I am in the process of creating a presentation on the three main runtimes on S60 platform - well, I should probably include also the browser in there, but currently the idea is to compare Java ME, Flash Lite and Python environments. Like: What functionalities are available? What is each good at? What is each not good at? and so forth...

My intention is to get this ready by mid-May, so there is still time to work on this (which is a good thing because the current version is like pre-draft quality :-)

However, if you would attend such presentation, what would you like to hear about? Also if you have some specific comments (pro or con) for a a specific environment, all comments are more than welcome!

Of course I will post the final presentation in here (or maybe a better place is FN Wiki...)

There has been a lot of discussion at FN discussion boards about Java ME development tools for Linux environment, which unfortunately seem to be few and far between. However, Sun just recently announced Sun Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.1 for CLDC, Early Access release, which provides a toolkit for Linux as well in addition to some minor bug fixes from the previous 2.5 version.

According to the release page it has been tested with Ubuntu 6.x.

I played with the Sun Wireless Toolkit 2.5 a little and it seem to have quite a few improvements since I last tested it (of course extensive API support, new emulator skins, more polished UI, etc.) although it is still lacking authroing tools (well, that is what NetBeans is for, right?)

Now a word of caution. I noticed that the default build settings for the API support is MSA. If you are building an application to be used on real devices, make sure to change this setting. The problem is that the MSA requires MIDP 2.1, which is not yet available on the real handsets. You can change this setting either by choosing Custom API selection, which allows you to freely select the required APIs, or then by selecting JTWI from the drop down menu.

If you do not change this setting, you cannot install you application on any real phone, as the device complains about incompatible versions, or something along those lines.

This reminds me similar problems with devices supporting only CLDC 1.0 (including S60 2nd Edition and 2nd Edition FP1 phones).

Lesson learned: If you have problems on getting you MIDlet even installed on your device, please check first the build settings for the project. (and secondly, make sure all the JAD and Manifest entries are correct...)

During the past year and three months I have read I would say all the FN discussion board postings on Java boards, and many other postings from other sections. There are a number of things which I have noticed (in addition to the fact that there are huge number of really really useful posts and the regular and occasional contributors are really doing a phenomenal job in there!):

• People ask what is wrong with their program, but then they fail to provide necessary information for the readers to do any troubleshooting. Like did you get an exception, what line of code cause the exception, what device was used, what the application tries to do, etc. - It is like calling a car repair shop saying: " My car does not move. How can I fix it?" (well, do you have the keys, do you have gas in the tank, is the battery out, etc...)
• Same questions get asked over and over again. This is not surprising as sometimes things change rapidly and if the answer was "NO" two months ago it might be "YES" tomorrow. In many cases it looks like though, that people do not use the search or even read the FAQ postings, which have been prepared for answering the frequently asked questions. (Yes, searching might take more time and sometimes the search just does not return the right links - maybe because of different spelling...)
• Java questions are posted in Symbian forums and vice versa. I think I have moved at least one posting every day from Java forums to Symbian. Part of the issue is likely that the title of the forum does not include Java (or Symbian) in it, it can be only seen in the forum hierarchy at the top of the page. Maybe a place for some usability studies...
• Occasional crosspostings. Posting your question on multiple boards does not really help. It just fragments the discussions and makes the future searches less effective. Please, one detailed posting per question in a fitting section.

And finally, to make my posting less negative, I just have to share these two great pages with you. A cool concept phone from a high-school kid and a retro-case for your mobile phone. Happy Easter!

... is creating the graphics for your application.

Well, not exactly, especially if you are developing a complex Flash Lite application as the coding can get tricky too. And definitely not, if you are familiar with drawing tools in general. (Of course, if you get someone else to draw the graphics for you, you are golden :-)

After scrapping the networked Flash Lite application for my Flash Lite article, I decided to create a simple game as my example application. This time coding was not the issue, but getting the needed graphics in place cause some sweating. If I can use pen and paper, I can draw some things, which other people can even recognize. With mouse, this is much more challenging (note, I do not have a pen-controlled graphics tablet at my disposal, unfortunately).

Additional challenge was that I wanted to use vector graphics instead of bitmap graphics. Luckily Fireworks allows one to draw vector graphics and store in such formats which are understandable for the Flash Authoring tool (I used .ai format, which is the Adobe Illustrator file format). However getting used to the click-on-one-point-and-drag-the-handle type drawing took some time.

After few hours of experimenting and tinkering (and swearing), I got the game graphics ready. The results were not horrible, but no-one can say that the tree, apple, plate, and exploding apple I managed to create for the game are great pieces of art. I think most of the people can recognize them though :-)

Any good tips on how to become a great vector graphics artist?

When one has a mobile phone through one's employer, which also pays for the monhtly bill, it is easy to forget the cost of data (or the limitations in downloading data).

I was reading this report on Verizon having an unlimited EVDO data service which is effectively limited to 5 GB per month (anyone exceeding this amount could be kicked out of the service) and started wondering how much bandwidth I or any of my close colleagues use per month. And how much that data transfer would cost to us if we would pay that data transfer ourselves.

5 GB is about 200 megabytes per day (depending if you you want to check out the data amount per work day or all days). It is quite a lot for a mobile phone user (I guess), but still many people using this service to connect their laptop to the net might run out of data soon. At least I am getting enough emails and browse the Web enough that my monthly data transfer is way over this limit. Even without the occasional Youtube video sessions :-)

I tried to find out if AT&T (the wireless carrier I am now using) has any limitations in their unlimited data plans, but I was not able to find such limitations. Maybe I am not so expensive user of wireless data after all...

Maybe I been reading too much detailed Java infomration for the Standard Java certification exam, so that I have temporarily lost the big picture, but I do not seem to recall any good source of information about the reserved words of Java ME. (Note that above I have made an assumption that I have understood the big picture at some point, which might stretch the reality a little.. or a lot :-)

There is plenty of online sources for information about reserved words (keywords) for Java SE, but so far I have not seen a good collection of reserved words available for mobile Java developers.

Yes, Java ME is based on Java SE 1.3 so the keyword list should be the same, right? However most of the online sources list Java 1.5 or 1.4 versions of the keyword list, which contain a number of keywords not applicable for Java ME.

Like transient, assert, strictfp, and volatile.