Category: Software

Mobile Web Toolkit by BeeWeeb Technologies

BeeWeeb Technologies, an Italian software-house (does anybody still use this term?), has recently launched the first version of a new software called “Mobile Web Toolkit“.
The Mobile Web Toolkit is more a technology and a set of tools rather than a simple software. The technology is the result of a few years of experience developing software for mobile devices and for mobile operators, it is a technology to produce a layout that is mobile-friendly from content that was meant for desktop browsers.
Its current incarnation, and only open-source, is a plug-in for WordPress, but BeeWeeb has promised to release more plug-ins and libraries. The open-source version is based on WURFL, but reading the FAQ I think they also mean to provide tools to carriers and that will be based on a proprietary technology that might, later, be integrated with WURFL.

I also spotted a web-version of a presentation they made on the Mobile Web Toolkit that also adds some info about the technology in general and their plans to release more software in the near future.

GAIM becomes pidgin, when Lawyers are only an issue

GAIM has been a linux (and later also on other platforms such as Windows) IM client for many years now. Started as a client for AIM and later evolved into a multi-protocol client. It has always been open-source, they never made a penny on it and was mostly driven by students using Linux. GAIM is probably the most successful open-source IM client. I am one of the many users that like the idea of a single client to connect to many networks.

It turns out that AOL has been threatening the GAIM developers for years because they did not like the idea that GAIM sounded so similar to AIM.
I don’t think that GAIM has ever been a threat for AOL and this is fight certainly goes does to simply brand protection and lawyers willing to do something to justify their work (and expenses). So now GAIM is not GAIM anymore and it’s pidgin and you know what? It does EXACTLY the same things it used to do when named GAIM. So why bother suing 3-4 students to get their tiny app name changed?

So welcome pidgin.

Betavine and GPL software

Vodafone’s Betavine has launched a serie of updates, including a section for the development of open-source, much like SourceForge.
To kick-start the site they have included some libraries that Vodafone is releasing as open-source. I am especially happy about the GPL release of the drivers for the Mobile Connect Card. It’s for linux at this time, but one of the big issue for non-Windows users and getting on internet while on the move has certainly been the lack of drivers for proprietary PCMCIA cards. I think that the raise of the USB modems for mobile networks is a sign that more and more customers wanted non-Windows support, now that the drivers for a PCMCIA card are available I expect developers to take it and extend it.

Good move, Vodafone.

J2ME Guide – Part 1

Massimo Carli recently published a book about J2ME. The book is in Italian, but the good news is that it’s also available online for free. I had also put a link here on the right column, but I’ll take this chance to link it again, here.

Massimo has done another step further and published the first part in English on a friendly site. If you are considering to approach J2ME development and you’re a J2SE developer this is a very good starting point.

J2ME Guide – Part 1

Vodafone UK: welcome flat fee data, good bye IM and P2P

Vodafone is introducing a new data plan which is very near to a flat fee if not even better. Customers will pay a flat 1 pound per day to browse anywhere including the portal AND any site on the web.

Unfortunately this does not include VoIP and specifically Skype (which I can understand it not only uses a lot of bandwidth, but would also take away money from Vodafone), but it also does not include any kind of IM.
When using these services customers will be charged the standard fee per MB. Are they scared of losing money on SMS? Too much traffic due to the presence (clients regularly connecting the servers to ping)? How long will it take for users to install a Jabber server on a personal server (so none of the well known ICQ, GTalk, MSN servers) and using a non-standard port? Back to blacklists?

Read the Overview and the cost details.

Ideas for open-source and Software as a Service

Via Fabrizio Capobianco: “Rufo [Guerreschi] wrote a post on his blog about a model for the democratic control of telematic services. In a nutshell, he is trying to close the ASP loophole of GPL (v2 and v3…) with something quite more elaborate than a simple license.”

Here the full post from Fabrizio, Free Telematics and a enforcing open source SaaS, there’s also a link to Rufo’s blog and original posts.

20+ years and still on top of game sales

I am talking about Tetris, of course! Created around 1984-1985 has been a best seller for more than 20 years.

Every time a new console comes out one of the first games to be released is Tetris (plus some variants) and what is amazing is that it just keeps selling!

In the mobile space it’s not different. If you check out the monthly chart published by ELSPA, for example, you will see that the February 2007 UK mobile chart lists Tetris in third position and was second last month.

How is this possible? Well, I think that Tetris shows how all the most important rules of Casual Games should be applied and demonstrates that if they are well balanced will generate an endless interest from gamers in all times.
Here’s a blog post by Tom Hume written after “Casualty Europe” 2006, it’s from a presentation by Jason Kapalka of PopCap called “10 ways to make a bad casual game“. I remembered Tom’s post, but while searching on the web I also found another post from a Microsoft person, Kim Pallister, Casuality Session: Designing casual games.

My favorite rules (deduced from the worst mistakes according to Jason) are number 1, 8 and 9. I really think that the winning combination of a casual game is to make it easy to pick up (so no need to read or really just 1 minute to know the basic rules) and hard to master. Easy to pick up means that users will start playing quickly and see how the game works and get sucked into the game world, hard to master will make sure that users don’t get bored too quickly. Hard to master does not mean it is complicated, but that with many little things you can achieve a higher level, more points, better rewards.
Games like racing or war with too many power-ups, for example, are fun for a few hours or days, but then become boring. It must be something that you get little by little.

I think that Tetris matches the most important rules, SUPER easy to pick up, years to master. Simple graphics, you don’t need a modern computer with 4 processors to run it (it was designed in the Eighties!).

If you checked out the ELSPA chart you will have seen Puzzle Bubble in that list. The game is younger (1994), but same rules apply. Needless to say these are among my favorite games (and also the only ones I still play).

It comes as no surprise that in the mobile space these are the games that still sell the most, even if sometimes the phone keypad is not the best joystick even for these games (think of when it starts running fast!).