Andrea's Mobile Porfolio

Resume update - January 2012

2012-01-07T17:05:00.000+01:00

I've updated my online resume with some works done between 2009 and 2011 (some screenshot below...)

As usual, if you're interested... here it is.

Mobile MedlinePlus

2010-01-27T09:46:00.000+01:00

Long time has passed since this blog has been a "mobile portfolio", so here is some screenshot from a nice project I worked on.

Mobile Medline Plus is a mobile web site hosted by NIH/NLM American Government institutes, which is designed to fit a lot of different devices from some plain old WML device, to the latest iPhone 3GS, Motorola Droid and Google Nexus One.

From the home page at http://m.medlineplus.gov you can:

Keyword search and get back results from the MedlinePlus database
Browse or Search “Health Topic” Pages
Browse or Search Drug Info
Browse and Read Health-Related News Headlines

It was nice to see that a lot of blogs and twitter users welcomed the new site and, in general, gave a good feedback to it (for example: this one).

Here's how it look on two very different devices, a SonyEriccson W580, a low-mid end device with a 240x320px screen,

and the Google Nexus One, with its huge 3'7'' inches, 800x480 display.

Not bad, since you think that the very same view handles such different devices!

We addressed the mobile web device fragmentation using the WURFL open source tools, both the file and the Java APIs, which provide a lot of useful information and detail about the device which is requesting your mobile page. Also, WURFL file is extensible, allowing the developer to map custom device behaviours he want to keep track of.

The good, the bad & the ugly: or how much time you need to spend on devices while developing a mobile website

2010-01-15T17:01:00.005+01:00

In the last few months I worked on a mobile website project, which needed to render fine on a wide range of devices.

The most common approaches to this kind of work are usually three:

the one-size-fits-all
serve different page for each device according to the mobile device request data (usually UA string)
sampling by device group, which is sort of half way between the first two: you create a reasonable amount of page templates to best fit to the different device (macro) families and address fragmentation without going mad.

Pros and cons of these appraches have been dicussed widely in the last years. My purpose here is to give you a rough idea of how much effort is needed to adapt a general layout to specific devices in case you use the third approach.

Imagine that you have created your little, nice and polished mobile web pages. You start testing them on various devices and...gahhhh!!! :D

Mobile IE leaves unwanted whitespaces here and there, BlackBerry browser doesn't render small gifs as you wished and a load of other small layout bugs on other browsers really do annoy you and, most of all, your customers.

So, assuming your mobile web application passes all your functional tests, there's quite an amount of time that you ~~should~~ must dedicate to solve these problems, being careful not to break the already working layout for this or that device.

This is a report I made for myself, where I recoreded what effort was required by certain mobile devices. Time is expressed in percentage on total time spent. Data are based on personal experience for a time of three working months.

BlackBerry 9000: 8%
BlackBerry 8100: 17%
Samsung SGH-D347: 12,5%
iPhone 3GS: 4%
Motorola V3: 8% (all Motorola four V series I used, more or less 14%)
BlackBerry 8300: 9%
BlackBerry 8800: 10%
SonyEriccson Z310a: 3%
Nokia 6682: 3%
Motorola Droid/Milestone: 2%
HTC 8925 and Tilt2: 3%
LG CG180: 6%
All other phones (3 SonyEriccson, 2 HTC, 2 Nokia, 2 Samsung): 8,5%

As you can see, most of my effort has been dedicated to BlackBerries (44%!), whose browsers are really awful beasts. This means that if your website is business or corporate related, or you estimate that your user base will access your website using mostly BB browser, you better spend some time exploring all the UI tweaks and issues they have. Plain and simple.

Also, particular attention must be paid to low resolution screen / memory limited devies (CG180 and Samsung D347 took a good 20% of my time): in these devices, just adding a whitespace may blow up the entire layout!

Motorola (Droid excluded) took another 14% of time for layout fixing and troubleshooting. Their browser is quite "fragile".

The small work on the iPhone has been just optimization, but I have to say that in my case the main website UI was targeted to its users. As a consequence of this, also Android devices I used (the Droid and the Samsung i7500/Galaxy) gave me almost no problems: I had just to dedicate a little time to adjust the text for the Droid because of its incredibile high resolution.

Mobile IE browser gave me little trouble (the sum of all models I tested - HTC - took just 5-6% of my time for troubleshooting), but be warned: some Win Mobile 5 phones can give you a little more pain.

As you can see from the low percentages, good old Nokia - both series 60 and series 40 - and SonyEricsson gave me almost no problem.

My advice to you is to make a comparison between these data and other you can collect here and there in the internet and take a decision on how to spend your development time before starting your project.

Though I do NOT claim this result to have a scientific value, I hope you can have some hint of where to focus your effort before developing your mobile website.

So, who do you think are the good, the bad and the ugly?
Well, about the last ones I have half an idea :D

Moto Droid in action!

2009-10-29T11:59:00.001+01:00

Motorola Droid is the first Android 2.0 powered phone top hit the market.

Android 2.0 has just been released a couple of days ago, this (to me) means that Motorola has worked side by side with the G-guys to this new OS release, providing test, feedback and integration suggestions.

Even the phone's name gives the impression of Motorola trying to create THE Android phone at its very best.

Here's a DROID video from the guys of Engadget.

Will DROID re launch Motorola's ambitions on the mobile phones market?

New Android Market

2009-09-04T08:46:00.004+02:00

One of the few things I didn't like of the Android phones is the Market application. The search engine is quite unefficient and there's no space for screenshots.

Now, the Android guys have improved the Market app that will be upgraded with the upcoming 1.6 version.
New Market will show two application screenshots, and app categories have been imporoved. New categories have been added:

Top Paid
Top Free
Just in

Overall UI look and feel has been improved and polished, the Games and Application macro categories are always visible as a top bar .

Here's a short video by Google with all the new feature of the new Market.

In love with SenseUI

2009-06-26T21:23:00.003+02:00

OMG! I must seriously start working on the Android SDK!

Hatom Eclipse plugin

2009-06-15T11:21:00.006+02:00

As I already did for the Netbeans IDE, I developed a free open source hAtom plugin for the Eclipse IDE.

The project is hosted on Google Code, you can download the Eclipse plugin or broswe the source code here. It is released under the Apache license 2.0.

The plugin was developed for Eclipse version 3.4 ("Ganymede").

As I wrote in the post about the Netbeans plugin, since Hatom is an XHTML related microformat, the first release (it's just 0.1 at the moment) can only be used on well formed text/html decuments. Hope I can add different content type handling (ie: JSPs) soon (some cut&paste here^^).

Hatom Netbeans plugin

2009-05-23T17:15:00.005+02:00

One of the projects I've recently worked on is a plugin for the Netbeans IDE which provides code completion for hAtom keywords, syntax highlight and a validation feature for the Hatom microformat.

I've developed it for the old version 6.1 and the latest one 6.5. As soon as possible, I'll test it on the upcoming Netbeans 6.7.

The whole project is releaased under the Apache 2.0 license.
You take a look and try it here.

Since Hatom is an XHTML related microformat, the first release (it's just 0.1 at the moment) can only be used on well formed text/html decuments, and veocity templates (using a workaround). Hope I can add different content type handling (ie: JSPs) soon.

Java certified!!

2009-04-30T12:40:00.008+02:00

In the last period, I often wondered why - after 9 year spent programming in Java - I should try to get a SCJP certification.

I never thought a multple-choice exam, as difficult as it can be, could replace an extensive experience in many fields of Java programming. And, in fact, it doesn't. If you think to the Java certification, just as a "resume booster" you won't find it very useful, especially if you can prove your experience with a real-world successful experience.

But that's not the point.

The preparation for the exam is, probably, more important than the exam itself. There's always need of refreshing your knowldge, of an API review, of new look to "new" sides of the language you could have underestimated.

In my case, having learnt Java with version 1.2 something, I can see myself as an "old school" programmer; more than that, working for almost five years in the mobile field made me quite expert in string, text and other data manipulation using very limited tools. I truested my experince and I was not very attracted by the new ways of handling that kind of problems.

Taking the Java 6 programmer certification exam foced me to take a very close look to regex, Scanner, formatters and more actual Java APIs for formatting, tokenizing and so on.

The same for generics: there's really more behind them than just using type-safe collections! (a nd some pitfall too...)

And, well, there could be something that you presumed you knew so well, while you didn't :-)

Taking the exam was a great refresher for me: if you prepare it with this spirit you'll surely be satisfied with the results.

Well, as for the exam itself...I can suggest the "usual" book, the Kathy&Bert one, it is like a bible for the programmer's exam. If you score high in the included mock exams and quizzes, you will also score high at the exam, since I feel that the difficulty level was almost the same.
Then, if you have some bucks to spend and you want some more question to practice with, you can also buy the Whizlab tool for certification, who gives you a more faithful exam simulation tool (especially for drag and drop questions).

I will post every now and then some certification tip that may be useful. For now, let me enjoy my ~~Oracle~~ Sun's SCJP paper!

Online resume

2009-04-09T14:57:00.002+02:00

I've just posted a rough resume of my working experience here.

Not a big update by the way! :-)

OpenNMS - addon

2009-02-10T16:39:00.005+01:00

I've worked for a while to a small addon for OpenNMS, an open source network monitoring system, for which I developed a module that allows monitoring of small parts of network nodes (ie: a switch port).

Here is a three min video of what I've done.

(better seen in HD)

Yes, I know, it's a little bit different from the usual mobile stuff... ;-)

Campionato 08/09 for iPhone: a review

2009-01-22T10:44:00.009+01:00

Long time has passed since I bought the app Campionato 08/09 for Apple iPhone/iPod touch and promised my friend Stefano I'll review it. So, here I am, and I'll try to be as honest as possible.

Fist of all, let me say that Campionato 08/09 is very accurate for what concerns the Italian national leagues. For every club a truckload of information and news are provided, plus the top scorers ranking and link to Google Maps and Wikipedia for locating the stadiums and know everything about them.

As for the user experience, it is very good, compliant with the native iPhone applications you could say. Navigation between internal menus is easy and quite straightforward.
A nice piece of feature I liked is this: when you select the Serie A or Serie B calendars, the app scrolls down automatically to the current matchday and displays the result of your favourite team (if you configured one).

Application configuration is a very easy task. There are three main properties that you can enable or disable:

Favourite team
Enable/Disable live updates
Enable/Disable vibration for notification

It is quite obvious that the application gives its very best if you enable live updates! Sometimes it happened that I was in a place where there wasn't any information source available, and I appreciated so much being notified in real time of Cagliari's new goals :-)
Real-time notifications use the common "new mail" notification sound, so the first time you hear it you can be quite confused, but you'll get used to it pretty soon.
However, the authors provided a way to disable live updates if you don't want to consume your money in order to follow your favourite team's games!

As far as I can say, results and all the details about the ongoing games are updated really really fast, while, after all games end, it takes a little more than I expected to get the updated league ranking.

It is also nice to follow the leagues of other nations. With Campionato 08/09 I can now follow the destiny of Zola's West Ham guys ^^ (you know...everybody loves Gianfranco), but I miss much the lack of the other leagues rankings. Well...at least I couldn't find them...

Another cool thing is a sort of internal mini-browser which is capable of show you the latest news about all the teams without closing the application and switch to Safari. It would be nice if also the maps feature worked like that.

So, as an improvement, I would suggest Stefano, Roberto Fraboni and the other authors to provide a faster update of the Italian leagues' rankings. That's why a common use case of websites and/or old teletext is this: "Ok, game has just ended, let's see if we climbed up the ranking!!"
Even Italian Cup updates and main draw would be appreciated!
Plus, I'd like to see ranking also for Premier League, Liga and so on.

One last thing that I'd like to say is: if you love football, or you are at least quite interested in it (like me), 1,59 euro its quite a ridiculous price to gain access to all these infos!!

So, the bottom line is: good job guys, but we can't wait for it to be even better!!

Not in Italy...as usual!!

2008-12-09T23:48:00.001+01:00

I quote some lines from Android Developers Device page.

The "Android Dev Phone 1" [...] "will be available for purchase in 18 international markets, including the US, UK, Germany, Japan, India, Canada, France, Taiwan, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and Hungary. We will continue to expand this program into new geographies over time. Check this page for updated information".

Ehi, wait, wait!! Where's Italy?
AARGHHH!!

Please, tell me it's just nightmare.
Not the first one, by the way (no Italians developers allowed to Android Competition, remember?).

@ ProNetics

2008-10-09T10:54:00.005+02:00

One month has passed since I've begun a new working experience at Pronetics. My first project covers a field which is different from mobile applications and is very new to me; I'm pretty sure I can learn a lot of interesting stuff from it.

My previous work experience at Axis has been rich of challenges and I thank all of my former co-workers for the experiences I shared with them. I wish the best for all of them.

Resume

2008-09-24T22:14:00.078+02:00

Be warned, this not exactly a formal resume, but it gives you a rough idea of what I've worked on! :-)
- 2011

Last year, after I recovered from a severe pathology (well...I'm still curing it but this is another story) and joined a new company, AICOF, I worked mostly on a public administration webapp, Sardegna Lavoro. In the mobile area, I experimented some Android features with my Asus Transformer, just to keep me updated.

- 2010

I kept on contributing to the Medline Project (new WURFL updates).
BNL mobile. I created the main architecture and developed some of the services of the mobile banking website for BNL (Bank group BNP Paribas). This how it look on an iPhone 4. On that version (which also runs fine in Android webkit based browsers) I could try some CSS3 and JQuery mobile tricks for rounded buttons and fade effects. As with all the WURFL project I worked on, the website UI changes depending on the device capabilities: if you visit the website with, for example

In order to show some screenshots I had to blur some personal data here and there :-)

- 2009

Android POC. I created a POC for a friend's company. The alpha version had to track users movements, send them to a Facebook app and show them on the screen using Google Maps overlays. Unfortunately I just kept the login screen shot taken on a Samsung Galaxy running Android 1.5.

Sun Certified Java Programmer 6.0
I created a bunch of plugins for Jira bug tracking and project management open source platform.
In September I started working on project for the WURFL company, a well-known solution for mobile device fragmentation. The first project I worked on was located in Washington DC and is Mobile Medline Plus, a collection of useful medical web resources (see here), which adapts its layout to the calling device.

Here's a screenshot on Google's Nexus One.

- 2008

On September I moved to Pronetics, where I worked on an OpenNMS addon (more on that here)

From january to August:

Development of version 2.0 of Volksbank mobile banking client.
I developed some proptotype of mobile banking applications for RIM BlackBerry devices (gah...I hate them!)

- 2007

I spent almost all the year working for two mobile banking projects for the Raiffeisen and Volksbank Italian banks, which also gained a little press attention by an Italian magazine. The picture below is taken from a demo screenshot of the Volksbank app. Both applications have an Italian / German bilingual support.

Development of a Swing application prototype for J2ME UI customization. The application allowed dynamic XML layout editing and UI images replacement of existing MIDP applications in order to speed up "branded" application versions.

- 2006

I lead a team of four developers in the project of Polarix mobile application and content delivery platform (more on that on Polarix website).

I also developed a module of Polarix, "News", for both server and Java ME clientside components.

I also begun working on a J2ME graphical component library (unfortunately frozen in a very alpha version)

- 2005

At the end of March I begun my working experience for Sardegna Innovazione. For them I created the project and development of many applications:

Sogaer Infovoli: a departures/arrivals time table for the Cagliari Elmas Airport. It was ported to more than 30 devices, including Nokia series 60 2nd and 3rd edition, SonyEricsson with native OS and UIQ, and someMotorola V series. I've already wrote too much about it here.

XML bases product catalog for a Sardinian tyres retailer: LGG. You can read more about it here.
Borsa Pocket, a stock exchange socket-based client for Nokia series 60 second edition.

From January to March:

Development of a branded game for the Italian TV reality show "Ritorno al Presente" for Nokia, SonyEricsson and Siemens phones
Development of a system integration module to exchange routing data for car navigation systems from a PHP / C++ service to a content distributor server (written in Java) for Fiat.

- 2004

I worked on new games porting for Arcadia Design:

Alien Island puzzle game (the image is for the Nokia series 40 master version, I developed the series 60 /Ngage, Siemens and SonyEricsson ones, here's an official announcement)
Development of three racing games for Corriere dello Sport - Stadio mobile gaming contest platform.
Dedicated version of Mail@Mobile for IBM Domino server (such a bad version, to be honest...)
Porting of a J2ME meteo application for the Tiscali Meteo channel for Nokia and Siemens phones.

- 2003

On January, I begun my working experience with Arcadia Design where, as member of the games development team, I worked on the conversions of J2ME (MIDP) games for Nokia, Motorola and Siemens phones. Here's the games titles (all copyrights belong to Arcadia Design):
Zoo Battle (this is the screeshot of Nokia series 60 version)
ZooMoo
Jetski Extreme, where are also worked to the level design (here's a game review)

Server side development for the Mail@Mobile project: an email client for J2ME enabled phones, even very limited resource ones (such as Nokia 7210 or Siemens MC60), capable of handling many different types of attachments such as: images (GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF), text files (TXT, RTF, DOC). The server side technology was base on J2EE and Apache POI conversion libraries.

- 2002

Until March I went on with the BLU project, then, on April, I went temporary to Treviso, working on the development of CRM services for the Genertel portal (www.genertel.it), built on top of a proprietary architecture based on J2EE, ATG Dynamo AS and JHTML
On September, back in Cagliari, I was involved in a project for BNL bank (www.bnl.it) of a portal for small "consumer credit services" made with very old Java 1.1.x and EJB 1.1

- 2001

Development of the internal framework and addressbook service of the BLU portal (www.blu.it, an old mobile phone carrier). I wrote all the DB / LDAP DAO layer for the user profiles. I also wrote some JAVA / XML /XSL infrastructure for the addressbook service and for the portal's WAP pages (WML 1.0) used by mobile phones such as Nokia 7110 and 6210. The portal has been buyed by Wind company in 2002.
As an internal project for the FST company, I worked on the frontend of Xoom-like "virtual disk" using servlets, plain old scriptlet JSP and Javascript 1.3

- 2000

Java / JSP developer for the front end of a trading game engine ("Sito Gioco Trading") as a part of my training-on-the-job experience for FST company
ASP / Javascript developer for the website www.archiviostatocagliari.it in collaboration with Mr. Ilio Leo (our version of the website has been replaced in 2007).

Netbeans plugin for BlackBerry JDE 4.5.0

2008-07-24T17:17:00.004+02:00

Integration between JDE BlackBerry development enviroment and Netbeans has always been a real pain.
After you had added the JDE platform to Netbeans, you had to manually modify your build.xml in order to point to the BlackBerry RAPC compiler, generate the correct .ALX and .COD file and so on.

Today I've found a Netbeans plugin for JDE that authomatically creates the right files in the right directories without any manual "correction" (even if you have different configurations for your project). I've tested it only a couple of times, but it easy to realize that this plugin is simpler to use and more efficient that the previous "brute force" integrations available in many tutorial you can find here and there.
At least, it is definitely worth a try.

I tested it with with Netbeans 6.1 and JDE 4.5.0.

New Nokia series 40 6th edition

2008-07-02T14:14:00.000+02:00

Nokia has announced a new edition for the old and widely adopted series 40.

Series 40 6th edition phones will not differ from the previous version. From the Java ME developer point of view there'll be the new support of two API:

JSR 179 (location API)

Wireless Messaging API 2.0

In the first case you'll be probably forced to use an external GPS unit, since there's no trace of an upcoming GPS phone in this series.

For the Flash Lite lovers out there, there'll be support for FL 3 player.

The first phone of series 40 6th edition will be the 7510 Supernova.

What future for Java ME mobile banking?

2008-06-12T20:46:00.000+02:00

The mobile banking applications I worked on during 2008 and most part of 2007 gained a little spotlight on May issue of Wireless4Innovation italian magazine. The magazine is very marketing oriented, so the article itself has not much appeal from a technical point of view; yet it gives me some satisfaction.

In the last year or two, interest in mobile financial services is constantly increasing leading to a demand of (web or standalone) applications that can meet the user's usability and security needs.

"The future of Mobile Banking", which is part of the article's title leads Java ME developers to an unsolved and well known problem: certification and secure data transmission.

The post "How MIDlet signing is killing J2ME" on Javablog, despite some arguable cost calculation and conclusion, hits some point. From my point of view, MIDlet code signing specification that doesn't give the Big Ones (you know, manufacturers, carriers, both traditional and MVNO) a list of mandatory certificates that MUST be supported is simply meaningless. As you can read in some of my previous posts, every code signing certificate available on the market cannot be used on Motorola devices, it can be used on some Samsung device and are fully supported only by Nokia and SonyEricsson devices. No news about LG devices: you just have to buy one, try your signed app and pray. This, until some carrier or manufacturer (what about RIM?) decides the "they" want to sign your application in order to make it executable on their phones. This is where certificates fragmentation issue reaches the madness apotheosis: even if you buy all the code signing certs you can find on the market, you won't be able to cover enough devices to satisfy some important customers such as banks, insurance and financial companies.

The extreme solution, then, seems Java Verified Program, a commercial program where you pay people in order to test and sign your MIDlet.

Now, since you can't modify an application after they've signed it, unless you want to pay again for it, this implies that you have to give to these people a banking application that uses a real user with a real banking account: is this acceptable? Of course, it is not.

You could put in your application a dynamic URL configuration module, just to let them test and sign it on a pre-production enviroment. But, if you don't have planned to do it for for your own purposes, doing it just for passing the JVP is such an absurd idea that it does not even deserve a thought.

Edoardo Schepis tells us very well how can be expensive and frustrating this process.

And, then, after you've signed your application it comes the HTTPS certificate compliance problem...

Many developers, far more expert and important than I am, explained these things in detail many times: I just add one more goodnight thought.

Java Me could be a mature technology for business applications, not just for games and widgets. It had years to conquer a market for which mobile web application were not fit: wap sites were almost unusable (I hate them...sorry!) while MIDlet can provide fast, usable and functional UIs with a very light data exchange, based on XML messages. Its only weak spot was delivery, but it was something that it was possible to work on.

Now it seems to me that this great chance is going to be lost: the iPod touch/iPhone browser offers a new user experience and it will give birth to a whole new generation of mobile web applications that are fit for business services. Faster to develop, with less fragmentation and certification issues.

What about MIDlets, then?

If MIDP 3 - if we'll live long enough to see it - will fail to solve this fragmentation issue and won't simplify its security model (which doesn't mean make it insecure), I'm afraid Java ME will be a leading technolgy just in the games industry and in those niche markets where peculiar device features are involved (ie: sensors, BT, GPS and so on..).

Getting BTS cell ID with Java ME and SonyEricsson mobile phones

2008-05-05T12:15:00.003+02:00

We all know that in many devices it's impossible to get some useful network informations such as cell ID, RAT, network status using Java ME technology.

With the newest SonyEricsson mobiles, it'an extremely easy task!

You just have to call

using a set of dedicated SE keys.

For instance, you can get the cell ID invoking
System.getProperty("com.sonyericsson.net.cellid")

I've tested it with a couple of properties (cell ID, RAT, net status) on SonyEricsson W910 with a Vodafone card and it works just fine.

W910 is a JP-8 phone, so it's quite recent; SonyEricsson claims these properties are also implemented on some JP-7 phones, but on versions from 7.3 on.

You can try them yourself on your SE phone. In case you don't know the platform version of your cellphone, which can sometimes change depending on the firmware version, you can call System.getProperty("com.sonyericsson.java.platform")

The list of available system properties available for the latest SE phones, is available in the developer guidelines document.

Where does it really work? Part 2 - Verisign code signing cert

2008-04-30T19:28:00.000+02:00

Here's an update of my previous post about code signing certification.

I successfully tested the Verisign Class 3 code signing certificate (2004) also on:

SonyEricsson M600i (TIM branded)
Nokia 6230i
Nokia E50

both Nokias were unbranded.

Broken fillRoundRect on SonyEricsson WTK 2.5.x

2008-04-29T13:01:00.000+02:00

I was testing a ported application on M600i emulator when I found some of the round rectangles I use to draw where drawn some 50 pixel below the expected y coordinate.
To be sure it was a bug I just filled a round rectangle using fixed coordinates and - surprise! - the y coordinate value was 123 instead of 70.

There's a post on SonyEricsson developer forum about that, but no official answer from SEM people.

By the way, I experienced this issue using SonyEricsson WTK 2.5.0 and 2.5.0.2. Since this WTK is based on SUN's version, I guess this bug will be fixed in a next major release of the SEM customization. Luckily, everything works fine on the real device so, if you haven't such complex graphic to test, you can do it directly on your target phone.

Android to invade Japan!

2008-03-27T09:36:00.000+01:00

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo announced a partnership with Google. The two important point of this partnership are Google services access through i-Mode in order to speed up the load time and improve usability of the most used G applications (maps, gmail) and, most of all, the agreement to bring Android-based handsets to the Japanese markets.

Japan could be the first real benchmark for G's new mobile platform since Japanese users are more careful to what they choose and are more used to consume high profile services. A success could drive other carriers/manufacturer agreements on Android adoption; on the other hand, a failure could be a gravestone on Android future.

Source: Mobile Communications Int. Feb 2008 issue.

Where does it really work? Part 1 - Verisign code signing cert

2008-03-06T10:45:00.000+01:00

Ever wondered what are the real devices where some code signing certificates really work?
Here is a partial but verified answer.

I successfully used Verisign Class 3 code signing certificate (2004) on the following devices.

Nokia 6630 (firmware update may be needed)
Nokia 6680 (firmware update may be needed)

Nokia 6290
Nokia 6120 classic
Nokia N70
Nokia N73
Nokia N76
Nokia N81
Nokia N95

Nokia E65

Nokia 6151
Nokia 6125
Nokia 6103
Nokia 6233
Nokia 6234
Nokia 6300
Nokia 5300

SonyEricsson K810
Sony Ericsson W910
Sony Ericsson Z610

Samsung U700

I know of other compatible devices (SEM W810 for instance) but I haven't tested them myself, so I don't list them here.

I also know that most Motorola and Blackberry devices are NOT supported (manufacturer or Java Verified signing is required), but I've only tested Blackberry 8100 Pearl (which doesn't accept Verisign cert).

Hope this helps.

Numobiq announced

2008-02-07T12:44:00.000+01:00

Actually, there's almost nothing on their website, but the question is almost obvious: is Numobiq just another mobile framework or yet another widget platform?

In the first case, it may be a nice new entry, though there's already a lot of mobile frameworks that haven't already reached the market. In the second...well, either you guys at Numobiq can deliver widgets that offer a revolutionary user experience, or you're dramatically late.

However, the company is worth a look, just because of the people who founded it.

First look to Android APIs

2007-11-13T13:35:00.000+01:00

I'd like to step over the main platform overview, the important but - in the end -usual joy for the open platform and the OS based on the Linux kernel (2.6).

Working for almost five years with J(2)ME, the first thing I did when Android SDK was released, has been give a quick look to the APIs. The package list. The Java classes.

So, the Android Java library is neither J2SE nor Java ME. But, well, there's a lot of stuff to work with.

You know, reflection, regular expressions, concurrence, compression (zip and jar), sql...these are things you really miss when you work on mobile and, WOW, they're all here and ready to rock!!

We have the core Java classes to handle XML and the whole HTTP client library from Apache Commons (which I always use on J2SE projects and I miss so much in Java ME).

Plus, a package to handle JSON.

Then there are the "original" Android APIs. And, gosh, this is the real deal: low level access to GSM functions, to the OS core and more. We have a whole new UI framework, audio libraries, OpenGL based 3D graphics and -hear hear - a speech recognition package!

If this is not enough, you also have access to a package to integrate GMaps into your apps.

All this in a multi process VM (called Dalvik VM).

If this is not a giant leap, I don't know what else could be.

The first reactions from MS and Symbian are quite disappointing ("just a press release", "yet another platform"), but what can you expect from them? To open Symbian as soon as possibile?This is not very realistic, but I fear for them, it will became a due in the next years; at least, if Android takes off.

For now, LG, Motorola (gah), and Samsung are into Open Handset Alliance, as well as some important carriers such as T-Mobile and Telefonica. That's a thing I wouldn't underestimate.

By the way, Google guys have already achieved a result: many many developers want to try it.

And as soon as results from developers will come (read: new cool, more robust and portable apps), some will look at android in a different way.

I'll complain to Android people about one thing: why just an Eclipse plug in? What about a Netbeans one?

Guess where I'm going...

2007-10-29T17:41:00.000+01:00

The Tokyo Akihabara district is a sort of "techs Wonderland": LCD TVs, great cameras, awesome mobile phones and an incredible mess of electronic gadgets.
But even here, in the end, a visit to the American tech masters must be paid :-)

Wedding & Japan

2007-09-26T13:58:00.000+02:00

Next Sunday will be one of the most important days of my life, if not the most important one.

I'm gonna get married with my wonderful girlfiend.

I'm very tired, but so happy and excited!

Then, we'll leave for a trip to Japan, a place that both of us dreamt of since we were kids.

See you all (not too) soon!

Photo by Michele Falzone

On curious ways to find a blog...

2007-07-11T13:53:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it's fun to know how some visitor has found your website or blog. Most of the Google searches that lead here are base on device or API names, but there are some exceptions; here's some of them

"Nokia 6230 was in the washing machine"
No surprise. Since my portable HDD was in the washing machine too, we are fellows.

"disk washing"
Probably, we didn't refer to the same washing...

"market analisys for wireless broadband 2007"
Ah, the power of tags. There's no post about that in my blog, but that's what you get when you cambine too many tags...you get lost!

"open HTC3600"
Man, what do you mean with "open"?

"andrea castello you tube"
Thank you so much, friend. I'm really flattered! Wait wait...is there an adult movie star who has my same name?????

Scrolling through table rows

2007-06-15T10:45:00.000+02:00

A small video about the app I ported to HTC 3600. I'd like to implement an iPhone like scroll feature but, unfortunately, it takes time...that's a first attempt, by the way.

It's taken with a Nokia 6630 so the quality is poor. Sorry.

Java ME Key codes on HTC3600

2007-06-13T13:25:00.001+02:00

People who uses to program MIDP applications using Canvas classes, often struggle with the (in)famous keyCode canvas property, which maps phone keys to numbers.

The set of keyCode is different from a family of devices to another, or from a JVM implementation to another. This features usually - if you exclude the big phone manufacturers - are poorly documented, since (until this widget-mania days) most of the people just used a Form-based approach to Java ME development.

I'm currently testing an application on a Windows Mobile 5.0 HTC 3600 PDA, which has an Intent JVM. So, I post the result of my test on keyCodes and other canvas related data.

LEFT MENU BUTTON = 57345 (I-beg-your-pardon?)
RIGHT MENU BUTTON = 57346
"FIRE" or "ENTER" BUTTON = 13 (luckily, that's prettey ordinary)

In HTC 3600, you can easily map directional keys with the usual costants UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, but just in case you're interested, these're the codes for them:

UP = -57377
DOWN = -57378
LEFT= -57379
RIGHT= -57380

Also, some virtual keyboard's keys are mapped as well:

Numbers 0 to 9 = 48 to 57
Numeric shift (the "123" key) = 57
STAR key = 42
# key = 35

Plus, HTC 3600 doesn't allow full screen mode: win mobile toolbars are always visible so, despite the 320 x 240 screen resolution, the real Canvas size is 268 x 240.

Hope this helps some poor Java developer who never met Intent JVM before.

Hard disk - Washing Machine 1-0!!

2007-06-08T13:22:00.000+02:00

What happens when you forget you so-cool-6mm-thin HDD card in your old pair of jeans? Sooner or later it ends up in the washing machine for a not very useful "disk cleaning".

So, a couple of days ago, when I was going to hang my jeans out to dry I felt a heavy, familiar rectangle in the back pocket and I realized what I had done.

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! A good 100 euros and 6 gigs of quite important backup dead and gone!! Apparently, the disk was unharmed, but I didn't dare to hope data and disk were both safe.

But, who knows? Give the little card a try...

Well, guys at LaCie...

I LOVE YOU ALL!!

That's what it means building quality products (and dumb-proof...)!! Not a single byte of data was lost!!

LaCie has a new faithful customer, you bet it!!

Will JavaFX bring new life to Mobile?

2007-05-09T13:35:00.000+02:00

Well, maybe I'm the last one to mention this new technology, since all the blogs out there have spread the buzz ten seconds after SUN announced it, but I want to dedicate a post to it too!!

JavaFX is a new "product" (exact definition by J. Schwartz) and

it's basically a scripting platform that promises improvent in the fields of portability, security and all the usual babbling...for all segments of the Java family.

I'd just like to give my two cents on a few points:

1) Behind all the marketing buzz, it seems to me that JavaFX Mobile target are content developers such as Flash (Lite) ones. SUN probably wants to compete with Adobe for what concerns the ease of development and graphic appeal. If so, it is an had road. Pushing SVG technology is a good beginning (and SonyEriccson can be a part of it) but it cannot be all. Some work to port Java2D effects and image manipulation in the Java ME galaxy should be done...

2) Many people complain about the "new language" introduction. At a first sight, JavaFX scripting doesn't really look like a real "language", but something simpler, just a bunch of directives and layout definition based on a declarative syntax. In other words, just a tool to simplify developers' work. If JavaFX will just end up increasing the amount of code to write, it will be a failure, no matter how cool will be the applications created.

3) JavaFX Mobile, Sun's software system for mobile devices, is available via OEM license to carriers. Translation: we don't know when you'll deploy you JavaFx Mobile application on real devices. If adoption time will be similar to the rest of JavaME distributions, we'll have to wait between 12 and 18 months. How does it sound?

SAUI library in action on YouTube

2007-04-24T15:10:00.000+02:00

I've just posted on Youtube a short video of a sample application created using my widget library called SAUI. There's nothing new in the library since mi last post about it, but this is the effect of putting some of the component togheter in a sample application which, incidentally, behaves in an AJAX way.

The quality is not good and the image is stretched (I must practice with video capture and editing...), but I still hope you like the final effect.

New tutorial about SOA and Netbeans 5.5

2007-04-19T13:38:00.000+02:00

A new, really nice, tutorial about SOA application developed on NetBeans 5.5 by Antonio Pintus is available on NetBeans wiki.

The tutorial is complete and spans from "from Web Services implementation to BPEL orchestration" (I quote the tutorial intro).

Launch applications associated with specific file types with Java Desktop API

2007-04-06T12:37:00.000+02:00

If you are frightened every time you must call some external application from your Java code using the runtime.exec() method, now you can easily call applications associated with specific file types with the brand new Java Desktop API, included in Java SE 6.

What a great feature! I just called my default PDF reader (guess what...) and my default Java ME emulator (the WTK 2.5) from a Swing application with these few lines of code.


Desktop desktop = null;

if (Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) {
desktop = Desktop.getDesktop();
}
else {
// Desktop not supported handling...
}
if (desktop.isSupported(Desktop.Action.OPEN)) {
try {
desktop.open(new File(yourFilePathHere));
}
catch (Exception ex) {
// exception handling...can be a nullpointer, an IO or an IllegalArgumentException...
}
}
else {
// Open file action not supported...
}

As you can guess from the code, the Desktop API is basically the Desktop class and its own inner class Action.

Desktop can open or edit all the files associated with an application with the method calls desktop.open(File file)and desktop.edit(File file)
but it can also open web page URIs in the default browser using the method
desktop.browse(URI uri)
or open your default e-mail client, already filled with receiver addresses and mail body text, with desktop.mail() and desktop.mail(URI uri) where the URI concatenates receveiver and body text.

The Action class defines the five different actions that can be performed by the Desktop class: OPEN, BROWSE, EDIT, MAIL and PRINT (yes, print!)

The only annoying side of this API is the always-check-for-support one. Since Desktop.getDesktop() can throw many different Exceptions, you better call it after you check if isDesktopSupported(). Same rule for the Actions: you always must check if the're supported. But this is a fair cost to pay in order to call you system applications easier and faster than with the old ways.

Note: the Desktop API is not a complete replacement for all the runtime.exec() usages, but it helps reducing the number of calls to a sometimes hard to handle way to interact with your host system.

Blog widget on WidSets

2007-03-26T17:21:00.000+02:00

I just created this blog's RSS reader widget for WidSets application.
Unfortunately, I couln't test it. If some of you uses it, please let me know how it works!

Mashup and Geoweb

2007-03-13T16:55:00.000+01:00

Today I've attended the first day of Mashup and Geoweb cluster project organized by Sardegna Ricerche, the R&D department of Sardinia regional government.

Today' speech, hosted by Davide Carboni was focused on Google Maps APIs; in a few hours Davide clearly explained us the basic API features, from the usual "(map) Hello World" to event handling, markers, drag & drop, Ajax integration, geocoding and so on.
We also tried a very basic mashup, embedding a Flickr photo and a YouTube video into a GMap info window.

Back to my office, I demonstrated some of the features to my colleagues.

The javascript GMaps API are really clean, written in an object oriented style and easy to learn. Plus, they hide all the boring cross browser issues. The only bad side of it is that you cannot access GMaps data but just their Javascript client, which gives you little control on the informations you want to display in your site.

Wish I had more free time to explore them deeper :-)

JTattoo look and feel

2007-02-15T18:44:00.000+01:00

I was wandering in the web, looking for some nice Swing components and look and feel.
I found the SwingX project on SwingLabs, which is a pretty impressive library with some very cool widgets and effects but lacks documentation and (gah) all tutorial links return a not very nice NullPointer and Error 500 in their Tomcat server.

Then I found a pack of nice LnFs on JTattoo. The library is free for non-commercial use so, since I'm developing a private application, I tried them all.
Here's a sample form from my application, using the nicest JTattoo LnF.

You have to click on the images to see the details.

Smart

Most of these LnFs are really gorgeous, if you wanna see other samples, you can go here

SonyEriccson new mobiles

2007-02-09T13:27:00.000+01:00

SonyEriccson has unvealed its new mobile phones: two so called Walkman phones and two Cybershot ones. I liked so much the last generation of SE mobiles, especially the K800i, the W850 and the W950, but this time I was a bit disappointed.
This looks like sort of a transition release; in other words: there's nothing really noticeable in these new phones.
Let's take a look at the new K810i (photo), and compare it to its ancestor, the K800i. What's really new in it, with the exception of the awful keypad?
Both have a 3.2 Mpx cybershot camera, and are quad-band GSM and UMTS phones.
The have the same heap, both support Memory Stick up to 1 GB, same browsing capabilities.
What about the Java ME programmer point of view?
This is the list of the supported JSRs:

CLDC 1.1 (JSR 139)
MIDP 2.0 (JSR 118)
Wireless Messaging 1.0 and 2.0 API's (JSR 120/205)
Mobile Media API (JSR 135)
Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JSR 185)
Java API for Bluetooth™ (JSR 82)
PDA Optional Packages for J2ME Platform (JSR 75)
Web Services (JSR 172)
Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234) (camera capabilities)

Mobile Java 3D

Mascot Capsule Micro3D Version 3
Mobile 3D Graphics API for Java ME (JSR 184)

Same as the "old" K800i.

If you'll read carefully the available specifications you'll find out that K810i supports WMV, while K800 doesn't. Nothing noticeable.

The only useful new feature in K810 is the POP and IMAP client, which can be useful sometimes, anyway it's too little to justify a new model.

If you're interested in buying a new SE phone, take a look and the Q3 2006 models before doing it, you may realize that you can spend less money, get the same features, and be satified to avoid the latest "marketing trap" models.

Slides of my Java Day speech on slideshare

2007-02-08T09:43:00.000+01:00

Italian language only. Sorry!

Google bombing for a free Wi-Max in Italy

2007-01-12T14:02:00.000+01:00

This post is in Italian for it concerns an Italian political and economical problem.
I will only say that inthe year 1999 the Italian Gov organized a public auction in order to assign the 3G frequencies.
The result of this action was a huge money waste for the companies and the consequential mess of high rates for 3G services and connctions.

What should be a technology for all the people became an expensive gadget.
Now, in the year 2007, the same is going to happen for Wi - Max frequences. Hope it won't happen again.

Google Bombing per liberare il Wi-MAX

La buona notizia

Il 5 Dicembre 2006, il Ministero della Difesa ed il Ministero delle Telecomunicazioni hanno raggiunto un primo accordo per liberare le frequenze necessarie al Wi-MAX (ora usate dai militari per i loro radar) e renderle disponibili alle applicazioni civili.

Potete trovare tutte le informazioni del caso a queste URL:

Difesa.it - Sala stampa

http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?id=1799182

http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?id=1832760

Ad una prima occhiata, sembrerebbe che il Wi-MAX sia alle porte. Quasi.

La cattiva notizia

Contemporaneamente alla notizia dell'accordo si è anche scoperto che esiste l'intenzione di assegnare le frequenze disponibili del Wi-MAX agli operatori commerciali interessati seguendo la stessa strada già seguita per l'assegnazione delle frequenze UMTS: una bella asta pubblica.

Un google bombing per far sentire la nostra voce

A questo punto, molte associazioni, tra cui AntiDigitalDivide ed il Partito Pirata, si sono messe in allarme. Alla fine, per far sentire la nostra voce, abbiamo deciso di organizzare un Google Bombing.

Potete trovare qualche approfondimento a queste URL:

http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?id=1837781

http://www.zeusnews.it/index.php3?ar=stampa&cod=5306&numero=999

Perchè le aste non sono una buona idea

Il motivo per cui le aste pubbliche per le assegnazione delle frequenze sono diventate evidenti a tutti dopo l'episodio dell'UMTS: l'alto costo delle licenze è ricaduto sugli utenti ed ha trasformato una tecnologia tutto sommato a basso costo (niente cavi, niente scavi, etc.) in un costoso gicattolo per ricchi. In quella occasione si è persa l'occasione di liberarsi del monopolio Telecom sulla rete fisica e di dare vita ad una ricca comunità di piccoli e medi WISP (Wireless Internet service Provider) che avrebbe avuto effetti molto positivi sulla concorrenza e sui prezzi.

Di fatto, l'assegnazione delle frequenze con il meccanismo delle aste rafforza il potere del più forte e consolida gli oligopoli esistenti, escludendo dal mercato gli operatori più piccoli e più nuovi.

Un meccanismo alternativo di assegnazione delle frequenze

Dopo questa triste esperienza è diventato chiaro che occorre un meccanismo di assegnazione delle frequenze diverso da quello delle aste, un meccanismo che non sia di tipo economico.

Si possono ipotizzare molti meccanismo di questo tipo, dal sorteggio alla condivisione delle frequenze tra più operatori, alla creazione di una fondazione pubblica che si occupi delle infrastrutture e le noleggi a prezzi politici agli operatori. Quello che conta è che sia un meccanismo aperto a tutti.

Il rischio rappresentato dal precedente UMTS

Ovviamente, se ora il nostro governo decidesse di assegnare le frequenze Wi-MAX con un meccanismo diverso da quello delle aste, le aziende che a suo tempo hanno acquistato le licenze UMTS a suon di miliardi si troverebbero a doversi confrontare sul mercato con una miriade di nuovi operatori che hanno ottenuto le licenze Wi-MAX quasi gratis e che sono tecnicamente in grado di offrire alla clientela dei servizi quasi identici a quelli dell'UMTS. La resistenza di queste aziende sarà sicuramente molto elevata.

Tuttavia, è proprio questo che deve succedere: le grandi aziende hanno avuto la loro occasione con l'UMTS (diversi anni di vantaggio) ed ora devono cedere il passo a tecnologie ed a operatori più adatti alla realtà del mercato ed alle esigenze del paese.

Perchè un Google Bombing

Ovviamente, come utenti non abbiamo nessuna voce in capitolo. Queste scelte vengono prese sopra la nostra testa. Non ci resta che rassegnarsi e mettere ancora una volta mano al portafogli.

La nostra unica speranza è quella di far sapere ai nostri rappresentanti politici, ai loro consulenti ed ai giornalisti che sappiamo quelli che sta succedendo, che non siamo d'accordo e che alle prossime elezioni chi appoggia questo insano meccansimo di assegnazione dovrà fare i conti con il nostro risentimento.

Per ottenere questo risultato abbiamo deciso di mettere in atto una azione di Google Bombing.

Come noto, Google elenca i siti web in base alla loro popolarità. Quanto più un sito viene citato da altri siti, tanto più in alto viene elencato da Google. Il Google Bombing consiste nel rendere deliberatamente molto popolare un sito web (od una singola pagina) creando molti altri siti web ed inserendo in ognuno di essi un articolo ed un link che faccia riferimento al sito, od alla pagina, che si vuole rendere popolare.

Si tratta di una tecnica del tutto legittima, del tutto corretta, ben conosciuta e di successo quasi garantito se si dispone di una comunità abbastanza ampia.

La nostra speranza è quella di riuscire a fare in modo che nei prossimi mesi chiunque usi Google per cercare il termine Wi-MAX finisca per inciampare in una pagina che contiene le nostre lamentele e le nostre osservazioni al riguardo. Più esattamente, la nostra speranza è che inciampino in questa pagina i consulenti dei nostri uomini politici ed i giornalisti. Questo ci permetterebbe di alzare di molto il livello il livello di "awarness" attorno a questo problema e di far arrivare ai nostri politici un chiaro messaggio riguardo alle nostre opinioni.

Come si fa un Google Bombing

Fare un Google Bombing è piuttosto semplice:

Si crea un sito web con la pagina che si vuole evidenziare. Nel nostro caso la trovate a questo indirizzo: http://www.partito-pirata.it/?q=node/49
Si creano numerosi siti web esterni, ad esempio usando i servizi di Blogging gratuito come www.wordpress.com , www.blogger.com o www.splinder.com . Ovviamente, si possono usare anche i siti pre-esistenti.
Su ognuno di questi siti si pubblica un articolo come quello che state leggendo (lo potete copiare pari-pari: è sotto licenza libera GFDL). All'interno dell'articolo si posizionano uno o più (massimo 2 o 3) link come uno dei seguenti.

http://www.partito-pirata.it/?q=node/49">Wi-MAX

http://www.partito-pirata.it/liberate_il_WIMAX.html">Wi-MAX

(Il primo link mostra il sito del Partito Pirata con la pagina in questione. Il secondo link mostra solo la pagina "nuda").

Il risultato

Sulla vostra pagina web, il risultato visibile all'utente sarà un link come uno dei due seguenti.

Wi-MAX (Link al sito del Partito Pirata)

Wi-MAX (Link alla pagina "nuda")

Tra qualche settimana, se riusciremo a raccogliere abbastanza consensi, cercando "Wi-MAX" su Google, la pagina in questione dovrebbe apparire tra le prime dieci dell'elenco. Dovrebbe essere quasi impossibile non vederla e non leggerla.

Come contattarci

Per qualunque necessità, ci potete contattare sulla mailing List del Partito Pirata (http://www.piratpartiet.it/iscrizione.php) o potete contatatre l'autore di queste note a questo indirizzo: alessandro.bottoni@infinito.it .

Licenza

Questa pagina è disponibile sotto licenza GFDL. Può essere copiata e riutilizzata sul vostro sito per creare il link necessario per il Google Bombing. Non occorre fare nessuna modifica.

Sogaer Mobile Widget on N73

2007-01-11T16:24:00.000+01:00

I'm still busy with porting. Luckily as works goes ahead, portings became easier and easier and screen resolution are standardized (almost everyone is going to support 240 x 320 ).
I recently made the versions for Nokia s40 128 x 160 and a generic version for 240 x 320 phones (I'm beginning to map different key codes in resource files).
Here's a Soager screenshot for Nokia N73.

I've also come back to the "origin" (web applications programming) to
give a new look and features to my company's Delivery Platform Software

iPhone or Widget phone?

2007-01-10T14:49:00.000+01:00

The newest Apple gadget, the so called iPhone looks like a fresh and innovative product to the millions of potential customer in the cellphone market.

But it looks very familiar to us, developers and UI addicted.
From the first official images of the phone, it looks like it is a portable widget engine, with all the usual services that you can find in the various Widget engines: weather, timetables, to do lists, clock (...). Even classical phone apps such as SMS have been "widgetized".

This can be either good and bad.
Good because Apple is a sort of trend setter company. If people will love and get used the new UI then all the other mobile gadgets will take advantage of it.

Bad because everyone will gently smile at you app and say: "Sorry, Apple did it first".

What about the other features?
- 2 Mpx camera: seen
- touchscreen (with the "multitouch" UI tech): nice but, in the end, seen.
update: I have to change my mind about this point: the interaction between UI and touchscreen is absolutely awesome; the responsiveness is impressive.
- mp3 and video player: seen
- 8 GB memory: nice
- 320x 480 screen res: nice, but N80 and other have similar resolutions
- Wi-Fi and BT 2 wireless conn: seen
- EDGE connection: GAH!!! Ok, the Apple guys say that next iPhone model will be a UMTS or HDSPA one, but all this stuff (especially the last point) is not enough to call it "revolutionary" neither justifies the Jobs claim to be "5 years ahead" of the competitors upcoming phones...poor N95 could feel offended :-)

The iPhone browser seems very usable, but I wonder how can be the navigation experience with a EDGE connection: I guess it's really bad and you're virtually forced to use Wi-Fi connection, which in USA big cities may be commonly used, but you can't say the same about smaller cities (or even big ones when you move to Europe).
A HDSPA connection will is required.

PS: here's a quite balanced analisys on iPhone.

Sogaer Infovoli: Cagliari Airport Mobile Widget!

2006-12-22T09:35:00.000+01:00

My Mobile Widget for Cagliari Airport ait traffic is finally online!

I developed the first version more than one year ago and it'a very simple widget: it connects to a server in a REST way and shows you departures and arrivals with a 2 minutes delay from the real time but, finally, seeing the little banner on the left in the official site of the Airport is a Christmas present for me (well, only professionally speaking...)

The initial release is supports 10 phones:

Nokia 3650 - 3660 - 6600 - 6630 - 6680 - N70 (yes, it's MIDP 1.0 compliant and pretty I'm sure it works with all Nokia s60 176 x 208 phones, perhaps not including the old Nokia 7650)
Nokia 6230 (128x128, MIDP 2.0 CLDC 1.0)
Nokia 6125 (128x160, MIDP 2.0 CLDC 1.1)
Motorola V3 RAZR (176x208 MIDP 2.0 CLDC 1.0)
SonyEriccson P910i

Here are some main menu screenshot from SE P910, Nokia 6230, Nokia s60:

Mustang is on the ride: Java 6 released!

2006-12-11T17:26:00.000+01:00

I've just downloaded it and I'm installing in both Windows and Linux machines.
Next days I'll write something about this new release (at leaset, I hope so..)!

A little bit of fun, a little bit of nightmare: the JavaDay experience

2006-11-29T13:19:00.001+01:00

Last Saturady I had a speech at Cagliari's Java Day event. It was my first time as a speaker and I was a bit nervous.
So, it's no surprise if some little trouble occurred during my speech. At the end of it I felt like I didn't tell all the things I thought were important and I just spoke of the meaningless side of the subject.

Now, three day have passed, and I have learnt some lessons that I will find useful for future speeches.

Disable all Windows authomatic features. You don't want Windows Update to start when you're at slide number 3, don't you? :-)
Disable you screen saver, in case you keep talking for 10 or more minutes without touching any key/mouse/touchpad
Make sure you have more than one backup of you speech slides.
Less slides, more words. I prepared 42 slides for a 40 minutes speech. Definitely too much. I think it's better to reduce the numer of slides and develop your speech skills. I feel better when I'm forced to add some "filling" that when I must cut off a bunch of slides and a whole part of the speech.
Do one thing and do it well. I prepared a sort of "all-you-can-eat" speech. I spoke about Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Java Me and I presented a demo Java ME application which used the Ajax programming model. Very bad choice. Next time I'll try to focus on one single thing.

Well, what do they say? Live and learn.

Luckily, I also had a lot of fun with Stefano Sanna , Davide Carboni and Roman Strobl interesting speeches, and I had an interesting conversation about mobile carriers behaviour with Andrea Lagomarsini, a very enthusiast Java architect.

Slides from my JavaDay speech are online

2006-11-27T11:50:00.000+01:00

The slides of my JavaDay speech "Asynchronous Java ME and XML" are online now (Italian language only, sorry!).
You can download the PDF version here.

This is a screenshot of a demo application I developed for the speech, as seen on a SonyEriccson W810i emulator.

To colour or not to colour: that is the question

2006-11-21T10:20:00.000+01:00

I've implemented a Color.java class, which is a rough port of class java.awt.Color class from Java SE 5.
Color class has some sort of utility methods such as getting RGB(A) components of a color or adding an alpha component to it.
The problem is this: all my UI components use colors in their classic MIDP-fashion form, which is the good old int value. The Hamletic question is: should I embed a Color instance in every UI component or I should keep holding color variables as int and just create a Color instance when I need to perform some sort of transformation or analisys?

In case I change all my int variables into Color instances, a developer should do this every time I want to set a color into a graphic context:

// A color created from its RGB components...
Color bgColor = new Color(0x77, 0xA3, 0x77);
// getRGB() returns the int value of teh color
g.setColor(bgColor.getRGB());

All this can be boring and sometimes even useless...but some other times can be useful:

Color bgColor = new Color(0x77, 0xA3, 0x77);
g.setColor(bgColor.getRGB());
g.fillRect(...);

Color alphaBgColor = bgColor.getAlphaVariant(0x60);
GraphicUtils.fillAlhphaRect(alphaBgColor, ...);

I'm still not sure I want to refactor teh library changing all int into Color.

Any hints out there?

Murphy's law applied on programming

2006-11-15T16:25:00.000+01:00

"The hard you try to do something *new*, the sooner you find out that somebodyhas already done it."

SAUI episode 3: labels and symbols

2006-10-23T12:01:00.000+02:00

Step by step, SAUI keeps going.
This time I implemented one new and basic widget: the label.
Label can have text and one image (I guess I'll create something different for a "multi image label"), and can have three possible layouts: center, left or right (wow! That's original!).
You can add a border to the label, the same way you do with TextField or CheckboxGroup.
I'm currently developing a label with multiple text lines and one font layout for each text line.

Going back to the Text field, I developed an "insert symbol" system that uses an horizontal scrollable strip where user can choose the symbol to insert into the text field. The selected symbol is highlighted with a border. The insert symbol strip inherits the focused text field layout and it's drawed immediatly before or after it. The problem is: I only support a limited set of characters, so I still have to work on it.

As I already imagined, first bugs show up.
The system that I use to handle the [0-9] keys characters insertion sometimes skips a character (ie: sometimes, when you press the "6" button it shows you the "m" character, the "o", "6" and then "n"), this can be annoying since it only happens every now and then.
Plus, the caret position sometimes is not very accurate, since it's calculated using Font.stringWidth(String str).

Click on the image and tell me if you like the first results of this new project!

I don't believe in Mobile (Web) 2.0

2006-10-19T10:53:00.000+02:00

This 2.0 thing seems to be the new Internet religion: either you're into Ajax/Comet/the-next-revolution or you're out of the business.

Following this unwritten rule, somebody (I wonder who) decided to start the Mobile Web 2.0 buzz.
Well, keeping on using religious terms, I don't believe in Mobile Web 2.0.
I don't believe in it for three simple reasons, as I already commented elsewhere:

1. Many (most?) of the people own and WILL own GPRS devices (28,8 kbps - 58,6 kbps).
They simply don't have enough bandwidth to support Ajax or Comet asynch connection models. My Nokia 6600 browser freezes every time I enter my mobile ebay account. Sometimes it also happens with the SonyEriccson P910. Even with 3G phones (up to 384kbps) things are problematic. And we're still talking about synchronous models.

2. The graphic appeal of Web 2.0 on big screens (I have a 1280 x 1024 one) is one thing, the graphic appeal of Mobile Web 2.0 on 240 x 320 screens is another thing. After all, it seems to me that most of Mobile Web 2.0 are just gadgets or toys that aim to take advantage from the "cool factor" more than offer a really useful service.

3. Lack of "mobile culture". In Italy, many people don't even know what is their cellphone's name and still use SMS-based services.

In other words, if we are in a pre-Mobile 1.0 phase, why talk so much about a possible 2.0?

Probably somone noticed I edited this post, introducing a change of definition between Mobile 2.0 and Mobile Web 2.0 after I remembered the distinction made by Tom Landspurg in Myths of mobile Web 2.0 (and mobile Ajax) . I'm not sure I believe in Mobile 2.0 either, at least not as an identifiable, clear set of technologies or programming paradigm; but I thought it was necessary to separate all that is no more than a porting of Web 2.0 and all the other blooming mobile technologies (the upcoming MIDP 3 for Java ME, Python, Flash Lite and so on...).

SAUI episode 2: Checkbox & checkbox group

2006-10-17T13:42:00.000+02:00

This is the first image of my checkbox implementation.
It is divided into two classes: CheckBox and CheckboxGroup; the first one has no UI and carries informations about the single item, the second one aggregates and handles all the CheckBox items, draws them and handles keyPressed() events.

It handles EXCLUSIVE mode (only one item is selectable) and MULTIPLE (all items selectable). It is completely customizable with preferred colours and it's auto-adaptive: if you change font size and style, CheckboxGroup adapts its appearence to the new font properties.

If I'll solve some bug and stabilize the API I'll open source it and ask for your help!

Playing with L&Fs

2006-10-13T14:29:00.000+02:00

Nothing about mobile this time.
I'll probably have to modify an open source (GPL) Swing application for the company I work for.
While I study the best way to add new features without making a complete mess of an already "problematic" code, I'm trying many different L&F on a tiny application I wrote to send SMS to a business partner...

This is how it looks with Liquid L&F

And this is how it looks with the Substance L&F 3.0!

What are you telling me? I seriously need to buy a Mac??

First step with SAUI

2006-10-11T17:28:00.000+02:00

At last, I'm trying!
This is my first experiment of a fully customizabile, canvas based, UI library (which I'll call SAUI...well...if I'll release at least a 1.0 beta of it).

This is the first result: the Text fields shown in the picture look quite different from one another, allowing the user to chose between many style options: border (b. width, b. single, double b., no b.), background color or gradiant, width, height, absolute position (x, y, ...maybe z).
All the text fields are placed in a "container" and I can pass the focus from one text field to another.

It's a hard work and I think bug will show up pretty soon.
But I need some input UI items to avoid the problem inherent in my application: when I change from where I show variuos informations (canvas-based), to a screen where I have to input some data (form based) I feel like I'm exiting the application and going back to the device native OS.

I know the way from this first experiments and Tricastmedia's TWUIK is long, but I hope results will be nice!

Next step: the checkbox!

A safari in the MobileZoo

2006-10-06T12:29:00.000+02:00

Mobile Zoo is a web site that aims to offer a complete collection of mobile phones features and worldwide diffusion. In order to do this, they developed MobileZooHunter, a MIDlet that discovers all your phone's features - included a pretty impressive scan of Java ME abilities - and sends them to MobileZoo database.

Site is in alpha version, so something doesn't work fine, but I like the inititive.

Right now, the ZooMobileHunter is only available for CDLC 1.1 - MIDP 2.0 phones. Since I have two older phones (Nokia 3650 and Nokia 6600) and many people, especially in Italy, still own older phones, it would be nice if there was a CLDC 1.0 - MIDP 1.0 version of this app.

Nokia N95: the Monster!

2006-09-27T10:10:00.000+02:00

I had just decided to (not) buy a SonyEriccson phone when the "engine-alert light" in my Ford Focus made me change my mind...hmmm...well, that's not the way I wanted to start.

Ok, let's try again: I had just decided to buy a SonyEriccson phone when Nokia announced its brand new N95, that put on me more than a doubt.

This "beast" has a 5 MegaPixel Carl Zeiss camera (gosh!), a built-in GPS receiver.
It's EGPRS/UMTS/WI-FI enabled.

Plus, this is the list of supported JSR in this phone.

FileConnection and PIM API (JSR-75)

Security and Trust Services API (JSR-177)

Wireless Messaging API (JSR-205)

JTWI (JSR-185)

Mobile Media API (JSR-135)

Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API (JSR-226)

Web Services API (JSR-172)

Nokia UI API

CLDC 1.1

Location API (JSR-179)

SIP API (JSR-180)

Mobile 3D Graphics API (JSR-184)

Bluetooth API (JSR-82)

MIDP 2.0

Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR-234)

Location API and GPS...yummmmie!

DEV magazine on JSR 184 and Jasper S20

2006-09-22T09:41:00.000+02:00

This month, the Italian magazine DEV publishes a 17 pages (WOW!) set of articles about Java ME's JSR-184 aka Mobile 3D Graphics.

Also, it presents in Italy the first all-Java-based phone: Jasper S20.

Platform request test

2006-09-21T17:15:00.000+02:00

I have tested the platformRequest method of MIDlet class on three different devices: Nokia 6600, Nokia 6630 and SonyEriccson P910i.
Only in the last one it works, while in the Nokias it stays inactive or just throws a Symbian Error (MontyThread...).
So, right now: SonyEriccson 1 - Nokia 0.

(22/09/2006)
I update this post with some info from Stefano Sanna:
His Nokia 6630 works fine (now I have to check firmware versions).
Nokia N80 & E61: perfect
SE z1010: ok
Jasper S20: perfect (browser starts slowly...)

PS: if you want to test platformRequest and you don't want to write the boring midlet...you can download it from SonyEriccson site.

Infoflight porting for Nokia 6230i

2006-09-19T17:38:00.000+02:00

Here it is...

I don't feel comfortable with this 208 x 208 screen size and these ugly fonts. And there's still something to fix: that 1/23 page indication for example...

PolarixNews for Nokia series 60

2006-09-15T13:41:00.000+02:00

This a sort of Feed reader I wrote to avoid some problems with the so called feed fragmentation.
You know RSS 0.91, 1.00, 2.oo etc. And the ATOM, NITF and so on: what a mess!

So I created a Java server side application that downloads, cleans and converts (using this library) a large number of formats into a new lightweight one, which I called SMNF: Simple Mobile News Format.
I created SMNF specifically for mobile applications: it hasn't a lot of useless metadata and it is easy to parse with KXML or similar libraries.
Speaking of "cleaning", I hate whan I find an RSS full of HTML code inside the tags. I think that who invented RSS just wanted a simple summary of news and events, without having to transfer a lot of useless and messy layout code!! So, SMNF is a text only feed: my server application cuts off every piece of HTML in the original feed.

I'm preparing a web page for SMNF format, and I'm trying to translate the format' specification in English (poor me!) since May.
PolarixNews is the first (and maybe the last...) SMNF reader, you can download it for free here

Sogaer Infoflight for Nokia series 60 & 40

2006-09-14T15:20:00.000+02:00

This is another (demo) app that I developed in 2005. It is designed as one of the thousands Desktop Widgets available everywhere. It just connects to the Cagliari Airport, Sardinia, and downloads actual departures and arrivals in XML format.
My original idea was to create a sort of "widget platform" such as Konfabulator or the Mac OS X dashboard, but unfortunately I couldn't go on with my idea.

I took care of the design toghether with designer (and former high school classmate) Claudio Serra and of the series 60 1st edition version. Then Ivan Mossa did the series 40 and Motorola V3 porting. Now I'm porting it again to Nokia series 40 208x208 phones.

Infoflight is a free demo, and you can download it for free here

Lgg mobile catalog

2006-09-14T14:20:00.000+02:00

This is my first Java ME application since I left Arcadia Design to join the Axis-sv/Sardegna Innovazione group. The customer is an importan Sardinian tyres retailer which has a good number of Motorola A1000 devices.

It was designed to interact with the customer's ASP-on-SQL Server software, exchanging XML files which can contain either the whole tyres' catalog or an incremental update.

The UI is made extending the Canvas class and refreshing it authomatically with an updater thread, in a very "videogame flavour" way (which is - incidentally - what I did when I was with the Arcadia Design team). The rest of teh application is quite simple: the customer wanted the catalog to remind an Excel spreadsheed so I did it that way. The application also has a small internal search engine which can find tyres according to their name (or part of it) or their commercial code.

The most difficult part was synchronize the local catalog with the server's one without having to donwload it all every time. A state diagram of that synchronization flow occasionally pops up in my nightmares!!

The application and the image below is copyright of Axis-sv.it