Posts filed under 'Wireless'
Two very intersting news last week:
Adobe creating the OpenScreen project , aiming to reove some licensing restriction on Flash and Flashlite format, giving access to some Flash porting API…
The spirit is of course to be able to deliver Flash on much more device than today. I am still amazed by the low REAL usage of Flash on mobile device. This could have been the enabler of killer app, but due to many mistake, mainly from Adobe, they missed their window of opportunity. This seems to be one of the latest attempt to reverse the trend.
Is it too late?
The other (probably linked) news is the announce from SonyEricsson of project Capuchin. This project wants to link Java and Flash world. This is one of the most interesting things for Flash since a long time.
One interesting things is that SonyEricsson has been a strong promoter of standards, and it’s interesting to see it for once doing some properietary API, and for a propietary technology.
This is also probably a bad news for SVG, which never reall took off, as an alternativbe technology to Flash for creating vector content on mobile.
For your records, it’s also something that we were doing in “Exen”, at In-Fusio, in the early 2000. The game engine was able to play Flash animations (but Flash 4 only) within Java, and for instance, use Flash clip as a sprite within a game. Seemed to be a good idea, but this has never been widely used in our games: lack of documentation, portability issue, etc…
May 5th, 2008
Interested in creating mobile widgets? Just check our latest tutorial on how to simply create and deploy mobile widgets using Webwga platform using standard and easy to learn technologies, like XML and JavaScript.
Yes, Webwag is since some monthes compliant with JavaScript (in fact a subset of JavaScript), but this make very easy for any Web developer who know a little bit XML/JavaScript to write great mobile widget.
The tutorial describe how to create a translator widget, using a web service and some Ajax techniques. And we’ve just opened the Developers corner on the forum, so support will be given to all our developers.
April 28th, 2008
Congratulation to Vollee, who displayed for the first time some videos of what they are doing secretely since several years: a great technology to easily deploy any desktop game to mobile, using video streaming.
As you can see, it’s not only a direct transcoding of the desktop stream to a mobile screen, as the content would have been totally unuseable ( too small, too many information, etc…) but something much more smarter. And of course, this works for any game, not only SecondLife.
We were doing some experimentation in this area two years ago at MobileScope, bascially using streamed GoogleEarth picture as a background of a game. I’ll do a post some day if I can find some video of these experiments.
But here is the Vollee example:
Now, there are some key question still to be answered: is there a market for this? Does the bandwidth cost worth the value of this?
But anyway, congrat to Vollee team and to Julian for these great achievement.
April 26th, 2008
Discovered this website - devicefragmentation.info through Jason Delport’s Mobile Observation blog
Higly interesting paper on fragmentaitons issues, and on different way to solve them!
And like Jason, I like the way Dimath Rajapkse categorize the various technique used:
I think I’ve experimented all the techniques since I am in mobile industry, from the “old” manual multi, where I you had to do the porting “by hand”, to various multi method.
I personally think that the Derive-Multi are well adapted for one shot products, like Games, while the Single-Adapt are more adapted to long term product that require constant evolution, like Webwag for instance.
It’s also true that most of the developpeur combine some of this techniques .
But at the end of the day, dealing with JavaME is not the most complex issue. We now have to deal with JavaME+Androïd+Flash and now iPhone native and Silverlight! Waow, good time for porting companies….
Identificateurs Technorati : mobile, wireless, javame
March 7th, 2008
Big week for Webwag! After the yesterday announce that Webwag was finalist of the GlobalMobileAwards, we just announce today our new iPhone version. You saw a video some time ago, but now this version is live: just point your browser to http://iphone.webwag.com (or http://webwag.com with your iPhone) and you’ll have access to your exact same account on your mobile. OF course, this works also on your iPod touch.
We created a user experience close to the default iPhone user experience, but with the full Webwag features:
- You can add/remove new tabs
- Add new widget
- A first preview level with number of unread articles in your feed
- Dynamic icons for some widgets: flickr, weather
Now, webwag covers a wide range of mobile and web device: web browser, mobile version (java me) and iPhone.
Try it, and tell us what you think!
We also launched the first step of our new Webwag V2, with some nice features:
- resizable columns
- variable number of columns
- enhanced discovery
- new themes
Identificateurs Technorati : webwag, iphone, ipod, wireless
January 23rd, 2008
Webwag has been selected as a finalist in the “Best Infotainment portal” at the Global Mobile Awards. The final of this famouse competition will take place during the next 3Gsm, in barcelona, in February…
More on the offical Webwag blog
And the globalmobileawards site
January 23rd, 2008
This iRiver unit presented during the last CES looks great. There is even a touchscreen that serve as a remote controller, but you can display much more info on it: RSS feed, weather, video, etc… Sounds a great widget platform, for your digital life…
Through multiroom (in French)
January 14th, 2008
Finally, we had a chance yesterday to access to Yahoo!Go 3.0 SDK. As a frequent reader of this blog, you should know that Widgets is a favorite topic, so I was curious and excited about achivement of Yahoo!Go 3.0 and his SDK.
The home screen is really good, looks great. Very nice theme, with a background image and a caroussel of “widgets”. Things become bad you start to dig into the content. In fact, what is Yahoo!Go3.0 is very similar to Yahoo!Go 2.0: an enhanced browser to the yahoo content. All pages are similar to wap page, but with some improvment in the navigation. There is however some specific part that have some higher capacitities, like the “map” part which contains a GoogleMap type navigation.What really kills the experience is that the answer to every keypress (and I’ve tested this on an N95, which is usually a very fast phone) takes too much time!
So now , let’s look at the widget part and the SDK: in fact, what is promoted as “widgets” is in fact some enhanced xml/wap pages created with the “BluePrint” language. The good thing is that pages can be easily integrated within the Yahoo!Go content, and can also benefit from the integrated advertising feature.
So Yahoo!Go 3.0 is more or less an enhanced mobile browser without Ajax capacities, and these widget are XML component that can be part of the page. One of the benefit of such basic approach is that these “widgets”, can be deployed even on simple Wap/xHtml pages. The bad thing, is that it’s quite impossible to do “real widget”: very little interaction possible between the application and the user, no local caching, no access to phone features…. Seems like a step back in the times “before ajax”. Does it really make sens to build a download app if you just provides a browsing experience?
Identificateurs Technorati : yahoo, mobile, mobilewidgets
January 10th, 2008
Last week was “LeWeb3” week, with several interesting announces around widgets.
First, Goojet, the last entrant in that space announced his beta at the event.
Orange also showed an iPhone version of there own portal, BubbleTop, and a preview of their mobile client. Nice UI but not yet available….
Also, some first info about the future iPhone Webwag version. Here is a short video (in French):
This version is in beta test, more to come soon!
December 19th, 2007
Would it make sense for Google to provide an Androïd version for the iPhone? Of course, not the complete stack, but just the development framework. Most of the people and especially developers don’t really care about the full stack, but about the interesting part which is of the development framework, as long as it’s well integrated with the rest of the phone.
I am not an Androïd expert, but it seems possible for me to adapt this on the iPhone.
Why:
- It could be the first Androïd platform
- It could provide an easy way to develop applications for the iPhone
- This would solve one of the fragmentation issue
Why not:
- Because Apple don’t want it?
- Because Google don’t want it?
- The google and Apple gadget are not the same. They both choosen different look and feel for the UI (which is understandable). So which one should we choose for an Androïd on IPhone?
- It might be not possible to reach the same level of integration between the application framework and the core system.
This seems possible to me from the technical point of view. First, google could do it. If it’s not Google, some external developer could do it. Of course, we don’t have detailled spec of Google Dalik VM, but it’s not a big issue: we could use an open source JavaVM, and just run some plain Java Code with the Android Framework? It seems that people already started to work on standard VM porting, with this VM porting on iPhone. A good first step, but Androïd on an iPhone could be the toy of 2008 for developprs…
Identificateurs Technorati : android, iphone, java
December 16th, 2007
Might be already old news for some of you, but I’ve forgot to put it on my blog, so here it is: we have released Webwag V1 version. The official news is here: Webwag mobile V1 release, API is open!
Here is a non exhaustive list of new features you will find in this release . And we are heavily working on other improvment on other part (web and…?), that will be out very soon!
- End user space
- Faster: We increased start speed, network accesses, widgets opening by a factor from 5 to 10
- Automagic widgets arrangement: Now widgets can be automatically arranged while you move them with no need for pixel adjustment (the old free mode remains availab
- 140 handset models: We’ve grown the handsets compatibility from around 10 to 150 over many new brands. We’ll showcase some of them on this blog in the coming weeks
- Parlez-vous Français? You’ll be happy to learn that Webwag mobile now detects your language and is available in French. Many other languages will come.
- Link to original article in Blog posts: You can now view a mobile adapted version of the web site’s article page for any information (RSS) feed.
- More room for Widgets. The bottom bar has been replaced by two elegant soft keys, giving even more room to widgets.
- New widgets including eBay, French Traffic conditions (very useful these days), a new discovery from mobile…
- Many many bug fixes…
- Developers: A new shiny Javascript API is available at api.webwag.com that makes it easier than ever for any web and mobile developer to create widgets using a standard subset of Javascript, XML and other standard oriented tools.
- Brands and content owners: Webwag mobile is a very addictive and simple way to create a positive relationship with end users by giving them a useful service linked to a brand or a specific content. You can contact us at partnerships@webwag.com for more information on how to mobilize and monetize your brand and content in the Webwag mobile ecosystem
So let’s talk a little bit about the developer part: yes, now the scripting languge is a subset of JavaScript. So need to learn a new language. So new, you can have an object orientation for the script, this will simplyfy some form, especially for callback, as function can be associated to objects:
var myObj=new Object();
myObj.showMe=function(){
alert("Hello World:");
}
myObj.showMe();
is now a valid code. So check the api.webwag.com for more info (and do not forget to register to have access).
We also added a lot of functionalities for developer, like the ability to create “form” for better input parameter.
We will prepare some tutorial and samples in the coming weeks….
Update: The http://api.webwag.com does not require anymore you to register…
December 10th, 2007
Just played with these two great apps, showing the potential of the iPhone and especially the multitouch screen and the accelerators.
The first one is in fact a multi touch demo, quite simple, from cedsoft: it allows to play with a satellite picture and zoom it, move it and rotate it. You could say that GoogleMap is already doing it on the iPhone, but the rotation add a lot of novelty. It pave the way to more complex application, like photo editing tools, or productivity tools with a different UI.
To install it, use the http://prog.cedsoft.free.fr/ repository
The second one is iPhysics (a port of CrayonPhysics). It’s a very simple idea, but hard to describe. The objective is to push a ball to a certain place, but based on physics interaction. You can not move the ball directly, but you can create object by just drawing them on screen, and then these object interacts with the world. Very addictive and innovative
.
To add it, just add this repository in the installer: http://iphone.r4m0n.net/repos
Some remarks:
- Hopefully the iPhone has been unlocked, and will be soon officially. Without this, I think that such app would have been really hard to exist
- Sometime, it’s good to exit from the “Ajax” reign. It would have been if not impossible quite difficult to create these app with a browser only.
- The development chain for iPhone is -in my view- way too complicated! So I give full respect to these early pionner, but I would like to see an easy way to develop complex app for iPHone. I think that Java would have been the best candidate for this. I am dreaming of an Androïd port for iPhone…
There is a lot of potential for iPhone games, thanks to the combination of nice things:
- multi touch screen
- portable device
- High surface screen
- Connectivity
- Sensor
- Camera
For instance, I am dreaming (or hoping that people will port it) some of this games:
- Catapult , a game originally created for the Gizmondo, a cool augmented reality game
- Some nice billard game
- A marble madness port with acclerometer
Identificateurs Technorati : ipho, e, augmented reality, games
December 8th, 2007
Congrat to FredBrunnel, who just released one of the first app for Android: TwitterDroid
As Fred said, not very usefull while there is no real handset yet, but interesting anyway. Fred, one suggestion: share with us (developers) your though on developping on Androïd…
Identificateurs Technorati : androïd, java
December 3rd, 2007
So Google finally released not a gPhone, but a development platform: Androïd. I’ve spent some - little - time to play with it, and here are my thougt:
- As a user it’s obviously much better and polished UI than Symbian or Windows Mobile. But in the iPhone days, it’s quite poor. The most annoying thing is the usage of menus, on a touch screen. The menus are not visible once closed, and does not seem to have a way to open them just with the touch screen.
- As a developer, it’s both very cool, and a nightmare: very cool, because the Java API seems quite complete and useable, there are some nice UI effects and it facilitate the integration of applications within the phone, and a nightmare because this is now a new platform to support. It’s not J2ME compatible, but supports partially some JSR.
Let me summarize the development landscape these days. We have:
- XHTML/Wap family
- the iPhone mobile browsing familiy
- the iPhone native/ObjectiveC
- Symbian
- Windows Mobile
- FlashLite
- and of course J2ME
and now we can add Androïd with probably native/C++ Androïd and Java Androïd. Not sure that we should thank Google for this one!
What are Androïd chances of being successful?
Can the OpenHandsetAlliance make the difference? In the mobile industry, we probably have more consortium than an any other industry. Consortium for handsets, for platforms, for games,…. But usually, once a consortium is created, it’s the beginning of the end: most of them never released something interesting.
Can the applications make the difference? I am sure that you can easily create very cool and powerful application with Androïd. But I also see many great application on windows mobile or Symbian (and it’s probably 10 times more difficult to create them on these devices) but very few of them reach a critical mass.
Can Google make the difference? Of course, it’s backed up by Google but this could be a good or a bad thing. More and more people in the mobile industry are afraid of Google power. Third tier manufacturer, some Taiwanese and Korean will probably deliver a few Androïd devices, but is it enough to capture the market?
So, let’s wait and see. This sounds more the equivalent of Microsoft first attempts on mobile: not as good as it should be, but with deep pockets, you can afford several attempts before being succesful.
You can also check Fred post on Android
Identificateurs Technorati : android, google, wireless
November 16th, 2007
So Apple announced the availability of the iPhone SDK for February next year.
Seems to be a good news, but a few sentences makes me feel unconfortable: there is a big paragraph about virus, malware and so on :
“There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network.”
I don’t think that there are such virus yet (I know that on Symbian phones, there are some Bluetooth viruses), so why are they putting so much empathis on this? It seems the “good reason” to block third party developpers:
We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.
Let me guess: if you want to deploy on an IPhone, you will have to be “Apple Certified” developper? Or may be “Operator Certified”? We are back to the good old security issue on mobile, where independent third party application will be so restricted that it will be impossible to make it run on a mobile.
May be I’m wrong, but wait and see…
On the same topic, read Russel Beatties “Third Party Applications on the iPhone…Translated“
October 18th, 2007
I will be in the next “Mobile Bar Camp” in Paris, Saturday the 13th of October, organized by Philippe Jeudy and Louis Van Proosdij. Will be in French, but imprevissive list of participant. If you want to chat with me, drop me an email.
October 3rd, 2007
Browsing the web I’ve discovered that LUA reached a popularity of 15 in tiobe rank. This is incredible, but also very interesting. Lua is a very simple but smart language that was designed to extend existing applications. Typically, to add scripting capacities in existing programs. This is a not a new idea, and a lot of technologies where available at that time, but most of them where not easy to implement.
The key differentiator of LUA was the integration simplicity. LUA is now very popular, but when I’ve first discovered it, it was not the case. I’ll do an “historical post” of what happened in the early days of In-Fusio regarding LUA, mobile, and Java.
In 1999, when we started In-Fusio, I’ve created the first connected game embedded in Mitsubishi device. At that time, the most advanced mobile game was snake (V1!) and we were delivering console quality game on mobile, but even more, we introduced connectivity with SMS. User was able to download new game levels each week through SMS….These games (BrainDrain, Push, Crazy Pet) also contained some hidden part, but obviously very hidden as not so many found them: there was the first 3D real time demo on a mobile phone, done using Vector Ball, a reminder of my early Amiga days
Some snapshots of Push, a Sokoban clone, embedded in Mitsubishi phonesBut the issue was that the game where embedded, and not downloaded. User was not able to change his game. We started then to think to a way to download games.
Technically, it seems that it was possible, even with limited resources of the phone. We could expect around 16 to 32kb of available writeable flash memory for game. But due to security reasons and cross platform issues we needed to find either a scripting language, or a VM based engine.
So I started to evaluate the various technical solutions for this: from Python, Tcl/Tk, Java, JavaScript and of course Lua. Even Perl! I also looked at some alternative solution, mainly used in SetTopBox.
Rapidly , it appears that Python, Tcl/TK, JavaScript where really too heavy in terms of code size to fit into a mobile. Perl…no, definitvely not Perl for game!
So the remaining two where Java, and Lua. Remember, it was in 99 and MIDP was not yet even discussed. I’ve evaluated a couple of the “light java “implementation, like Waba, and another one that has been used in some lego engine.
But Lua looked great also, and was compliant with our requirement:
- small footprint
- easy integration
- simple to understand and to use
I made a prototype of an integration with a “kind of” R-Type game on a Mitshubishi phone that worked well.But my godfeeling was that Java will be here for long time, and strategically speaking, it was better to follow the Java path. The KVM on Palm was also presented in JavaOne’99, the first JavaOne I’ve attended!
So we look deeper on the Java side, and found a nice JavaCard implementation by Schlumberger. It was really an amazing implementation, tailored for highly constrained JavaCard, so it could feet easily in mobile.
At that time we also discussed with Sun about Java licensing, but fee were really beyond expectations (Sun started by talking of a 10$ per handset license!). We decided to choose the VM implementation, a clean room implementation so no fee for Sun as long as we did not put any Java logo on the mobile. So we decided to use Java instead of LUA.
The first implementation took some time, but when we had the first real handsets, we had a big surprise: it was ssoooooo slow, and unusable for games! Was hard to go beyond a simple minesweeper game. So we decided two things:
- improve the speed of the VM, by working with Schlumberger
- create high level game API
So we created Sprite, Layer component, animation, etc…to speed up things, a complete game api. We also added a raycast engine that could be used to create 3D effects with processing power of mobile of that time. In fact, all the rendering and the animation was done natively, while Java was used more as a scripting engine. And that’s where the MIDP2 game API came. Here are a few snapshot of the first black and white created for the platform:
Some of the early Exen games….
The first prototype was demonstrated in September 2000. Even internally, the game developer team was not convinced with the ability to create arcade quality game on mobile. But the first game produced externally on this platform, by Kalisto, “Tinies Farter” (yes!) was a great and really playable arcade games, and gave us confidence in the ability to create more cool games.
With a launch early 2001 with D2 in Germany, closely followed by Orange in France, and more operators later on.
Since day one, the system has been conceived with an ecosystem for game developer, operators, and us, so we started to make revenue from day1, while it took years for J2me to reach maturity. We thought that we had a 6 to 12 month windows of opportunity with Exen, but it appears that the window was more 24 to 36 months, with a total deployment of more than 50 millions of handsets….Not bad for a small window of opportunity.
The story is not yet ended, but we will write this another time….
Identificateurs Technorati : java, j2me, exen, in-fusio
September 3rd, 2007
Apparently, a company name Ricavision is preparing a SideShow Fridge Magnet. Sideshow are Windows Vista widget, and these widget will be able to run on this specific magnet device.
Not yet a real “physical widget”, but interesting anyway. Here is the link to the full press release.
Through Ian Dixon’s blog
Identificateurs Technorati : physical widgets, widgets
August 10th, 2007
As discussed earlier, our SDK is open to third party developers. To get it, just drop us an email at feedback@webwag.com .
It’s very easy to create your own mobile widget, with very little code. If you are a web widget developer, you will be familiar rapidely with mobile widget.
So let’s dig into a widget, and let’s see how we can create one very easily
A widget is made of two main part:
- an XML description of the UI
- a script, which contains the behavior of the widget.
Let’s start with the clock, which is one of the easiest one, and let’s jump directly into the source of the widget (source code is here ):
The widget is enclosed into a “widget” tag, and the first part contains the UI description:
- image tells the engine that there is an image to display, and the url of the image is “clock.png”. By default, URL will be relative to the source file of the widget itself.
- then, to “poly‘ elements. Poly are polygons (but limited to three points for now) that are displayed on screen. cx and cy define the center of the polygon relative to the origin of the widget, and poly contains the x,y pair of points that define the login. Here we have three point (p1={0,0},p2={0,0],p3={20,0}) which is basically a line.
borderColor define the border color of that polygon.
The last item, is a non visible one: timer, and this element will just call a callback at a specified interval , in that case, at every 200/10 seconds, so every 20 seconds….
the script is quite easy:
- a function (onTimerFired) and a “main” part which just call that function.
Note that onTimerFired will be the default function called by the timer element. The content of the function is simple:
time() return the current time in the form DD/MM/YY ss:mm, like 07/07/2007 13:12
then explode will convert this string in an array, using the space as a spearator.
So timeArr[3] will contains 13:12
Next line, 13:12 is then exploded once again and put in another array, so hour[0] will contains 13 while
hour[1] whil contains 12.
The next two line, just set the angle properties of the two polygons created earlier. nameCl and hourCl are
the name used in the definition of these polygons, so now the script can refer to them directly.
We could access to most of the attributes of the UI elements directly, like hourCl.cx=13 our minCl.borderColor=”0xFF0000″
So as you see, with less then 10 lines of code, we have created a nice looking analog clock running on most of the mobile devices….
More tutorial and full documentation are availables on our devleoper pages…..
Identificateurs Technorati : webwag, mobileajax, mobile widgets
August 7th, 2007
Great news with the new look of the web site, and the official launch of the mobile version (in fact, since a couple of days, but we were too busy putting everything up to blog it!).
So, go and try webwag.com to experiment the new WebWab look. Flashy colors are avalaible, as well as more relaxing green or grey.
This is also the launch of the long awaited Webwag mobile version! >Now everybody with a recent J2me phone can experiment true mobile widgets.
Just go to the website, register and open the small “phone” icon and follow the steps…
This is the first major milestone in the Webwag vision of the “Personnal Digital Hub”, allowing access to all your content from various devices, whatever are the technologies.
Mobile is only the first step, and you will see others in that direction.
The SDK will be released later on but we will select a few motivated developper if they want to experiment it earlier.
Widgets use an XML description for UI, and a simple scripting language for behavior. Every JavaScript developper will be familiar with these technologies in a few hours, even if more complex widgets require more work: we don’t deal with the same issues as in the browser world!
June 13th, 2007
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