Friday October 29, 2004 Mama Mia! Italy's 3G provider starting to sell Moto A1000. J2ME รจ molto buon!
Hey, Amici di J2ME: Italy's 3G provider (Three) is making the Motorola A1000 available to their users. Very cool J2ME phone! In addition to J2ME technology, it's got 2-way video conferencing.
See: Now if we can only get that in the U.S...
|
Thursday October 28, 2004 Paris Hilton's favorite Java PDA/phone device: Danger Sidekick/Hiptop II
Paris Hilton has been seen sporting the new Danger Sidekick II PDA/cell phone combo. It's the second generation of a PDA/cell phone that runs PIM apps, sends SMS/MMS text messages, takes digital photos, makes voice calls, and now is more compact like a cell phone when the flip-out screen is closed.
See: New Danger Hiptop II (Sidekick II) The cool part is that the UI and apps are all coded in Java hidden to the user. The PDA/cell phone runs its own native OS underneath its Java layer. Danger should be smart and certify to J2ME CDC compatibility and then open their Java platform to developers. You can't be a hit with a wireless device to get to over a million users without opening your platform to J2ME technology these days.
|
Wednesday October 27, 2004 Pedal faster! 3G catching up in the U.S.
Here's a report from the CTIA Wireless conference going on this week in San Francisco. Reports indicate that 3G wireless technology for cell phones is catching up in the U.S. mainly because Americans are the biggest consumers in the world of J2ME games and entertainment content on cell phones.
See: The key is not to produce the same tired old video clips and games as you would for the desktop Web browser (because the screen is so small on a J2ME technology-enabled cell phone). The key is the fun-factor. If you make a compelling and fun J2ME game or entertainment app (like Kerry boxing Bush), someone with a cell phone will show another person who will download and show another person and so on and so on and so on. Like the VO5 commercial. :-)
|
Tuesday October 26, 2004 Better, stronger, faster - PalmOne Treo 650
Is the newly released PalmOne Treo 650 any better than the Treo 600? The jury is still out, because from the specs. it looks pretty similar to the Treo 600.
See: It's only available from Sprint for now. And you can still download J2ME MIDP 2.0 for it separately, so that part is cool. Everyone wanted one for Christmas will have to switch to Sprint, though. Bummer!
|
Monday October 25, 2004 Ohh! Big knockdown punch delivered to BREW from J2ME!
J2ME got in a good knockdown punch against Qualcomm's BREW recently when Nokia decided to go with Preminent, a delivery and transaction system for cell phone content (games, ringtones, apps, etc.) that excludes BREW and only delivers J2ME technology-based content to cell phones.
See: BREW is down and out (J2ME has 600 million units vs. BREW's piddly 38 million units)! A quote from Nokia:
"BREW is an interesting, proprietary solution for an early-stage
market," Thygesen said. "It's for carriers that want to get a
start. We're looking at a system for the longer-term market."
|
Friday October 22, 2004 T-Mobile wishes you a very BlackBerry Christmas with 3G
T-Mobile is launching 3G service this Christmas and support of a 3G BlackBerry by middle of 2005. But, they are being cautious in their outlook.
See: Why so cautious? They just need some fun J2ME games that take advantage of the 3G network connection. They don't get that they need to tie lots of cool network-dependent content with a technology launch. You don't launch 3G service without a bunch of cool J2ME games. That's just basic marketing 101.
|
Thursday October 21, 2004
Zone4Play's Subsidiary MiXTV is extending J2ME technology, SMS, MMS, etc. to allow you to talk back to your TV via a satellite broadcast. You can vote, take surveys, play along with game shows, etc. from your J2ME cell phone so that you interact with the TV show that is being broadcast live.
See: Hmmm... Elvis might not have shot out his TV screen if he had this more elegant way of talking back to the TV. ;-) (For the younger generation: Elvis was like the Justin Timberlake of the 1950s... except bigger).
|
Wednesday October 20, 2004 Light, fruity, smooth, refreshing... wireless
Airborne Entertainment is going to release a J2ME MIDlet called the Wine Spectator Mobile Companion to see wine ratings conveniently from your J2ME cell phone.
See: They released on BREW first, but then will release a J2ME version shortly. That's dopey. There are many more J2ME phones out there than BREW phones. Their marketing must be doing a little too much product quality testing... which seems to be impairing their judgement! ;-)
|
Tuesday October 19, 2004 How sweet are you today? Just check your J2ME cell phone...
Mobile Diabetic, Inc. just came out with a J2ME MIDlet that allows diabetics to log thier blood glucose data wirelessly from their cell phones instead of using a paper and pen.
See: Nice use of J2ME technology: combines a medical app with the wireless network.
|
Monday October 18, 2004 Vote early, vote often... then redial and vote again, then redial and vote again
The mayor of London in 2008 wants to start a method of electronic voting where city voters can use the Internet, telephone, even J2ME technology-enable cell phones to cast their ballot for mayor of London.
See: It's like voting on the American Idol TV show... except for more boring candidates. :-)
|
Friday October 15, 2004 Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin-Eater!
J2ME multi-player gamers better watch out. IT GlobalSecure has come out with their SecurePlay 2.0 software for J2ME games to weed out cheaters on the J2ME multi-player networks.
See: Better watch out if you've been using your cell-phone to illegally share multi-player J2ME games without paying for them. Five-oh will be after you if you do. Aloha.
|
Thursday October 14, 2004
Cell phones are the most numerous software platform to program to, with 1.3 billion devices versus 500-750 million PCs. Some consumers (like in China) will skip having a PC and just have cell-phones far extending the lead that J2ME technology devices have as the most popular piece of equipment to program.
See: Learning to program J2ME devices is the most important skill to have as a software engineer going into the next decade.
|
Wednesday October 13, 2004
New sync software from Visto Corporation -- Visto Mobile 5.0, which can sync a cell phone with calendar, mail, contact list, etc. data from your desktop PC and servers.
See: It's nice to have the same data be everywhere, not necassarily the same apps everywhere. Data should be transferable, not the front-end GUIs, which should be device-specific.
|
Tuesday October 12, 2004 Grand Unifying Theory from FingerTwitch
Buried in this news announcement from Mforma, an aggregator of cell phone start-ups into a bigger holding company, is their acquisition of FingerTwitch, a start-up that enables mobile apps to run on both J2ME and Brew.
See: Maybe it's something to watch...
|
Monday October 11, 2004 Java, Java, Java -- everywhere
Three new phones from AT&T Wireless. All three have Java, Java, Java on them.
The V180 is GSM quad-band, MP3 ringtones, MMS, and of course has J2ME. The V220 adds to that a med-res camera. The V505 adds on top of that bluetooth, and video playback. See: Now all they need are some "That's-Hot!" J2ME games and apps to run on them. Get to work, everyone! :-)
|
Theme originally based on design by Bryan Bell
