Sapere Aude
Tag: mobile
i made a very geeky discovery on the commute today. if i put something between the lids of my notebook while carrying it in my bag, i can keep the notebook on while walking. instant ipod at no additional cost. since i rarely part from my bag, this could be described as my first wearable. now, for some interesting applications:
All-day computing is a reality (up to 8 hours on select systems) when combined with system battery with the ThinkPad X30 Series Extended Life Battery. This unique battery can be added to the bottom of the ThinkPad X30 notebook to provide up to 8.0 hours of computing on select models.
this is my next computing-related purchase. i already get 4 hours out of the current battery, and it spoiled me. gone are the days running from outlet to outlet. that is a whole 9-5 without one recharge. impressive.
This paper describes our implementation of the Universal Location Framework, a technology that allows aggregating multiple location technologies, seamlessly transition between them, and exposes a single Application Programming Interface (API).
Today there are well-established technologies for position location such as Global Positioning System (GPS), cell phone triangulation using Enhanced Observed Time of Difference (E-OTD), and emerging technologies such as Digital TV (DTV) signals, Wifi, and so forth. The performance variation of these technologies with respect to the environment has been the main reason for their development and continued existence. ULF is addressing this issue by not being restricted to any specific technology. Instead, it uses a layered approach that allows integrating (fusing) multiple technologies.
intel’s research in location-aware computing seems to have resulted in JSR-179, which was approved a few weeks ago. with luck, it will be implemented shortly.
A prototype mobile phone that also works as a TV set for digital TV broadcasts shows a TV image on the air during a demonstration. NEC hopes to launch commercial models by 2005.
taking stills + receiving video. what is missing is taking video, and all of a sudden flash mobs can be on air. alternatively, there are now bluetooth cameras.
the components are all there.
can we bring it all together, and produce something that goes beyond “gee look i can take pictures”? we will hopefully find out this summer, at a mobile semantics hackathon in zurich. let me know if you are interested, and what you could contribute.
I tested the new smartphones last night. I had to check into this site, of course, and it rendered not bad at all. I’m inclined to do a simpler, one column layout without the sidebars if I ever decide to buy one of those. I still think their GUI sucks ass (its based on tiny buttons with illogical function mapping). I’d much rather have a phone with a touch screen, but they are very bulky. So I guess I will skip this generation of mobiles. The picture is almost original size. It’s highly alarming that every mobile device is demoed with sports scores. Who gives a fuck about sports scores?
2002-11-05: Xaraya is now public. Initial reactions are very positive. I’m glad we didn’t do any forums, because forums attract scum. In other news I did an interview with internet intern, a german mass market internet rag (some 400k circulation). I talked about the reasons behind Xaraya and why Xaraya will succeed where other php cms will fail:
The article should be up in 2 weeks.
2002-11-09: I opened a whoopass can’o’worms when I outlined my plans to implement workflow for Xaraya early next year. I want to start very simple (actually the work would be done for a client project) because I knew from preparing the web services talks that workflows are a very complex topic. Gary suggested I look into wfmc which is the industry standard for workflows. Very nice, but I guess implementing it would keep me busy for a year. Workflows might be a topic for oscom too. Both wyona and zope already implement some support for xml-defined workflows.
2002-11-28: I created my first WSDL file today, with the help of some tools. I’m pretty sure my WSDL is invalid. Scripting languages with their weak type systems and WSDL don’t exactly mix well. I hope to eventually enable web services to call into the APIs that Xaraya offers. At this stage, it is merely a nice idea, but I’m slowly making progress.
2003-01-25: I took the plunge, and am now running a current Xaraya snapshot again. Lots of new toys to play with 🙂
Yeah I know I have been slow with updates, but a) live has been hectic b) Xaraya is not yet very convenient for blogging.
On the bright side, comments should now be fully functional, with a nice tree view.
2003-02-12: Another one joins the MT love. Marcel is a buddy from the Xaraya PMC, and the 2 of us should really be using our own dogfood, but alas it is not there yet re: blogging comfort. One day soon, though.
2003-02-12: Xaraya Usability Recommendations is probably one of the more extensive studies about usability in the open source field. And we are not even at 1.0 yet. Kudos to Doug and Drew for this fine doc. If we follow through with this one, good things are in store for the web layman.
2003-02-21: This feed validates as RSS. I took the plunge, and fixed the RSS feed for Xaraya. Unlike postnuke, Xaraya will ship with a rich feed that makes use of the 2.0 format. We now also have SOAP support. Mike pushed a changeset that enables to call Xaraya API methods over SOAP. Here is the relevant part from the WSDL.
<wsdl:arrayType=”xsd:string[]” />
<xsd:complexType name=”wsModAPIFuncRequest”>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name=”module” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”func” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”type” type=”xsd:string” />
<xsd:element name=”args” type=”xsd:xsdl:myelement0″ />
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
2003-02-27: Aye, Kevin, we will work extra hard on usability.
The PN user registration process is plain silly. It is one of the things that I was hoping to see the last of in eventually moving to Xaraya. I have a suggestion for anyone working on the end-user (non-admin) aspects of the core modules. Pretend that the typical user is my mother who gets very flustered when web site processes aren’t as easy and straightforward as possible. And Mom cries when she gets flustered. Please folks … don’t make my Mom cry.
2003-04-21: congrats team.
It is my pleasure to announce the first Beta Release of Xaraya (.900). This release is the culmination of nearly a year’s worth of hard work and undying dedication to creating. All of the developers on the project have devoted many hours to reach where we are today. The first Beta release for Xaraya is intended to capture a baseline of what needs to be accomplished before the final release. This is merely another step in the long journey that began with PHP Nuke, and then PostNuke for many of us.
2003-06-25: My friend John Cox is being interviewed about Xaraya:
With the articles system combined with the dynamic data system (both written by Michel), a webmaster no longer has to wait for developers to dream up new modules. All a webmaster has to do is dream up what they want to display, and from there it’s just a matter of adding 2 templates into the system and creating a new publication type to gather the data.
I just installed Xaraya again after neglecting it for a while, and I must say, very impressive. Time to mop up the nuke market with their silly systems.
2003-06-30: Looks like everyone and his dog is converging on XML pipeline processors these days. With more powerful XSLT editors, maybe the time for these technologies to appeal to a more mainstream audience has come.
2003-07-02:
2003-07-20: Xaraya goes new ways again. They now use phing, a php clone of ant, to maintain build files for the distribution. Very neat. The more standardization, the better. Apache Lenya is using ant more and more for various scripting tasks too. This nicely leverages the very good ant documentation and literature, and means you have to learn fewer concepts.
2003-08-02: Xaraya is now bitkeeper project #6 by number of change sets.
2003-11-04:
Trolling through the Bitkeeper tree on the site, looking at the change sets, the different names, the comments, it just sort of occurred to me this is beginning to look like a factory, chugging merrily along I’m noticing more and more people on the public mailing lists wanting to take the bk plunge. The collective consciousness has apparently reached a critical mass conclusion and internalized that this is the normal way of life around here. Quick rewind to 8 months ago, when most everyone (me especially) were still trying to figure out how to do a merge… You’ve come a long way, baby.Marc
I am very happy that we made the decision to establish sound processes, use bitkeeper instead of cvs, and aim for quality. It took longer than the usual crappy php project, but then again it is of much higher quality. We are now the number 3 user of bitkeeper, only surpassed by MySQL and the Linux kernel. Amazing.
2003-12-12: This post led to an avalanche. Wow, 19 months later, the repercussions are still working its way through the php cms community 🙂
2007-06-20: linux.com is now running on Xaraya, a CMS I co-founded
occasionally, there is still a gem to be found in the slashdot crowd. in response to the announcement of an apache port to windows ce, len produced this nugget:
The WinCE apache thing, but then it hit me. It isn’t about the general type of web server that we know and love. It’s about a portable transaction platform!
Imagine that you are a salesman, contractor or other individual who travels and does business with many different people in many different places. If you had a 802.11 (I don’t think bluetooth will make it) enabled Jornada or iPaq, then you could carry a web-based transaction server with you, wherever you go. You wouldn’t need a fixed IP, nor a constant broadband link to the internet.
You could hop on to your client’s wireless LAN, or establish a peer-to-peer link to make your transaction server (e-business whatever) appear local to your clients. They could do business with you, and you take your web-site and data with you when you leave. In this way, you could use a near universal interface (web browser) to handle customer interactions, without having to scrawl all of the information in by a flaky pen-based interface.
This would be a very cheap way of doing business, with less threat of being cracked by some script kiddie.
Why not build innovative mobile apps with 2G technologies instead of whining about UTMS?
Esther Dyson:
We were driving to a board meeting in Tallinn, Estonia. When we arrived at our destination, Juri Kaljundi picked up his cell phone. “Gotta warn them we’re here?” I joked? “No, I’m parking,” he answered. He was sending an SMS to the city’s parking service. Based on his cell phone number and the license number and the location he entered, the parking service database would register his car as parked, and bill him at a rate tied to the location and time. Later, when a meter minder came by, the minder would see a “mobile parking” sticker on Juri’s windshield and could send another SMS, including the car’s license number. As long as Juri had registered as parked, no problem. Otherwise, the system would fine him for parking without registering.
Estonia is evidence that the current mobile network is just fine for all kinds of cool applications. Imagine what could have been done with all that money that was sunk into 3G licenses by investing it into cool ideas like these? Obviously, there is a shortage of smart ideas and an abundance of capital. I see no other explanation for the recent dumb investments.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 