Mauricio Leal's Blog

September: The Month of Java in Brazil

From September 10th till September 30th, Brazil will host several Java Conferences in 14 different cities, giving the comunity hours of deep technical content with the best Brazilians names in the comunity and some international guests as well. If you're anywhere near, those are the places that you will find events and the dates.

This is a calendar of events during the "Month of Java", including Brazil's national Java Conference: JustJava'2008.

And not forgot to mention, we are going to end up the month with Sun Tech Days

The beginning of Tomorrow's Computer

Think about tomorrow’s computer and what is the first picture that comes to your mind ? A faster computer ? A smaller computer ? A little device talking to you because you asked where is the next theather ?

Well, I think tomorrow’s computer is NOTHING. We’re not going to have any computer at all, because software will be everywhere and you won’t notice. Maybe part of your clothing, your shoes, your wallet….everything will be part of tomorrow’s computer and those “things” will be communicating with each other, giving information all the time and also reading us everything that we do and feeding back us with more and more. It certainly will be excited moment when we reach that point.

I just can’t say when exactly we’re going to have tomorrow’s computer in our hands but I think we’re facing what it can be the beginning: Sun SPOT’s.

Those are little devices with plenty of sensors like compass, accelerometers, light sensors and etc. It doesn’t have neither a display or a keyboard, but you do can use it Java on it. Those devices can be used in a more different ways and it’s totally worth looking it.

So far, it costs US$ 550 and it’s only available in the US, which it’s a bit too much for my taste but I’m pretty sure that costs will get lower as people gets more interested on it.

Right now in JavaONE, there are plenty of sessions and I’m can only hope that people will transform their software project into a hardware project, so people start developing tomorrow’s computer….right after on this Saturday, when JavaONE is over 

War of the Worlds I: Developers x Carriers

If you’re a mobile developer like I am, you will spend hours looking for the right tools, gathering information from books, magazines and articles all over the internet and after a few days, you will be delighted about your new mobile application.

But developing the mobile application itself it’s not enough: You want to show to your friends (or customers) what your application can do and play with it. Of course, when you do that, you probably will face the first barrier on mobile development: The carriers.

In most part of the World, carriers has a huge power of how the application should be deploy in the devices, making a tuff life for all the developers out there. I attended an BOF last night in JavaONE’2007 called:

BOF 5914 – How to Work with JavaME Carriers ]]> About 4 carriers were represented (Orange UK, AT&T, Spring Wireless, Mobile China) to comment about JavaME projects and how we can work together, so everybody could benefit for a mobile ecosystems. Some of the major points the carriers told us were:

Carriers are not worry about games: They have plenty already
Carriers are looking for applications that bring more rich experience for the user, although they look some of the API’s on the phone
Carriers are still looking for a perfect security model, so they can provide certificates for developers.
Carriers don’t know how to handle the hobbyist developers

Mobile China was the most interesting because they have a way to work with developers in a more political way: Hearing developers needs. I still don’t have any details about it but I will go after those folks to get some more details about it.

I was very happy to know that most of mobile developers out there are very angry on how carriers are treating us and I good message from this BOF from a fellow mobile developers said: “It is not us[developers] who should know how to work with you[carriers]….It is you who should know how to work with us, because we have the ideas”

Even though the discussions were impressive, this is a very good sign that we’re moving forward in mobile applications. I can only hope we can see more of those discussions between developers and carriers in the future, so we could bring more expericences towards the community.

Ok, I've developed my Java ME application. Now what?

I’m pretty sure that developing a Java ME application is an incredible experience. First, because you have to be very clever on fit everything in a very tiny devices, restrained by display resolution and screen size, not much memory and a few ways of input data (usually a numeric keypad or stylus). Second, because once you did the application and you deploy into your device, it’s really feels good taking your application right into your pocket and do something useful. (I particular I loved to show off some application developed by myself, which it’s something that my friends already had in their “heavy” laptops…Sometimes, it’s hilarious).

However, taking this application into the open market and get users to play, it’s totally another story. It really doesn’t matter how simple your application will be, a certain amount of quality is always required (and trust me, you’ll avoid a bunch of problems if you maintain some quality). I guess the most obvious question in your head is:

All right, but how do I keep a good quality in my mobile applications?

Simple answer: Use the 5 “T”’s rule: Test, Test, Test, Test and Test

]]> The need of testing is increasing as devices are getting more powerful and new JSR’s are coming up each year. You check the device specifications of some manufactures, you will realize that for each new functionality, you (as developer) must perform more and more testing in order to give some warranty of the mobile application you’re developing.

Ever since I joined the Mobile and Embedded Community, I was thrilled with the perspective of the cqME Project, which it’s all about testing your application before reaching the end user. If you ever wonder how you could test your application and what kind issues on your application, cqME Project might be the answer to your prays.

Besides having some technology like cqME Project that enables you to help testing your application, something else that I advice and it’s very simple: Take your application out

It sounds a bit weird (specially for geeks like I am) but this is testing work. I’m not saying that you should take your mobile application to the movies, but play with your own application, installed on your phone and use it on a several situations of your daily life. That was something that I did a lot when I wanted to make sure that my application will act as I planned. Most of the times, you’re developing a ME application sitting in chair, looking at your emulator and playing in a environment that it’s by far, totally different from the experience the user will face it.

The first thing you notice when you take your application “in the wild”, you’re going to test the user interface and see if you can get any information with few keystrokes. Sometimes, I’m sure this it will be the first modifications you’re going to make it.

The fun part of testing, it’s that you can do it in so many different situations, such as:

When I go to my dentist and I cay test any connectivity (either with Bluetooth or GPRS)

When I go out for a dinner, I check if I hear my application play a sound (or even vibrate) due a notification through JSR 205.

I know it may sound a little weird, but all this is necessary.
Perhaps you find some willing users to help you speed up the process. Because, once your application is on the open, it will be hard to know what went wrong on your code.

How to make money with Mobile

Although I don’t have the official numbers, I’m sure most of developers are looking a way to make money with their mobile applications. Some may find really hard to develop a business model, so you can offer Java mobile applications to millions of hunger consumers out there.
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1 – He/she is not sitting in chair and usually, he/she is walking towards some place
2 – He/she wants simple buttons to press in order to obtain some real information
3 – He/she wants to do something useful on his way home, work, college and etc.
4 – He/she wants to get more information as possible in a very tiny screen

Of course, I’m sure people would say that mobile users might need a lot more than this, but I think we could start thinking about those issues, when we’re developing our mobile application. Understanding the needs of our mobile user, it’s the key of how to make money in the mobile world.
Ever since I’ve started working with mobile applications, I’m noticing a great number of tools, techniques, books and articles and business cases to deploy very high quality mobile applications on the market. I’m not sure yet if consumers are totally aware of the offer currently available, but it’s getting there.
In the beginning, it was mobile versions of desktop applications like office suite, web browser, zip files and PDF readers. Today, they’re realizing that mobile user is happy with the possibility of open a Word document but, it gets disappointed that editing or looking for a big pictures it’s kind hard due display limitations. This is something that we need to overcome in our mobile applications: Mobile applications that it matters to mobile users.
I’m not saying that I know all the answers for the next generation killer applications for mobile, but I’m pretty sure that it will come in 2 years (maybe less), for several reasons:

1 – Carrier’s bandwidth is getting cheaper and data plans are reaching users on reasonable prices
2 – Mobile phones are getting cheaper
3 – More and more mobile phones are coming with some awesome technology, like JME (not mention all available API’s)
4 – More memory and more processor power is start to kicking, enable more features on the phone, such as 3D or voice recognition.

I’m sure it will take some time, until consumers realize the power they have in their fingertips. One day, they 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. If we could reach that point, I’m sure tons of money could be made.