Category: Mobile

Hiring from open-source

Reading Chris DiBona’s blog I found this interesting post on another blog.
Reduce the risk, hire from open source (Loud Thinking)

I think it makes some very interesting points.
Working on the WURFL project has taken a lot of my time, both working time and spare time. Sometimes most of my spare time and none of my working time.
I am sure this witnesses my passion into the project itself, programming and the mobile world.

Working in the WURFL project brought me some really interesting contacts, of course and hopefully this will be reflected in more opportunities in the future.
My current contract and the last 2 years of my working time have happened thanks to WURFL and the contacts that it generated.

Often the interview was really a few minutes and something like “We want to do this and that, can you do it?”.
Sometimes I was surprised by how quickly this happened and how people wasn’t really much interested in my CV. I think this also confirms how CV’s can sometimes not mean much (both on the good and the bad side).
I wonder how could you understand if someone is good at programming or has good analisys qualities in a 30 minutes interview.

WURFL mid-Spetember update

I originally started this blog to post freshnews about WURFL.
I understand that many people visit our website on sourceforge (http://wurfl.sf.net/), but I think that not as many read the wmlprogramming mailing list.
I thought that writing a blog might keep more people up-to-date.
On the other side there aren’t that many updates. I always work on WURFL, but there are not sensational updates. It’s a hard work and very time consuming, but I understand we don’t have anything sensational to write every single week.
I ended up writing posts about FireFox, my Apple-passion and so on. I wonder how many are really interested in that (and I also always wondered why should people be interested in blogs in general, but it looks like I’m one of the few thinking this). You will now ask yourself why would I write a blog if I think that most people from around the world will not give a damn about it. The answer is simple: testing. See how it works and how it comes out. How much interest is generated.

But now let’s get back to WURFL. If you are not updating directly from CVS regularly you are not very up-to-date about the changes. Thanks to Pau, one of our regular contributors, we are adding a TON of updated max_deck_size’s. This is done thanks to a script he prepared that checks values passed by the Openwave gateway (MAX_PDU_SIZE) that in general refers to the max_deck_size.
On the same topic, someone asked on the mailing list (1-2 days ago) if max_deck_size could be applied to xHTML and i-mode pages too.
For i-mode, as always, the answer is pretty simple: YES. To avoid adding a new capability we decided to recycle the one we already had.
For xHTML(-MP), as always, the answer is not so simple. There are some browsers, from Nokia and other manufacturers that may load pages of different size if it’s xHTML or WML. So the answer is basically “no”. When importing data I always try to keep the smaller (and safer) value.
We are now evaluating if we should add a new capability.
If you are interested and think it’s valuable you might consider promoting it and maybe become a mentor (work to keep it updated).

I also keep working to bring more and more user agents into the XML and parse UAProf’s to add the basic data. UAProf is very useful for us to determine and import basic information such as brand, model, screen size, j2me basic capabilities, MMS and more, but we do need developers’ support to update all the other more detailed (and valuable) info.

Please, keep your emails coming.

Some other things are happening in the underground, but I really can’t talk about them yet and also don’t want to make them public until they are real.

Stay tuned.

RSS feeds a-go-go

RSS feeds have been available for quite a while now.
As an old timer Opera user, I have always believed that setting a number (5-7) of homepages would bring me to the sites I visit most often. Then I would browse from there.

Lately RSS feeds are more and more common so I eventually decided to give it a try. I downloaded NetNewsWire (for Mac, of course!) and this was the beginning of the end. The software (unfortunately) includes a HIGH number of feeds. Of course I subscribed to a bunch of them PLUS all the pages I regularly visit. Now I have about 100 news to read every day and if I don’t read them regularly they GROW UP!
Now I’m addicted.

I have to say it’s pretty cool. Some sites offer the full news through the RSS, some other will give you a short description and then you may read the full news on their site. Both solution are cool to me.

It looks like many people likes this new way of staying informed… And probably I’m one of the last geeks to discover this “new technology”.
Anyway, going back to the wireless business, a couple of people already started to port this “new technology” to the people on the move.
Here are the links:
pixs.jp
www.ifeedyou.com

In my previous post I talked about Marcus. He’s the author of pics.jp.
Jérôme Chevillat is the author of Ifeedyou and uses wurfl for the multimarkup rendering.

Both services let you read the news title and the short descriptions, the problem arises when you need to read the full article. Maybe while you’re on the move you don’t need to read the entire article. Too lengthy texts might not be so comfortable to read on a normal device like my V3.

WURFL around the world

I just got an e-mail from Erik, with a link to this page:
http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2005/09/01/442083.html

I don’t speak Norwegian, so I can’t translate, but basically dagbladet is an important newspaper and news-site. They also provide WAP access to their site.
The news announces the full support of the PSP by their site and guess what? They use WURFL for the markup and image rescaling.

I am really glad to see this, thank you Erik.

How much does WURFL take?

These days I spent some time reading a post from Russell Beattie about Mobile Research and the replies that followed. I have in some way already posted about it.

Later replies also made me think about the time that I invest in WURFL. While sometimes the project might seem dead or silent, I constantly work on it and Luca Passani does the same.
Initially the project was just an idea, collect the data that the few readers and writers of wmlprogramming were already storing. At that time we were not so many and basically we all were developers experimenting this new technology trying to find our way out of the “quicksand”.
After Nokia’s ringtones (strictly monophonic) and after all the other manufacturers understood that personalization would have brought money, more companies and people started minding about “device capabilities” and of course new developers joined the wmlprogramming mailing list looking for information about devices and support. More technologies have arrived (MMS, EMS, J2ME, etc) and WURFL kept growing in size, contributors and most of all users (users that often don’t contribute back, but the few that do keep the project alive).

Luca and I started to feel that the project was growing when the number of emails about WURFL on wmlprogramming and most of all emails directed to us personally started growing a lot.
Today I was wondering about the time I spend on the project. A rough count is that I spend about 60-90 minutes per day replying to personal emails and emails on the list.
Aside from this I spend a few hours per week, I would say an average of 3-4 distributed during evening and weekends, mostly importing data in the XML. I think I reach peaks of 10-12 hours, sometimes.
I am sure developers supporting WURFL are also spending some extra time just because they think it’s a good project and they think it can help other people as it helped them. This is why I respect anyone who sends me an email and always try to reply quickly and fully.

Who is using WURFL? While many think it’s just an “underground” project, there are indeed some big companies using it. Sometimes they won’t tell us because they don’t mind, some other times they will consider it an “industrial secret”, some other times they might be scared we will ask for money. What else? I am sure there is someone in some big company that users WURFL and is pretty satisfied with the results, but won’t tell it too loud just because it’s a big company and knowing that it uses something free instead of paying a lot of money to some big company that SELLS software and consultancy would not be good.
Why am I not asking for money? There are many reasons, here’s an unsorted and incomplete list:

  • I take advantage of many other open-source software so this is my little contribution back
  • WURFL was born as a collaborative effort and should continue that way. No one invested fresh money in it, if not his own time, but this is also one of the reasons why it was successful
  • In the last 2 years I got contracts ALSO because I work actively on WURFL and companies hiring me were HAPPY that I dedicated some time to project
  • I don’t think that selling WURFL (intended as the XML) would really give me much money. I think many people (probably not understanding the difficulty) would say that anyone can collect data about a device. What could give money would be some added value. It is funny when sometimes I receive emails of people asking me to develop some software for them. Do they think that just because I work on an open-source project, working is a hobby, for me?

There are probably many other small reasons why I do this, maybe also the dream of a worldwide fame, going on TV, being interviewed and so on. But probably this is too far away, I should have done something more popular, like eMule or Napster…

MobileResearch in the news

It looks like MobileResearch (a startup company?) has gotten quite some good friends on the net. They are presented as

“the first commercially available solution that provides mobile developers and content publishers the data they need to address the problems associated with mobile device fragmentation”

on their site, here, here and probably on many other sites.
They certainly have a great marketing team and I’m happy to see that more and more people realize that knowing what a device can do is really important.
I am not saying that WURFL is better (or worse) than their product, I haven’t seen it. The good thing and probably their advantage over WURFL is that it’s specifically targeted for the US market (but it looks like they will deliver something for the European market later this year) and WURFL hasn’t had that many contributions from the US market. We have recently (the last 2-3 months) started receiving contributions from the US, this means that they are eventually understanding and feeling the need for such database.
I am sure the guys at MobileResearch have worked and ARE working hard on their project, but you will all agree with me that it’s a great marketing-ONLY statment the fact they are the first… It’s true that WURFL is NOT a commercial product, IT IS FREE! On the other side it is also true that there are other really valuable and EXPERIENCED companies offering similar products. The question is:”Are they as well trained and are they targeted to the US market?” Maybe they have worked hard on the GSM/European market and don’t have much information about US devices. Audiovox devices are not being sold in Europe. There are many devices from Sharp and Sanyo being sold in USA only. Danger is another one, and I could list more.

I just wonder how much marketing is behind this software and how much “substance” is behind the product.

Knowing that more people is working on something like WURFL just confirms the value of the project and seeing that they ask you almost 30.000,00 USD makes me understand the monetary value of WURFL.

I wonder were WURFL could go if people donated some money or time or resources.

PS: while writing this post I noticed they are also putting banners on Google.

Serial Numbers/IMEI in user agents?

“Recently” Vodafone has begun to force the user agent “format” to manufacturers producing device that will be sold as “VodafoneLive” devices. These devices follow a standard scheme for the user agent string.
Sample agent: “Vodafone/1.0/V802SE/SEJ001 Browser/SEMC-Browser/4.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1”.
As you can see we have the string “Vodafone”, then we have “1.0” (Vodafone specs version 1.0?), then V802SE (V802 from SonyEricsson), SEJ001 (SonyEricsson J001, it’s the firmware version) and then a string that can be customized by each manufacturer, in this case we have the SE browser version (4.1) and the j2me profiles supported.
On one side this can be good for the device detection, we know for sure that all devices with a user agent starting with “Vodafone/1.0” will be xHTML and have some basic feature (that I haven’t discovered, yet). On the other side some devices might be matched with a wrong device. This doesn’t make a big difference with regard to the markup (xHTML is always xHTML), but might make a difference when delivering contents.

Unfortunately, it seems that this rule was not so clear to manufacturers. Here are a couple of user agents that make an exception:
Vodafone/SonyEricssonV800/R1S025 Browser/SEMC-Browser/4.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
Vodafone/R4.5/SEMC_v800/EU_1 SonyEricssonV800/R1A Browser/SEMC-Browser/4.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
Vodafone/1.0/V902SH/SHG001/SN350257000024598 Browser/UP.Browser/7.0.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 Ext-J-Profile/JSCL-1.2.2 Ext-V-Profile/VSCL-2.0.0
Vodafone/1.0/V702NK/NKJ001/IMEI/SN354350000005026 Series60/2.6 Nokia6630/2.39.126 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1

While the first two user agents don’t respect the standard precisely, they still look “OK”, to me (but I don’t know the *real* standard, nobody asked my opinion or shared any official docs with me), but look at the last two. They are presenting the serial number that is to say the IMEI of the device. YES, they are printing the IMEI of the phone in the user agent.

WURFL is not going to list all these user agents, we’d have a ‘device’ for every phone sold around the world. It is strange to see this info in the user agent.
Could this be of any use? Is this against my privacy? Would a user be happy to see his IMEI distributed? Is the IMEI a reserved information? Does this identify a single person?

WURFL 2.0 is out!

So WURFL 2.0 is eventually out!
It took months of work and while the updates on the CVS were more or less constant, we did not release any “official” version for more than 7 months.

This has been a long work and while it might have seemed that we were not doing anything we have been really active. Being an open-source project and not having anyone paying us JUST for this, of course there have been weeks in which I have been more productive and others in which I could not dedicate the time I would have wanted to WURFL.
Contributors have grown in number and I keep receiving emails from all around the world with many different devices (that I often have never seen and probably will NEVER see!).

Applications based on WURFL have grown, certainly, otherwise I wouldn’t be receiving so many emails, contributions and new user agents.

WURFL 2.0 includes many updates, not only about new user agents and new device information (OF COURSE), but also a deep review of the j2me group. This is the part that took most of the time. We have received a contribution from Telefonica I+D that is now in charge of keeping the j2me group updated also with the support of J2ME Polish who kindly provides their device database.
Did you see a device in j2me polish that is not well described in WURFL? We probably could not associate the model name with the user agent, LET US KNOW!
Are you a j2me developer? Well it’s probably time to give another look to WURFL. The new capabilities should help you develop applications and develop download servers.

If you are reading my blog you will also know that we have also introduced new capabilities about SVGT. The support from manufacturers is growing and we expect many more devices to support this format in the near future. Flash is also growing in the mobile market and we have it too.

Are you all about downloads? New capabilities are there too. Please, let me know of new devices and of information that is incomplete!

Hurry up to download the new WURFL, make sure you update your scripts and softwares with the new j2me capabilities and report back!

I know it’s impossible, but if you still don’t know where to get it, go to the WURFL website.

WURFL + J2ME

We have eventually reached the final stages of the new J2ME structure in WURFL.
It really took way longer than I thought, but thanks to the guys at Telefonica I+D we now have a tool to import new data an updates from the J2ME Polish files and can of course apply our own patches.

Considering the long time it took I have also added a ton of new user agents and device information. I also have a long queue of UAProfiles that were processed (thanks to Zev’s tools) and are waiting to be added to the main WURFL.
Things are really growing and something is happening. Contributors continue to grow and I receive emails from the stranges places of the world.

The new release will include more than 7000 user agents and 1000 recognized real devices.

What is needed to WURFL to beat the competition? We needed testers and contributions. We needed developers to let us know what they find out about devices. I know that everyone is buying Nokia 6230 and SonyEricsson V800 because those are the ones that sell well, but I also know for sure that each of us has some funky phone and we need to tailor it well in WURFL.

Do you have information about behaviour of Teleca browsers? Know about Samsung and LG devices? These are the information that is hardest to find.
Thumbs up to SonyEricsson that eventually produced a document that details differences among browser versions and names the browser version in the user agent!
FYI: the document name is “dg_browsing_r3a.pdf” and is included in the package named “dg_browsing_mar05.zip”. Any newer version from the SE developers’ site?

If you want to get the latest WURFL, get it from CVS and start testing!