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MIDP 2.0 for Palm officially released

the IBM websphere micro environment with support for MIDP 2.0 has now been officially released on the palmone website. it runs on Palms with OS 5 and and ARM processor, specifically the Treo 600, and the Tungsten and Zire lines.

i'm not crazy that the VM isn't bundled with the Palm OS...that seems like it would have been a better deal for both palm and ibm. hopefully, it will be bundled in the future.

If you already have a J2ME app, conversion to the palm plaform is pretty easy, although there are still a few "known issues" that developers need to work around.

we did it with our FeedBurner Mobile Feed Reader - so if you have a Treo 600 or a Tungsten C, try it out!

jet get born

If you read this sidebar regularly, you'll know i'm big at pointing out derivations in the music i hear - and in that light, i am gonna have a field day with jet get born. don't get me wrong - this is a fun disc, but if ever a time machine were to be invented via music - this is it. right back to 1970. this is awesome. granted, it's been done before by the black crowes, but i think jet does it all a little better. and just to clarify - these are all original songs, but you can go through them one by one and pick out particular songs they were all derived from. let's take a look at the first few:

Last Chance - AC/DC (Highway to Hell, Long Way To The Top, hell, every ac/dc song is the same) - well it's only fitting. jet are aussies so why not try to crack the top 10 strip club playlist.

Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Iggy Pop - Lust for Life, A little Zeppelin - is this on a VW commercial or something? you might actually mistake this song for "Lust For Life" in parts

Rollover D.J. - definitely some riffs stolen right from BTO's Takin' Care of Business - probably others. this song is a lotta fun.

Look What You've Done - the Beatles via Oasis. i wish i remembered calculus so i could get the significance but this is a second derivative! sounds more like oasis than the beatles, but at times really sounds like the beatles. did i just calculate the area under john lennon's acid expanded mind or something?

Get What You Need - the Kinks All the Day And All The Night. is that the name of that song? it seems too long.

Move On - Rolling Stones. Wild Horses, steel guitar and all.

Get Me Outta Here - Alice Cooper, like Love It To Death-era Alice Cooper, not School's Out-era Alice Cooper.

anyway - it goes on from there in much the same way. good straight forward rock-'n-roll. guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and an occasional moog. what else do you need? an original sound? nah....

[buy at amazon]

dada live: official bootleg (vol. 1)

dada is probably best known for their 1992 hit "dizz knee land" which has suddenly fallen back into fashion with its line "i just flipped off president george, i'm going to disneyland."
fans of dada know their catalog goes much deeper than that, and that what's really to be enjoyed about this orange county trio is their unique brand of funky power pop with dual vocal harmonies shared on every song by their two frontmen not heard since early lennon/mccartney or maybe the posies.

i've seen dada live a couple times, and what's really amazing is that they can pull off these dynamic vocals all while playing their instruments in rhythm syncopated to the vocals, with almost studio quality. no parlor tricks here, no britney spears lip syncing, just pure live showmanship.

that same talent comes across loud and clear on offcial bootleg (vol. 1) (does that mean there's a vol 2?) - this is one of the better live albums i own judged both on production and performance - polar opposites from say, the smiths ironically or maybe not-so-ironically titled rank.

the "hits" are here (maybe that's just "dim" and "dizz knee land") but the rest of the album rocks as well. if you mildly like this band, go out and buy this. if you can wait for the shipping ...

[buy at amazon]

sony ericsson announces 3 new MIDP 2.0 phones

Z500	K700	S700
GSM/EDGE 3-band 65k Colors MIDP 2.0 MMAPI + WMA Java 3D Push-to-talk	GSM 3-band 65k Colors MIDP 2.0 MMAPI + WMA Java 3D	GSM 3-band 262k Colors MIDP 2.0 MMAPI + WMA Java 3D
consumer link	consumer link	consumer link
developer link	developer link	developer link

three new MIDP 2.0 phones on the horizon - note none of them are symbian phones - which is good news if you are distributing J2ME apps. they all also support the Java 3D API for gaming.

let's hope they can get these into the hands of developers soon. that's usually about 3-4 months after they are available on the grey market. they just started offering Z600s to developers last week!

one lawsuit down, one to go for RIM

via cnet, RIM, Good Technology settle suits
Good Technology has signed a settlement and license agreement with Research In Motion, bringing to an end a series of lawsuits between the BlackBerry developer and the start-up.

RIM is also appealing a decision that they cannot sell in the US because of patent infringement on NTP.

A few days ago, i posted on P900 to get RIM capabilities and wondered why a similar deal with nokia hasn't closed and i think the answer from nokia has been "RIM won't indemnify nokia against their lawsuits" and i've heard the same thing is jeopardizing this deal with sony ericsson.

in laymens terms, RIM won't pay Nokia or Sony Ericsson for any losses or damages they incur by licensing the technology, especially for instance if the companies that are suing RIM also sue the other two companies.

just a plug...

...for one of my colleagues, dick costolo, who gets some good press in this article RSS: Not Just for Bloggers Anymore.

one of the great things about our FeedBurner project/company is that it's right in that fun sweet spot of getting a lot of press.

i've been concentrating a bit on the convergence of RSS in mobile, and it's getting interesting as well. over a year ago, we saw RSS starting to become the preferred model for operators to accept RSS content feeds into their Content Provider interfaces (in Europe, mostly). now, i've seen a few projects in north america that have taken this model as well.

i'm sure we'll see more

toothing

well, when bluetooth first came out, my collegues and i tried to think of all sorts of innovative applications that could be developed, and always always at the top of that list was "things that would happen when you moved into another bluetoother's personal space".

well here ya go, no application but what comes on the phone, and a community around it. austin powers would be proud. this puts the "grr in swinger, baby".

wired news on "toothing"

quick CTIA thoughts

i was down in atlanta at the CTIA conference this week...and was much more impressed with this show than the fall version in vegas. a TON of people down there, pretty much every hotel room was soaked, and in general a lot more interest than i've saw last year. i'll take that as a good sign!

This was in infrastructure show, so there were lots of companies that made cell towers and even the little huts they sell to farmers built right on the show floor. it makes one really think of everything that has to go into the mix to make wireless work.

but there were also plenty of software vendors, operators, and device manufacturers. below is a snap of siemens now famous marketing stunt...they give out inflatable pool rafts that are in the shape of a phone, complete with buttons and a screen and all - but the gimmick is, they only hand them out in the inflated state! so there's lots of people standing around trying to deflate these things, or carrying around inflated rafts. very ingenious!

the best new device i saw was the nokia 7610 a megapixel camera, and i think they finally got the size right for a carry-around all the time smartphone. i wish they made the 6600 and 6620 (which i also tried) in this profile. the "messed up" keyboard didn't bother me...but i'm right handed.

on the CDMA side of things, i really liked LG's successor to the vx6000, the LG vx8000, with a 1.3 Mega Pixel camera, up to 10X zoom, and 1X EV-DO.
phoneyworld has a picture..i have a nice glossy brochure...no pics on the LGUSA.com site as of yet.

best party...Sony Ericsson and Ericsson rented out one of the music halls and had a show with Switchfoot and Train - both of whom i've never though much of recorded, but were great live!

what's behind the new wireless usage policy on united?

apparently, this morning, the policy on united airlines for which wireless devices you can use changed. i say that because yesterday it was the old "anything with an on or off switch can't be used within 10 minutes after takeoff, or 10 minutes before landing. cellular phones can non be used at all during the flight until you land".

this morning, it got way more specific. i can't remember verbatim what the slightly disgruntled flight attendant on my 7am flight was reading off the card, but i do remember some of the details:

No cellular telephones may be used on the flight at any time (until landing).
No laptops with centrino or "wi-fi" technology
No devices with bluetooth may be used at any time
No "Blackberry" or "Palms with email capability" may be used at any time.
No "video gaming phones" even with "flight mode" can be used
oh, and no "noise reduction headphones" can be used within 10 minutes of takeoff or landing because those are electronic devices

at least they don't mention calculators anymore.

i was on the way back from CTIA, so maybe just maybe this was special but that seems odd.

does this stuff really interfere with communications? shouldn't that be solved by the spectrum used on the planes? if it's dangerous to use wireless devices on a plane, isn't that a fundamental problem in itself?

any why the stupid rules against using them even with "flight mode" on? what the hell is flight mode for?

we've all heard all the stories about cell phones in the air confusing towers on the ground, but why would united airlines care about that? we all know cell phones work from the air - on 9/11 many of the unfortunate victims made calls from the air - and i used to always keep my mobitex blackberry on in flight, well, so i could get email throughout my flight.

i've also heard rumors it's because they want you to use the on-board verizon airphones.

and wait a minute, wasn't boeing working on putting wi-fi on planes? i thought the DC-Frankfurt Lufthansa flight was wi-fi enabled. do 777's use a different radio technology than my 737? (i kind hope so).

being an american, raised in this culture of fear (if you believe michael moore in bowling for columbine) - i have no choice but to assume this change in policy is a direct result of what happened in Madrid ( 11-M ).

it's pretty scary, but we've all heard what happens when you put a GSM phone next to a speakerphone on a conference call, and you get an SMS. there's a definite pattern of interference that is generated. and that could be used any number of ways. there's also a some evidence that suggests al queda and it's affiliates are using cell phones to detonate devices, just using the alarm feature on these phones.

unfortunately, this makes all too much sense. the modus operandi of al queda so far has been to use the very infrastructure created by the western world against it. but an airline telling people not to use their n-gage isn't going to stop a terrorist who wants to do damage or inflict harm, and banning such devices from being carried on an airplane doesn't seem like the right answer either.

so what's my point? i'm not sure. i think my point is to see if anyone knows the real reason behind these seemingly silly and contradictory policies. anyone?

Age of Empires for the Pocket PC

wow i just tried out the pocket pc version of Age Of Empires and it's quite amazing what they can do on this platform. I'm a huge fan of AOE on the Mac, so i was definitely pleased to find this.

the strokes room on fire

i actually wasn't that crazy about the strokes debut is this it. yeah it was catchy, and there was nothing offensive about it, but it just didn't move me. maybe it was the repetitive airplay of "reptilia" on XM radio that drove me to buy room on fire - but i think this one's even catchier...and musically a little more complex. this album seems to get a lot of mixed reviews, but i'd ignore those and give this album a try..it's stuck in the turntable.

musically, "reptilia" and "12:51" remind me of a gap commercial, well a gap commercial before they went earth wind and fire on us ( "oh-ee-oh, say do you remember? oh-ee-oh, dancing in september? oh-ee-oh, never a cloudy day-ay..." or something like that). it's guitar bass and drums with a few keyboards sprinkled in..just enough keyboards to be reminiscent of the early 80's east-coast-pre-new-wave-kinda-punk sound the strokes are derived from. television, the cars, you got it.

my only complaint is that this disc is kinda short. barely over a half hour...but to be honest i'd rather have a solid half hour of rock than an hour disc made up of half filler which seems to be the norm these days. so good. keep the filler for b-sides where they belong so you can release a b-sides compilation in 5 years we'll all love.

enjoy.

[buy at amazon]

cross carrier MMS for fun and profit

i'm currently doing a project for a client deploying an MMS application on a carrier's network...however, carrier, let's call them carrier A does not allow us to test using the MMSC on their network...but obviously we can use the data network to throw packets wherever we want, and with some creative uses of third party gateways, we can send MMS on carrier B's network without too much trouble.

so we are using carrier A to deliver MMS on carrier B's network for testing, and neither carrier knows we are doing this. fun stuff! essentially, we've implemented cross-carrier MMS without all the messy billing stuff. it's not that simple, i know, but pretty cool anyway.

treo 600 email woes

i was just about to pen a glowing review of the handspring treo 600... which has performed flawlessly as a business tool for me over the past couple of weeks...when all of a sudden, something happened. the built in email app started locking up the device every time it checked mail.

it didn't seem to co-incide with installing or un-installing any app...it just started happening, and now it happens every time i check mail. using a third party mail app works fine, but i really like the OEM mail app's ability to browse HTML email, and alert me when i have new mail on a regular basis.

i've tried deleting and re-adding my mail account. no dice.

anyone else have this problem, and even better, a solution?

signed,

thank god there is a reset button on the palm

new release of palm midp 2.0 sdk (beta 3)

on my asking palm has posted the next rev of their midp 2.0 sdk. EVEN THOUGH THE WEBSITE SAYS BETA2, when you download the file, it's actually BETA3.

instructions on how to get it are still the same and can be found here.

feed stats

just for the sake of getting this out there...now that i've been tracking my feed stats with FeedBurner for a few weeks...i can see which feeds are being consumed by whom pretty easily.

i've offered at least 3 versions of feeds for awhile now, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom... and my usage is as follows:

RSS 1.0 30%
RSS 2.0 64%
Atom 4 %
Others 2 %

politically, i don't really care which of these formats ends up winning...it will be up to the clients (RSS Readers) to decide which versions to support, and the format that makes it easiest for RSS Readers to move beyond the 3-pane display and deal with things like the i-tunes namespace (like apple has), photo feed namespaces (like textamerica has), etc.

as i'm leading up the charge here in developing mobile readers for J2ME, BREW, etc for some of our solutions it's something i'll need to look at closely from a product management standpoint as to what will sell software and service. that probably means multi-standard support for now - but i hope it shakes out in the near future.

from an objective standpoint - from initial conversations i've had, the blogging engines want to support Atom (in addition to RSS )because of its 2-way support for posting to weblogs, but corporate publishers seem like they will just stick with RSS 2.0 because of stats like mine...it's what they're readers are using so if they ever hope to monetize their feeds they're just going to stick with what is working.

interesting.

wow. joi ito's GPRS bill

i'm not sure what to make of this...but this is impressive. here, joi ito talks about his $3500 GPRS bill from roaming and using GPRS around the world.

i'd love to see how that's broken down, joi. which companies are the most expensive to roam on TMO with? i guess when i've used GPRS in travel (UK and Germany) there was always a TMO corporate presence there for roaming, so it was affordable...in fact, i never noticed a spike in my bill.

nonetheless, joi makes some good points.

okay, sorry for the lack of original content here the last week or so. ton of stuff to do. about to depart on a trip to the west coast...where i always get some quality writing done. on tap, some new device reviews and my thoughts on motorola's device strategy.

just where is the Palm MIDP 2.0 public beta?

i've gotten a bunch of emails from people who haven't been able to locate the Palm MIDP2.0 beta.

first, you need to register as a developer with palmone.

then, it's on this page:

http://pluggedin.palmone.com/regac/pluggedin/auth/Java1.jsp

second one down:

Version: Public BETA2 (ARM only)
Date Released: February 20, 2004
Size: 7.3mb
Description: Runtime, Packaging, and Debugging Tools for Java 2 Micro Edition support on palmOne devices. Beta2 includes support for OTA and AMS.
Device Support: Zire 71, Tungsten T2, Tungsten T3, Tungsten E, Tungsten C, Treo 600
J2ME Standard Support: Connected Limited Device Configuration 1.1, Mobile Information Device Profile 2.0

at this URL:

http://pluggedin.palmone.com/regac/pluggedin/auth/ViewDocument?app=pluggedin&docId=1113