We’ve finally announced the seed funding of Webwag that was kept silent since some time. The press release is here.
And finally, Techcrunch finally made a reference to us (ok, Techchrunch fr only but better than nothing).
Also, we’ll be in the states in the coming weeks, in the bay area: for the Web2.0 Summit, and WidgetSummit conference, Mobile2.0 Event where we are speaker, and at the CTIA where will be announcing (let’s cross fingers) some interesting things.
October 15th, 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
Beginning of this year, Webwag introduced the “Wod”,or Widget On Demand, that allows you to create a Widget on any web site. The process was quite easy, but it’s now even easiest, thanks to Webwag FireFox extension: a click and you’re done…How? Install the toolbar, find a site you love but don’t have widget? Press “Create a Wod button”, select the area you want and click “Done”…That’s all….You now have a new widget! There are of course limitation, but in most of the site, it works perfectly. Demonstration:
A wod in two steps
Go to your favorite website (example: http://boursorama.fr)
Press “Create a Wod” in the Webwag button and select the area you are interested in:
Then press ok, and….miracle, the widget is on Webwag:
And this works for many different site, including live site: the update is done real time. Try it yourself!
The extension contains also other features, like the ability to add directly an RSS stream from a page.
Final reminder: the tool bar is here
Identificateurs Technorati : webwag, firefox, toolbar
September 27th, 2007
Just discovered a VERY interesting post about Facebook and privacy:
Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know.
The most interesting part, is this one, the number four topic:
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
So Facebook can do what they want with content posted on Facebook! Including picture, your profile (your CV?), etc…. A perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable license….
Think of this before creating your own private group to discuss the next big thing, or before posting your perfect pictures… Seems to be the reason why a group named “the Grasshoppers” moved from Facebook to Ning…
Through Widgify
Identificateurs Technorati : faceook, ning, privacy
September 9th, 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
Thanks to the new “Link to this page” feature of Google, you can easily embeed a map into you’re personnal start page.
Here is how to do it:
In Google map, press the “Link to this page” link, at the top left
Then, just select the “iframe” line, and in your webwag add an “HTML container” widget and copy the content of the iframe line into the HTML code section of the widget…and you’re done: you now have a direct link with this Google Map, from your start page. If the map is updated, your widget will be updated.
From Google LatLon blog
August 23rd, 2007
Webwag is a small team, but very reactive! We already have the equivalent of the iPhone widget available on webwag, look:
How to do it? Just go to your webwag factory, and add an HTML container, and in this container, put the following code:
<iframe xsrc=”http://iphone.facebook.com” mce_src=”http://iphone.facebook.com” height=400 width=350 />
and that’s it…..
Yes, that is just embeeding the iPhone version of the Facebook site on Webwag, but this one is optimized for small screen, so it fit very well to be embeeded in a startpage like Webwag. I expect so to see more of these site optimized for mobile browsing, and then, these site will be easily embeeded in pages like Webwag. That’s an interesting side effect of the iPhone hype.
Identificateurs Technorati : facebook, webwag, widgets, iphone
August 15th, 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
For those who still don’t know it, there is a new great blog which already a star: it’s Marc Andreessen one, blog.pmarca.com . A lot of great post about startup creation, VC, and a lot of other things. Read the “Moby dick theory of big companies” , and the series on “Truth about venture capitalist“
Interesting also is the Ouriel Ayon point of view on Marc’s blog. As him, I always wondered how Marc could create so quickly such incredible content, while being involved in many other things.
July 9th, 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
I’ve wrote by the past several entries about touchscreen ( The future of board games ) and how interesting this technology is, especially for mass market.
Of course, Microsoft know this too, and just announced “Microsoft Surface“, which provide new way to interact with a computer.
The video is really interesting and demonstrate good use cases:
May 30th, 2007
Last week was “Mobile Widget week” in London, with what seems to be a nice Mobile Monday about widgets. I was not here, but here is a list of related links to this event:
This one is not directly related to this mobile widget week, but as usual, techtype haves some strong views, which are most of the time very interesting. And I really like the title!
May 25th, 2007
Is from Widgetop….Look nice, but probably not running on any existing phone and hardly useable. A clock for instance, is probably the worst thing to do in a mobile using css/html/javascript, but this will make Ajiit happy….
May 21st, 2007
Want to test the new Webwag mobile extension? Then go to http://beta.webwag.com and use your webwag account (or create one!).
There only are few handsets officially supported (N70, K750, K800, LG Chocolote, Sagem My800x) but should work on more handsets, just try it, and let us know the results.
- Register and create your webwag account
- Add the widgets you like in your page
- Add them into your “mobile screen”. To open your mobile screen, click on the “mobile” icon on the top left, or click on the “mobile” icon on the existing box.
- “save and install” will send you an installation SMS that you should receive within minutes with a link to download it on your mobile. On most of the handsets, the link will be selectable within the SMS. On some handsets (like the LG, Motorola) you can use this link from a specific menu from the SMS message.
If you have problems receiving the SMS, let us now
Feedback, issue, just email us at: feedback@webwag.com
Faq:
* Are all widgets available from Web and mobile?
No, only a subset of existing widgets are today available on mobile:
- RSS
- Flickr
- Email
- Note
- Weather
- Clock
- Background
* Is it the same widget running on web wand mobile?
The widgets use the same data, but are different, because of size issue.
* But why not having just a web browser running these mobile widgets?
Because first, technically very few handset have the capacities to run complex widgets within browser, and also because we think that usage are different from web and mobile.
* Do you plan to support more handsets?
Of course, we are already working on this.
* Waow, sounds so cool, how can I participate and create my own widget?
The SDK is not yet public, but just email us and we will notify you when ready (feedback@webwag.com)
May 14th, 2007
Widget Week in Londn: sounds cool. This include a MobileMonday dedicated to widgets (and of course, with a Webwag mobile demonstration!)
Technorati Tags: mobilewidgets, mobile monday
May 14th, 2007
Sun officially launched today “JavaFX” (previously know as F3). It’s a scripting language that could be used to easily create rich content application for Java powered device.
This seems to be the Sun’s answer to Apollo and SilverLight, from Microsoft. Honestly, the answer is a little bit disapointing
- One more language! The language itself, is nothing really fancy. No major killing feature, not as dynamic as Ruby for instance, and not close enough to other “standards” like Javascript or Java. So why create another language, while there are so many?
- Integration, deployment: I take a look at the first sample and libraries. The library is something between 1 and 2 meg, on top of a standard JavaVM (JavaSE!). So, it’s huge. That’s one of the big weaknesses of Java today: the runtime is already so big, the installation so long, but worst, the starting time once everything has been installed.
- Target: mobile. Sun claims that it’s a good candidate for mobile application. Of course, it’s the next battlefield. But honestly, JavaFX is way too big to fit on existing mass market devices or any existing J2me implementation, so it needs to be embedded natively probably. I do not beleive that JavaFX mobile will be a serious candidate in the next 18 months, too early.
- Why not pushing further SVG? SVG is the current standard in vector graphics (and Flash is the de-facto standard). So why not push more SVG, by creating a better binding with SVG and Java, and/or Javascript?
So I do not believe that JavaFX will be big. It’s another missed opportunity from Sun to reinvent themselves. They had a widely deployed VM, that had the “network is the computer vision”, and now they desperately trying to follow on the RIA…Ajax is an intermediate technology, soit’s a fantastic opportunity to create something really new, Microsoft and Adobe are on the train, and Sun still trying to jump in…
Technorati Tags: javafx, javaone, ajax, silverlight, apollo
May 9th, 2007
Orange is also preparing the launch of his own startpage. Created buy Orange R&D Labs of San Francisco, BubbleTop will be the latest entrant in this market. Highlight are on search and sharing (this sounds familiar to me…).Welcome guys to the sartpage land! BubbleTop is the new name of their previously secret project, “dimsu”. Still not public, so we have to wait a couple of week to have a better view of the features, but it’s a clear sign (if it was needed) of the importance of startpage for information ogranisation.
I am always surprised by the fact the operator does not use the asset that they haves, like address book, to create more applications for the end user. Adress book synchronisation could be a killer feature with a social networking web application. Sim could be used to store some of your web indentity so you can take it with you…..
More one “Le Blog de Bezier” (French)
Technorati Tags: ajax, startpages, webwag, netvibes, bubbletop
May 5th, 2007
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– Eric Cubizolle