a laugh… Jeff sings horrendously out of tune and badly timed into the ReVoice system (here an iPhone app), then uploads his “masterpiece” and has it retuned by the ReVoice server. The result is perfectly in tune and in time and still recognisably Jeff.

• now have an iPhone app
  1. record yourself
  2. gives scores for accuracy
  3. uploads, corrects, downloads to iPhone and shares online
• can try out on http://singtone.com
• aim is to send it to someone else as your ringtone
  • when you call, they hear your voice
  • At the moment, this doesn’t work with the iPhone, as you currently have to pay Apple to make a ringtone (unless you hack something…)

Masabi Rail Ticketing

Ben Whitaker (getting married this weekend— congratulations!)

Ben Smith (of the Really Mobile Project) recorded video presentation; may also be on Slideshare (old version)

• Working with ATOS Origin (heathrow express & national express)
• only 12% of rail tickets sold on the internet — most bought at station
• masabi’s implementation has no sign up — no usernames or passwords
• mostly offline…
• for consumers: if it feels slick and looks slick, people will use it
• Chiltern trial: compelling reason (get out of queue) got people who had never downloaded an app before to use mobile ticketing
  • advertise at the pain point — “while you’re queuing, try this”
• Q: How have TfL responded? A: They’ve already put their investment into NFC
• Big rail & bus operators like the soft roll-out of mobile barcodes rather than ITSO…
  • “there’s space for both”
• IATA have legislated that all major airports must implement barcode tickets by May next year
• In Germany, if you turn up with a mobile ticket and your battery runs out, you’re fined!

Corebridge with Wings

Simon Taylor

• VPN via small app on phone
  • iPhone, Blackberry, WinMo & Symbian
• If phone rings, CRM app launches on laptop
• Similarly, click a phone number on screen and phone makes call straight away
• App logs phone calls made from mobile back onto corporate server
• Can send SMS messages from Lotus Notes & Outlook, but this system uses your actual mobile phone to send — so responses come to you, not the SMS gateway
• Also provides enterprise-wide voice mail

spoonfed

Alex Will

• 21st Century version of Timeout
• high quality local event content
• 30,000 events per month
• iPhone app — Event Radar
• LBS mobile Java app launching in Q3 2009
  • complete with maps…
  • looking at options for map source
• have small editorial team of 5 editors to cover the whole of London
• has some social features — meet up with your friends, etc.
• “user generated content is great for cats on skateboards”

Samsung

• Samsung Mobile Innovator
  • includes lab.dev testing (using Digia remote devices), market.dev pitching
  • core partners are invite only but still free
• Staines office focusses on supporting Symbian
  • ramping up skills to support Symbian Foundation
• Samsung IQ widget competition:
  • opens on 24th June
  • £15,000 top prize, 2nd & 3rd prizes too
  • download the i8910 HD DevPack
  • submit entry at http://www.samsungiq.com
  • widget marketplace (More Widgets) is free to user

Vopium

Tanvin Sharif http://vopium.com/

• based in Denmark
• free calls on your mobile via VoIP, or else local call then VoIP then local call
• free to download app — runs in the background transparently
• first 100 SMS are free then charged after that
• available from all channels
• can do free mobile termination for Skype!
• merge address books and identify with phone number
• cf. Fring, Nimbuzz — they’re aggregators and run within a separate app
  • main competitor is TruPhone — seamless integration into phonebook
• tells you if totally wifi or involves a local call
  • doesn’t tell you if one or two local call
• remote leg: Vopium pay 1p, charge 2p

peepr.tv

Mun Kong, d2see http://peepr.tv

• stream live from any webcam — pick up on http://peepr.mobi
• can send an SMS when you detect motion
• launches native media player on phone
• showcase of technologies
• cf. Qik: phone to PC, this is PC to phone, with no app needed on phone
• can make feeds private, but not password protected

0870.me

• mobile access to alternative to 0870 numbers
• iPhone app got rejected — “circumventing carrier policies”
• Android app intercepts standard dialler
• with 5 minutes call length, estimated savings of £54K
• 0870.me — open API for anyone to access, or even download the whole database
• API integrates with 0800buster.co.uk

OverTheAir — September 25/26th

Keep the date free!

Thanks to the organisers!

O2 Litmus launch

I went to the launch of O2 Litmus on Friday — in the form of a hack day at the O2. It was interesting to see an operator directly running a hack day. Usually they’re involved as the supporting acts in a semi-official way, like Vodafone Betavine supporting OverTheAir. The guys at O2 did a reasonable job — finding people via twitter and other events and providing solid wifi and lots of power supplies. They didn’t leave quite enough time for the hacking though, allowing too much time for O2 Litmus partners to advertise their wares in the morning.

O2 Litmus itself seems like a good proposition in business terms — the same 30/70 revenue split as the Apple App Store; a system to let developers test apps with early adopters before releasing them into the wild; and money coming through to developers just 5 weeks after purchases. O2 are also trying to support app development through their partners, providing testing and business development support.

There are a couple of pieces missing, however. One great advantage of the Apple App Store is the ease of download — one click and the app automatically downloads to your iPhone and appears in your home screen. This is much harder for general phones at large — not only do you have to make sure you’ve got the right build for your phone (a problem that Apple has avoided for now by just having one platform), but you then have to figure out your phone’s weird and wonderful download experience. Do I really want to install something that my phone tells me could be a security risk? Do I want to install it in Games or Applications? And now it’s downloaded, where did it go? (Nokia Series 60, I’m talking to you here…)

At the moment, O2 Litmus requires a separate application and description for each build, with no provision for combining builds with automatic detection, and no support for external hosting either. I suggested that they consider allowing URLs for downloads and they seemed interested — this also opens the door to web apps instead of downloadable apps. They might also consider partnering with one of the companies who make a point of providing effective provisioning systems — like Paxmodept, GetJar or even ourselves.

The other piece that is missing is direct access to the store from the phone. O2 say they will email their early adopters in a few weeks to get them involved in the web site, but even those who do will not have the ability to see what their friends are doing and download the same thing. Spreading applications virally requires immediate access to the app as and when you see someone else using it. Miss the moment and the viral effect dies. The iPhone provides the App Store on the device itself to help with this — it’s not the easiest solution but at least it’s possible. Since J2ME apps make sharing apps intentionally hard (security to stop people sharing paid-for games…), O2 need to provide some access to Litmus from their phones.

As I mentioned above, the hacking competition itself was a little rushed — we only had about 3 hours to get something ready. As a result most of the entries were screenshot prototypes and sometimes not even that. I started putting together a simple J2ME version of our iPhone MyRail Lite app but NetBeans wasn’t behaving itself. Instead I made a paper prototype integrating MyRail Lite with twitter so that you can meet friends on the train and as they arrive:

Share your train journeys on twitter with myRail Lite on iPhone. Click the Tweet button on your departure, select your destination and carriage and it will send a tweet for you. Also see which train your friends are on and track them as they go.

The idea caught the attention of the judges (I imagine it was the idea rather than my sketched interface!) and I won second prize — 30 hours on DeviceAnywhere.

Here’s my full notes from the day if you want a bit more detail:

Why Litmus?

• Came to the conclusion about a year ago that O2 is quite difficult to do business with…
  • Just like the other network operators! Except O2 hasn’t had a developer program recently.
• Enabling O2 customer base to test apps and feedback
• Developers can test apps and get feedback
  • Can control how many customers can download it and test it out
• Developers can also put apps on sale directly
  • O2 take 30% cut of sales — exactly the same as the Apple App Store
• Plans to incentive customers to get involved
  • Any customer that has tested your app will get the app for free when you go commercial
  • So controlling numbers of testers is crucial
• O2 Marketing will monitor forums & feedback and launch popular apps into main customer base
• Money comes through to developers after five weeks

Litmus Tools

• O2 APIs
  • Connection Status API
  • Location API
• Supporting services:
  • DeviceAnywhere — remote device testing
  • Rackspace — hosting
  • Segala — expert testing

Mobile Social Networks — Ewan Spence

Poking from your mobile

• Involved in running Wubud — still in stealth mode
  • 100% focus on mobile, but with web client too, linking to other social networks
• itsmy.com makes money from users buying widgets
• facebook 0.3% CPM…

Mobile Developers Dilemma — Paul Golding

Slides available online

• Still has his Source O2 badge from O2’s previous developer outreach programme
• Expert member of MIDP3 group
• Chief app architect for Motorola in 90s
• What should you build?
  • Open APIs
  • Involve a community to build weight & momentum
  • Provide service & support
• Mobile UX: should exploit context
• Use microformats — if there isn’t a suitable one then invent one!
• Jitterbug — successful phone for old people in US
• Social Business Model: share ideas with frenemies
  • Share the risk
  • Exploit mashups
  • Create or be part of an ecosystem, so that even if people click out of your app, they haven’t left the ecosystem and are therefore more likely to come back
• Paul’s 9 year-old son is an iPhone developer :-)
• Growth areas:
  • Enterprise social software
  • Services to support SOHO users

Inspiring New Ways of Design and Development — Anthony Ribot

Slides available online

As usual, Anthony gave a good presentation on mobile design. The Ribot guys were on a lucky streak on Friday, winning both a Sony Ericsson C905 in the raffle and coming first in the hacking competition with a proposed mashup of dopplr and your phone address book — find out who’s in town and then call them straight away. Well done guys!

• The user-centred developer is a new type of role that should exist
  • Should develop with the user in mind
  • Not a role for every developer
• Clients from web medium come with a long list of 15 features
  • We tell them we’ll only implement the top 3 items, or even just the top 1
• Data-snacking is the most common experience on mobile
  • 30-60 seconds experience — small snippets of info
• Important to re-use the learnt behaviours of the device
  • Makes the first experience of the app that much better
• Mobile not about making things smaller!
  • Must take in context of use and figure out what the user actually wants to do
  • Cameron Moll: Mobile Web Design book
• It’s all about the subtleties
  • e.g. working around the 3G icon on Nokia devices — Opera Mini indents the page title
• Try and make the experience support reward-based design
  • e.g. Opera Mini (again) — right arrow does clever things based on context
• Dealing with diversity
  • Use statistics (e.g. admob) to work out top 5 handsets for your target audience
• Use rapid prototyping
  • The sooner you can get something tangible in your users’ hands, the better
  • Paper prototyping is good, but having something real is so much better
  • Finding that there’s less application stuff and more motion
    • Harder to describe in paper prototypes and screenshots
  • Tools available:
    • Flash (lite v3)
    • XHTML + CSS
    • Nokia Web Runtime
    • Silverlight (coming to Windows Mobile early next year, Symbian & Apple targeted too)
    • Dashcode

Partner adverts

We then had presentations from Rackspace, NAVTEQ, DeviceAnywhere, Mob4Hire and Segala.com. These were interesting in parts, but generally not much more than we could have got from flyers — a bit of a waste of time when the audience was mainly developers. We know what hosting is, thank you.

Rackspace — Matt ???

• 2600 employees (40-50 in London)
• growing about 50% year on year
• have “positive churn” (1.5%)
• 24/7 live “fanatical” support

NAVTEQ — Tony Hand & Mimmis Olsson

• 80 new devices launched with GPS in H1 2008
• 74m GPS phone devices sold in EMEA next year
  • 55m smart phones, others feature phones
• NAVTEQ Network for Developers
  • Online developer community
  • Includes sample map data
• NAVTEQ Connections Web Portal
  • matchmaking, promotion
• 6th year of NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge
  • 2009 prizes include cash, tool & data licenses and handsets
• O2 segments:
  • Ambitious Status Seekers
  • Frenetic Families
  • Fun Loving Socialisers

DeviceAnywhere — Leila Modarres

We use DeviceAnywhere for testing our JavaME apps (such as the National Express East Coast Timetable to Mobile) and find it very effective. I didn't take many notes on this session as I already know how it works. Go see their site if you want further details.

• Screens only turn on when the device is in use
• Will hand out 30 free hours today
  • I won them!

Mob4hire — Paul Poutanen

• Mobile developers can leverage the value of existing handsets to test for other developers
  • Earn money on mob4hire…
• Developers can use Litmus system to take advantage of 25,000 early adopter customer base on mob4hire
• Roadmap:
  • Certified testers
  • Remote emulation — competing with deviceanywhere (using LogMeIn)
  • Coder4Hire
  • Market research — localisation etc.

Segala.com — Paul Walsh

• Expert testing services

Future of Mobile 08: Android and Gears for Mobile

Rich Miner — Google

Rich used to work for Orange before he co-founded Android.

Tom Hume also has good notes for Rich's talk.

• We have hit a tipping point with openness being a major catalyst
• Mobile phone operators tend to behave somewhat like lemmings…
  • (re: unlimited data plans)
  • Have probably been pushed a little faster & harder than they would have liked it (iPhone)
• Rich spoke about history of working at Orange, trying to launch SPV
  • Difficulties sorting out bugs — HTC didn’t have access to code, Microsoft said it would take months to fix…
  • App discovery was non-existent
• Fragmentation:
  • Compared number of mobile phones to number of cars, PCs, landline telephones…
  • Unsurprisingly, there are more mobile phones by several orders of magnitude
  • Even for Google, it was crazy to get apps signed on lots of operator networks
  • Google Maps for Mobile should be able to launch directly from your address book, but this is not possible in J2ME
  • It’s possible to access your address book, but only on a subset of phones that support the relevant API, and even then you have to implement your own search
• Showed slides from Android (the company) when being bought by Google:
  • Hardware costs going down but software costs staying the same
  • Existing Smartphone OSs aimed at enterprise & high-end, Android aimed slightly lower
• Android architecture — all available as open source: source.android.com
  • Linux kernel for hardware drivers
  • Libraries on top — SQLite, WebKit, OpenGL…
  • Android Runtime on top and to the side
  • allows access to all the data and services on the phone
  • App framework on top of both
  • Then actual provided apps on top of that
• Android marketplace is totally under control of developers
  • No human intervention between developer publishing and appearing on the marketplace

Mauricio Reyes recorded the Q&A if you want to see the video.

Q: What about the UI?

• Need to focus on consumer focussed user interface
• He didn’t quite answer the question, other than say it’s an important issue…

Q: What are plans to generate as much hype as iPhone?

• Not looking to replace iPhone — iPhone is already a good Google experience
• This is a 1.0 device from HTC and T-Mobile
• There are lots of others in the pipelines — there will be lots more arriving soon

Q: Once there are lots of different handsets, how will apps run on all handsets?

• cf. JavaME from Sun — there was no reference implementation, so each JVM behaves differently
• Instead Android has a single reference implementation so each device will have the same underlying software stack and apps will make the same calls
• Are working on a conformance test — for OEMs to run and carriers to use before accepting a test
• Google are also going to pick reference apps that challenge the platform (in a good way) and will highlight those as app tests

Q: WebKit and Gears

• At the moment, Gears is tied to browser app, not WebKit core
• This was a mistake and will be changed
• Will therefore be able to have a WebKit component in your app and still access Gears stuff

Q: Widgets for home screen not in current SDK

• Home screen is just an app
• Just ran out of time in development — have had lots of requests to add them
• Haven’t made a roadmap yet
• Since it’s just an app — can replace with something else — and some OEMs may do so

MomoLondon: Mobile User Experience

Last night’s Mobile Monday London was themed on the Mobile User Experience.

Taptu — Steve Ives (CEO & Founder)

• Live since last October — preparation since April
• Aim to get mobile search used several times a day rather than
• Company expertise: mobile user experience (ex-Trigenix) + search algorithms (with experience from Cambridge Computer Lab)

UI design process

12 months, 14 user studies (2 day sessions with 10 users spending an hour each)

1. concepts
2. paper prototypes
3. device prototypes (static pages)
   • used for user studies
4. two other steps… (can anyone fill them in here)

Main tenets:

• don’t assume
• listen to users
• iterate often

Personas

Built up a fair amount of detail about 4 personas.

• 20, iPod generation
• 32, careerist power user
• 23, unwired social (not a lot of access to the internet during the day or evening)
  • mobile internet is primary access to internet
  • particularly large in Asia
• 27, digerati — bloggers, influencers
  • 10% size of others but very influential

Prototypes

Paper prototypes done by photocopying framework with title, options and back then annotated.

Device prototypes — high fidelity, device-specific, pixel perfect (no software engineering required)

Design

Three core families, each with different user experience design

1. low: 176x220
2. mid: QVGA
3. high: iPhone

Graphic design comes from within company — authentic and fast turnaround

UE Testing

They set up a portable user-experience lab, since testing users in London (and they’re based in Cambridge). This consisted of a laptop, a portable mixing desk, two video cameras and a microphone. They could take this to any meeting room and hold user testing.

Two cameras: one aimed at user’s face, other mounted on handset; both mixed & recorded together with a separate microphone. Results in movie showing user reaction in a picture in picture format.

Totally regular event to run a user study — expensive and time-consuming, but have committed to do this.

Human Factors International — Scott Weiss

He wrote a book: “Handheld Useability” in 2002

Moving to “persuasive design”: are your users going to come back?

A good way to determine persuasive design is eye tracking, but this doesn’t work on mobile as the eye trackers require a stationary device.

“The minimum number of design & feedback cycles is 3”

If user testing a phone, don’t sit right next to them and breathe down their neck. Instead, sit opposite them and make them show you the phone if they need to.

Moving from design-time to runtime: Future Platforms — Bryan Rieger

Bryan was addressing the disconnect between designers and developers during and towards the end of the design process. The designers come up with something that looks wonderful and flows beautifully, but if the developers just take the assets directly from these mockups, then the application would run like a dog on mobile. The assets would be too large to load quickly and the device would run out of memory.

• Think about assets, custom fonts, icons for different states.
• Specify paddings, margins and use native drawing capabilities.
• Use composite images — combine resources in device rather than beforehand.
  • e.g. transparency overlay, shading for selection, etc

For example, FP reduced the resources in the Locomatrix app from 12K to 2.87K — massively improved performance and could now work on a lower-memory device such as a Motorola PEBL.

Control Java design based on constants provided in a resource file.

The designers and the developers must work together.

Some of this can be used in mobile web as well, especially if the device has CSS2 & CSS3 capabilities.

Panel session notes

“Institutionalizing useability” — book on Amazon for getting user testing introduced into a company

WebX — sharing presentations for remote teams

Design for the mass market if you want to be successful — this means that the interface will need to work on constrained devices (e.g. pepperoniti — most widely used mobile social networking tool, has very primitive UI)

How do you design for location-based interactions? Or RFID or other? FuturePlatforms are trying but are struggling — the tools don’t help, so they’re using sketches and notes on the walls.

In Apple, the chief designer reports to the CEO — that doesn’t happen very often in other companies.

What’s your good (and bad) UI experiences?

• Marek: N95 Google Reader
  • simple, one graphic, making best use of browser, loads very quickly
• Scott Weiss: bad user experience — RAZR, almost destroyed a company
  • four soft keys
  • took off menu soft key too late
  • industrial design was spectacular, but user experience was terrible
• Taptu:
  • BMW idrive — terrible
  • Phillippe Starck video on TED: simplifying product design
• Bryan Rieger: love the iPhone
  • some of the worst user experiences coming out of Korea to try and copy it (LG & Samsung)
  • touch screen, but some of the screen isn’t touch sensitive and the buttons change under your fingers

OverTheAir: Hacking Competition & Presentations

Lots of people stayed up overnight to hack mobile applications and there were some very cool results.

I tried out building a mobile widget using the Nokia Web Runtime. This is an application environment on recent Nokia Series 60 devices that uses the WebKit browser with various extensions. You write widgets for it using JavaScript, XHTML and CSS (just like any other widget, but, as always, slightly different to the other formats). In fact, I started off building the widget using Apple’s DashCode — a web application builder for the iPhone. This comes with an interface builder that allows you to drag and drop controls onto the screen and wire them together.

Getting the control logic to work took a bit of getting used to — as with all interface frameworks, there’s a learning curve where you build up understanding of how the pieces are supposed to fit together. In the DashCode case, this isn’t helped by the lack of any documentation for the interface controls. However, the development environment more than made up for this — there’s a very capable Javascript debugger, complete with an interactive console, and it’s very easy to start and stop your widget in the iPhone emulator.

I used prototype to power up the Javascript side — making the Ajax calls to our server much easier and enabling some mucking around with the results to provide some pretty formatting.

Once I’d got the basic application working in DashCode, I took it across to the Nokia Web Runtime environment. This provided some extra features such as storing preferences between invocations so that the widget could start up straight into showing you the departures that you’d chosen previously.

I found the Web Runtime very effective, and it fills a very useful niche for simple, web-connected apps on recent S60 phones. Development time is fast and you have access to a reasonable amount of the phone features, though nothing quite as useful as location or the address book (as yet).

My hack won special mention in the “Most practical / ready for market” category — runner-up to the SNOB address book picture enricher. I’ve included a movie of the widget in action (within an iPhone environment) below.

Some other hacks were:

• PimPam — social BBC programmes
• 21st Century Fridge Door — text & MMS to a shared web space
• Location-based games w/J2ME — e.g. capture the flag
• Social Tracker — basically just captures where you are to a database…
  • seems to use Google Maps in a browser to capture the current location
• Flat Music Player UX design — zoomed out user experience — see the album art very small and in specific places on the screen
  • uses sense of physical location rather than words
• Twitter client for Windows Mobile today screen
• Browser Sync while ActiveSync’d — nice!
• YourLocal - displays the local transport stops around Imperial College
• FuturePlatforms — Octobastard robot — you have to see it to believe it :-)
• SNOB: Social Network Open Butler — add pictures to your address book from social network avatars (web service outputs XML independent from social network)
• Autowigificationizor (Owen Griffin) — click a firefox button and get a web runtime widget generated for you based on the RSS feeds for that web page
• MixItUp — cocktails in Flash
• Bluetooth + FOAF — unique ID from hash of bluetooth ID & device bluetooth name; can revoke it by changing your device bluetooth name; get a list of all the people you came into contact with at a conference
• Update FireEagle location from command line, then display it on blog
• LastMinute Labs — PhonePhight with motion detection & bluetooth — very cool!
• Torchwood Sweded — again, I think you just had to be there…

OverTheAir: MIDP3 -- Paul Su (Aplix) & Óscar Gutiérrez Isiégas (Vodafone)

Recommended book: Kicking Butt with MIDP and MSA

Aplix make a MIDP3 implementation.

MIDP 3.0 Expert Group is now looking for feedback from developer community on the specification. You can comment on the specification by logging in to opensource.motorola.com and submitting tickets to the JSR-271 project.

Improvements

• CLDC 1.1.1 — minor improvement, adds permissions classes as used by new framework, also adds some inverse trig functions
• Concurrency now mandatory — spec mandates behaviour: must be able to support at least two MIDlets at once
• Shared libraries — LIBlets
  • LIBlets are executed in the context of the MIDlet
• MIDlets running in the background can request user notification
• Applications can restrict which other apps can make use of it — completely independent from permission model
• Existing permission model still in place for legacy MIDlets, but MIDP 3 has more fine-grained permissions similar to CDC
  • Still held to ransom by certificates on the device being controlled by the operator
• MIDlet can consume and publish events between each other and the system (e.g. power on)
• Auto-start, Screensaver & Idle screen MIDlets
  • Auto-start MIDlets will attempt to restart when they’re shutdown
  • Idle screen MIDlets can define a derivative of a CustomItem and the phone will display it somewhere on the idle screen
• Can interchange Record Store data between phones and to and from the network. Can also encrypt RMS data to protect it
• Image display support now includes mandatory PNG, GIF, JPEG & SVG Tiny 1.?
• Custom OpenType fonts — defined in the JAR or downloaded from the network

There are more details about some of these points in the masterclass session that Paul and Oscar ran previously. Here's the slides:

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Schedule

Probably get final draft review completed by Q3 2008…

BarCamp London: Introducing J2ME Polish

Here is the presentation I made at London BarCamp 3. It’s been a long while appearing on slideshare, but in that time the guys at J2ME Polish have released version 2.0, complete with all the features promised in the slideshow and more.

We use J2ME Polish at Kizoom and I’m really impressed with how easy it makes mobile development. You can’t forget about the fragmentation issue, but the issues you have to deal with are reduced to sizing images and choosing formats rather than writing code to switch between them.

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