The next generation... fragmentation?

A lot of people argue about JME fragmentation. And about JME, Symbian, Windows Mobile development in general. Too complex, too time-consuming, too fragmented. I agreed. And it seems like most of the people are looking for Web-style, Widgets like solutions for this. I support that "hype", but only to a certain extend. No doubt, it's nearly 10 times easier building a User Interface on a capable(!) browser using XHTML, SVG, ECMA script, rather then using the paint(Graphics g) Method in JME. Agreed. But when it comes to questions like: "How do I get the GPS-location in the browser-based application?" it's getting interesting.... Currently everyone wants to introduce his own solution in that space. Gears (from Google), Mozilla, LocationAware, OMTP, W3C, OpenAjax Alliance, just to mention a few examples. That's fragmentation at it's best. When people talk about fragmentation in the JME space, they usually mean that there are different APIs available on different devices and that the APIs behave differently (due to bugs or bad Spec). What is currently happening in the "browser-world" is even worse. They will have the same problems like JME (bugs, availablility of APIs cross devices) PLUS they don't even have consistent APIs yet. I hope that people start recognize this, and feed their proposals into a standardisation body to get a consistent API out as soon as possible...

Convergence

I'm a fan of Sony Ericsson devices as you might have noticed ;) I also like the DLNA media server integration of my Link Station and my PS3. Now the guys from Sony Ericsson did me a favour with their C905 device. It has WiFi and a build in DLNA compliant media server. When it connects to your WLAN, it will instantly show up in the Crossbar of the PS3 and you can view the pictures taken with 8.1 megapixel camera directly on your TV screen. Cool! Really, really cool.

Summerjam 08

...took place last weekend in cologne bay. we put up our tent next to the lake, stored some beer, a shisha and barbecue stuff there and had 3 very relaxing days on the jam. It was a great and peaceful atmosphere and not as crowded as last year. Even the lineup was not absolutely first class, the music, the sound and the performance was excellent. Stephen Marley, Patrice, Jah Cure and many more...
In my view, Summerjam is the best festival to go to, it's 100% easy going and relaxing with excellent music and jamaica feeling :)
Check out some pictures below or some youtube clips here.

p@rty 3.0

As last year, conny, marcel and I organized a party for family and friends. I still think that the location of a good party is a very important piece, so we spent some time to spot the right one. This year we decided to rock-a-boat on the rhine river. So we set up our equipment on the top deck of the nautilus boat and had a lot of fun until the early morning. Thanks everybody for showing up there, and let's see where we will rock next year ;)

Motion sensor fun

I played around with the accelerometer in my Sony Ericsson W910i phone which is accessible for JME applications via JSR 256. I took the physic engine from Marcin Ploska and extended it with accelerometer support. See the results here:

Marathon

On Sunday I finished my first marathon in Duesseldorf. Crossing the finish line was a strange moment between happiness and exhaustion. Not sure if I will do this again ;)

JSR 226 Demos

I gave a speech at JAX this year (on the mobility track) regarding JSR 226 and the usage of SVG for the UI of mobile applications. I think that SVG is still a bit underastimated at all. The scalability features of SVG are very useful especially on the various screen sizes on mobile devices.
To show the audience the features of SVG on pratical use cases, I created some demos which I'd like to show you here. Static images can't replace the animations of course, but it should give you an idea what SVG can do for you ;) I should mention that the SVG artwort was created by our graphics team, I'm just doing the java piece :)