I read this from Tom Hume, but was too odd not to repost it here.
I know at least 3 people who would need it, if only I had known it a month ago, I would have had a much easier time with the Christmas presents.
Check out Botanicalls, the hardware and software to let you plants call you when they want to be watered!
A little bit of publicity and links are worth much more than bare money.
I wrote a short Premus review here the other day and now David has updated the online demo to the latest development version that includes the validator, better source view and syntax highlighting.
He also squashed a few bugs here and there.
Bookmarking has been disabled due to spammers immediately using it to publicize their sites. The current version shows how bookmarks can be used, but you are not allowed to create new ones. If you make a local install you will be able to use them, of course.
See the updated Premus live, or read the CHANGELOG for a few more details about the changes.
Message to David: you need to practice your communication skills, the changelog is too short! 😛
“The name Premus comes from PRoxying EMUlator Service. It is a mobile browser emulator that converts WML, XHTML MP, cHTML and Vodafone’s PML (c. 2004) into standard HTML that you can browse in your normal web browser.”
This is what David Johansson says on the site as a short description of the software. David has been developing mobile services for many years now and he was among the early supporters of WURFL.
Premus was born from the need of testing mobile sites, WML in WAP 1 in the beginning and later many more markups. I would not call it exacly an “emulator” as David does, but rather a testing tool. In two words, Premus lets you pick a user-agent (from WURFL, of course!), define a URL and specify extra headers, if you’d like. The software makes the request and reformats the markup so that it renders well in your web browser. It’s not a Java application or applet, it’s not a real emulation engine or and SDK. It’s a web-based tool that lets you easily test your sites and make sure that all the links work and the pages look as you expect.
You should not expect a faithful representation of how it will look on the mobile device; it does not show alerts if you picked the user-agent of a WML device/browser and the remote site returns XHTML. It is intended for programmers and authors that have developed a site or a complex service and need to check that everything is OK.
Since real device testing is ALWAYS suggested, this is the perfect light-weight tool to make a general test before going with the mobile.
More in detail, while browsing with Premus, you always see the general page layout, but you can also see the original source, you see, edit and force cookies and headers. By default you have a some input fields on the top of the page for the user-agent, URL and manage all the proxy features and see the page in a dedicated box. De-activating the “frame” checkbox you can see the page layout in a window on its own, more similar to the mobile browsing.
A very helpful feature is actually on the bottom of the page. It shows a list of external resources (normally images) and the size of each. Also provides the time needed to download the markup and all external contents. The time is calculated on the fast internet connection of the server, not calculating the mobile networks latency, but will be useful to compare different pages and sites.
Premus will help you save a lot of time.
Premus is now released as open-source so you are free to download and adapt it to your needs.
If you look at the version in development you will see some new features that are not in the online demo, yet. These are features that I have strongly suggested to David and actually it really took him a few hours to implement them, but I think they will make a big difference.
Syntax highlighting has been added for the source view, very useful when you need to check your markup. Also the spacing has been changed for better readability.
Even more important to me is the markup validation. It’s disappointing when you build a big site, get ready to test with your mobile (take it from the drawer, put the correct SIM card, check the WAP profile, go online) and discover there’s a typo in the XML declaration. Checking that your markup is validated will certainly guarantee the best interoperability with all browsers. When you want the best possible support you really want this. Well-formedness is the first thing! Look what happens if you validate http://m.gmail.com/ :
All the code is Python and should be easy to install on most modern Linux disto’s.
Some other minor things could be cleaned up and improved. Nevertheless this is a very good testing tool. If you are a mobile sites developer, I suggest you try it out, especially the development version that adds those 2-3 features that will actually ease your work a lot.
Lately I chatted often with Roberto Galoppini, he is very interested in technology, mobile devices and most of all about open-source.
After a few chats he asked me to write a short interview for his blog. The short interview turned into a LONG talk, but of course he had to cut it down to make it fit in a blog.
Here it is: Italian Open Source projects: WURFL
In the last couple of months I wrote posts about developers’ sites around the planet. I mostly wrote of updates or new sites that I found. Today I’m talking about a developers’ site that has been around for quite a few years, at least 3 or 4, I’d say. The site I’m going to talk today is MOTODEV, by Motorola.
While it’s been around for a long time and I have known it for a long time, I hadn’t felt like talking about it, yet. Why? Because there’s not much to say. Why? Because there’s nothing interesting to read or download!
Info about WAP capabilities is reduced to the VERY minimum and by minimum I mean that on most device spec pages (and files) you get something like “WAP 1.0” or “WAP 2.0”. Links generally target to OMA’s homepage or even the WAPForum’s.
Multimedia is sometimes described with very generic terms such as MP3-support, but nothing about other formats.
In general you can’t find accessory information about e-mail client, MMS (other than “supported”), messaging, IM.
The site in general is very poor.
Many devices are missing.
Downloadable spec files are generally a PDF version of the web page you were reading. 99% useless considering that you could save-to-file the page you’re reading.
Only thing that is decent on the site are specifications about J2ME capabilities, API’s and so on. This is decent, but not all devices have the documents available.
My overall vote to the site 4 out of ten and only because there’s J2ME information, otherwise it would have been a 2.
Something that clearly demonstrates the quality of the site. I tried to update my profile as it’s outdates, this is the result:
While writing this post I browsed the site looking for examples and re-check what exactly is available. The site has slightly changed the layout and some extra information has appeared. Looking at the device spec of the Motorola RAZR V3 we can now see the browser vendor that was not available in the past. As pointed out before, resources about J2ME are decent. The rest is mostly very similar to the end-user site, information about the generic support of SMS, EMS, MMS and IM. What IM, for example? OMA’s? AIM? ICQ? I have a V3 and I know it’s OMA IMPS (or Wireless Village), but data is still lacking.
I can see for example another V3 with CLDC 1.1, how do I distinguish the two models?
What I find disappointing in general is that all around the site there are very few details and it seems like the Motorola devices are 100% adherent to the standards and all the links are to the official documentation, while we all know that this is not entirely true, that all devices and implementations have their own peculiarities and in most cases this will not even put in evidence extra features the devices might have. Something you should actually put in the spotlight if you want developers and content providers to be able to provide the best for your devices.
I have to admit I have seen a slight improvement in the site and see new filters to search for devices that were not available 10-15 days ago when I had to do some research on them. Two weeks ago, in the handsets page there was a filter only by year. Now that filter is gone and new ones, more detailed and more interesting for a developer are present.
Related links:
I found a very interesting article on Blog Maverick. The blog, in case you did not know, is maintained by Mark Cuban, the owner of the basketball team and a number of companies related to internet (read more on Wikipedia at the link above).
The post is entitled Googlenomics , Itunes and Zune and describes a few reasons why Google might enter the Music downloads business, how much it would cost and what it could bring to them.
It makes some sense, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, or at least not as it is described. I can hardly believe that the music labels would be happy to give away the music for free. The first billion songs for free is A LOT and would cost them A LOT (Mark says about 575M USD). That would mean a really low price per song and the music labels are already fighting with Apple to raise the 99c per song.
While Google and Apple are friends, I doubt the service would be compatible with the iPod and Google and Microsoft are not so much friends, so I hardly think it’ll be compatible with Zune. What’s left? Something that maybe is not in Mark Cuban’s article, you home-media-center. An all-in-one tiny computer (as big as your VCR) that connects to internet, lets you watch TV shows, listen to music and read news online. Wouldn’t that make more sense for Google?
I wanted to make this post about fifteen days ago, but then other things took over and this was left behind.
While doing my daily news-reading and “siteseeing”, I found a site that seems to mean that Motorola is into the open-source. Reading more deeply it is clear that they have open-sourced some parts of their J2ME implementation for mobile devices and the full software for some linux-based devices!
opensource.motorola.com offers a number of downloads. The most active, according to the published statistics are JSR’s in general and more specifically JSR 271 (Motorola ‘s JSR 271 implementation or the JCP JSR 271 specification).
Even more interestingly, there are links to access parts of device kernel, drivers and applications that are developed as open-source. You can access kernel and packages for the ROKR E2, A1200 or A780 and E680.
This is very cool.
The community is not very active also because it’s a very specific topic, but still it’s an initial effort. It’s incredible how much traction Linksys got after they released the full firmware of their WRT54g and later.
As a test I downloaded the firmware of the A780/E680, 72MB! It’s all RPM. There are many packages included and other packages are stored outside of the “firmware package”. It seems like there’s everything.
Why should I buy a greenphone, now that I have discovered this?
Hackers wanted to test these files and play around.
opensource.motorola.com announcement to the press.
WURFL is an open-source project and it has been running for about 5 years now. Initially it was a common effort of a few developers around Europe willing to share some information and save some money from buying every phone on the market.
Later it turned into a very valuable information source for anyone in the mobile space from anywhere in the world.
Today is the de-facto standard for anyone that wants to build a mobile solution in-house.
How much does WURFL cost? It is still entirely free. The main XML includes devices for 1999 to 2006 (and 2007 soon!). The free libraries range from PHP to Java, Ruby, python, .NET, etc. Basically any well known programming and scripting language.
What do you need to start? An idea and One or more programmers to turn your idea into something real using the tools that WURFL provides.
It looks like there’s someone with an idea and looking for an experienced programmer: J. Edgar and associates, a recruitment company. I just found a post about a job opportunity in which WURFL is a requirement!
The yearly payment is not bad at all, 90.000+ dollars. It is not clear to me if it’s US dollars or Canadian. Anyway it seems like WURFL programmers are very well considered.
A few days have gone since X-Series was launched in the UK by 3.
A few reviews and news items were published, but I still could not find any real review. There was one on Mobile Gazette, for example, but I would not really call it a review.
Since I’m not in the UK I can’t really say much about it except what I read on the online site.
I am personally not very interested in Sling and think that Orb *might* sometime turn out to be useful, but that is actually not the main reason why I buy the X-Series package.
What are the other features included? Yahoo! search and eBay. I see it as a good branding opportunity for these two companies, but I don’t think it’s very compelling… While I see the value of getting their name next to a flat-fee data plan, I would not buy the plan just because I can search with Yahoo!. I can search using it anyway! 😀
To me, the most interesting features are messaging and unlimited internet. This means e-mail, browsing, but maybe also using other applications such as bluepulse (I also just wrote a review on bluepulse) or more that might come in a few months specifically for this kind of data plans.
Another big thing is Skype on 3 as they call it on the Skype site. The devices will have Skype pre-installed. The client is compatible with the standard service so you will be able to login with your existing account (or create a new one, of course). Users can call each other for free and this is great. SkypeOut is still not supported, but should be enabled in the next months. This will certainly take some revenues away from 3, but I’m sure it will make a lot of customers happy!
Reading the fine print you discover that data usage is unlimited, but actually 3 has defined some soft-limits that they have identified as “fair use limits”. On the website it is not written clearl, but my understanding is that surpassing these limits every months might result in an early interruption of the service from 3. The limits are high and I surprisingly agree on the limits they have identified. This is a good sign from 3. Example of Fair Use Limit for data: 1 GB each month (taken from the X-Series site).
One thing that I did not like is that the data usage is limited to the phone. In theory, if you want to connect with a PC you will have to get an extra data-plan or pay-per-use as you would normally do. Customers of this plan will initially be geeks and business people. All customers that will ALSO need internet access with their PC. The two devices provided are Symbian, but are not a BlackBerry or a P990i or an E61. They are both media-rich devices rather than business phones. I think this is not a pro.
The price is VERY interesting and while it’s a promotional price (starts from 20£ per month, which is about 30 Euro), the final price (starts from 35£, about 50 Euro) is still a very good price considering that it includes a BIG LOAD of messages and a lot of calling minutes. I would like to hear how much you pay per month, because if we consider the taxes (at least in Italy), data and calls… I’m already above that and I don’t use as much data as I would with the X-Series.
I was a bit worried of the price when they announced it, but I think it’s very compelling.
When are the other operators following? How long will it take? 6 months? Less? Never?
Also check out the X-Series blog.
A few days ago Bluepulse v2 was launched. I had given it a first try with V1, but honestly, with the RAZR V3 I had more problems than other, so I gave up almost immediately.
I don’t think it was a problem to the bluepulse itself, but rather to the poor capabilities of the V3 (not really a good phone for anything other than being slick, thin and cool).
Now that I have a cool and shiny Sony Ericsson W810i I can give a try to all these nice applications.
First things first; installation was fast and smooth. I got on their site with my mobile phone (http://get.bluepulse.com) and downloaded the MIDlet. Tech note: the download consisted of only a jar file, no jad.
In 2 minutes I was up and running. I already had an account from my first try with the RAZR V3, so I simply configured the login and password and I was in.
My Place
bluepulse is first of all a community. “My place” is basically a guided menu that lets users describe themselves, their interests and so on. This is obvsiously central to the community. When searching for friends you can see their profile, read about them, see pictures and videos. None of the fields is required, but if you use bluepulse for chatting and meeting people you will certainly want to fill these fields. Available fields range from Age/Sex/Location to free text fields, pictures, video. You can pick an icon from a list of available images or get one assigned automatically. Details go down to your e-mail address and phone number.
I have browsed a few people in the community. Most users wrote a good amount of text and provided their A/S/L. Very few provided images or videos. If the MIDlet allowed users to use the camera to take a picture or record a video it would have been easier in some cases; on the other side you have to specify a URL and the application will download and store it. Considering that this application also relies a lot on Web 2.0 concepts, it’s should be noted that it also provides the ability to use Flickr.
I am not a usability authority, but I am certainly a user, so I have a remark here: Age/Sex/Location is all menu-driven, so much menu driven, that I think it would be easier to dial in my birth date rather than pick it from multiple menus (first select a year range, then year, then select month, then day all using the joystick).
Community
To start you need to find people. Search is easy, pick age/sex/location, SEARCH. Would be nice to have an automatic suggestion of the same age and location as my profile (if set) and then pick the sex. If wanted, change the other settings. We all know why people use this to kind of tools. 😉
Search my nickname or e-mail is also available.
After searching you may see the user’s profile, add as a friend, browse his/her friends. While most users have written a lot about themselves and their interests, I often could not find pictures or videos. The menu items were always present and often resulted in a “user did not upload an image”. A bit disappointing. It would have been nicer to only list items that contain something. It would also save time (and money).
Exchanging messages is quite easy. You should first add someone as a friend (you send the request and the user is allowed to accept of reject). Once the remote user has accepted your request to become a friend you can send him/her a message. When logging in the application you get an alert if new messages are available. All common mailboxes such as “inbox” and “sent” are available. Messages can be stored or deleted. Sending a message is much like an SMS, so anyone can do it quite easily.
I tried the online chatroom, but they were empty, so I can’t say much. Looked like an IRC channel.
Widgets
Bluepulse can be seen as a container of plug-ins or widgets. Its power layes in the ability to add a lot of custom widgets according to your needs and pleasure. Pre-installed you can find a feed reader and the full messaging and chat system that is part of the “community feature-set”.
Add a widget
Managing Widgets is certainly a major functionality of bluepulse and installing a new one is quite easy. Search among the available plug-ins selecting by category, popularity or more recent. Click, read a short description and install.
Installing a new widget really takes a minute. Once installed you find a new icon in the starting page. A breeze.
RSS feeds
I tried to add my own feeds to see how they would look on BP. I thought it would be better to check feeds I know. Unfortunately I had to type the exact URL of the feed, quite uncomfortable while on the move. During the tests, anyway, I was near my computer and could get them. Once gotten the exact URL (not always very short to type on a mobile) it worked as expcted. I encountered some problems, anyway. I tried the atom feed from Mobile web planet, at first it seemed to work and showed me all the headlines, but then I could not see any contents.
I tried the pre-defined Flickr feed and this time it worked, but I could not see any of the images of the 3 different posts I tried (3 random posts from the first page).
Another pre-difined feed was Yahoo! sports. News were OK and contents were present. I was not able to see any images, again. I guess this is a rescaling problem. The W810i should be able to display most image formats. I think the server-side application (of bluepulse) should convert the files into a supported format, anyway.
Overall results were a bit disappointing. It’s OK if some remote feed does not work, but you would expect the pre-defined feeds to be widely tested.
IM
I installed MSN as a test. Installation was smooth as with other widgets. I looged in at my first try and all the online buddies were downloaded and shown in a list. I hadn’t thought it would have been so easy. 😉
I could exchange messages with a friend easily. The page looked like a standard chat or IRC, all text, not buddy icons. It worked well. The page is refreshed every 30 seconds or so, a good time considering that it’s a mobile application. Sometimes the refresh seemed a bit annoying, maybe because it’s a page refresh and was very visible. Quite acceptable, anyway.
Overall results
The client in general works smoothly. I received an SMS and later a call while playing around; in one case the application kept going without a glitch, after the call I saw an error message (something on the lines of “connection error, try later”), reloaded and everything worked fine. This is certainly a demonstration of solidity.
While Opera Mini was born as a browser, it has a few features such as the RSS feed reader that are in direct competition with bluepulse. I have to say that Opera is much more advanced in this field and that I was a bit disappointed by the results that I obtained in the tests I made with bluepulse.
Opera also takes advantage of the left and right joystick moves to scroll quickly. I think bluepulse should take the suggestion and do the same to make the scrolling of long lists of widgets and contacts faster.
Last one thing is the use of the camera. Opera was really smart to integrate it. If you want a real 2.0 experience, the camera must be part of that.
Pageloading was in generally a big issue that I noticed, as a user. Every time I wanted to do something “Loading 0%” appeared, then jumped to “Loading 100%” and eventually displayed the page. It’s useless to see a “0-100” excursion and it’s annoying to keep re-loading every page. Opera Mini seemed to be faster, I don’t know why. Maybe Opera Mini uses sockets and bluepulse uses HTTP?
The application is very solid, the basic features such as messaging and chatting are good and work smoothly. Installing a widget is very easy and fast and the developers’ community provided a ton of plug-ins aside from the ones developed by bluepulse. The overall result is certainly positive, but not an A. It certainly still has some rough edges and should make the general navigation smoother. It’s a bit frustrating to use it and I think it will make some users walk away due to this.
Related topics:
Opera Mini 3.0 – review, by me
bluepulse website
Bluepulse 2.0 is Bigger, Slicker, Broader and Deeper (and may be the ultimate mobile media platform) on MobileCrunch
Andrea Trasatti's tech notes and more 