by Peter Seibel
-- A fantastic collection of interviews with 15 famous programmers. Contains some great history and insights on the field of "computer science."
-- Geeks, drugs, and deception. An entertaining look into the (fictional) lives of techno con artists, and how a recently-fired comic book artist get pulled into their inner circle.
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-- Particularly useful reference when trying to eek out a few extra milliseconds of load times in older browsers.
-- Interesting tech, and somewhat engaging, but disappointing ending (or lack thereof.)
, by Neil Strauss
-- An engaging, first-person account on transforming from an urban writer into "Jason Bourne."
, by Cory Doctrow
-- A high school hacker fights the 'Department of Homeland Security' to reclaim American civil liberties after anti-terror tactics are taken to a new level.
-- Techniques-for, and the value-of sketching interactivity before developing products. Good ideas. OK book.
" -- About finding untapped opportunities in your market and repositioning yourself to capitalize on them. Easy to grasp; Longer then it needed to be.
" -- A thin book with some good best-practices, but a little disappointing. Perhaps it's JavaScript's fault, not the author's ;-)
" -- Good overview of usability issues in designing HTML forms, backed by examples and eye-tracking research. I bought the digital edition, which was slightly cheaper. (You can use code: WFDDE to get an extra 10% off any purchase on the publisher's site.)
" by Marshall Goldsmith
-- Discusses interpersonal skills (and how to identify and fix them) that most commonly hold executives back in their career advancement.
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-- Lesson: Cut the corporate B.S. and stop wasting your time. Focus only on what matters most.
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-- Lessons on handling tough conversations: firing people, relationship problems, hostage negotiations (well, maybe not that last one.) Wasn't an exciting read, but I've been paying more attention to "turning points" in conversations since reading it.
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-- Lessons in building reusable ("pluggable") Django applications. Assumes you know the basics of Django and Python.
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-- I really enjoyed this one. Lots of suggestions and strategies for negotiating.
IDEO Labs just released a killer app for iPhone prototyping called LiveView. The application allows the iPhone to view, and interact with, a region of your desktop machine’s screen. Using this, you can have a prototype (or even an XCode application) running on your desktop, and try it out from your iPhone.
I finally got my first Arduino board last week (a Diecimila, to be specific.) It’s been on my list of “things I want to hack on” for awhile, so I eagerly awaited it’s arrival. It’s been a good ten years since I’ve built anything in the Art Installation / Physical Computing genre — which is ten years way too long.
In preparation for my first weekend with the Arduino, I hit up SparkFun and a local electronics store for a handful of little gizmos to wire up. I’m still a newbie when it comes to designing electronics (though to be honest, that’s part of the fun), so I started off by following the “Spooky Projects – Introduction to Microcontrollers with Aurdino” lessons. With the Spooky Projects built (minus the glowing skull, unfortunately), I wrapped up the weekend experimenting with potentiometers as the controls for animation timing in a few late-night, generative-art pieces I’ve built using Processing.
So far it’s all good fun — and something I’d definitely encourage folks to try.
The Maemo team has been quietly rocking Nokia’s world for some time now. They’re off in the background building (almost pocketable) mobile computers; fine-tuning touch interfaces and small-screen UIs; becoming experts in embedded linux; and bringing top-notch open source software and modern development tools to this unique mobile platform. For years, the Nokia tablets have sat on the side-lines as niche devices for hackers; but lately, the team has been changing the game.
The Nokia 770 and N800 have always faced an up-hill battle with market adoption given their lack of GSM/CDMA support. “Is it a phone?” is one of the first questions people ask when they see me using one these devices. Saying “No, it’s a web tablet” only brings a look of confusion. Thankfully, the latest software releases, wider market recognition of UMPC’s, and the iPhone release, have had a huge impact on the perception of the N800.
The Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition 4.2007.26-8 upgrade (released earlier this month) brought Skype support to the N800. While perhaps playing second fiddle to a Flash upgrade that makes YouTube work better, adding Skype greatly improves the likelyhood of using the N800 as a portable VoIP device. However, even more significant is the recent Internet Communications Software Update for N800. This update adds SIP support to the N800 for VoIP calls — a feature that turned my N800 into my new desk-phone at work.
At Optaros, we use Asterisk to run our phone infrastructure. There are the occasional physical SIP phones in conference rooms, but in general, we use soft-phones running on our laptops to make and receive calls. The downside here is portability. Even using WIFI, a laptop doesn’t make the best cordless phone. But an N800 does. The N800 is actually quite nice as a cordless phone; and with WIFI available in the office, at home, and at nearly every business in Austin, my phone extension can now be routed to my Nokia device and be available almost everywhere.
It may take awhile for the market to notice this, but Nokia is quietly taking the top-spot in mobile linux and VoIP hardware know-how. The Nokia linux tablets aren’t quite ready for the general consumer (in terms of usability), and the marketing messages aren’t there yet either — but the R&D is, and the technology will be ready to drop-in and rock the mobile-phone world as soon as the strategy dictates.
Awhile back, Ubuntu announced a mobile and embedded edition of it’s popular Linux distribution. The buzz was around the possibility of Ubuntu Mobile showing up on future UMPCs. The news caught my eye, but didn’t really get my attention until the plans for Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) were announced:
“Ubuntu 7.10 will be the first Ubuntu release to offer a complete mobile and embedded edition built with the Hildon user interface components” (developed by Nokia for the Maemo platform.)
Now that’s interesting. Could it be that we’ll see Ubuntu Mobile booting on Nokia N800’s? It’s certainly a possibility — and one that could bring a larger breadth of software to Nokia’s mobile Linux tablets.
However, as interesting as it may be if Nokia adopts Ubuntu, the possibilities for wider Hildon support didn’t hit me until my drive home today. It was one of those obvious moments. I had been using my Nokia N800 while walking to my car, so the touch- and small-screen friendly UI was fresh in my mind. Then I started thinking about my Car PC. It uses a 7″ touch screen and runs Ubuntu (a full distribution, with a UI designed for full-size monitors.) Running Gnome on my cheap, in-car 7″ monitor makes for a pretty lousy experience. Text is hard to read, and everything is too small to click on. However, if this news is right, Ubuntu 7.10 will change all of that. I’ll be able to run Hildon on my Car PC! That’s killer. Imagine having Canola running in-car, sitting on 100GB of multimedia…
One of the most interesting topics of iPhone speculation is the choice of interpreted, web technologies as the development platform. I greeted the news with a big smile, and a sigh of obviousness. Having spent a few frustrating years preaching the potential of agile mobile development platforms, it sits near and dear to me to here that Apple is paying attention to a bigger market.
Of course, the old-school, “Mobile 1.0″ crowd’s reaction is just as I would expect. Some of the claims make me laugh, so I felt motivated to chime in on the topic. Let’s break down the big three that I’m hearing:
“No SDK means no killer apps.” There are two issues here: (1) That there are ‘killer’ mobile apps that aren’t already included in the iPhone; and (2) That killer apps can’t be built with web technologies. For the first bit, ask yourself what the killer mobile apps are? Number One is voice… Number Two is SMS… Number Three varies, but support for syncing PIM data, taking pictures, listening to music, checking email, and browsing the web, pretty much covers it. For the second part, to assume that killer apps can’t be built with web technologies would require denying the last ten years of Internet development. The Web has changed everything — and it was built with web technologies ;-) Besides, Apple hasn’t commented yet on whether they’re exposing select native API’s via JavaScript.
“No clear revenue stream (for developers and operators) means no developers.” Stop thinking Mobile 1.0. Stop thinking traditional channels. Stop thinking about the Operators and Manufacturers “owning a customer”. Drop all this telcom baggage and start looking at the Web. There are plenty of companies making significant revenue simply because a large number of people have a browser and a data connection to their PCs. If anything, the mobile market becomes more interesting (and potentially more lucrative) when application development is cheap and the legacy mobile bureaucracy is out of the way.
“Developers need low-level access to the hardware.” This actually came up in a recent conversation, and I just about walked away at that point. Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how much of a PITA (and HUGE waste of time) it is to develop high-quality, reliable, usable, native applications on embedded hardware? I do. And I can assure you that you want no part of it. I appreciate the occasional need, and I’m sure Apple can give the John Carmack’s and Google’s of the world a l33t SDK; but if you’re looking to develop innovative, profitable mobile applications, there’s no reason for you to be tracking down memory leaks and hardware bugs. The less time you waste fighting the hardware, the more time you’ll have to launch new software. (If you don’t believe me, compare the rates of software and business model innovation that happens on the Web vs. on mobile phones. Mobile phones have done wonders for flattening the world, but they can’t compare to the Web as an environment for cheap, rapid innovation.)
It’s ironic how much sci-fi involves saving Earth from robot space invaders, yet we’re the one’s sending laser-packing robots to Mars:
(Via:
)
There’s a lesson in there that I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.
You can now download the new firmware flashing software (Mac OS X and Linux only) and the new 2.0 beta firmware from the Maemo platform releases page. The new software includes the previously-announced Google Talk client.
For more screenshots, see:
Also of interest:
A friend just sent me a link to Teemu’s Blog to check out his two recent posts:
The examples cover Python for Maemo on the Nokia 770, and make it look extremely easy!
Teemu’s Blog also has some good information on other applications that have been ported to the 770, like TuxPaint, a VNC Viewer, Rhythmbox, Asterisk, and, of course, Monkey Island!
For more Nokia 770 apps, check out the ApplicationCatalog on the Maemo wiki.
After much waiting, my new phone is finally here! (That’s a picture of a Nokia N90 below, in case you’re reading this in an aggregator that doesn’t pull in linked images.)
Alright, so I’m last on the block to get one, I know, but I’ve really wanted this phone for it’s camera and high resolution (352 x 416) screen. Even though it’s four or five months old (that’s ancient, right?), it still seems to be top dog in camera phones, which is what I wanted.
However, before I go much further in explaining my excitement, I suppose it’s only proper to mention the standard disclaimer that I’m a little partial to the brand and technology in this phone, given my place of employment (ie., the company that makes it.)
With that out of the way, let’s start with first impressions. The packaging was nice — standard Nokia cardboard, but it opens well, creating a nice presentation and feeling of excitement. It’s not quite the experience of opening an iPod box, but it’s an improvement over previous box designs.
Removing the N90 from it’s clear plastic pedestal, you immediately notice the metal trim on the sides, which is cool to the touch. The phone feels solid, and you notice it’s heft. I hear people complain about the size and weight of this phone, but it carries the bulk well — it’s similar to how a solid car door feels compared to a flimsy entry model. Opening the clamshell, the mechanics also feel more solid then on my 7610 (although it could be the 2 Euro face plates from a Beijing street dealer that I was using.) The 7610 is a great phone (I carried it for almost two years!), but the N90 is certainly a step up.
Unpacking the rest of the box, you get a power cord (with a new, smaller plug that renders my collection of Nokia charges mostly useless), a single power-cord adapter for older chargers, a USB cable, a 64 MB MMC, and a wired headset that seems more like a prank then a real consumer product (I’m glad I still have the one-ear unit from the 7610.)
With the phone charged, I fired it up to be greeted by a gorgeous screen and a LOUD startup sound. Before mucking around, priority number one was to transfer my contacts and pictures to the new phone. Fortunately, I know that the new devices ship with a Data Transfer application, so I gave my new toy a Bluetooth device name, popped a dummy-SIM into my 7610, and kicked off the process. The 64 MB card in my 7610 was maxed-out with pictures, videos, flash files, and Python scripts, so I expected this to take awhile. It did — about a half an hour, but it worked like a charm. Having this work was particularly important to me since the N90 isn’t supported by Apple’s iSync yet, and I don’t have the patience to use Nokia PC Suite.
Next up was installing crucial applications. This includes, Python for S60 (of course), Calcium, FExplorer, Google Local Mobile, and my various card and puzzle games. Everything installed and runs fine, but you certainly notice the free memory numbers when installing — there was something like 25 MG free on internal storage! That’s a nice change of pace.
Using the phone will take a little getting used to. The controls are spaced differently, so I find my thumb occasionally hitting “end call” instead of ‘c’ (the “delete” key.) The D-pad placement is also going to make gaming a little tricky. It’s recessed in such a manner that my thumb is telling me I’ve been playing on the phone too long. The 7610 was no Snake-champ either (the 6600 is probably my favorite for that, or perhaps the original N-Gage), but I suppose I’ll get used to it. It’s also a little disorienting at first when you have to switch to different soft-keys and a side-mounted D-pad when rotating the screen. It “feels” right when you’re holding it, but it’s still something different.
I made a few mistakes when trying to take my first photo (of one of my cats, in case you’re curious.) Just when I had the shot lined up I would depress the D-pad hoping it operated the shutter. It doesn’t. It’s the button above that. And then when I finally figured that out, the cat was in for a surprise when the flash went off :-)
I’ve got a lot of exploring left to do on this phone. There’s a ton of camera functionality that’s new, and I might even try to make a phone call!
Sony has announced that the PSP will ship in North America March 24, carrying a “value pack” price of $249 U.S./$299 CND. The value pack includes all the things you’d expect to see in a base price, like a battery and power cord. I’m still going to buy one though.
(via Yahoo Press Release, Engadget, and slashdot)
In more important news, joystiq seems to think that Gran Turismo 4 will release on Feb. 22nd, even though Sony apparently hasn’t made an announcement of such. IGN agrees on the date, and adds that the EU ship date is set for March 9th.
I bought an iTrip mini this week, which is an FM Radio transmitter for the iPod mini. I was originally just going to get a cassette adapter, but using the mini as a personal pirate radio station makes the device a bit more portable for multi-car use. Besides, the geek appeal of going wireless is much too high, and the iTrip product design is fantastic — it fits perfectly over the iPod and looks good doing it. (Well, in reality, it doesn’t fit as perfectly flush as the pictures [it's about two pixels off on the side with the Hold switch], and the seams on the top picked up some fuzz from my fleece jacket pocket, but overall it does look quite nice.)
Unlike some units, the iTrip allows you to set which frequency it runs on, but doing so is an interesting hack. Griffin provides a CD with short audio clips that are coded in such a way that the iTrip picks up the instruction and changes it’s frequency based on it. You’re supposed to make a playlist containing these special tracks and use them when needed. The catch, of course, is that if you leave the tracks on your iPod all the time, they will occasionally show up in the play-list rotation (which is bad.) The Griffin solution is to manage your iPod listening with smart-lists instead of standard playlists, but that’s asking a bit too much in my opinion. Instead, I simply found a frequency that stays clean during my commute and stuck to it. Road trips will require an alternate solution.
I’ve tried using low-power FM broadcasters in the past and have been disappointed with the audio quality. The iTrip didn’t change my opinion much. The first thing I noticed when firing up the iTrip is that the audio signal was really quiet. It certainly helps if you turn the iPod volume up more, but going too high will distort lower frequencies. Turning up the receiver’s volume higher then normal will help, but if you must do this, you’ll be in for a shock if your choosen frequency doesn’t stay free.
To address sound quality, I found that using a different EQ setting helped. Small headphones generally need a low-frequency boost, but modern car audio typically doesn’t. In fact, turning the iPod’s EQ off all together helped a lot.
The next major issue is that the iTrip made it very apparent that my tracks aren’t balanced for volume. Some are much louder then others. I tend not to notice this on my home system or headphones, but the iTrip emphasizes it.
Most interestingly, my biggest find when using the iTrip was that I finally groked the Podcast movement. Podcasting hit the scene just recently, and up until now, I really didn’t see a need for it. The reason: up until now, I’ve been using my iPod primarily in the gym — a use for which I have little desire to hear someone talking politics. But in the car… that’s a different story. I often try to arrange my commute to catch the Diane Rehm Show on NPR. Sometimes my schedule works out, sometimes not. For those times when I miss the show, it would sure be nice if the digital archive was automagically pre-installed on my iPod for the drive back to the city!
For those interested in learning more about Podcasting, I’ve included a few links below:
- Podcast: New Twist on Net Audio, Wired News
- iPodder.org
- podcasters.org
- podcaster.net