Open Moto's Call to Unify Mobile Java Platform

On Monday Motorola announced the launch of it's opensource site; opensource.motorola.com, and made a call to "Unify Mobile Java Platform":

Motorola Launches opensource.motorola.com

New Web program to feature code contributions, open source projects, information and idea exchange

Motorola Issues the Call to Unify Mobile Java Platform

Company open sources MIDP3, Java test framework & test cases to jump-start unification movement; encourages mobile industry leaders to support the effort

If they were really serious, i would have expected them to have spent sometime on the presentation of the site - maybe they wanted to let everyone that they had bought the enterprise version of SourceForge.net (maybe?), but it came across half-baked and unprofessional to me... if they aren't even going to put the effort into tailoring the site, how much effort are they going to give the developers?

Releasing test cases to JSR's to Unify Mobile Java? I thought the development and release of test cases (a.k.a. technology compatibility kit) was part of the JCP process?

The cynic in me also tends to think this move is because Motorola staff don’t have the capability to keep up with and debug the companies changing position on operating system usage (is it Symbian, Microsoft, Linux or a Motorola OS we are using this week??)

Mpowerplayer: A Java WebStart MIDlet Player

mpowerplayer is a Java Webstart application that allows Web users to try J2ME applications directly from the Web before they buy, with the security to protect your midlet.

Mpowerplayer also provides a Developer Environment, claiming to be the only cross platform MIDP 2.0 SDK, offering J2ME development for MacOS.

From the site:

The mpowerplayer software developer kit includes the mpowerplayer as a standalone application. It's a pure Java emulator implementing MIDP 2.0 and MMAPI, suitable for integration with your favorite environment and IDE. Third-party integration efforts exist for Ant, Eclipse, Idea, and we hear of more efforts almost daily.

mpowerplay also provides a catalogue in their demo platform, so you can use them as a distibution channel also...

I actually found it at the Download Page for GMaps, a free J2ME application that displays Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Windows Live Local (MSN Virtual Earth) and Ask.com Maps and satellite imagery on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices.

Java will be Free: Not Whether, but How?

Looks like all the speculation was right - Rich Green, executive vice president of Sun Software, after being asked "Are you going to open source Java?" by CEO Jonathan Schwartz, announced "At this point, it's not a question of 'whether,' but a question of 'how'."

I am still not sure if they are talking free as in "freedom", or free as in "free beer!"...

Instant Messaging: New Developments in Presence, and Real Time Information Interchange

This was a Webinar presented by Ferris Research, a San Francisco-based research institute focused on messaging and collaborative technologies.

Instant Messaging (IM) began largely as a proprietary service ...
From this beginning, we have seen: presence extended to other devices (telephony handsets, cell phones, PDAs, applications, etc.), the addition of other forms of real-time information interchange based on audio, video, file transfer, and structured text; and the support of multi-point interchanges (conferencing). We have seen the emergence of standards that define protocols for both the internal use, and the linkage, of presence and real-time information interchange systems and services, and we have seen new entrants (Skype, GoogleTalk, etc.) lead with audio capabilities.

The webinar presented three good speakers that provided different perspectives on the IM and Presence area.

1. Nick Shelness, Senior Analyst, Ferris Research, and Independent Technology Consultant, started with an overview of history of IM, the architecture of presence systems, and the standards involved. He mentioned the use of SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP as the standards in use now.


2. Joe Hildebrand, Chief Technology Officer, Jabber Inc, then discussed the approach of Jabber Inc to the IM space, and the need to incorporate capability into the presence protocols to enable the roaming of end users across multiple device endpoints. He listed 3 outstanding problems in 1) close consumer systems that will not federate, 2) ongoing changes to the SIP/SIMPLE protocol, and 3) security and trust issues


3. Adam Gartenberg, Offering Manager Real-time Collaboration Offerings, IBM Lotus, also discussed the need to cater for different device endpoints and the ability to select different modes of interaction. He also spoke of the move toward "2nd generation" real-time collaboration by the integration of data feeds into the interaction - "“real-time as a platform, not just a communication device"

The question and answer session then bought up further issues:

Will IM replace email, including for document transfer?

Yes, the increase in spam on SMTP means IM is a more attractive interaction medium as it is protected from spam by having a “deny” by default policy, however the major concern is from virus threats in file transfer, but IM “servers/brokers are now addressing that with server base virus scanning. However IM is not (traditionally) a store and forward interaction, and we can’t be online all the time!

Will we see federated communities of IM users

IM communities will have to interoperate for IM to replace/compete with email for communication. This will expose IM to the same issues of security and spam as email faces.

Application interaction through IM

I was excited by the prospect that new online applications will be proactive as a bot based interface across IM. This has been seen to some regard, and the XMPP protocol makes this very easy to implement. It was over 5 years ago that I did a paper on Intelligent Agents, and saw the promise for this interaction, once the IM client is as interoperable as a web browser we might see this promise realized.

Thanks to Ferris for putting on this webinar, I look forward to the next one: Mobile Messaging Devices, 2006-2011

It is here

It is here, the moment you have all been waiting for, but never realised would be... the blog for Derek Munneke.

"Have you gone completely mad?" Mark asked me as I slipped a sixth different bottle into my hand baggage.


"I'm trying to challenge and subvert my own fundamental assumptions as to what constitutes rationally constructed behaviour."


"Does that mean yes??"


"I mean that I'm just trying to loosen up a bit," I said. "An aeroplane doesn't give you much scope for arbitrary and alternative types of behaviour, so I'm just making the most of the opportunities that are offered."


"I see."


Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See, 1990 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345371984