Only now I read that a new version of Tera-WURFL has been released.
Steve, the author, finally feels confident to call it stable and I can tell you it’s been tested by many companies and has been running in its previous incarnations on my high-traffic sites.
Well done Steve!
You can read the changelog and download it from the official site, Tera-WURFL
dotMobi just published a short article that I wrote that I think can be interesting for many. The article is an overview to navigation sessions and the usage of cookies to achieve it. One important part of sessions is also being able to track users so this is also mentioned in the article.
I think it’s an interesting article and should answer some of the questions that I have seen on wmlprogramming, mobiledesign and dev.mobi recur quite often. Maybe it’s because I wrote it, but I think it should be useful to many.
You can read it here, User Tracking, Sessions and Cookies
My friends at DADA pinged me to share this breaking news, DADA and Sony BMG are partnering in the US and making a new company called DADA Entertainment.
I hope this is a sign that media companies have understood that they can’t keep just selling CD’s. This seems to me like when in the early eighties people thought that TV and VCR would have killed the radio. Then 5-10 years ago many said that internet and free information would have killed the newspapers.
Guess what? All of these media are still around and the winning move is, of course, to put one foot in each media and get the best from every platform!
Full PR on DADA’s company site, SONY BMG Music Entertainment and DADA form joint venture to create a leading U.S. direct-to-consumer digital and mobile entertainment service
You might have read the recent press release from dotMobi about the launch of a global mobile phone database. The press release also mentions that I have been appointed as Director of Device Initiatives and this means that I will be in charge of the project, starting from the design and down to the development and launch as a public service.
In the last few years I have made some good experience in device databases with WURFL and worked with some first class people in the W3C’s DDWG. dotMobi seemed like the perfect place to start a whole new adventure to create a new and innovative device database. I have all the experience of the open-source community and the will to make a first class product that can satisfy the small shops and the enterprises, dotMobi is the right place to try to achieve this huge task.
I joined less than a month ago and we are now in the most exciting phase of software development: collection of requirements and design. This is a very critical moment as we need to identify the meaningful use cases for the repository and then design our software and data structures so that they can satisfy the needs. In order to get started quickly, we reserved a meeting room in our Dublin offices, got coffee and cups for all, sat down and spent about 2 days talking about what the existing databases provide, how they are built, what they offer, what are the needs of the community of developers and designers and how we should build a new, revolutionary solution. We don’t want to re-invent the wheel, but we want to learn from past experiences and then try to make some steps forward. When the meeting started everyone had a number of ideas that did not really seem to work out very well with each other. I have to say that after two days drawing on a blackboard, talking, writing notes and sharing ideas, we have come to a very interesting solution. When the meeting started we had all these pieces that did not work very well, but after a lot of work, the dam was open and the river of ideas was flowing smoothly, every piece had found its place and the big picture had a very good shape.
We have now collected the requirements, we have defined the use cases and we are deep down in the design phase, this is the most exciting part of software development. We think that a mixture of Agile and XP programming is a perfect fit for this project, there are some functionalities that have been discussed only at a high level and that will be interesting to see them take a shape while the software grows.
Our desire is to make a few steps in the right direction and create new opportunity for developers, designers and companies in general. dotMobi is perfectly positioned as the company is all about mobile services. dev.mobi and ready.mobi are growing in popularity every day and the mobile phones database will be another quality tool offered to the community.
I am very excited about all the features we have thought so far and I am confident that most developers will be BLOWN AWAY by the software that we are going to build.
As a follow up to my previous post “WURFL is great, but I also need to move on“, here is the public announcement of what I’m going to do next,
dotMobi to launch global mobile phone database for developer community.
MovaMessenger is a multi-protocol IM client for your mobile, developed using J2ME, which means that it will run on most mobile devices. MovaMessenger was developed by MovaFone, the same company that did MovaMail, so the general layout is very similar.
First off I went on the website, read that it supports most IM-protocols and started wondering about how it works. Is it based on Jabber? Is it using libpurple? I don’t know, unfortunately (maybe I should sniff some TCP connections on the mobile…).
On the site I could decide if I wanted to download directly or subscribe online. I decide to register and this has been a good idea as I could define one service account immediately from the web, much more comfortable than using the phone keyboard. Once defined login, password, my phone number (what do they need it for?) and setting up one account (AIM) I was presented with a URL to type in the phone and download my personalized version.
I would have liked to be able to define all the protocols from the registration. Also, since I provided my phone number (in international format, of course!), I would have liked to receive a wappush to download the JAR and not type it manually. Not a very long URL, but still a wappush would have been nicer.
I downloaded the application, 137KB, it took just a couple of minutes and I was ready to go. After downloading and starting the application I saw a short explanation message and then was asked to create an account… Hmm… I thought I had defined everything from the website. Anyway, I typed in everything and of course it said the account already existed. I chose to go to the main menu and not try to provide new parameters. Once in the main menu I could pick “Login”, account and password were already there and I logged in. Once logged in the AIM account was already there, configured. I added ICQ and MSN profiles. It took a bit to login, but eventually I was online and my buddies started popping up.
Scrolling up and down seems sometimes a bit slow, but I’m not sure it’s MovaMessenger’s fault or rather my W810i’s slow CPU. I should probably test on some other device. Keeping the up or down key pressed jumps to either the top or the bottom of the list. I have to say that I also instinctively tried to scroll pages up and down using “left” and “right” keys as in Opera Mini, but that actually zoomed on the current buddy.
Chatting with friends is as easy as you’d expect it, pick a user from your list, click on “Chat” and start typing. On my W810i, the “chat” button is on the right softkey, I would have expected it to be on the middle button of the phone (the one in the middle of the 4 directional arrows). The chat menu opens a window where you see your last messages and can type new ones (of course!). Standard emoticons are automatically converted into icons, the others are shown as they were typed in. Quite acceptable from a multi-protocol client that also runs on a low-power, slow-network device.
The left softkey lets me access the options menu where I can “set Status”, “invite Buddy”, configure “Services” or make changes on the selected buddy such as renaming.
Clicking the middle button on my W810i opens a popup where I can configure the phone number of the remote buddy. I can either type it manually or pick it up from the addressbook. Once set I can press a button to start a call. I don’t see the use of it, right now, but maybe some day I’ll need it.
Every time I’m idling and I receive a new message, the phone vibrates. Nice.
Users who sent you a message get a little message bubble next to their name. It’s a bit slow to scroll up and down searching for the sender’s name. This could be improved, maybe popping them up or having a quick menu item from the Chat window.
A bit annoying that every time I open a chat with someone, the remote user receives the following “advertisement”:
“Hello, I’m now using MovaMessenger on my mobile phone to talk to you. If you’d like to chat from your mobile phone you can get MovaMessenger for free at http://www.movamessenger.com”
The application seems solid, even if I have used it for only a few hours.
I can’t check my data traffic in real-time, unfortunately, but I’m sure I’ll see a spike in my next bill. IM on the phone is certainly VERY interesting, but I need a flatrate for data, before I can consider it for full time usage.
Also, being a Java app (not MovaFone’s issue, of course) doesn’t make it entirely integrated with my phone in the sense that I either open it and keep it running, OR put it to sleep. Would be great to have it running in the background, maybe Sun and OMA should think about this seriously.
Apple has posted the developers’ guidelines for content aimed to the iPhone.
It is good to see that they are telling developers to pay a lot of attention to the fact that the device is not a desktop PC and despite the fact that it supports web standards such as HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, it still has some constraints like missing a mouse and a small screen.
I also appreciate very much the strong suggestion of sticking to the standards, you really want to keep things simple for the iPhone to process and using weird tags or strange constructs in your markup is not a good way to make the browser’s life easy.
Go ahead, get started with the development, as soon as you’re done reading Optimizing Web Applications and Content for iPhone.
At Appleinsider they have a new article entitled Apple says iPhone can be activated by users at home that says:
“Activating iPhone takes only minutes as iTunes guides the user through simple steps to choose their service plan, authorize their credit and activate their iPhone, Apple said. Once iPhone is activated, users can then easily sync all of their phone numbers and other contact information, calendars, email accounts, web browser bookmarks, music, photos, podcasts, TV shows and movies just like they do when they sync their iPods with iTunes.”
Wait a minute! I buy the phone in an Apple store, I walk home, plug the phone in the USB port, start up iTunes and… subscribe to AT&T? Select my preferred plan? You know what? This sounds a lot like I’m buying a mobile phone plan from iTunes. Sounds like I’m giving some money to Apple for this. Sounds like I will be able to buy more content and services from AT&T (or another operator) from the familiar interface of iTunes. Sounds like iTunes is turning into the centerpiece for buying media and services. Well THIS is an interesting new approach from Apple. This sounds innovative. This sounds like building more and more services around their iTunes platform.
I can’t really say “I just received” as this e-mail is dated back June, 1st, still I think it’s very good news. My friends at 01design have officially launched the new services for mobile users for ATAC Roma. ATAC Roma is the company that takes care of all public transportation in Rome, quite a good example of how a service should be tailored for the mobile context.
I went to try to service, but apparently you need to have a subscription with ATAC Roma, which I don’t have. This sounds like a big limitation, as I’d be happy to be able to access news and updates even if I’m just a tourist. I hope this is just a limited time closed service and that it will be open to all.
ATAC used to have a WAP site developed on top of WURFL, it sounds like the mobile section of the services have worked out and they decided to go with a more complete service that includes updates, news and so on.
The site is optimized for Opera Mini. Again, too bad I could not test it. I will look for a test account and update, if possible.
Well done!
Via Fabrizio Capobianco:
“June 29th is the turning point for the mobile market, the one we have waited for years. The fun starts now.”
Andrea Trasatti's tech notes and more 