Alexandre Gomes's Blog

Community: Mobile & Embedded Archives

Attention when buying bluetooth dongles

Recently, a friend of mine bought a bluetooth dongle.

In theory, it had an external antenna to enhance the signal.

Everything looked fine until the dongle fell down and the truth came up.

Wow, the expanded antenna was everything but to enhance the signal. Actually, it was nothing! Just a piece o plastic attached to the USB dongle bound to anything.

Dhammit! Take care next time you buy a bluetooth dongle....

Mobile & Embedded Community in FISL 9.0

The Mobile & Embedded Community was greatly represented at the International Free Software Conference, held in Porto Alegre, south Brazil.    At the Sun's booth, Roger Brinkley presented to all those who showed up the Mobile & Embedded Community, its projects and how big and relevant it's becoming to the digital and mobile media world. In particular, the Sun SPOTs were a show apart. Everybody wanted to know what was those soap-like devices used for.    At his talking, Roger presented the Community elements: mobile, media and embedded.    To talk about the mobile perspective, Roger invited me, Bruno Ghisi and Ricardo Ogliari (?) to expose the projects we maintain, respectivelly, DiNo/HoHo, Marge and MEChart.    DiNo is a J2ME originally built at 2003, not based on the Game API. It had beed kept closed source for 5 years, it had been commercialized by some brazilian operators and now it's fully available in the Mobile & Embedded Community under the GPL license. More about it later.    Marge is a bluetooth framework built over the JSR82. The great thing about Marge is the large availability of demos. With them, everybody can learn how to build nice bluetooth enabled applications. Actually, I also have a bluetooth framework, called BtUtil, but it do not compete with Marge. The BtUtil aims for simplicity. It's largely based on the concept of "convention over configuration". The Marge project, on the other hand, is a robust and complete layer from which one can benefit of all bluetooth resources available in the JSR82 spec.    MEChart, also hosted in the Mobile & Embedded Community, has as objective to supply an API standard for the construction of some types of graphs through the Java ME platform. Its target is devices with the CLDC and MIDP 2.0.    Later on, Roger discussed about recent project affiliations from the TV industry in the M&E Community.    To represent the Embedded element, the Trackbot was introduced. Then Roger tied one SunSPOT on his golf stick and he demonstrated how they could be used to track golf plays and fine tune movements. Afterward, on the last minutes of the congress, Roger still find time to record a podcast with me, Flávio Alves and Israel Faria. Nice to meet you again, guys!

Brasileiros no Java Mobile & Embedded Developers Days

With dozen of pretty nice proposals, and after a hard work to select the most relevant sessions to compose the conference, the reviewer team comes out with the first version of the JMEDD schedule. Pervasive computing, Java in TV, mobile tools, communication technologies, entertainement, community ecosystem and real world experiences are some of the subjects to be discussed. Among them, a set of brazilian project will be presented to the world. Congratulations to Marlon Luz, Luiz Anjos, Jackson Feijó, Gracieli Mateus, Carlos Fernando, Thiago Vespa and others that I might had forgotten.

I strongly suggest you to confirm your registration as soon as possible. The world has never seen a better place to change ideas, expand your networking and, why not, make business on Java Mobile & Embedded Technologies.

For the portuguese audience, feel free to use the banner below to help us to promote the event.

Enjoy it!

2007 - The year of Java in TV

Every JavaOne bring us numbers. For the mobile universe, the actual numbers are: 2.1 billion Java handsets, 2.5 billion Java Cards, 4 million Blu-Ray devices and 7 million set-top boxes. Wow, that's impressing, but there's something smelling different this year...

If I'm not wrong, 2001 was the mobile year at JavaOne. The big focus was the introduction of J2ME to the community. I felt like being asked all the time to get into that new and exciting technology (and so I did). In 2002, the message was like "Java in mobile devices is a fact, what are you waiting for?". And, since then, mobility has always been in JavaOne.

Looking from distance, this year is not different from others. Mobility is a recurrent subject in BOFs, TSs e General Sessions. However, in my opinion, we are living a new big moment for the Mobility and Embedded Java world that need to be remarked. For me, this is the year of the Java and TV related technologies.

As 2001 is remembered by me as the year Java was massive inserted into cellphones, 2007 will me remembered as the year that Java was popularized in the television, and that's one of cool stuffs I've talked before!

If you are not sure about it, look at the numbers. Set-top boxes has never been so numerous and Blu-Ray is out there. A number of set-top boxes are being shipped with OCAP (PBP/CDC/JME) deployed and Blu-Ray comes with a JRE as well!

During the Mobility General Session, Laurie Tolson repeated several times "Volume Creates Opportunity". The TV industry affection about Java can double the device volume we have today. Two times more devices may means four times more opportunities. So, stay tuned in this so promising market. At least, don't miss the show today (Thursday, 05/10/2007):

• TS5723 - JavaOne Conference TV Track Kickoff Session
• TS0011 - OCAP: Summary of Technical Features and APIs
• TS0697 - Java Technology for Interactive TV: Developing and Deploying Effective OCAP Applications
• TS5931 - OCAP Roadmap and Future Interactive Services on Cable TV
• TS0887 - Producing Blu-ray Java Software Titles for Hollywood
• TS5894 - The Role of Java Technology in IPTV
• BOF0889 - Talk to the Stars: A Discussion of Blu-ray Java Technology
• BOF5724 - TV Technology Q&A

Yes, thanks to all those who is helping Java goes towards ubiquity.

Talking about Cool Stuffs at JavaOne 2007

As computers go towards ubiquity, common life changes. The masses don't care about the latest Glassfish release or the OpenJDK open-source license. They do care about entertainment tools, fancy devices and smart-cars. That's what changes their lives, in the common sense.

Yes, I know all the enterprise stuff and the licensing model impact the way technology is applied and evolves, but now I'm talking as an ordinary consumer, and not as a developer.

Airlan San Juan has a nice post regarding the "small and simple". Take a look.

During Consumer Technologies track, at JavaOne, you can hear about things that impacts directly the way of our lives. Here is a small list of topics to be presented:

• Java and Cars
• Java and Cable TV
• Java and Blu-ray
• JavaCard and Web 2.0
• JavaCard and WLANs
• JavaCard and Mobile Apps
• ...

So, don't miss the train. If you want to change the everyday life, go ahead and bring Java to the masses, not only by the web, but also by common and cool stuffs. Let's create an effective ubiquitous Java world.

The Java realm is plenty of awesome technologies. It's time to make them all work for common people. It's time to stop creating CRUDs (the world has already plenty of CRUDs :-)). I'm sure we can do better. Using MIDP just as another View layer for enterprise applications is not that interesting. However, combining MIDP with Bluetooth, Jini, JavaCard, JXTA and others are a good way to start things up. I'm going to talk deeper about it later.

Finally, powering consumer services and devices with the Java Technology can make it disappear as the most profound technologies in the world, as said by Mark Weiser. It's just a matter of being creative.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the JavaOne!

-Alexandre Gomes

Towards Ubiquitous Computing

"One day, they (consumers) will wake up and realize that they won’t need computers like today. Instead of sitting down in a chair and reaching the information, the information will be wide available in your pocket, wherever you go."

I agree with him and I'd say more. In my point of view, the information will be wide available not only in your pocket, but wherever you want, like clothes, walls, tables or even in the water.

Computer Specialization

I believe that, in the future, specialized devices will take over generic computers.

For instance, let's think about engines. Generic purpose engines don't exist anymore. My grandparents used to use a unique generic engine to get water from a watering hole and to triturate corn to feed little chickens. Now, engines come to the market as water pumps and mixers. That big device used for everything in the everyday life is now dead. When asked about that universal engine, my grandfather said it's gone, and he didn't need engines anymore. For him, engines is now used only in cars. For me, engines went invisible. In fact, engines became ubiquitous.

Some years ago, I used to listen to MP3 files in a 486 DX2 PC powered by Winamp. It was a very big and dirty white box. Today, all what I need to play MP3 files fits in my pocket is can be called as iPod. That means, again, generic engines (PC) was replaced by specialized ones (iPod) and, probably, not all of those iPod owners know that they have a complete computer inside their pocket. Maybe, they don't even like computers! For them, they don't need computers anymore to listen to MP3s. For me, now they need computers more than ever. IMO, computers started to become invisible and ubiquitous.

So, I believe the way we use computers (as users, not developers) today will no longer exists in the future. I think, in the future, we will have a computer for browsing, a computer for office stuff, a computer for playing, a computer for home controll and so on, and all of them will be cheaper, smaller and easier to use than today.

But, what about Java? That's a good question, and I'll talk about it later.

see'ya

Alê!

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