Animation about concepts to be aware of when designing mobile user experience

I encourage you to watch this animation as seen on piksels.com. Funny and interesting!


Designing for Mobiles: Users & Context from Niek Dekker on Vimeo.

W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation

No, I am not transcribing the W3C News feed, if you also read the last post from some minutes ago. mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0, the specification whose authors are Sean Owen (Google) and Jo Rabin (dotMobi -and before, at Segala-), has been demonstrated by means of a main reference implementation: the W3C mobileOK Checker.

Behind the web front end in that page, there is an open source checker that has been possible thanks to the mobileOK Checker Task Force: Abel Rionda and Miguel García (Fundación CTIC, current co-chairs of the TF), Sean Owen (Google, chair of the TF from its creation in early 2007 until June 2008), Jo Rabin and Ruadhan O'Donoghue (dotMobi), Dominique Hazäel-Masseux and François Daoust (W3C), Roland Gülle (7Val). Ah, and myself.

Basically, the open source checker implements the tests and the tests intend to provide algorithms for those best practices in the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 (Basic Guidelines) W3C Recommendation that can be performed by an algorithm without the need for a human expert (that is another battle that I'll write about someday).

This is part of the support of Fundación CTIC to web standards in what regards to mobility since September 2005, when I joined the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices working group:

• Provision of two implementation reports for the Mobile Web Best Practices W3C Rec:
  
  • "Implementation D" is the wonderful work made by Martín Álvarez Espinar on the web site of Fundamentos Web.
  
  
  • "Implementation E" is the official web site of the City Council of Zaragoza (zaragoza.mobi), whose content transformation engine was created from scratch by Luis Miguel González, Rodrigo García, Julio Argüello and myself. It was the "kernel" of Merkur, the content transformation proxy of Fundación CTIC.


• Implementation of a W3C mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 checker: the subject of this post. By the way, in CTIC we have a great checker called TAW that can validate web sites against WCAG and mobileOK tests. Miguel García, co-chair of the mobileOK Checker Task Force, is the main analyst, designer and developer of this tool.


• Creation of the Device Description Simple API W3C Recommendation.

It has been a lot of work, besides the dozens of projects accomplished in the meantime, but it is good to see that results are visible and -what is more important- useful.

Device Description Repository Simple API is a W3C Recommendation

The DDR Simple API document has just become a W3C Recommendation. This work intends to provide a standard way for any stakeholder in the web ecosystem to access device information known "a priori" like screen size, number of colours, or image formats and markup supported. The document has been developed within the W3C Device Description Working Group and its editors are Jo Rabin (from dotMobi -mTLD Top Level Domain-), José Manuel Cantera Fonseca (from Telefónica I+D), Rotan Hanrahan (from MobileAware, chair of the DDWG) and myself, Nacho Marín, from Fundación CTIC.

It would be completely unfair not to mention the fifth horsemen, Mr. Rodrigo García (also from Fundación CTIC) who was a key player in the development of the document, the re-expression of the API in IDL and WDSL -to prove how it could be used by other technologies different to the Java API used in the document).

This is not the only document provided by the DDWG, so here goes my acknowledgment to: Andrea Trasatti (Director of Device Initiatives at dotMobi), as editor of the DDR Core Vocabulary (together with Jo and Rotan); Jose Cantera once again, as editor of the document Device Description Structures; Eman, James and Matt, as editors of the Device Description Landscape 1.0; and Rotan, yes, Rotan again, as editor of the Device Description Ecosystem 1.0.

And of course, to all the participants in the group: it was a pleasure to work with you all. I hope we'll work together again. Some of you are still doomed to bear with me in the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, one of the other groups in the W3C Mobile Web Initiative.

Mobile analytics

Some days ago I read a post in the Little Springs Design blog very interesting about Mobile Analytics. I forgot to post about it but a twit from Andrea reminded me that I had that pending task.

It talks about how careless analytics engines for web sites are about mobile web and, given that mobile access is increasing on and on, something should be done about it. There seem to be some commercial solutions but no open solution seems to be available à la Google Analytics.

A must-read article for those intending to measure accesses to their mobile sites.

Nokia Maps 3.0: Great improvements coming

Nokia Maps is the software that I use when I travel abroad. The best new feature that I have found in the news coming from the Finland is the integration with Ovi and, more particularly, the chance to plan your trip in the web and then transfer the results to your mobile. If one image is better than one thousand words, a video is much better than a googolplex words. There you have it:



Available on S60 3rd Edition FP2 devices and soon to come on FP1... and S40 too!

Songbird 1.0

Songbird is a new music player in town. It has recently reached its version 1.0. I started playing with it and all seemed fine. But after installing the LyricMaster extension, it stopped playing music files (no matter whether I disable or uninstall the extension).

It promises a lot but it seems to still be buggy.

Symbian going open

A lot has been written in what regards to Symbian becoming an open-source operating system. The scheduled moment for that to become true seems to be 2010. In the meantime, some facts prove that they are taking it really seriously.

For example, the new Carbide C++ 2.0 has just been released for free. A bit sad for spending money this year on some Carbide Pro licenses, but a step forward into openness. Next step: kill Symbian Signed (or at least, seriously re-think of it).

[EDITED 2009-01-21: This post was written long ago but it was saved as a draft and not published -do not know why-. Published now! :-) ]

Google Reader and its revamped user interface

Google has improved the UI of one of their most popular service: Google Reader, their web-based RSS feed reader. Besides the slight changes in the look and feel, CPU load when accessing the service has decreased a lot.

In an Acer Aspire One, you can now really enjoy the site without your web browser becoming unresponsive once in a while. In an even less powerful device like the Nokia N810, your CPU stops being at the 100% all the time and, if you do not want the full view of the posts you can use the list mode. This mode allows you to view only the name of the origin web site for the post, and its subject and date, so you can avoid all the posts that are not attractive. This list view is an intermediate step between the traditional Google Reader "full web experience" and the simpler Google Reader Mobile.

The main difference is that Google Reader Mobile offers a list of links (one link for each post) and the selection of a post means loading a new page, while the new list view in the "full" Google Reader shows the content of the post using JavaScipt. Luckily, the use of Javascript all over the Google Reader site seems much lighter in terms of CPU consumption.

Great work!

Running Office 2007 in Ubuntu 8.10 using wine

There I go with a step by step tutorial:

Just follow the steps in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=844309 BUT INVERT THE ORDER OF STEPS 9 AND 10. This is, first execute winecfg as said in step 10, and then rename files as said in step 9.

I have started word and typed a little and seemed to be working fine. Then I just moved the cursor over the default Excel spreadsheet and it froze.

Stay tuned and I will report feedback about my experiences with Office 2007 in Ubuntu 8.10 with wine.

Ah, I launch Office apps by means of the scripts provided at http://www.wine-reviews.net/microsoft/microsoft-office-2007-update.html.

Wiki in a JAR

I like using the huge amount of projects in sourceforge, so I have just decided to use this blog to recommend some of the projects that I use.

The first one is a great project that makes a wiki available to you by just invoking a JAR file. It is called "Wiki in a JAR" and you can find it here. Try it and do not tell me that it is hard to deploy and use. As you launch it, it will tell you in which TCP port the wiki is available.

Great to have it in your USB memory!

Toward a unified ontology of Cloud Computing

Although the title of the document/presentation sounds a bit pretentious to me, this is a nice and brief starting point to clarify the concepts related to the well-worn expression "Cloud Computing".

Thank you very much to Lamia Youssef, Maria Butrico and Dilma da Silva.

Chinese Democracy

Since today and for the next ten days, this is my status in the different IM protocols (ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, GTalk, ...) and social web communities (Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku): http://web.gunsnroses.com/splash.jsp.

I know it will not be the same as the old true band but they deserve the attention in hommage to what once was.

Google Gadgets in Blogger blogs

A new feature is available when designing or modifying the template for your blog in Blogger. You can now add Google Gadgets to your blog, as it is revealed in this YouTube video:

I hate Device Diversity in gaming arena... but there are reasons to eat the bait

Being a fan of Guitar Hero since its first release on PS2, I thought that everything would be wonderful in PS3 in what regards to music band simulation. Then came Guitar Hero III and the wonderful Rock Band. But Rock Band did not come with the same flavour to Europe: no pack with the BD and the instruments, which had to be bought separately and individually. That means much over twice the price in the USA even accepting a 1€=$1 conversion.

And hell has been raised even hotter and wilder taking into account the lack of compatibility between the peripherals of both GH and RB worlds. A patch has been announced for Rock Band support of the GH3 guitar but I do not know if it is true. There is no news about Activision trying the same (well, no news further than Activision meaning to sue Harmonix for the patch).

Taking into account how much I hate that Sony does not standardize music peripherals and that I would like to pay once for a guitar or a drum set and be able to play both games, what is the reason that tempts me to acquire another music band simulator?

For example, an expansion like this :-)

[ADDED ON 2008-11-01] Gosh! You can also buy Motley Crue's classic album "Dr. Feelgood"... Aaargh!

Geolocation in urban areas using WiFi

Although there have been previous and successful experiences using WiFi signals from the different access points detected by a mobile device, as Fraunhofer showed in the last IADIS Wireless Applications and Computing in Amsterdam (to which I attended and presented some work that I will talk about someday), Google includes this in its My Location service in its Google Maps mobile app, as they announced in their blog.

The greatest thing is that they provide support for this technology in their Google Gears Geolocation API. Awesome!

I am wondering if Fraunhofer holds some IP and how it might affect the deployment of services based on this technology O:-)

By the one, the news is that someone offers WiFi geo-location, Google is not the only one exploiting this technology.

Physical keyboard in a touchscreen

Also seen in Xataka Movil. An interesting design for a touchscreen that raises parts of ths surface as the buttons of a keyboard. It this is technically possible, I buy it.

Interesting form factor for a MID

As seen in Xataka Móvil, Intel presented their new Moorestown platform incarnated in a prototype of a Mobile Internet Device.

A video is better than a million words, so take a look below:

Flash content in mobile devices (II)

Just a brief post to remark (in what regards to my previous post) that the add-on to block Flash content is also a must in Firefox if you use it in a netbook like the Acer Aspire One. Those sites filled with lots of tiny Flash boxes make an Intel Atom @ 1.6 Ghz sweat a lot (so netbooks with older processors like the Via in the first EeePC must feel like in hell when having to render that content).

Bye for now! :-)

Flash content in mobile devices or how to soothe the pain in maemo

Everybody is very happy with the support of the full web in mobile devices, but any regular user knows/suffers the fact of trying to enjoy rich web sites from a mobile device. Even with a powerful mobile device like the Nokia N810, making use of WiFi connectivity powered by a good ADSL/Cable network connection behind, certain web sites are a hell to enjoy.

The user, although having a full-web browser, ends up using a simpler mobile version for the browser not to drain battery power (for instance, due to the Javascript engine making intensive use of the CPU in Facebook or in Google Reader). The Google Reader site is a good example of how the mobile version is good enough for us to do what we want with almost no cost in computational terms.

I have always loved visiting Spanish sports online-newspapers like As or Marca from the N810, but always making an exercise of injecting patience to my state of mind before accessing: they are filled with Flash content (mainly with advertising purposes) that makes loading the main page as painful as a kick on your butt.

Some days ago, I specifically searched for some sort of Flash blocker, taking into account that such an add-on exists in Firefox and that maemo's microb is based on the Firefox engine. I discovered the Browser Extras repository and then found a Flashblocker port for MicroB.

If you want to know how good it was installing this add-on, you need to read the full post in the OMAG blog.

Nokia NSeries as multimedia servers

I guess I already talked about this. It is something I have used several times: viewing multimedia contents in my phone in more powerful media renderers, like the display of a PC or a TV set. I have been lazy recording a video illustrating about this usage for UPnP technology, but luckily Martin Sauter has just posted one in his blog. You can find the video that he included in his post below:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The mobile phone previously known as Nokia Tube is finally here. It is the first attempt of Nokia in the touchscreen environment (after the long gone Series 90). Running the new S60 5th Edition (still looking for the 4th! :-) ), I guess that this Symbian flavour is no threat for the iPhone... yet. Those waiting for the Messiah iPhone-killer that no one invented so far will have to wait for new iterations of the platform. Here you have a video of this popular phone:



I have been waiting for the last announcements from several platforms trying to erase the Nokia N85 from the top of my wishlist, and this phone will not be the one who makes it. The only thing that might make it would be an Android cheap but good phone like the G1 (you can see it in a previous post of this blog in action), but they are not expected by now in Spain.

Open Symbian Signed working!

After months trying, the page of Open Symbian Signed worked in a try to sign an unsigned application. Symbian Signed is the worst idea I've ever seen on a mobile platform (and on any software platform, in general). At least I managed to sign at least an app to work on my own phone (for the validity period it will last).

With Symbian Signed and the iPhone App Store, what other choice do open developers have but only work on Mobile Linux platforms?

Bonus points for Android in the mobile wars. Only waiting for an actual working phone in Spain... Sigh!

Possibly the best article about Real Sporting ever

Thanks to The Guardian for this wonderful article.

Fundamentos Web 2008

October is almost here and a new edition of Fundamentos Web is coming to town. Web 2.0, user preferences, standards and accessibility in CMS solutions, WAI-Aria, Marketing 2.0, a workshop on development of unobtrusive AJAX solutions in the real world, another one on design of mental models, instant English and Spanish translations available, participation of web gurus like Chaals, Jesse James Garrett, Eric Fain, Steve Faulkner, Becky Gibson or Peter-Paul Koch.

It happens here, in Gijón, on the 27th and 28th of October. The web site of the event has all the information you need (location, agenda, hotel recommendations). What are you waiting for? Sign up!

Real Sporting, I believe

Since my last post about the football team of my soul, three losses in a row (Sevilla 4 - Sporting 3, Sporting 1 - FC Barcelona 6 and Real Madrid 7 - Sporting 1) have made the team being in the media very often in the last days.

The last time when Sporting was in Spanish First Division, we beat the record of fewest points ever (13). The prophets claim that we are going for a new record.

The fact is that, while we are playing against the big ones, other teams have had not so difficult rivals and they are only 4 or 5 points away. Yes, we have zero points, but I will list in the future the amount of points achieved (by the last ten teams so far in the league) in the series of matches between Getafe and Villarreal. Many will get zero too and some others... three? four? That only means that league to avoid relegation to Second Division will be played in the direct duels between contenders.

I have deeply analyzed the game of a lot of teams that I bet that will be fighting to avoid relegation. They all lack of the offensive skills of Real Sporting. I know that the defensive play of the team will be strengthen after facing the great teams we have been fighting so far.

The next challenge is tomorrow, against Villarreal, another team to be feared. They were second last season, with many chances to be first until the very end. This season they have started in even better shape. This is not the league of Real Sporting yet so 1 or 3 points would be a gift.

Our league starts next week: Mallorca, Osasuna, ... If we get 4 or 6 points against them we might get out of the relegation positions. I am sure, we can. I am sure we will.

The differences between the richest and the poorest is bigger than ever this year. But among the poorest, a decent defense that I know that we will achieve and our powerful attack will make us prevail.

And you will see...

¡Siempre Sporting!

G1 looks good to me

There have been different and opposite opinions about the new Android phone, but this video makes me think that android phones will rock. I want one.

Bluetooth interaction in El Molinon

I have just read in a post of the official web page of Real Sporting de Gijón that a network of Bluetooth hotspots is being deployed in El Molinón in order to push content to users during football matches.

I hope the system is working soon and I will report about it right after I try it. The post says that El Molinón is the second football stadium in Spain and the third in Europe (are you sure?) using this technology, after Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu and Bayern Munich's Allianz Arena.

The creators of this system are AdsMedia and it looks like they will be the developers of the WAP Portal (isn't this a deprecated expression?) of the club.

Finding in Nokia Maps via Google Maps

If you are a user of Nokia Maps, you'll probably have realized that in no way it matches the searching capabilities of Google Maps. One thing that I did not know is that you can search in the s60 GMaps client and save the result as a favorite. now you'll find it in My Places inside the Nokia Maps app. More details and screenshots in The Nokia Blog.

Fring on maemo

Some weeks ago, the guys at Fring released a new version of their popular multi-IM and VoIP client, but now for the maemo platform. It crashed when I tried it in the N810 but a few days ago they launched a revision of this wonderful software, and now it works perfectly.

You will find the same experience as in the s60 and the rest of mobile platforms having this nice communication tool available. The user experience is worse in what regards to IM if compared to Pidgin, for example. But, on the other hand, it allows multi-IM connectivity plus VoIP, reducing a lot the memory fingerprint needed when using the options available until now (nokia IM client plus pidgin, pidgin plus gizmo or whatever other combination of software tools to be logged in yahoo, msn, icq, aim and any VoIP provider).

Great piece of software to be followed!

Maemo's new generation

The Maemo Summit is bringing a lot of good news. The most commented ones are cellular connectivity (great!), high definition camera (wondering the impact to the price) and OMAP TI3 support (will this mean less battery autonomy?). I would also like to point out some other ones:

- Meta Tracker: content search and metadata tools (with Frade being part of the dev team, btw).
- gUPnP (I am still looking for complete UPnP support on the N810).
- upstart: faster system bootup and shutdown process.

...

And last but not least... bluez with A2DP support... Yayyyyy!

More promised changes to the maemo platform here.

Evolution of global warming

I have just received a greeting card in Facebook containing the pic below. No comments :-)

SequoiaView

I am writing this post to recommend you this great free tool for Windows that I have been using since last year. It is called SequoiaView and creates a map that pictures an image of your hard disk divided into blocks. Each block represents a file in your hard disk and its size in the map is set accordingly to the proportional size it takes. So you can visually detect big files and thus be able to move it to another disk or delete it.

I have the laptop I use for work with its disk almost full and I could not guess how to get more free space. I left SequoiaView running while I went for lunch (it takes some minutes to complete the map in this laptop) and now I found a big number of tech videocasts that I had downloaded long and that were in a folder that I did not remember that existed in the disk.

Absolutely recommended! Thanks to the University of Technology of Eindhoven for this wonderful tool.

You can find below a screenshot showing the map of my disk while highlighting the 2 GB pagefile.sys file.

2007 Office System SDK

Microsoft has just released -in their Download Center- the 2007 Office System SDK: Open XML Format SDK 2.0.

This SDK allows you to create and manage Open XML documents programmatically, offering a set of .NET classes that create a high-level abstraction layer instead of forcing you to know the details of the XML formats used in Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007.

It is great that this is available as a free download as, in the past, it was a commercial add-on for Visual Studio.

Fotmob

For a guy crazy about football like me, this is a must!. FotMob allows you to have online real time information about the main football leagues in Europe. It works on Windows Mobile and Java phones now, with Android and iPhone coming soon. There is even a Windows Vista gadget :)

It is already installed in my mobile phone and it'll be used a lot ;)

Google Chrome: First experiences

Everything is fine with Google Chrome and I am in love with it, but... how is it possible that it was born to enhance web user experience in what regards to web services and applications and it does not support an important service built in the Google Bar for IE and Firefox such as bookmarks?

I bookmark URIs in Google Chrome and it does not sync with the bookmarks in Google Bookmarks. Bad thing which I hope it is fixed soon.

And I also miss several Firefox extensions that I am in love with (ForecastFox or TwitterFox, for example). Maybe the open community of developers will port them soon. In the meantime, Google Chrome will not be my default browser.

Enough complaining. It is true that this is a beta (and a top-quality beta, I must add) so it is only a matter of waiting a little and it will be improved as Google always does with their inventions :)

Google Chrome

We have a new browser in town. If everything in the comic book is true, I think I'll change my default browser. Already waiting for it on Linux. And on maemo? :-) I wonder how a tab-model and plugin-model based on processes suits to a resource-limited machine. All my life in the university teaching me about how good multithreading is and in the end they sell that everything in its own process is better. Jokes asides, it is the same old story, more usage of resources for the sake of security and stability. I bet that a good multi-threading model would be able to do the same with no bugs is the best, but I guess we have all surrendered to the idea of making software without any bugs.

I'll test it in depth in the next days and then see whether I change the default to Chrome.

Ah, and it is great that it is based on open-source and it is open-source itself. Other browsers can take benefit of it, as Chrome has taken benefit from other open-source browsers. Will V8 become the "de-facto" standard in Javascript VMs?

Time will tell about all of this.

Sporting 1 - Getafe 2

Yesterday, my dearest Real Sporting de Gijón debuted in the Spanish Liga BBVA. They lost 1-2 against Getafe CF, twice finalist of the King's Cup and having been eliminated from UEFA Cup by Bayern Múnchen. Sporting did not deserve the result as they were the only team on the field that tried to play good football.

In the first half, Sporting started with speed, accuracy in the pass, pressing on the strikers and midfielders of the rival and only lack of precision shooting on goal stopped them from scoring before Getafe did. This happenned on minute 14, when Perez Burrull signalled an unexisting foul by Diego Castro. Albin kicked hard from the frontside of the area defended by Sporting. A visitor player embedded in the barrier moved away and Pedro and Kike Mateo also moved (inexplicably). The fast ball of Albin found no opposition and Sergio Sánchez could barely touch the ball. Lesson 1: Never get away of the barrier even if the ball is going to break your teeth.

The next five minutes belonged to Getafe but it was only a mirage. Sporting showed their decision to go for the match and went on with the good play based on speed and good treatment of the ball. The reward came on minute 35 as Diego Castro kicked hard from the outside of the area with no good results but he got the clearance and hit the ball hard again close to the opposite post of the goal.

In the second half, Sporting paid the effort done in the first part of the match. Getafe had the possesion of the ball but did not play vertically. Positional dominion of Getafe most of the time and few chances to score from both teams. On minute 86, the referee did not signal a clear foul to Diego Castro when counterattacking and in the next play Getafe scored their second goal. Although this decision had its importance in the final result, it is relative, as the red-white defense gave three chances for Getafe to score in that play. The last one was a clearance towards the center of the border of the area which Casquero took benefit of to score with a great and unstoppable kick. Lesson 2: Never clear the ball to the center, always to the sides and -if possible- out of bounds.

Although I mentioned the referee twice, he did well all over the match trying not to stop the game vey much. This is the opposite to the whistle concerts of the referees in the Second Division. But it is true that his only two mistakes cost two goals in the end and that he did not use the same judgment to book Sporting and Getafe players with yellow cards.

I am proud of the way in which Sporting played against one if the best football teams in Spain. As they get in better physical shape, this team will do great things in Spanish First Division. Of course, I bet against anyone who dares that they will remain as a First Division team at least in next season. They suffered in the end due to the energy spend in the first half. No player has been on the grass for 90 minutes all over the pre-season. This means that games are still very long for their legs. If Sporting players manage to play at least 60 minutes with that pace, they will do a lot of harm to most of the teams in the league.

WiFi antennas in laptops

I've complained long ago about the WiFi antenna of the Lenovo X60s that I use at work, compared to other devices. Even a Nokia N810 proves to detect more networks with more signal power in medium and long distances, but you could not say that an N810 is a cheap device.

But I really checked it out now that I am trying my wife's Acer Aspire One in some sort of hard conditions. I live in the 5th floor of a block and my parents live in the 2nd. I usually get to their place to work with the needed peace of mind (wife+baby+puppy dog do not help much to focus on work) but I have always had the problem of WiFi, as my AP is not in the vertical to the room at my parents', where I am now staying. That means more walls to be crossed by WiFi transmission.

The fact is that I brought both the X60s and the Acer Aspire one and former cannot see my AP three floors upstairs while the wonderful Aspire One gets the signal with a 75%. And the Aspire One is one of the cheapest notebooks out there so it supports my idea of Lenovo using WiFi antennas of unacceptable quality for a machine that is meant to be used for work purposes on-the-go.

Maemo and S60 nirvana

No comments. Just read the (great) news. And then wake up by reading the last line :-)

Sporting 2 - AC Milan 0

Today, Real Sporting played its last match of the pre-season against AC Milan. Our young team was brave and did not feel less than the legendary Italian squad. It is true that they came to El Molinón without Inzaghi, Ronaldinho, Kaká, Gattuso and Pato. But I guess that a team coming back to Spanish 1st Division after 10 years in 2nd Division, and playing the friendly match with the typical line-up of last season, was meant to lose again:

Abbiati; Zambrotta, Maldini, Kaladze, Jankulovski, Pirlo, Brocchi, Cardacio, Seedorf; Flamini and Paloschi.

Like it or not, it is very likely that this is the starting line-up for the 1st match of AC Milan next Sunday in what regards to the defense and the midfield.

Favalli, Antonioni, Bonera, Emerson and Viudez substituted Maldini, Jankulovski, Kaladze, Cardacio and Paloschi. Except Viudez, unknown to me so far, the other four players are all renowned players in Calcio.

Paloschi had its two chances to score the first goal but he missed both of them. In minute 22, David Barral (the top scorer of Real Sporting in this pre-season) set the 1-0 in the scoreboard of the stadium. In the 2nd half, Mate Bilic scored the 2nd goal after shooting directly from about 20 metres a foul signalled by the referee in the right corner of AC Milan's area.

Real Sporting will start the 2008-2009 Liga BBVA against Getafe in our stadium (El Molinón) and no previous result will matter if we do not win the first three points. By the way, it is a shame the state in which the stadium is, looking like a stadium built in the beginning of 20th Century and not having been cleaned or cared about since its construction. It looks its improvement and amendments will be ready at the beginning of the 2009-2010 season. I am afraid will have to play UEFA Cup then in the stadium of our dearest neighbours: Carlos Tartiere :-)

Olympic Games: Basketball Tournament final game

This morning (Spanish local time), USA and Spain played for Gold Medal in the Basketball competition for men in the Olympic Games taking place in Beijing. Spain forced USA to play at their highest level but they finally lost.

Spain confirms as the only nation being able to 107-118. The final score does not show how even the match was, as two technical fouls in the last seconds allowed USA Team to increase the difference. Those fouls were due to the Spanish players and technical staff being tired of the performance of the referees.

I wish I could have the time to review the match and list all the personal fouls (that would be PF too in the tougher NBA competition), 3-second violations (Howard lived in the paint!) and travellings made by USA Team not being signalled by the referees or the amount of inexisting personal fouls signalled to the Spanish guys. And I am talking about plays completeley clear to the spectactors and with no hesitation or posible subjective interpration of them.

I am not saying that Spain lost because of the referees. With a proper work of the referees, it would have been a better game (close until the end, so more thrills for the public!) and it is very likely that in the last plays, the USA Team would have prevailed as they are faster, stronger, technically-gifted and proving a long range shot accuracy never seen before in the NBA Team performance in FIBA competitions since the Dream Team I.

It is just that the referees stopped us from enjoying that close score until the very end of the game. Dwayne Wade has said it is the best game ever in basketball. I do not agree with him as there are some NBA finals that have been really great, but it is true that it may have been the best one in FIBA competition.

Congratulation to the best USA Team after the eternal Dream Team I and I hope that Brazauskas and Co. get back proving their knowledge about basketball rules and its appliance. You cannot act in a different way in Euroleague and in competitions where USA play. The rules are the same for everyone and it is USA who have to adapt their basketball to the FIBA rules, not the referees adapting to the ways that benefit the USA Team. They do not need any additional help.

Oh, by the way, Mr. Bryant. You have fallen in my top list of sportsmen radically and you were among the best. You are no one to gesture suggesting the public to shut up. It is the same public that was cheering you up all the competition and part of the public that helps you earning all the money that you earn. Bad thing that proves you are a kid in the body of an athlete.

I wish this generation of Spanish basketball players was eternal! Thanks a million times for your basketball!

Acer Aspire One and the danger of installing new packages

I followed the steps provided by Jorge in his blog in order to change Aspire One's default Firefox 2 by the latest Firefox 3 from a repository so it can be updated easily.

The day after I did that, my wife complained to me as she could not check mail anymore. Launching onemail from command line I could see that a shared library was missing (libxpcom_core.so) was missing. What a chance that this is a library included in Firefox 2 and not in Firefox 3 :-)

You can take a look in Jorge's post in his blog as I provided to him the steps to correct this undesired situation (awaiting moderation, at the moment of writing). Besides that shared library, three other ones were missing so you'll have to follow the same steps to have the four files back in the /usr/lib directory of your Linpus copy in the Aspire One.

Acer Aspire One: an excellent IP-TV player

I have just installed Zattoo in my wife's Acer Aspire One. It is a very good IP-TV player that offers many Spanish TV channels and some international ones. It provides localised TV-channel lists for Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom and its web page is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

It works smoothly on the Aspire One (even in fullscreen mode), so it allows this cheap machine to become an IP-TV box. The service has been free until this month but in Spain, due to users demand, they are charging 2.40€ + VAT if you want to use it in Spain during August and September in 2008. I had used it in the past, but I have paid for it in order to have another place where to watch the Olympic Games.

Zattoo is available for Linux (several distros), Windows XP & Vista and Mac OSX so you do not have any excuse to start downloading it. Absolutely recommended.

Spanish football needs Sporting de Gijón

It is not me saying this. Today, you can read in as.com about the semifinal of the summer tournamente Teresa Herrera between Atlético de Madrid and Real Sporting de Gijón (the local football team and the only one that I support, in case you never visited this blog before). The journalist who wrote the article says:

"If our football needs Atletico in the mood to compete against Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, it also needs Sporting among the great ones. El Molinón has always been the stage for fine matches. And Sporting has had in its roster top-level players."

Wise words :-)

Ahora más que nunca, ¡Sporting de Gijón!

Second post on Acer Aspire One

Full menu of xfce4 enabled by right-clicking on the desktop.

Several applications installed: vlc and skype firstly so any video can be played and A/V conferencing works. Problem with pidgin because of a version conflict with libpurple in the repositories -working on it-).

The peculiar netbook-typical desktop is reconfigured to offer me the apps that I want to shortcut.

Login screen enabled (need to enable a logout button O:-)).

compiz up and running at start time.

Now it is becoming a real netbook.

Ah, before I post on gaming on the Acer Aspire One. Remember to update mesa-libGL (sudo yum -y update mesa-libGL): glxgears reported 404-421 fps before the update, and 433-466 fps afterwards.

First experiences with Acer Aspire One

I gave my wife yesterday an Acer Aspire One as the day of our IX Anniversary is pretty close. She sa w me carrying the wrapped gift and... mmmmm... let's say I was "adviced" to give it to her in advance.

She is very happy with it, although she misses a real desktop and the Linpus Lite linux distribution is a bit poor to her. This is not a con against this distribution because I guess it is what computer newbies need to be able to start using a PC with Linux on it. It offers a home screen with big icons taking you to the main applications needed: browser, email and IM clients, multimedia, games, basic configuration options.

The lack of a chance to install new applications (at least it is not obvious how to manage to do it) is something that makes you want to install another Linux distribution. I hope Acer and Linpus will improve this issue.

It takes a bit to get used to the keyboard but after some minutes you are used to it. WiFi works perfectly. It boots in about 20 seconds and it shuts down even faster.

Great buy for 298€. I love cheap ultralaptops.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Copied to the OMAG blog and enhanced.
EDITORIAL NOTE 2 (18/10/2008): s/ultralaptops/netbooks/ :-)

First Olympic Medal is Gold and is Asturian

Samuel Sánchez made it. He managed to surprise the favourite candidates for the Gold Medal in the Road Cycling Course. Samuel got the first medal for Spain in the first day of the Olypic Games. He got a gold and he is Asturian.

By the way, Giro d'Italia, Tour de Francia and Road Cycling Course won by Spaniards. Great year for Spain in sports: Nadal winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon, the Spanish Football Team becoming European Champion, ...

I hope this is all a prelude to the most successful year in sports. Errrr... Anyone thinking about taxes and prices decreasing in order to properly celebrate it? :-)

I hate fragmentation

Device fragmentation (or device diversity) is a problem. Too many different software stacks installed in those little devils. Although a lot has been done to improve Linux distribution fragmentation in the last years, something similar happens in this field. This is why I hate that different Linux-based mobile environments join forces and this is why news like this make me unhappy.

... and Even Better News for the Mobile Web

And how is it that it took so long to the W3C MWBP working group in order to be able to provide its first W3C Recommendation? The Mobile Web Best Practices have been waiting for months for XHTML Basic 1.1 to be a W3C Rec, because it was defined as the mark-up language of reference for the Default Delivery Context define in the document.

Was it so important to wait for it? Yes, XHTML Basic 1.1 is the mark-up language jointly supported by both W3C and the OMA from now and on in order to be the hypertext language of reference in mobile devices. So no more XHTML Basic vs XHTML Mobile Profile (well, they shall be taken into account for a few years as old devices disappear and new devices start including browsers supporting XHTML Basic 1.1). It is great that, in the next future, the OMA and W3C speak the same (hypertextual) language.

Good news for the mobile web

I am sure I am being the last one to spread the word, but I am proud to say that the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 (Basic Guidelines) have become -two days ago- a W3C Recommendation. The proud is due to the fact that this document has been developed by the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices working group, under the umbrella of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative. I joined that group in September 2005 by attending the Face-to-Face meeting in Rome, some months after its birth in June 2005. I must say that in my first months within the working group I felt like fish out of the water. Little by little, I managed to understand the whole problem (it is easy to understand the problem of the web in mobile devices, in general; I am talking about understanding certain subtleties). Then, more people at work started understanding it too and participating in the group and we managed to even provide Reference Implementations of the Best Practices (i.e., web sites following the BPs), like zaragoza.mobi or the web site of Fundamentos Web. We have managed to do even more stuff related to all the efforts within the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, but these are stories yet to be told (some of them really soon) as the final version of new documents come out to the public.

Sporting back in the elite

I have a post pending with my humble hommage to the return of my football team (Real Sporting de Gijon) to Spanish First Division... or "Spanish La Liga", as the guys at CNN funnily say. In the meantime, the managers are trying to make a proper team to survive in the competition and are preparing a pre-season set of friendly matches to start the engines of the team. From my vacational retirement in the Canary Islands, I proudly read that one of these matches will take place against AC Milan (one of my fave teams ever since the times of Gullit, VanBasten, Rijkaard, Costacurta, Massaro, ...). By the way, the only time both teams met was in UEFA cup, in 1988 if my memory does not betray me, and I was there. We won 1-0 although we (unfairly) lost 1-3 in the 2nd match. I hope that we win this upcoming game, although it's been long since then and the difference between the rich and the poor is greater. Anyway, it is time to dream of great matches against excellent teams in El Molinon. I wish I can go on dreaming like this for years. It would be the sign of Sporting settled in First Division.

First post from Maemo WordPy

Trying maemo wordpy from an N810 for the very first time. Nuff said :)

Technorati Tags: maemo, wordpy, n810

Android on N810

Thanks to the easy install procedure made available in internet tablet talk, I am enjoying android in my N810.

Slow, smelling like alpha software, but working. It seamlessly detected and used my WiFi (I suppose it takes data from the N810 install because otherwise I wonder how he managed to crack WPA :-) ).

I hope it will get improved along time. Looking forward to new and faster versions.

How open will the Symbian platform will be in the future?

After Nokia acquired enough shares of Symbian, they promise Symbian will be a fully open platform. Maybe they do it to stop Linux-based initiatives like Android or Limo. Whatever the reason, openness would mean to me that I can flash my N80 (abandoned from Nokia updates) with features only available for newer NSeries models so far. In my dreams :-(

Juego guapo

Preparate, jogo bonito. Llega el juego guapo. Nos vemos en el Mundial en un par de anos. Brasil y Argentina tiemblan. En Europa no hay rival.

Maps and mobile phones

This cool video is the winner of the S60 video contest. It perfectly shows some of the great possibilities of maps applications in mobile phones. A video is much better than a googolplex words so there you have it.

Symbian Foundation

The greatest mobile manufacturers join forces in order to make Symbian a big open platform and their instrument will be Symbian Foundation. It is great that Symbian becomes an open development platform (please start killing Symbian Signed!) but the only idea of a single Symbian flavour is good enough news. You can read it with more detail in this Nokia Show Press Release and I got to these URI from a post in Barrapunto.

To the semifinals!

Mediamarkt Spain offered to pay back the 25% of the price of all their HD-enabled TV sets sold in the last weeks if Spain reached the semifinals of the Euro 2008. Time to pay!

Firefox 3 already out :-)

After having installed Firefox 3 some days in advance to the Download Day in a Ubuntu machine, now it is time to do it on Windows. The updater available in Firefox itself reports a connection timeout when trying to check whether there is a new version available.

Looks like the Guinness world record is on its way :-)

Firefox 3 already out?

I've just installed Ubuntu 8.04 in a machine. It had Firefox 3 beta 5 installed and 160 packages to update. After the update I find that... I have Firefox 3 installed. Wasn't Firefox Day on June 17th? Are Ubuntu users special to Firefox and thus gifted with the browser in advance? O:-)

Here comes the Dragonfly!

Opera 9.5 is out and it comes with a set of developer tools called Dragonfly. So far, web developers have browser extensions like Firefox's Web Developer, Internet Explorer's Developer Toolbar or Safari's integrated web developer tools.

The ability of debugging Javascript is very important in web browsers in order to determine the different JS support, APIs on top of it or implementation deficiencies.

The developers of Opera are doing a great job and it is still one of the fastest desktop browsers and the least memory consumer.

But... some of the typical Web 2.0 sites show some problems. I think this is the last post I'll do on blogger using Opera 9.5, because CTRL+SHIFT+arrow keys save a draft of the current post instead of select text. Pretty uncomfortable as it changes the behaviour of post edition in Blogger

Enter OMAG!

I was going to post about the new version of Vagalume, but I guess I will do it here. You are all welcome to the web site of the Open Mobile Astur Group :-)

A new member in the family (II)

As promised...

A new member in the family

Sara has a new "brother". His name is Mazinger and he is a dwarf poodle. Pics soon available.

Maemo, Wiimote and remote controlling: A perfect combination

In the last two weeks, a new maemo friend is in town. He is an old colleague and workmate who has just bought an N810 and developed this in such a few time. Don't you think he will be a valuable contributor to the maemo scene? :-)

Watch the video:

Maemo is getting better and better

A lot of good news on Maemo.

Canola 2 jumps to beta 8 with lots of bugs fixed:

Better third-party plugin support: More API available for third-party plugin development.
Better handling of large titles in titlebar.
Fix during cover change.
Sort files inside "Browse by Folder".
Show current time during seek.
Fixed bugs in video player.
Ability to refresh podcast feeds manually.
Ability to select where downloaded contents go.
Smooter animation in the lists and sub menus.
General theme improvements.
Allow more podcast feeds.
Support compressed feeds and request them by default.
Better handle out of space.
Show more normalized download velocity and time remaining.
Various fixes in network handling in Podcast.
Restart downloads when podcast plugin is loaded.
Make it possible to preview the podcast description in the list.
Make it possible to read the feed description while listening to the podcast episode.
Remove episodes from "Podcast: New Episodes" when listened to or deleted.
Show the podcast feed title in the player as album and not the parent title.
Ogg support for the Scanner is back.

I copied this from the news page of the Canola 2 project at INdT, as there seems to be no permalinks for their news.

All existing add-ons (YouTube, so far) and themes have been updated and you should go for the last version if you change to Canola 2 beta 8.

But the best is yet to be told: there is a LastFM plugin! I love it, although its functionality does not match (yet) Vagalume's. But, to be fair, Vagalume does not have so great interface as Canola.

Ah, and more things not yet supported but in sight:

Playlist creation (on-the-move) + Playlist saving and other related features
Youtube paging capabilities for the search results (to allow more results to be browsed)
UPNP support
PNG thumbnail support still missing
Full hardware key mapping support

The YouTube results paging is a must as now the interface does limit the number of results you can enjoy. And what to say about the chance to access remote contents via UPnP. Media in your S60 3rd Edition phone or your PS3.

More on Maemo: as announced in the CTIA'09, the WiMax version is coming. Errrr... well, congratulations to the ones who will buy it and use WiMax, but I do not think this will happen in Spain. The best news from the last edition of CTIA was said in the same announcement from Nokia as some sort of additional-and-less-important information (source: Internet Tablet Talk):

upgraded OS2008 [that] introduces useful new features to the platform, including an enhanced e-mail client, support for Chinese character rendering in the browser and RSS feeds and Seamless Software Update functionality to eliminate manual software updates, making periodic updates of the operating system quick and easy. While standard on the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition, current owners of Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets with earlier operating systems will be able to upgrade their device to the revised operating system for free during the second quarter of 2008.

So N800 and N810 owners should be looking forward to a new system update for these gadgets.

And last but not least, some more disruptive applications for the N800/N810. I am still checking out Numpty Physics and trying to advance to the 4th stage :-) MyPaint screenshots look amazing although I guess that drawing is not one of the things that I best do. Anyway, I will try to get better at it and try to develop cool stuff like these:

Canola strikes again

The guys from INdT strike again with the Beta 7 version of Canola2. Besides all the changes (basically, support for third-party plugins), they offer a new add-on to access the contents of YouTube. I think that I shall seldom visit YouTube with MicroB.

This add-on is amazing. If you have an N800 or an N810, I do not know what you are doing here. Go get it!

Rise of the mobile

Do you want to see how fast mobile phones are spreading?
Click here :-)

Note that you can move the pointer over different regions of the world to see their specific increasement of mobile subscriptions.

Mobile vs Desktop

I like saying that mobile is just different to desktop, while there is a general thought about mobile being less than desktop.

jonarne's blog gives his opinion (which I share) in a funny way.

Testing maemo wordpy

I had a task pending on the N810. Try posting here on maemo wordpy, a tool that initially allowed blogging on wordpress weblogs but that supports blogger since 2 or 3 releases ago.

Job done, and I hope that this tool will increase my posting rate, as I tend to use the laptop less and less often in my leisure time.

Enter mauku

Mauku is a Jaiku client for maemo, which I like a lot (almost as much as Twitter)

Google Search on the idle screen

Over one year ago, many said that there would be a hard fight among mobile applications developers in order to win their place in the idle screen of mobile devices. Google has made its slight (and somehow invisible) move to make their move on the S60 3rd Edition platform.

After installing their software (from your Webkit browser), everytime that the idle screen shows up (or the user unlocks the keyboard of your phone) a prompt is displayed with a remainder on the availability of the search interface by pressing the "Edit" key.


After pressing that key, you can type the terms of the search:


And then, an instance of the Webkit-based browser is launched offering the results:



I was going to show my own screenshots but why repeat what others have already made in a great way. I took these ones from All About Symbian, after a quick Google search (how not!).

Nokia Morph

This is what I call R&D

US presidential candidates in the network

I have just added a contact in LinkedIn that surprisingly had Hillary Clinton among their contacts. I checked for Barack Obama and he was also there. I did not manage to find McCain, if you are more into Republicans :-)

Flickr and groups

After publishing in Flickr the pics of Carnival, the admin for the Matching Costumes group. Although I am a Flickr Pro user, I had never taken care of groups, which I see as a great way to aggregate pics from different users being related to a topic.

The Matching Costumes group is great and I will follow it for future Carnival initiatives ;-)

After sneaking a peek, I envy the guys in the pic below :-)

New version of PointUI Home (1.02b)

The guys from PointUI have just released a new version of Home, their new "shell" for Windows Mobile à la iPhone. It has a lots of improvements, changes and bug fixes as you can see in the release notes.

It is great that they support Smartphones and PDAs without phones, a lot of customization options, the removal of the Windows Media Player shortcut in favour of a Favourite/Start Menu shortcut the use of less CPU and a lot of bugs having been fixed.

N810 as a PDA

Someone asked me the other day whether the N810 had PDA functionality. Well, it does not have it by default. But if you install the GPE packages and then erminig, you have your Google Calendar and your GPE calendar sync'ed.

Besides, I have just discovered Companion Link for Google, which provides a 2-way synchronization between Outlook and Google Calendar. Adding Nokia PC Suite to this, I can have all my tasks and appointments in my hand from any PC (although I'll be more productive with my PC with Outlook installed), my phone and the N810.

Next step, contacts synchronization. Then I will be able to say the N810 can play the role of a PDA, besides all its wonderful functionalities.

Carnival is here...

Two stormtroopers managed to capture Princess Leia Organa in the spaceport of Gijón.



Afterwards, she was taken to the prison of the planet Icasel...



... where she is held prisoner among different monsters (like Grover)

Ironic video about the situation of CS engineers

I am sorry for all the readers of this blog non Spanish-speakers to post content in my native language. This video was taken from MightyRober's blog and it is an ironic (but not untrue) comment on a job application for Computer Science Engineers in order to maintain the software, hardware and network of a company in the field of electric power distribution. They also want appliers to be ready to co-operate dealing with the accounts of the company. And all for the wonderful annual salary of 10,000 € (taxes and other issues to be discounted from the salary). Ain't it great?




As the video shows, 10 people applied for that offer. Incredible (although we should consider the profile of those people... I cannot believe that a CS Engineer with 3 yrs of experience has applied for that job).

I warn you about inappropriate language and I please ask you to get the spirit of the video and do not take into account the literal words being used.

Vagalume update

Vagalume has jumped up to version 0.5. Thanks to Alberto from Igalia (and to the rest of contributors, of course) for keeping on with the good work. More last.fm in your maemo, debian or ubuntu machine!

Pau is a Laker!

For a Lakers fan and a Pau Gasol fan, this is NBA's best news ever! Lakers and Grizzlies have traded Pau Gasol for 5 (now ex-) Lakers including the rights of Marc Gasol plus first draft choice in 2008 and 2010.

Fight for the crown!
Fight for the RING!

Connecting the N810 to Internet via 3G

You have to follow these simple steps (I suppose Bluetooth is already on for your phone and your N810):

- Pair your N810 and your phone (N80 in my case) via Bluetooth. This is achieved in the N810 by going to the Control Panel, then choose Phone and add a New one. You'll see your phone and if you follow the wizard you'll pair them forever for automatic connection between every time that both BT interfaces are turned on.





- In the Control Panel, choose Connectivity, then press button Connections and then New. Follow the wizard, name the connection (for example, I named it Yoigo over BT) and , for the type of connection, choose Data Packets. In order to configure the Data Packets connection, you should enter the Access Point Name (internet for Yoigo), the Dialing Number (*99# for Yoigo), and your username/password with your provider (both empty in my case). In fact, the autonfiguration message, that Yoigo sends to your phone when you first turn on your phone and connect to their network, creates a network connection profile for the phone to act as a GPRS/UMTS modem and it looks like the N810 read its information and filled automatically all the details.



By the way, from now and on, it is very likely that your N810 connects via 3G when its BT interface and your phone's are both on. If you press on the connectivity icon in the systray of the N810, you can tell it to connect automatically to any connection, to WiFi or to phone (and additionally to always ask before establishing any connection).

Weird behaviour of N810

Reflashing the N810 fixed a problem that started happenning to me this week. Headphones only played through the left channel.

After reflashing, stereo audio sounded in a perfect way once again. I've been enjoying it for some hours and... the bug showed up again.

If I move the connector a bit I can make both channels sound OK but a slight movement makes me lose the right channel again.

Playing sound through the external speakers is fine. This is really weird and pretty uncomfortable.

[ADDED about one hour later]

I rebooted the N810 and both channels are back in headphones. Not without problems, because I could not turn it on. I had to let it rest and then it turned on. I hope I am not starting to suffer another bug.

Beware of the red pill

For the owners of an N810, if you enter Red Pill mode (which means that you gain root access to the OS), then you'll find that there are lots of updates related to the very core of the OS.

Well, do not update all those libraries if you do not know what you are exactly doing (as it is my case). I have just installed an update that consists of the installation of all the packages available for the OS and now "la cacharra" resets when it is booting.

I am reflashing it again with the Nokia Internet Tablet Software Update Wizard :-)

Internet Radio Stations in spanish

I have been struggling with Radio Stations streaming their air broadcasts through the internet in a way that is playable with the media player of maemo. Basically, this usually means streaming the RealPlayer way or some Windows Media Player ways.

And I do mean struggling because the web pages of many of these Radio Stations are filled with "web players" with a lot of JavaScript, some Flash and whatever other web techniques that make non-desktop browsers complain. It is true that some of them had a simple \ tag with its href attribute pointing to an RTSP or an MMS URL to just click on it and open maemo's media player. Thanks to them as they save some work to maemo hunters for Internet Radio Stations.


Well, enough speech, let's get to it. I hope it is useful (and not only for Nokia N810 owners).

Radio Nacional de España - Radio 1

Radio Nacional de España - Radio 3

Radio Nacional de España - Radio 4

Radio Nacional de España - Radio 5

Radio Nacional de España - Radio Clásica (seems to not be working)

Radio Exterior de España

Onda Cero (Asturias) (you have to choose the local station in Onda Cero's web site; this is the asturian station)

Europa FM

Kiss FM


Bon appetit! :-)

Best mobile phone of 2007

The guys from Xataka (a popular Spanish blog about gadgets) have published the results from their poll to guess which is the best mobile phone of the last year.



iPhone looks good and feels great but I cannot vote something not allowing MMS and SMS to multiple recipients, with no 3G support and no SDK to program non-web applications (by now).

Anyway, I have to agree is that if, without these and some other important not supported featuresl, what are the rest of the phone and mobile OS makers to do when they bring the next generation of iPhones? At the same time, we know the rest of the people are not being lazy (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, the Linux army). 2008 is a very promising year for the mobile gadget fan.

IM improved in maemo

OS2008, the OS in the N810, includes IM software that allows you to get connected to Google Talk (allowing videocalls), AIM and SIP.

If you want to use other IM protocols and services, you have to install Pidgin. But a project called RTCOMM lets you integrate your Pidgin contacts in the default IM client, which is just great in order to save resources (and one entry in the systray :-) ).

I hope the guys at maemo do their best and support all these additional protocols by default without having to install anything. Not necessarily implementing the client-side for all of them, maybe just by allowing automatic integration with Pidgin.

RTCOMM has its limitation (like being unable to allow to add new contacts -it has to be made using Pidgin's UI-), but it is a great piece of software.

WiFi on the N810 (or size does not always matter)

I still go on testing the N810 I have recently been given. Sometimes (more often than what is desirable) I need a time to work at home along the weekend. Sara is getting older (19 months soon) and she is a non-stop baby. So I went to my parents' home (just 3 floors below my flat, in the same building) in order to work a little. I wanted to be connected to my WiFi but, as expected, 802.11g did not get there in the proper way.

Luckily, my sister lives in a flat in the middle of my parents' place and mine :-) Another AP available so I tried to make use of it. Low-power signal. The Thinkpad X60s sees the 2 APs I have at home and my sister's, but it refuses to connect to any of them. Not only that, I already commented in another post that, in low signal environments, the drivers go crazy and the WiFi interface dies. In a way that, sometimes, it makes me have to reboot the laptop.

Incredibly, the N810 sees the 3 APs and it is even able to connect without any problems to the closest one (my sister's). Sometimes (very seldom), the connection drops but it gets connected once again some seconds later. No driver dies, no software mystery.

If you read the comment sent by Frade to the previous post, now you can have an idea of what he means by "don't forget to fill bugs with your suggestions, ideas or bugs (if you find them! :D )". He is not being pretentious at all. The machine is damn good and, what is more important, the software too. What many IBM, Lenovo or Intel engineers don't seem to able to make, the open software community can achieve it.

Thanks, Linux. Thanks, maemo.

N810 upgraded

After a backup of all the sensitive data, it has been upgraded to the latest release by now. It is great that all the data related to access points registered, email accounts, email folders, IM accounts, etc. are back after the upgrade.

The backup includes information about all the applications installed before the upgrade. So it tries to download and install again applications not included by default in the release. The only failure is that apps not included in the official repository are not reinstalled. For instance, I had to manually install pidgin, vagalume and canola. In the case of pidgin, all my preferences and accounts were there after re-installation.

I had never seen such great backup utility and transparent upgrade procedure. It is a pity that Nokia does not do the same about all their devices (thinking of the N80).

Nokia N810

The Three Wise Kings brought an N810 to me. I am starting to use it and I am in love with this gadget. One of things that has surprised me is the autonomy of the battery after a full charge. I have been playing with it yesterday (all the afternoon and evening through) and I had to go to bed before it ran out of power. Of course, with Wifi and Bluetooth enabled.

I have started to download and install additional software but I am making a stop in order to upgrade its OS2008 operating software (a particular flavour of Linux especiall developed for this platform -N770, N800, N810-). Afterwards, I shall read the dozens of blogs out there and know about the lot of tools available.

I guess you'll often read about this toy here.

Nokia Europe - Releases by date

For those of you dealing with Nokia gadgets, you may find this page useful: a list of Nokia software releases sorted by date (please take into account that the page belongs to Nokia Europe O:-).

Fixing the mobile operator name in Windows Mobile (useful for Pointui Home)

One of the things that I would love to get fixed in Pointui Home is the fact that the operator name is too long and does not fit the space allocated for it in the screen. Besides, it is untrue (Vodafone E) while my operator is Yoigo.

I guess that this is because GSM networks provide certain information (mobile network code, mobile network country, operator name and network name, for example) to our phones, and some phones are not using the proper information.

For instance, Pointui Home displays the network name as stored in the registry in Windows Mobile, in \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\State\Phone\Current Operator. Windows Mobile is missing the operator name (Yoigo). So we can change the string to Yoigo and show a more accurate information and a shorter string. Well, not that easy... As we switch our phone off and on, Windows Mobile will replace again the string value associated to that entry in the registry to the network value provided by the operator. You can override the value again, or you can create a program that periodically does this task (there are some available).

The fact is that Yoigo is operating on Vodafone Spain network and that leads some mobile phones to make users unsatisfied with the information displayed on their phones' display.

[ADDED SOME MINUTES LATER] I guess that it would be possible to permanently display the string that we want for our operator by adding a key to the registry entry
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\RIL\OperatorNames\ named like the mobile network code and with a value equals to the string that we want for our operator. I have to try it.

Pointui Home reloaded

I have not had the time yet in order to comment Pointui Home and its update tool has made it jump to version 1.01b. In fact, this afternoon it updated to version 1.01a and this evening it made it to this version.

You can see the changelog here. It is great not only that they show what they changed, but that they declare known issues taken into account for future releases.

I love that they think of users wanting to customize their tool, although it is achieved by having to write some entries in the registry. Fast prototyping is great!

Pointui Home

I have been trying the 0.92 beta version of Pointui Home, a new UI for Windows Mobile that I already commented (very briefly). It is time to go to bed now, but I want to say that I love it.

I'll comment it in detail soon, but I can advance that -although it is a beta, it has bugs and there is a lot to do- it is a great approach to iPhone-like UIs on Windows Mobile and I recommend everybody to try it. Remember that it is FREE.

Neurona

I have created my profile in Neurona.