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Vodafone UK and Vodafone IT

Today is the Italy gDay day: Google Nexus One came on the italian market. WOW!! Then I browsed the Vodafone site and I saw offers around all technologies they deliver such as iPad, ADSL (...), but quite anything about Nexus in the home page, just a little link (?!?). I was a little afraid... Then I presumed that it was a market strategy of vodafone not to do that big marketing around the new gPhone... Then I went on the UK site and I found this: they say "Android smatphones to suit all pockets"... I'm a little surprised... Any consideration? ;)

Stay connected...

Android Camera performance: new Options for preview callbacks in froyo

I managed to install the new Android Froyo release on my nexus one yesterday (a bit late I know... ;) ). I was really excited by the new features introduced by the google team (WiFi and BlueTooth hotspot device transformation capability, increased JIT performance, and so on...). Among the other features the release note reported some improvement on the camera preview side. The problem with the camera was that using the preview callback didn't allow to directly access the buffered preview calls running into poor performance frame preview that involved too many gc() calls for camera applications (Further informations are reported both in google group discussions and in details at http://nhenze.net/?p=349 - see comment #6 of that post to find a reflection trick to avoid using native code). Anyway it seems that the new Android platform version fixed this problem on the SDK!!! I haven't already tested the new implementation in order to understand the real performances, but if you dive into the android.hardware.Camera documentation both on 2.1 and 2.2 version, you can find the possible reason of that: new methods that were @hidden into the 2.1 version are now available (in particular: addCallbackBuffer(PreviewCallback pc) and setPreviewCallBackWithBuffer(byte[] buffer)). They will not only help to avoid gc() but their usage will also help performances when manipulating image frames to realize real time camera applications... I'm gonna test the implementation in my spare time...

Stay connected...

Impressions on the WhyMCA Mobile Developer Conference 2010

Friday the last I attended the WhyMCA Mobile Developer Conference 2010. It has been a really big event if you consider that the idea has been created and developed in few months: the start has been given by Alfredo Morresi, my colleague at Funambol (www.funambol.com) when he posted the proposal for "Mobile development, an event I'd like to an I'll try to realize" - in his (italian) blog.

Here are my few impressions:

- The event was greatly organized: the WhyMCA staff did a really great work in order all things to go fine there beginning from the quality of the discussed arguments. I definitely must say it has been a "WOW" experience.

- The numbers talk about 250 persons involved, also not italian people; the event was attended, of course by developers, but also by sales and courious users. This is important as the spread of mobile technology in Italy is a little complicated to be explained, but it is anchored to the billing model that carriers created during the latest years: just to understand SMS is always king feature for a SIM data plan as italian users prefer to send SMS than other way of communication such as push email and voice in general. Finally I think that many users just don't use internet data plans just because the capabilities of their devices.

- A lot of speech were about the emerging Android platform and iPhone latest architecture development. A room was quite entirely reserved for the Android platform discussion and I think this is good. Win Mobile 7 was presented personally by a Microsoft representative at the beginning of the conference and also RIM sent an italian sales representative to talk about the BlackBerry cloud services. Technologies like HTML 5 and flash were covered.

- Many Speakers (like me) were not technology gurus: I mean that the topic of their speech is out of their work field and they did it for passion. In my case I talked about Augmented Reality (see next bullet) but in the latest 4 years I've always been developing synchronization mobile clients and API for Funambol. In other words I think the whole event was "Passion Driven" both for the speakers and the attendees.

- I'm not surprised that Augmented reality is so a really hot topic also in Italy: I personally presented a speech that was intended to show how simply an Augmented Reality Application can be created using the android SDK (if anyone's interested, please take a look at my slide here). A parallel discussion track was related to the iPhone technology and the speech was realized by Stefano Zingarini and Lucio Riccardi (I directly worked with them previously to solve some Blackberry signature issues but I personally met them at the event).

In general I think it the WhyMCA Mobile Developer Conference 2010 was one of the most interesting event I've ever attended and I hope there could be more and more like that in italy.

Stay connected!!

Augmented reality: new applications era

I was looking around for news coming from the Mobile World Congress 2010 that is going on in these days in Barcellona. My company is there to promote our new Funambol portal and products and the CEO Fabrizio Capobianco will have a talk (see http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/268105/865d64a7b2/1218000305/d9ffb4d567/ for further infos).

The scope of my company is synchronization (http://www.funambol.com) but I've always been addicted by everything concerning the mobile experience and in general the issue of how improving user experience using new technologies. My first tech background when I was graduating at university concerned robotics and AI control, thus when I'm googleing around for the latest news about mobile world I am always excited when I find something about what in the early '80 was called "Virtual Reality". I was just a child when the "The_Lawnmower_Man" movie was out: it clearly explain what a vitural reality approach could be (something like "Virtual reality for dummies" - see more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawnmower_Man_(film) made on the original Stephen King's book).

As a developer I tried to figure out how to use a mobile device in order the user to have a "Virtual user experience" as 3 years ago, I was learning the basics about the Java ME Sun's technology. I made some experiment on how to interact with the real world using the device's camera and sensor (jsr 234 specz in general) but I realized that technology was a bit too young.

Today we use to talk about "Augmented Reality" as we talked about "Virtual Reality" in '80. I found this interesting article on Games Alfresco blog: it seems that if you own a last generation device the Virtual Reality issue is resolved on it. The link below shows a full video of what a mobile device can do with the current implemented technologies:

http://gamesalfresco.com/2010/02/15/metaio-releases-unifeye-sdk/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+GamesAlfresco+(Games+Alfresco)&utm_content=Google+International

Wow!! I found it really impressive!!

The applications shown in the video are demos but just try to figure out how they can be applied to the real world. I remember when I was playing "Doom" on my first vga PC, shooting the biggest monsters with the biggest cannons many hours per day: my mother always blaming me not to be out with my friends but wasting my time in front of that violent game... Soon I think people will be able to play games down the streets, using their own device just pointing their cameras and shooting the enemies maybe in multyplayer mode...

Also think about how these new technologies can be applied to the real world using the right approach (maybe not just games ;) ) they can be used in a wide application area, starting from games, of course, down to world accessibility improvements (search "The VOICe" app in the android market to have an example).

Let's see how the market will be dealing with these new technologies...

Last minute update: Multitouch on Android Google Nexus one

I was a little anxious to use the new features... I was googling and at the end I found this:

http://androidforums.com/nexus-one/41504-how-force-2-2-2010-ota-update.html

It works and I managed to zoom my first photo with 2 fingers thanks to the multitouch feature. The installation is a little tricky but it seems to be working...

In other words now I have a multitouch and multitask device... That is the best solution!

Multitouch and more on Google Nexus One

The latest official updates of the Nexus One include the implementation of multitouch technology. The strange thing is that it is now available for the Android Google Nexus One device but the update will be provided OTA (Over the air) to all devices "gradually". This means that you have to wait for a notification message and then download the update. For further information about the latest update fix see the link below:

http://googlenexusoneboard.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-software-update-for-nexus-one.html

I haven't received the update message right now. Let's see in the next days... :)

Android Nexus One

It has been very hard to find a Google device right now in Italy as it is not available on the google market, but finally i became the owner of a Google nexus One device. It should come here in Italy the next year but it will be branded by some carrier (rumors say Vodafone) and,as a developer I prefer Unlocked phones. I'm beginning android development on java platform and I hope I'll be soon able to public the first projects as applications on the Google Android Market.

Right now I think the device is really nice (not ugly as the G1) and usable even if it has just a virtual keyboard with the options to edit messages and doing searches using TTS voice integration. 

The nexus One owns a 1 Ghz QUALCOMM processor and 512 MB RAM plus an high resolution screen. It is the right device where to run the Android OS 2.1 (It is really heavier then the previous versions). Rumors say that in EU it will soon support Multitouch, but I have to say that I don't think it is so much important for me as a user (As a developer I prefer multitask :) ).

Just one thing: even if the market is ready, the number of really useful application is not nearly comparable to the Apple's one that shows more than 140,000 apps and their quality is not so high. Anyway I think it depends by many factors and soon many software house will create new apps or port the iPhone one in order them to be available for android devices.

Further news will come in next days.

Funambol email client blog post example

... And here is the post content sent by my blackberry using the funambol email client!!!

__________
Funambol :: mobile open source :: http://www.funambol.com

Thunderbird client send to blog example

begin:vcard
fn:Ivano Brogonzoli
n:Brogonzoli;Ivano
email;internet:ivo@funambol.com
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
version:2.1
end:vcard

This is just an example for the last post. This post was created simply
sending a message unsing the Thunderbird email client to my blog post
email address. As you can see the signature is reported at the end of
the post and if you include your vcard properties with the email, it is shown at the beginning of the message body. Better to avoid this behavior, but this is just an example ;)

--

Ing. Ivano Brogonzoli
J2ME Software Engineer

Skype: superivomania
Yahoo: ivano.brogonzoli

Funambol :: Mobile 2.0 Messaging, powered by open source :: http://www.funambol.com

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change."

Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)

Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0

This blog amis to make you confident with Mobile 2.0 and help you creating your own web contents using your own mobile device. You just need a mobile device with an internet connection and a flat plan. Here you will find some tips and tricks that will allow your device to become your only tool to interact with your web data. Of course, at the end of the story you'll understand that you won't ever  need a PC browser, but only your phone.

Mobile 2.0 services and personal data

The question is: how can I use my phone to realize the full suite of services I have on my PC?

The spread of mobile technology makes it possible. Let's see together how you can replace your preferred PC services and appications on your phone.

First of all, when you buy a new mobile device, the biggest problem is to find a simple way to have your old device data on your new phone. How can you do?

Many manufacturers like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Blackberry (...) offer you their own software to backup your personal data (address book, calendar and appointments, for example). The mess is that they just make a backup of your data onto your PC, so you require to install at least a manufacturer application like Microsoft Active Sync or Nokia PC suite to have all of your data saved (mostly via USB, as per now).

Wouldn't it be nice a centralized service that does all of these steps for you? Of course there are some web service proveders that actually do that.

If you look for a free and innovative alternative, take a look to Funambol.

First of all go to the link:

http://www.funambol.com

Follow the links to the myFunambol portal, createan account and download the Funambol Email Client on your device. As U can see from the Fuanmbol home page Funambol supports a large number of devices, but if you don't see your, please use the Funambol "User Discussion" List to ask for addition - someone will answer very soon.

Be sure to have a flat data plan activated on your SIM card if you don't want your carrier to bill any single Kb of data received and sent during the installation and client's usage.

Now take few minutes to go on the Funambol portal and learn about what synchronization is and how it can help you and your buisiness.

Enjoy.

Receive your emails on your device (when they have just arrived!!!)

Of course, if you took a lok to the site suggested i n the last post, and you saw the Funambol developer team page, you saw my photo on that page as I am a Funambol developer. During the past 3 years I've been working on a useful email application that works on many devices and really makes it possible to avoid the use of a Personal Computer in order to send/receive emails, but only using your device. The Funambol Email Client is the key to this problem. We have many flavours of this product as it works with perhaps all the existent devices and operative systems and manufacturers. We provide both email client for Java capable devices and plugins for Symbian and other OS devices. Also if you use a Blackberry, I suggest to take a look to the Blackberry flavour of our products: we have the right applications both to synchronize contacts, tasks, calendars and notes and of course using a free push email service on it.  The usage is simple: access your funambol account, select your Blackberry device, synchronize your data and begin to receive your emails when they just arrive on your email server thanks to the push technology.

Synchronize yourself and enjoy.

Create your web content with your phone: posting to blog

If you own a blog you can share your ideas, comments and discussions on the web. This is the base concept of the web 2.0 that changes the web paradigm in the last years: at the beginning, internet was only a way to read contents and find informations on a wirld wide network. Now it changed and you can contribute with your own contents. If you are reading this blog you are experiencing one of the first tool that changed that paradigm. The matter is: can you use your device in order to post messages to your blog. The answer is yes! The solution is once more the Funambol email client. This functionality is only present on blogs that allow you to post via email, so depending by the type of blog, first of all you must see the instruction to activate your email posts. You will see that blogging via email is possible by sending a mail to your blog post email address. Just put the post 

title on your email subject and the post body on your email body. Of course you can use a PC email client like Outlook to do it, but if you wanna do it with your mobile phone now you can: send the post with the Funambol email client.