GNU+Linux on mobile laggy

Three years on, iphone still dominates the new media smartphone market. Nokia limps along after it's massive head start with Symbian.

GNU+Linux is nowhere near.. too many bugs, too little (if any) QA. GNU+Linux is may never get and succeed in the quality niche.

QA and UI consistency has to be massively improved, will it change? I hope so, but no company has managed it over the last 3 years.

T-Mobile G1 (Google Android) mobile phone

Good to see the T-Mobile G1 announced. I wanted to get an OpenMoko phone, but the lack of camera (and MMS?) means one of my most common uses is ruled out. Great that HTC who make the G1 have gone with a modern keyboard design like I proposed a while ago too :)

Tigra from nVidia looks good, hope to see some actual models out in the future.

Vodaphone O2 stifled number migraton

Sadly Ofcom have not succeeded in their effort to get mobile number portability in under 7 days. Established market controlling companies Vodafone and O2 teamed up to prevent 3 (who have a smaller market share) from gaining migrating customers. Of cause Vodafone and O2 do transfers in 20 mins over the water in Ireland!

Apple iPhone App Store

Apple iPhone App Store is the central location, the only location to get iPhone software. The problem is that it's not a software meritocracy, it's autocratic and Apple dictates what is approved for sale. It's not possible to buy software which runs on any mobile handset.

Hopefully other mobile vendors will wake up and agree an open standard for mobile software soon :)

Mozilla mobile edition delayed to 2010

Mozilla have announced their mobile browser now won't be available until 2010! It's amazing just how far they are lagging behind these days. So all the competition unified around WebKit will have two more years to consolidate their lead! Time for Mozilla to wake up?

Time for a new phone

I've been looking at getting a new phone recently, my Sony Ericsson K800i is 18months old and tech has moved on. The Nokia N95 isn't that much better than what I've really got, but the N96 looks promising, even if it still has the tiny 240x320 QVGA display! The Sony Ericsson W999i looks ace, and features the QWERTY rocker-button style keyboard which was popular on the M600 and P1i.. but it's not out yet.

My fav would be one of the two models out only in Japan at present: Sony Ericsson SO905ics is a 5MP Cybershot phone complete with FWVGA (864x400 px) DVD resolution display. The other choice is the Sharp 922SH, again decent screen size and handy QWERTY keyboard, but I don't know if this is touch screen, which is really needed for browsing the interweb (so hard on E90 as no stylus!). Hopefully equiv models to 922SH and SO905iCS will be released in GSM+3G unlocked varieties soon so I can give them a try.

Mobile Web Problem

Back in the 90s when we were all still creating our websites in HTML 3.2 we optimised pages for dial-up and compressed images down to the smallest gif we could. One unfortunate side effect of the Broadband boom in the UK worldwide is that websites don't cater for the optimal page sizes which mobile devices necessitate.

Even with the bandwidth problems of popular sites (BBC News front page is 278KiB) until last week the BBC News site did fit on my 800 pixel wide Nokia 770. However they have changed it now, so a minimum display width of 1000 pixels is required. We can of cause switch to the low graphics version.. but when the version before fitted, it is a shame we have to go back to a nearly text-only web page if I choose to browse on a mobile device.

A lot of web designers (including the BBC?) make the mistake of looking at the screen resolution of their visitors and assuming that people browse full-screen, when many people do not maximise their browser windows.. so that 1280x1024 display window is actually only about 800x600.

If you look at the resolutions of mobile devices you will see all the current Sony Ericsson models run at 240x320 resolution, and Nokia models the same. Apple iPhone is slightly higher at 320x480. LG KU990 Viewty comes in at 240x400

The other thing for website designers is to remember is that a 240pixel wide display which measures 2 inches across is 120dpi (compared to a normal desktop 72dpi), so if you display your text at 10pt, that will look 40% smaller (why aren't font sizes specified in cm on screen ?)

So web designers, remember there mobile market for browsing is growing all the time, optimise for small page bandwidth, and page width/height no more than 800px (my site comes in at 768px ;)

The other problem is sites with broken HTML, like the BBC News site, 375 errors. That is shoddy! (I should point out that blogger which generates my site has left 169 errors on the page, so I'm not in the clear either!).

GNU+Linux rtsp and mms support

There are a lot of rtsp:// and mms:// served streams online, and GNU+Linux distros like Ubuntu are not yet being released with native support for playing them or saving them to a file. Mplayer, Kaffine and Xine are all unable to play the stream URLs. Mplayer seems to be able to play the audio, but it is all crackly and breaks up.

If we use the workaround of converting the RealPlayer RPM, installing libstdc++5 and then pasting that into RealPlayer we can play rtsp:// streams ;) but we can't save them :(

It's a shame, as there are a lot of sites like youTube Mobile. Which don't rely on Adobe Flash, so we would have otherwise been able to watch the streams. mms:// is common as WMV and WMA files are served that way often. To be a multimedia distribution GNU+Linux needs to support these protocols out of the box from Firefox ideally. The current workaround is to install the DownloadHelper extension in Firefox (unfortunately Firefox still needs a restart.. reminds me of MS-Windows restart issues still!).

K800 torch

My Sony Ericsson K800i doesn't come with a way to turn the light on as a torch like my old K700i did. Fortunately someone has created a Java Torch application! There is also a Symbian P1i Torch application for the Sony Ericsson P1i if your lucky enough to have one of those phones.

Flip, Slide, Clam and Open style mobile phones!

We've had Flip phones (aka Clam shell) and Open phones for years.. but it seems "slide" is all the rage.. I did used to like "flipping" but I'm not convinced on sliding yet! and it's another moving part which could break.. Here's me hoping phones in the style of K800i and P1i will remain popular ;) The market is definitely big enough to support the variety we have though.

Google Android 3D and UI

Google's 3D accelerated android looks amazing, (you will need an FLV downloader etc to watch the videos as they are in Adobe Flash format). I love the browser history pages viewed as 3D, maps with street panoramas, and the ability to run games like quake! I'd like to see how they did the panoramas in code, seems to all run in Java from the look of it. There are so many nice touches, like integrated messaging, and the way the title bar is a notification area for incoming messages.

Interesting they chose WebKit instead of Mozilla's Gekko HTML rendering engine too. When you notice who compiled the OpenVG spec at Khronos things all start to make sense... ;)

Perhaps this is what the iPhone should have been? Another missed opportunity for Apple!

Sony Ericsson K800i Picture Messaging MMS configuration

I'm with O2, but bizarrely the O2 website cannot configure my phone. I had to reset my phone the other day and rather than hang on the 0870 premium rate number to get them to send the MMS config again I researched online how to do it myself. The O2 site even tells me the configuration is coming, and the PIN, but it never arrives!

Fortunately the sonyericsson.com/support site has this Picture messaging (MMS) page which can send through the configuration. Sending through the settings and applying them to my K800i created in my Settings->Messaging->MMS a new profile, "O2 WAP GPRS", containing:

• Message server as: http://mmsc.mms.o2.co.uk:8002
• Select Internet profile "O2 WAP GPRS" (which the O2 Active had sent the correct config)

Other useful Sony Ericsson pages, email setup, and internet settings. Related O2 technical info is HM2K site.

Sony Ericsson K800i not saving missed call entries

Just had my K800i stop recording Answered, Dialled or Missed calls! I made two changes, one of which will have fixed it, try them in this order:

1. View call history ("All" tab), press "More" and select "Delete all". Press "Yes" if prompted. Restart the phone.
2. If step (1) doesn't work, go into Menu->Settings ("General" tab), choose "Master reset", then the "Reset settings" option (this doesn't delete contacts etc).

Do backup before you try any of these tips!

No K800i driver hassles with GNU/Linux ;)

A funny thing happened when I plugged my mobile (Sony Ericsson K800i CyberShot) into a WinXP machine, it couldn't access the device at all! I had to go and download (and install as Administrator) a whole suite of Sony applications coming in at about 45MB just to be able to copy a my high-res photos off the phone.

Being a GNU/Linux user I'm not used to having all this faffing around and manually installing drivers (reminds me of the 90s), my K800i is fully supported out of the box, even on my old Kubuntu desktop! Just plug in the USB cable, and a window pops up with all the phones files for me to copy ;)

Junk caller number withheld ?

It's a shame, the TPS and the Information Commissioner's office can't do anything about junk calls, because unscrupulous companies are exploiting a loop hole. When asked why they are calling my non-publicly listed number they just claim the number has been generated using random modification of an existing number as a base -- which gets them off the hook with the IC's and TPS office. The legislation really needs to prevent all junk calls by default, sure if people really opt-into it then its fine, but we shouldn't be subject to interruption by these unscrupulous companies without opting-in. Regulation by "voluntary" industry groups like TPS/DMA/MPS isn't working because they are funded and represent financially the same companies they are supposed to be regulating! Conflict of interest ?

Junk calls often have the number displayed as "Withheld" (not to be confused with "Unknown"). I've been looking for a way to reject Withheld calls outright (aka Anonymous Call Rejection [ACR]), with a recorded message explaining that anonymous calls aren't accepted etc. I've not found a way to do it at present though. BT have their "Choose to Refuse" service on land-lines, which lets people reject individual numbers, and individual Withheld numbers (BT obviously knows the real number!). Also BT customers can dial *227# to reject all Withheld numbers from a BT line, and #227# to receive Withheld number calls again.. (A lot of legacy company PABX systems don't set a valid number still, so these won't get through) more info.

Apparently it is possible on some mobile networks, this page lists the GSM Caller ID codes, (background), however *30# sadly doesn't work on o2! Anyone able to reject Withheld calls on a UK mobile? Post a comment if you have managed it. This Caller ID FAQ has some useful info, which makes it sounds like o2 isn't working within the Telecoms Data Protection Directive (97/66/EC)!

In practice this kind of feature doesn't need to be server bound though, it could be a local setting to redirect to a special voice mail message etc. I'd code it myself if we had an open mobile phone platform!

Update: Samsung D900 can reject calls from Withheld or Unknown callers. N95 comes with Advanced Call Manager, as does Sony's P910i letting the user create whitelists and blacklists.

The story of when Sergey Brin met Larry Page

If you've not already read the excellent article on Sergey Brin I can recommend it. It talks about his family, background, their life in Soviet Russia, immigration to the US, being Jewish, where he was educated. Also how he met Larry Page and the moment he came up with the idea of ranking based on citations (i.e. Links). The rest as they say is history. Oh and Chernobyl Chili -- "45 minutes in the microwave." sounds yum!

I remember the moment when I was first introduced to Google search by a friend back in spring 1999, it was amazing compared to the other search engines I had plugged away with until then. The key is to make money out of ideas though, and Google have done that so well with AdSense, because the ads are integrated with the results people click them, and I know from experience I'm often looking to buy a product anyway!

The Inside Look at Google video shows what a great working environment they have there. This all leads me to wonder if the UK could foster such entrepreneurial success? We don't have quite such an environment of innovation and pushing the next generation I feel; things are improving though all the time though. I would love to see more Colleges and Universities helping start-up companies get off the ground and do innovative stuff with technology. Doing all the existing Desktop feature set on mobile is one big area which will be filled over the next 5-10 years -- why not make it our own destiny to full fill that?

This interview with Google's Marissa Mayer is really interesting too.

So thanks for doing search so well Google, and more fun times ahead!

How about an open mobile phone platform sir?

Mobile phones have come a long way in the last 10 years in the UK. I remember when my friend got his first analogue mobile back in 1995 and how impressed I was! I've got a K800i myself now, it's the CyberShot 3MP camera model. A really impressive feature set over the K700i I had. The K800i's screen is bigger, web browser renders clearer in anti-aliased fonts and it even has an M2 memory card slot, hungry for MP3s and photos - going to be great rocking to some fab tunes on the ski slopes with this phone come new year ;) Now all the French Alps need is a snowfall!

There are a few things which could be improved though. The stability and reliability isn't perfect; PhotoDJ crashed while saving my edited photo, and it even crashed when I added Nite (langue à la mode?) to my words list! Interestingly it auto-restarts when it crashes, also restarts when engaging file transfer mode, it could just be rebooting into "File Transfer" mode though?

Now what would be cool is if Sony published the source code, I'd love to get the opportunity to write some features for this phone. Here are a few ideas I've had :-
General:

• Integrated search box on main GUI of the phone, which searches with Google.
  
• Modify Camera View and PhotoDJ to make the Zoom function always accessible.
• Optimise Next Word Prediction, a cool feature, but too slow to be usable at present.

Compose message features:

• Add a way to set the Subject on TXT and MMS messages.
• Revise the input mode to not switch the last letter to CAPS when I switching from abc to Abc input.
• Add a some words to the dictionary and share the list online, Blog and Nite etc. (or use the Mozilla dict?)
  
• Keep the order of msg in Drafts, at present it changes when they are viewed.
• In the Web browser jump into input mode when a key is pressed (need to press Edit each time atm).
• Know that peoples' names and cities first letter should be capitalised.
  

Past use statistics:

• Address book search using past usage stats, like I mentioned in 2004. Also stats for non dictionary words, just add them automatically to a local list.
  
• Unify and sort the extended character list by their usage frequency, atm there are two different orders in use on different dialogs in the phone!

Add Contact dialog:

• When you meet someone and get their mobile number you always enter the number first and then the name; so the Add Contact dialog should highlight that field first!
• Know that 079* is a mobile number, and add it as that rather than Home in the Address book.

Finally, I know mobile phone companies make money out of chargers and other accessories to cover their discounted phones, but it would be sooo much simpler if phones cost slightly more and had standard connectors. USB, headphone jack and charger connectors are pretty much standard on other devices, but even between my Sony models the connectors change! Korea and now China are leading the field with standardised mobile charger and USB sockets; they are even mandating USB chargers! Now we just need a standard headphone/handsfree/music player control port ;)

A positive development is the announced Linux-based Motorola Rokr E2, it shuns the 100 song limit Apple hobbled the Rokr E1 with to "protect" their iPod music player market. The more open and DRM-free approach of the E2 looks v.promising; let's hope it gets released eventually. Many interesting things forward to in the mobile arena, I can't wait ;)