Category: Software

Volantis goes fully open-source

Volantis had announced a few months ago that they would open-source their software. They later offered a binary download while making the final touches to the open-source version. Well today is the day they release the entire software to the community.
BIG step for a company that has sold the software for so many years.

Here is an e-mail I just received:

Andrea

I wanted you to know that we have today released a version of the Framework, the Volantis Mobility Server, to the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL), version three.

Volantis is the first mobile content delivery solutions vendor to open source its code. In offering its Mobility Server to the community, Volantis aims to drive adoption and encourage more companies to bring usable and compelling content to the mobile Web.

“The Internet grew, in large part, because it was easy to develop for the Web. Not only were browsers relatively standardized, but the tools to create databases and complex systems are open and available,” said Volantis CEO Mark Watson. “Our goal is to bring that same openness to the mobile Web. Developing for this market is difficult thanks to the splintered phone market, which will only continue to diversify. Developers need an easy-to-use tool with a proven device library in order to help their creativity come alive.”

If you would like to receive a copy of the full press release please let me know. You can visit http://opensource.volantis.com to access the software and for further information and you can contact us via the community website or me individually at this address.

Regards

Su Johnston
Volantis Systems Limited

Here is also a link to the official press release on their site.

Of course Volantis is also a partner of DeviceAtlas and we are working closely with them in order to integrate their great device database with ours so that developers can get the best of the best.

Italian Government: open-source funds vanished

I’m re-blogging a post by Roberto Galoppini, a huge advocate of open-source. Apparently the Italian government has cancelled the funds for open-source. It’s disappointing that to save money they cancel this type of fund, but they keep paying millions for all the license of MS Windows, Office and so on. There are alternatives today and they would be so much cheaper only in licenses.

Anyway, you can see the full article here.

Is Apple too rigid once again?

Apple’s iTunes has been massively successful for two reasons, I think. First of all it got popular thanks to the iPod, of course, but also it did sell well because of a very simple pricing model that Apple could enforce on the content providers. I think most customers loved this (except for linux users that did not like the idea of being locked into a proprietary solution, of course).

On the other hand, according to rumors, the TV shows and movie side of iTunes never took off and I believe the reason was that Apple wanted to enforce a certain pricing model and most likely studios were not so happy. The result of this is the NBC is out of the game, the Apple TV never took off and while I enjoy from time to time to watch video podcasts, having shows would be better. Also, did I mention that in countries other than the US most movies and shows are not available?

Now Amazon’s music download service (Amazon MP3)is not yet selling as good as iTunes, but they have been able to sign all the major labels to provide un-protected music and they are using MP3 that while less efficient than AAC it’s still a good format and is supported by all portable music players. Looks like Amazon is suddendly a few steps ahead of Apple and I can’t think why the next step should not be to sell movies and shows.
Apple still has one advantage, the iPod and the Apple TV, but they need the content. The iPod was successful prior to the iTunes store because people could load their own music, the store was a subsequence.

If Apple wants to keep up with Amazon, they need to become less rigid and think about the business they can build around iTunes and not only on selling the hardware. If they can make iPods and Apple TV’s and iTunes store complementary, they can probably stay ahead of the competition.

Apple to use a pan-European approach to songs in iTunes

I was reading this article that does not seem to be huge news in itself as it mentions Apple will lower the prices in the UK in iTunes to match the price applied in the other European countries where the service is available.

What is interesting, though, is that Apple is saying that it wants to have a pan-European view for the content it provides and the pricing that is applied.

I live in Italy and most films and shows are dubbed, nevertheless sometimes I’d love to watch them in English, but unfortunately so far this hasn’t been possible in most cases, unless someone made the distribution in Italy. It is annoying when you read about online movie rentals or sales and then discover they are only available in the US. NBC lets you watch their shows online and for free, but only if you’re in the US.
I think that everyone who knows technology a bit and is an internet addict as I am, is waiting not-so-patiently for the day content will be available worldwide and for the same price.

I actually think this would also be a great solution against piracy. Think of being home, bored, you want to watch a movie, these are the options you have available:

  • walk to BlockBuster and rent a movie (in the hope they still have the one you want)
  • buy something on your satellite TV (if you have it and if they are showing anything good)
  • rent it on netflix (if you have the service in your country and if you thought of renting it ahead of time)
  • download it with bittorrent or eMule (if you thought about it ahead of time and now have the files ready and waiting on your hard disk)

Honestly for 4USD I would rent PLENTY. I often discover there’s nothing on SKY Movies when it’s too late to rent a movie (and this also makes me wonder why I pay a subscription to SKY).

See here the article: Apple to standardize iTunes music prices across Europe

t.wurfl.com is gone welcome logme.mobi

It looks like there has been a change in the DNS for wurfl.com and t.wurfl.com went lost with it.

I think t.wurfl.com was a great resource and I’ve seen a lot of hits without much publicity.

I’ve decided to keep it up and register a new domain for it. Some of the names I would have wanted to use were taken, already so I’ve gone for logme.mobi. Hit it with your mobile and you’ll get everything you used to get with the old t.wurfl.com. logme.mobi/query is still there, of course.

Let me know if you see any issues, I quickly fixed the URL’s, but maybe some links are not fixed, yet. Allow a few hours for the DNS to propagate.

iPhone SDK updates

According to this article on Electronista Apple has started delivering iPhone SDK’s to some selected partners.
It seems like the SDK is not a full SDK, but a way to produce applications in a contained programming environment. Sounds like Apple did not get it and the fact that lots of developers wanted to hack and build their own fully native apps was not enough of a signal.

Also, can you imagine how many developers you could bring to the Mac once they have developed something for the trendy iPhone?

It’s a missed opportunity to me. The whole “signed application” process is a bit of a pain (Symbian developers can probably tell you something about this), but reasonable (especially if you want to create a “walled garden 2.0” in iTunes), but not allowing developers to create at all is a misake.