Ron Liechty's Forum Nokia Blog
And Now For Something Entirely Different
Nokia Ron | 30 August, 2007 03:24
Ah the words I loved to hear right after the giant foot smashes the nude lady as the band plays Sousa’s Liberty Bell march. What, you only know Monty Python’s Flying Circus from movies and the dead parrot bit? The 45 episodes that began in 1969 have lasted 40 years and still stand up today. Something else began development in 1969 and was released in 1972 even before Monty Python made it to the American shore. That is the programming language called C, truly this was something entirely different.
C is a modular (structured) programming language that was designed to be a portable assembly language. John McEnerney one of the original authors of Think Pascal once wrote an e-mail saying he had finally found pure eloquence and it was pointers in the C language. Programming languages have come and programming languages have gone but C has endured and spread in dozens of variants and the basis for Java. All POSIX compatible operating systems come with a C Compiler built into the system. With just 30 words a language that is so powerful that it changed the world. It is not UNIX or Linux that made open source acceptable it was the portable language of C that allowed everyone on a wide variety of platforms to write something that they can share with the world.
So lets all raise a toast to something entirely different C, the eloquent programming language. Thirty-five years young and still it endures.
Ron
Entertainment, Open C, Symbian C++ |
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Web 2.0 rev. 8.0d
Nokia Ron | 28 August, 2007 02:42
I never got the purpose of a Wiki until I started using Wikipedia. To me the only thing that Wikis were good for was for collaboration projects. I did not grasp the concept of contributed documentation, only contributed code and comments. Now, a Wikipedia is my first stop for documentation of anything I am curious about. Want to know what SOA is? Then wikipedia.org is the place to go. Now granted there are twenty other possible solutions besides Service Oriented Software but generally from the context of the phrase you are reading it, you will get the right answer.
I hope that Forum Nokia’s Wiki can be the place for all mobile device developers to go to first for answers. I hope that when a person predominately doing Samsung device applications wants to find out information that they check the Nokia Wiki first. I say this because then that that same person will contribute his knowledge to Nokia’s developers Wiki. Sure we could all just use Google and let the Google Brats rake in the dough but do we want another mega-corporation dominating the world? (Well, yeah, if it is Nokia).
The best way to learn something is to teach it, the next best way is to write an article about it. If you don’t have time to do those, read a Wiki. If it is wrong, don’t worry an expert will come by and correct it in short order. I don’t comprehend why I resisted Wikis for years, most likely is that I just had this concept of it as a project tracking system. Whatever held me back, like a dam breaking my enthusiasm is bursting out. So, watch out below.
Ron
Business Opportunities/Services, Enterprise, Entertainment |
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Web .01 Old School
Nokia Ron | 23 August, 2007 22:30
At the dawn of civilization when baud rates were measured in the hundreds and if anyone was on the Internet their neighbors thought they could start World War III simply by playing a game, there was only one means of communication; CTSS. MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) allowed multiple users to sign onto a common computer remotely and share files. From this beginning of the Internet in 1961 sprung the main forms of communications our beloved e-mail and Usenet Newsgroups.
The wonderful thing about the old technologies that still hold true today is these text based system allow extremely fast transfer of information on very slow connection speeds. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) are only different that the original User Network - Usenet in that BBS’s have a central repository compared to newsgroups that are a conglomeration of providers sharing the repository. Forum Nokia’s forums (or discussion boards as we call them to avoid confusion) are the most popular area of Forum Nokia with nearly one million page views every month and over a hundred thousand unique visitors. Our repository of knowledge is unmatched by any other Mobile device vendor. Changes to newsgroups need to be done slowly and deliberately with all of the users worldwide taken into account.
About two thousand five hundred years before Isaac Asimov said “the only constant is change”; Heraclitus said that “Nothing endures but change”. Which sort of proves they were both wrong and that some things never change. My point being that with the new Web 2.0 social technology some things such as Forum Nokia’s discussion boards are still the best way to share and receive information. I remembered when I first studied C programming and my assignment was to get a name and number my results came back all screwed up because of the nature of scanf() being designed to read files not random entries. I posted a question on a newsgroup and Greg Comeau answered my question. If you don’t know who Greg Comeau is, learn more about him and his company he makes probably the finest compilers in the world. But more importantly Greg Comeau epitomizes the concept of the mixture of social and enterprise and the Internet that we now call Web 2.0 and he did it almost 20 years ago.
Ron
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Web 2.0, Part 2.0 Sales
Nokia Ron | 21 August, 2007 00:24
My local newspaper recently changed to truly be local with only one page devoted to national or international news yet on Sundays they have the expanded news and there is one page devoted to business. In this weeks paper the main feature was Technology helps reinvent cell phone advertising an Associated Press story from the Broadcast and Communication Exhibition in Singapore. The story is how advertising on mobile devices is now less obtrusive and not as distractive. Some advertising can be beneficial information which is a big part of Web 2.0 philosophy.
Why this is important is that even in small town America the mainstreaming of the Internet on mobile devices is recognized as the future of the Internet. Just as people that do not have home computers are missing out economically so will those that do not have multimedia devices miss out in the near future. What has kept many people from accessing the internet by mobile device is cost and speed.
The cost is certainly going to go down if advertising can be done in a manner that most people perceive as beneficial. For example when using your GPS aware device you wish to dine out, a list of restaurants near by will pop up. These restaurants have paid the search provider to be listed on the web the same as they pay to be listed in the Yellow Pages of a phone book. What developers need to do is create new applications that use a beneficial advertising. This way you are paid by the advertiser and do not need to worry about how to distribute and sell the application.
Ron
Connectivity, Enterprise, Location Based Services |
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Web 2.0, Part 1.5
Nokia Ron | 17 August, 2007 22:11
While I enjoy blogging and it does put a human face to a company I don’t see it as the penultimate feature of web 2.0. However, when you talk to bloggers or the media (where journalists are pretty much just paid bloggers) you would think that blogs are the beginning and the end of Web 2.0. A recent article about the iPhone told of an AT&T customer that had ran up a $5,000 roaming bill by using the iPhone to access the Internet while in Europe. Who can deny that the mobile device and the Web 2.0 are totally united for better or worse? Steve Jobs carefully used the Internet to generate hysteria for the release of the iPhone and the popularity of the N95 has mostly been through word of mouth over the Internet.
In reality, blogs are a small segment of the Internet and saying outrageous things on the net does not make you any smarter than saying outrageous things on a soap box in front of the town hall. You just get laughed at by more people. While someone might think he is wise and has a cult status the truth is that blogs are a small piece of the internet communication. Anyone that thinks that a single blog is directing the way the world perceives something is mistaken. However, when well orchestrated as in elections and iPhone releases, they can indeed be a powerful force. Like news and commentary on television where it represents about 10% of the online time there are other channels of communications we should be aware of.
Stay tuned for more information on Web 2.0 and how it affects mobile developers.
Ron
Connectivity, Enterprise, Entertainment |
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Web 2.0, Part 1.0
Nokia Ron | 15 August, 2007 23:25
I dislike buzz words like Web 2.0 that don’t mean anything so why not have a series of articles that tell what it means. One of Nokia’s employees uploaded a thesis on Web 2.0 to the Developer’s Wiki that I think every mobile developer should read. When it was uploaded, my first thought was that I wondered if this is really related to developing for mobile devices. Then it hit me, not only is this related; it is the most important media technology for developers to understand concerning the future of mobile devices.
Is it social media or a technology, is this just MySpace, eBay, YouTube or MOSH or is it technical like all the alphabet technologies AJAX or XML, CSS, RSS and all of that? Everyone that uses the internet thinks Web 2.0 is something else. Let’s start with something called Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that is highly touted as the future on all the Information Technology magazines.
SOA is a customer service oriented aspect of the Internet that I read a lot about and another thing I am never sure I understand. However, if you’ve ever filed an insurance request online, you have experienced it. While this total Web interface is effective and efficient and has made amazon.com and Geico Insurance big winners. Generally the customer service aspect is to get your money and often works very well for support after they have the money. However, in the case of highly technological support such as mobile device development, Forum Nokia needs to go way beyond SOA and understand it is not a panacea but only a piece of the pie.
Stay tuned for the next blog as I (feeling like Dogbert) give my opinions of other aspects of Web 2.0
Ron
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A Mini Vacation
Nokia Ron | 14 August, 2007 01:19
I thought I’d take a short vacation, I have to take two weeks a year by company policy and I’ve only taken one day so far, so this weekend seemed like a nice one to stretch out to be four days long. Hartti told me, “Ron you should not be working during your vacation the company wants you fresh”. Well, I made it Thursday without a nervous breakdown but on Friday I thought I’d check the mail. I don’t know if Hartti had anything to do with this or if the gods were just messing with me, but as soon as I got the mail downloaded the local internet connection broke and was off for 8 hours. I took it as an omen and found other things to occupy my time. Saturday I took a little trip so my time was
There was a car race on Sunday but after that was over and supper was ate, my fingers were twitching and my muscles straining, I could not take it any longer I had to sign on. I’m sure that none of you missed me but I sure missed you all. Only eight more days of vacation to take this year and I’ll be great. Maybe I’ll try this again for two days next month.
Ron
Ron
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When to Start Fresh with New Equipment
Nokia Ron | 08 August, 2007 21:29
I live in an old house and there is constant upkeep on the house as age and gravity take affect. This last weekend I had to do some plumbing, removing the old sewer pipe and replacing it with space age materials (also known as plastic). Because I was very careful and also have lots of deodorizers the job went fairly well and the house was inhabitable in a few hours after the job was completed. I could have just kept using the plunger every few months and lived with the occasional back up and I could have even just cut out and replaced the elbow that was giving me such problems. But those are just stop gap measures and at some time you need to fix it properly.
Nokia has recently replaced CodeWarrior with Carbide.c++ being one of the original CodeWarrior people from the 1990’s I had a lot of reservation about this change. However, there were just so many patches one can do to something and then it is time to start new, it made sense and even if there was a hardship of learning a new tool or there were some flaws it was time to start fresh. A new patch was recently made available that while it seems insignificant in numbering, it is a major update to the Carbide.c++ tool fixing over 130 bugs.
How to Upgrade:
Check your current version (Click Help → About Carbide.c++)
For Carbide 1.2 or v1.2.1 users, you will be loading a PATCH file
- Open Carbide v1.2 or v1.2.1
- Click Help → Download Updates in the Carbide tool.
- Select Find and Install…
- Select “Search for updates of the currently install features”
- Wait (then wait some more)
- Install features
For Carbide v1.1 users:
- You will need to install v1.2 from Forum Nokia, get a new license file, then follow the steps above
- Details on upgrading from v1.1 to v1.2 may be found at Forum Nokia Carbide.c++ licensing.
Ron
Open C, S60, Symbian C++ |
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New Features on Discussion Boards
Nokia Ron | 07 August, 2007 01:53
If you haven’t visited the discussion boards recently you need to give them a try. Forum Nokia has really stepped up with our active Forum Experts and Forum Nokia Champions to help all members of the developer community. If you have a question you will get a reply over 75% of the time. While this is not yet satisfactory it is extremely high for a peer support system. You can improve your chances to get a quick and useful response if you are sure to give a good subject title and post in the right area. Never “hijack” another thread to ask a question, those old threads are, for the most part, never read.
We have reorganized the groups to make it less confusing where to post messages and easier to find the proper area. We added improved searches for example you can now double click on folders (or sub folders) to mark that forum read, then click on new posts in only the forums you are interested in. We also have new tools to manage the discussion boards and hopefully an improved sign on procedure.
There are more to come, the upgrade allows us to add some often asked for features we will be adding these as the year progresses. I believe in taking small steps and letting the community learn what is new rather than push it all at once and confuse everyone.
Ron
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New Goodies on Discussion Boards or Living the Eternal Beta of Web 2.0
Nokia Ron | 02 August, 2007 04:55
If you haven’t been to the discussion boards in the last day or so, we have some new goodies you should check out. While we haven’t gotten it all yet, we do have a few new features and more that we can now add later on. This was enabled when we updated our discussion board software to a newer version.
One of the new features I like is having a new post list only have the final forum name rather than a long list which made scrolling the list a long chore. This however has raised a few hairs with some of our members so later this week, any duplicate or confusing names such as General (Java, and Web Technologies) will be renamed. If you find some things you see need tweaking let us know so we can fix them.
Another thing we now have is and icon for multiple quotes where you can quote from more than one message in a reply. We can also, play a little football and give out yellow or red cards to people that are pushing the terms of service. Before we had this feature we would have to either ban a user or edit his message, which I’m very hesitant to do. So now we can give them a warning to clean it up before outright banning a person. We’ll try to bring more new features online later this year.
Ron
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