Mobile Computing Trends

Only foreground 3rd party apps on iPhone - Intentional or Design flaw?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:32:00 +0000

I read this post in Techcrunch which discusses on iPhone's limitation to allow only foreground 3rd party applications. 3rd party applications are the ones developed using the iPhone SDK.

While the Mike thinks that this is an intended restriction owing to the limited memory and resources, I personally do not think thats the only reason. And I know why I am correct for some reasons ;).

I believe the restriction is more of a design flaw of the iPhone SDK. I believe that Apple engineers haven't yet figured out a way (or most probably did not have time to do so) a way to switch between the native applications and the 3rd party applications. You would need a robust layer which will take care of remembering the 3rd party applications' running context and bring back the UI when the application again comes to foreground. Also, there might be scenarios wherein what about happens if a native background application wakes up and wants to use the UI. In which case, how would the 3rd party application behave. Would it be able to yield the user interface for the native application.

Most of the above use cases need lot of thinking and through integration of it into the SDK layer. I am sure Apple would later release an updated SDK which will allow 3rd party applications to run in the back ground as well.

There may be a work-around for this problem. The 3rd party application developer can care of trapping/getting notification from the OS/platform for exiting its own context and then saving the relevant context information in the memory. The next time you launch the application, it can read the previously saved context and bring itself back to the state of previous execution. Its very similar to playing the brick game in your blackberry.

Is Sun getting desparate not to lose mobile JVM market?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:43:00 +0000

After Apple announced last Thurday of its intention to release the long awaited SDK for iPhone*, Sun has unveiled its intention to port JVM onto the iPhone.

Its looks like Sun does not want to waste any time bringing the mobile version of JVM (J2ME) onto the iPhone. Obviously this sense of urgency should be due to the fact that iPhone provides a very good platform for mobile applications and also because of the impending threat from Google's Android. Sun should already feel frustrated by Google's clever coup of replacing Sun's JVM with their own.

The way I see the future is that Apple and Google may be in a direct collision course towards mobile dominance. And Sun may want to be present in one of the camps.

What also remains to be seen is how would Sun JVM affect Apple's business model of trying to sell iPhone applications through their iTunes store (App Store as it may be called). With the JVM present on the iPhone, would mobile application developers like to leverage it or will they rather choose to directly use iPhone SDK. With Apple bringing in restrictions on the development platform (only Mac can be used has the host to develop and debug iPhone applications), it gives a point of leverage for Sun.

And what about performance! iPhone SDK is already a layer on top of the native iPhone OS APIs. Now JVM would be one more layer on top of it. Will the java applications written for iPhone in future have the same performance as other platforms?

The war for a mobile computing platform is going to get interesting as days go by. Keep watching this blog to see how this unfolds.

Useful Links:
* You may be interested in reading this coverage of the iPhone SDK Press Release by Ryan Block of Engadget.
- You can also watch Apple's official video on the iPhone SDK Press Release here. Note: You need quicktime player.

Are you writing Java Apps for Android ? Maybe and Maybe not

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:33:00 +0000

Lot of people who are aware of Android think that they actually write mobile applications using Java. This is only partly correct.

What many people miss out is the fact Google Android uses ONLY Java Syntax. The java code that one develops for Android is converted in to standard Java bytecode. This again is converted in a different bytecode format (which Google claims that is an optimized, minimum memory footprint bytecode).

Basically, Android does not use a standard JVM (it uses a non-standard JVM called Dalvik) . The SDK also contains android.* packages apart from the usual java packages.

I found this post from Stefano Mazzocchi very interesting. He claims that the reason for Google using a non-standard JVM is not really for just optimization sake, but instead to get around any licensing issues with Sun for using J2ME. Wow! I never thought of that.

Its natural. If I were to run the Android project (instead of Andy Rubin), then I would start using J2ME as a preferred virtual machine for obvious reasons that we have a huge group of developers who can be readily moved/attracted to developing applications on Android. And then when it comes to licensing, I would think of someway to circumvent the problem and the one smart way is to make sure the final bytecode is not the same of the one generated by the standard java compiler. Thats exactly what Google engineers have done by developing Dalvik.

Other interesting links:
http://wireless.itworld.com/4269/071116googlesun/page_1.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2007/11/dalvik_googles_tweaked_nonstan.html

[Article imported from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-you-writing-java-apps-for-android.html]

Opera Mobile 9.5 announced - But whats the big deal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Opera has announced the latest version of their Opera Mobile.

You can watch this guided tour of the Opera Mobile 9.5 user interface and features.

Now, most of you who have been using Opera browser on your phone should be confused between Opera Mini and Opera Mobile.

Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are different in many aspects. If you have been using Opera on your phone for a long time now, then you should be having Opera Mini.

Opera Mini is java based browser application, whereas Opera Mobile is written as a native application for a Symbian S60 or Windows Mobile operating system (Opera Mobile 9.5 also seems to be available for embedded linux).

An other difference is that Opera Mini uses an intermediate proxy server which converts the web pages to much lower sizes. Opera Mobile on the other hand directly downloads the web pages onto the mobile and then figures out a way to render it on the screen.

Last, but not the least.. Opera Mini is free, whereas, one needs to buy Opera Mobile.

Now, is it worth buying a browser for your phone. May be and May be not. I don't want to comment on it unless and until I try out the 30-day trial version of their previous version of Opera Mobile.

What makes you browsing experience in iPhone and Nokia N/E series phones great ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:25:00 +0000

You should thank Webkit, the open source web browser engine*, for the wonderful browsing experience.

This what the Webkit home page has to say:

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit's HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60's S60 WebKit development.

Apart from Apple (as the Safari web browser in their Mac OS X, iPhone and iPod Touch) and Nokia (in their N and E series of phones), Google has also included Webkit as the default web browsing engine in its recently released Android platform for mobile devices.

In his post, Bob Cringely reasons as to why Webkit is such a strategic project for Apple and why it would also be the driver for the rumoured iTablet (you find my previous post questioning as to whether Apple's PDA would click or not ?).

You may also find it interesting to read this post by Om Malik about Webkit's rise to popularity. Gives you a quick round up of where webkit stands compared to its competition.

Webkit is still evolving (but fast) and has a long way to go before winning hearts of hardcore Opera Mini fans like myself :). Read this post in Wap Review to know why Opera Mini 4.0 is better than Webkit on a Nokia (and I completely agree with that).

-------------

Web Browser Engine - This is the piece of software which downloads the html web page from the address specified by you, processes it and renders it back on the screen of the display device. The screen could be anything from your PC Monitor to an iPhone's touch screen.

[Article imported from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-makes-you-browsing-experience-in.html]

How does Google benefit from Android?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:20:00 +0000

This was the question my friend and office colleague was asking me when we were, in general, discussing about technology.

I explained to him that Android will speed up innovation on the mobile computing front thus ensuring that users have a better and more PC-like web browsing experience on their mobile devices. This ensures that more and more users will starting browsing the net from their phones and thus ensuring that more and more traffic is driven to one of Google's many services where they serve Ads and also not to forget that Google Ads are scattered all over the world wide web.

Basically, Google believes in increasing size of the pie rather than increasing size of the slice in the existing pie. Interesting quote isn't it :). Well, I read about this quote in this news article by Financial Post which questions Google's business model on going the open source way with OpenSocial and Android.

Though I told my friend about the above, I wanted to confirm again if this is how Google really was hoping to benefit out of Android platform. So I did a little bit of Google'ing and and came across this interview given by Eric Schmidt and Andy Rubin, Director of mobile platforms at Google (the brain behind Android)

This is what Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has to say in his interview at PBS.

SPENCER MICHELS: Now you say you're almost giving this away, why?
ERIC SCHMIDT: We're giving Android away because we benefit when the Web is better. We benefit when more people are using the internet, especially on mobile devices. And we benefit because when more people use Google, more people use Google search and every once in a while those people will use our ads. So eventually we think an Android mobile user is pretty likely to use Google advertising and our studies indicate that mobile ads are going to be worth a lot more than the traditional ads that we sell.
SPENCER MICHELS: Why?
ERIC SCHMIDT: The easiest example to think about is how personal your phone is. Everyone here, everyone in our audience has a mobile phone, very hard to get away from them. That phone is with them, it knows where they are. Imagine how we can use that information to provide a more targeted ad, if it were appropriate.

By the way, it is a very good interview and would recommend reading it if you want to know Google's plan for Android and mobile computing.

Google forming the Open Handset Alliance and defining a new mobile platform called Android once again proves my point that there is this race to establish a linux-based mobile operating system/platform (Oh yeah.. Android is based on Linux. On top of Linux, they have a Virtual Machine which offers APIs similar to Java VM but is supposed to be much more advanced than Java VM).

But with Google intelligently forming an alliance which includes telephone operators to handset manufacturers to chip manufacturers, they are better poised to take over the Mobile Operating System space much to the dislikes of giants like Symbian and Microsoft.

Google not just stops there. They even have a announced a $ 10 million prize money for users who develop useful and compelling applications using Android. This is to ensure that more and more developers get involved in this effort.

The advantage, I could perceive, from Android could be the following:

Handset Manufacturers: They would not have to pay hefty licensing fees to proprietary mobile operating systems like Symbian and Microsoft. So the cost of the handset goes down thus boosting the handset sales.

Developers: Because it is an open platform and almost everything is available for free, you can pretty much write any application you want. Imagination (of course the phone's capabilities) if your limit.

Consumers/End Users: Because handset prices go down, consumers can afford to easily buy them and they also get to install and use thousands of applications that were developed by the open source community.

Telephone Operators: They get to benefit because consumers start using these web-enabled/web-based applications on their Android phones and thus the data traffic is going to increase drastically. Operators are going to charge for this data traffic.

Of course, not to forget Google (and others).. they would be benefiting as well from Ads clicked by users on their mobile phones.

I am not sure how successful Android is going to be. But my gut feeling says that it will take off well. But, I believe, for the mobile web to pick up really well, the network speeds have to improve a lot. They sure will. Its just a matter of time.

-----------------

For those read this post till this point, scratching your heads, wondering as to what Android was all about, please read below.

Google, earlier this month (Nov 5th, 2007) announced that it was forming the Open Handset Alliance which is going to drive the development of Android. Android is an open platform for mobile phones which consist of an operating system, a set of software modules for performing some of the common tasks on the phone (middleware, as we call it in software terminology) and a user interface. You also can download the software development kit (SDK) for developing your own applications that run on the Android platform.

[Article imported from -http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-does-google-benefit-from-android.html]

Nokia N810 Internet Tablet released - Competetion of iPod touch ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:21:00 +0000

Nokia announces the release of their Internet Tablet, the Nokia N810.

You can view the official photos of this device here - http://www.nokia.com/A4136017?category=n810

Please do not confuse this device for a mobile phone because of the Nokia branding. The internet tablet is a wifi-enabled Mobile Internet Device.

This device provides you with an option to connect to the internet while you are on the move. You can do what you usually do with a PC.. you can browse, chat, make internet calls, access web applications and apart from that you can use it as a media player as well.. all this while you are travelling and away from your PC.

The device has a 4.13" (800x480 pixel resolution) touch-screen. Unlike iPod touch, you also have an option to use qwerty keyboard.

Also, it comes with an integrated GPS with an built-in maps and satellite navigation applications.

And yes (I am happy to say this :)), it is based on the Maemo Linux Operating System (Debian Linux derivative) . Now this is very important for the device to gain popularity. This device provides an environment where Linux developers from around the world can contribute towards developing interesting applications for this device. If developers are interested, users would also be interested as well as they have more choices in terms of applications for this device.

Now, I could not find a page where its specs are given. The specification details given in the press release are scattered. So here is the consolidated specification of this device that I could derive from the press release. The list is kind of crude and is incomplete. But is better than what is mentioned in the press release :)

Hardware Specification:

Screen Size: 4.13" (800x480 pixel resolution)
Connectivity: Bluetooth and Wifi
Touch screen and Sliding Qwerty keyboard
GPS
Integrated VGA camera
External Memory: 10GB Memory Card (Optional)

Software Specification:

Maemo Linux Operating System
Mozilla Web Browser with AJAX and Adobe Flash 9
Skype
Video Gizmo
Rhapsody
Built-in maps and Satellite navigation
Boingo
Earthlink
The Cloud

Highlights:

Offers true Web2.0 experience.
Open platform. Gives an opportunity for the open source developers to take part.
Touch Screen & Qwerty keyboard available

My Thoughts:

As, I have mentioned before, Mobile web is picking up pretty well and it is going to be next happening this after the PC revolution. Your life is more and more going to depend on these intelligent mobile devices. I wouldn't be surprised even if people stop buying PCs 10-15 years down the line when all they need is accessible through a mobile device.

Nokia realizes the potential for a Mobile Internet Device and is got a lead with their Internet Tablet series.

The iPod touch, I feel is more or less similar to the Internet Tablet. Both these devices are going to prove that mobile devices are a capable platform for accessing the Internet.

Now that brings up an interesting point. Nokia and Apple are competing with each other directly. While Nokia shows the media player functionality to their Internet Tablet, Apple has brought Web Browsing capabilities to the popular iPod media player.

Nokia, I feel has an obvious advantage here. Having been the leaders in Mobile phones, they are well placed to come up with more innovations to their devices. Also, the Internet Tablet provides an open platform for developers to value-add by writing applications of their choice. iPhone/iPod touch are very restricted in terms of supporting the developer community. Apple may lead the race for now in terms of usability and multi-touch features of their device. But its a matter of time before these features become a commodity.

Rumours about Gphone hardware manufacturer!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:05:00 +0000

Fortune news has got news that HTC, a taiwanese company, is manufacturing phones that come pre-loaded with Google's operating system for mobile phones. There is no news on model of phone or any other details of the Gphone capabilities.

But my gut feeling says that Google is going to use Embedded Linux (stripped down version of Linux) on Gphone with tight integration with their other services such as Gmail, Google Maps, etc. Also, the current trend shows that Linux is going to dominate mobile devices like never before.

Below is the link to Fotune News about rumours on hardware manufacturer for Gphone.
http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/10/15/chinese-whispers-50000-gphones-shipping-out/

Mobile platform-specific Google Maps!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:57:00 +0000

Wow.. finally Google Maps specifically created for S60 Symbian platform.

Here are some screenshots of the new Google Maps installed on my Nokia E61 :).

By the way, I found this review at All About Symbian about the new Google Maps very useful.

I knew this would eventually happen. This is what I was suggesting to Schrep in my comments to his post. I was mentioning about my thoughts on how Firefox for mobile phones should follow a strategy where first they come up with a Java based firefox so that they can capture the mass market and then they followup with a platform specific firefox application which gives a better performance.

Now, Google did just that. They first came up with a java-based Google Maps. This ensured that most of the phones start using Google Maps (capture the mass market). Now they've come up with a platform-specific Google Map which is available for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian and Blackberry, which gives a better performance and also utilize phone-specific features. For example, the new Google Map uses the phones' GPS if that's available. So if you install the new Google Maps on your Nokia N95, then it will automatically use the inbuilt GPS to show your location on the map.

For those who are not familiar with mobile applications.. what this means is that the previously available Google Map application (software) for the mobile phones was written (developed) using Java. Which means any Java enabled phone was install and use Google Maps on their phone. So you must be asking whats the big deal about Google Maps now?!!

Well, any Java-based application runs on top of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which in turn runs on top of the mobile OS (platform). Which means there will be a comparable difference in performance between a Java-based application and a platform-specific application. Obviously, platform-specific applications are must faster. Also, developing mobile applications using the platform specific APIs (Application Programming Interface) will let us utilize any in-built phone features like GPS (as I've mentioned above).

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/10/mobile-platform-specific-google-maps.html]

Race for Linux based Mobile Operating System

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:55:00 +0000

Phew.. what a journey through the world of mobile internet devices, mobile web browsers and operating systems for mobile devices. I am referring to the link after link journey of mine that was spawned from the links given in this post by Schrep on Mozilla's plans for going mobile. Schrep talks about what are Mozilla's plans to take Firefox onto mobile devices. In his post he had given reference to Intel, Nokia and couple of other links pertaining to how mobile web was really taking off and that it justified Mozilla's focus for a mobile browser.

During this journey (browsing) today, one aspect is very clear, that is, there is this race towards coming up with a Linux based mobile operating system.

Let me elaborate more.

First, I read this interview of Matt Zimmerman (CTO of Ubuntu) where he explains about Ubuntu Mobile, an effort by Ubuntu to bring an Ubuntu flavor on mobile devices. He says that there is a possibility of mobile devices coming up with Ubuntu Mobile installed, as early as 2008!!!

Next I read about Nokia's Maemo initiative where they have come up with a framework for mobile internet devices built on top of any linux operating system running on any device (including mobile phones.. possibly).

Then I read this news on how ARM is trying to come up with a better version of Linux well suited for mobile devices. You can find more information about ARM Mobile Linux Platform here.

And then Intel has its own initiative on bringing Linux on mobile internet devices called Moblin.

And finally how can I forget about the rumoured Gphone which many say (like this latest news on Fotune and The Register) that it is Google's effort in bringing in their own Linux-based operating system for mobile devices.

So what do you think are the least common denominators from all the above news.

Linux is going to dominate the embedded device space:

Mobile phone vendors like Nokia, Motorola and Palm either have their versions of embedded Linux running on their phones and they are under development right now.

Its not just mobile phones but other devices like Internet Tabloids would also run on Linux.

And from my experience on set top boxes, I know Linux has made in-roads there as well.

Chipset Vendors are desperately trying to define a mobile platform based on Linux:

All mobile chipset vendors (like Intel, ARM, Broadcom, etc.) seem to be defining a Mobile Linux Platform where they are more than willing to provide support to the developer community in supporting their hardware. Reason, they see lot of potential for mobile devices and they want to make their platform developer friendly.. especially Linux friendly.

Today's browsing on internet has been very useful and given me a lot of perspective on mobile computing.

[Article moved from http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=1268868560754932236]

AJAX initiative for mobile web

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 10:54:00 +0000

Read this news in Techmeme about leading vendors and companies taking part in a workshop aimed at bringing AJAX for the mobile web applications.

This further strengthens my argument from my previous post that mobile web is picking up. I think AJAX something that was definitely missing on the mobile platform. When most of the web applications are making use of AJAX to bring interactiveness and better usability, the mobile web has been lagging behind.

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/09/ajax-initiative-for-mobile-web.html]

Review: Opera Mini 4 Beta 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:45:00 +0000

Opera Mini 4 beta 2 is a mobile browser for mobile phones which are java enabled. It is one of the (probably the one and only) best mobile browser around which provides superior browsing experience.

What makes it superior is the fact that it gives a true browsing experience, in the sense, it is capable of rendering actual web pages as you would see it on a desktop web browser like IE, Firefox or Opera.

An other factor that makes it really superior is its performance. Pages are fetched and rendered very fast and definitely it is the fastest mobile browser around. The magic behind this performance is due to the fact that the requested web pages are first processed and optimized by Opera's proxy servers and then given to the mobile phone. Size of the images in these optimized web pages is greatly reduced though the only minor drawback is that their resolution is very less. But thats a small sacrifice for the responsiveness that is gained in turn.

About Opera Mini

I would like to only touch of upon some of the notable features. For a complete list of features, Opera Mini's web site is the best place to refer (its a great page explaining all the features crisp and clear).

Henceforth, in this post, when I say "Opera Mini" I am referring to Opera Mini 4 beta 2

Start Page:

Opera Mini's startup page is a really smart move towards usability. At first, I was not happy with this because the default browser that comes along with the Nokia phones (based on S60,3rd edition platform) which takes you to a default home page that you have set. But after having used Opera Mini for quite some time, I found that it was a good thing to have a start page. What makes start page so useful is the fact that all you bookmarks and your recent browsing history is accessible from here. Well thought usability!!

Start Page

Web page Preview:

Any page fetched by default is shown in a fit-to-screen preview. A small box overlay hovers over the preview which can be moved in any direction either using the keypad or using your phones joystick. This box overlay gives an indication of the content that would be zoomed onto fit the phone's screen. A cute little mouse pointer is also provided which proves to be useful at times when selecting items in that web page.

When scrolling through a web page (in zoomed mode), Opera aligns/positions the page automatically such that the text appears centrally. So that way we do not have a scroll left/right to adjust the text such that it falls within the viewable region. Very intelligent!!

Full page preview

Zoomed portion of the preview

Shortcut Keys:

There are shortcuts for doing almost any operation. There are two sets of shortcuts: the first set is accessed by pressing "#" key followed by other characters. This gives the most common operations like managing your bookmarks or navigating between pages. The second set of shortcuts can be accessed by pressing "*" key followed by other character. These shortcuts are used to access bookmarked web sites and to change the viewing mode to full screen or toggling between portrait and landscape mode. Check the screenshots below the complete list of shortcuts.

Shortcuts accessed by pressing #

Shortcuts accessed by pressing *

Bookmarks:

Websites can be easily bookmarked by using the shortcut "#7". You can also bookmark a website by chossing Add Bookmark option from Menu->Tools.

While adding a bookmark, you can also choose to display this bookmark on the start page. not adding all bookmarks to the start page ensures that the start page is not cluttered and only the most important bookmarks are availabled for access on the start page.

Adding bookmark from the Menu

Choose to display this book mark in the start page

You can manage the add/delete/modify/rearrange the bookmarks by pressing the shortcut key "#2" and then selecting the Manage option. You can also access the bookmark list from the menu.

Managing bookmarks

One of the biggest drawbacks of Opera Mini has to do with the reordering of the bookmark list. Say, for example, you need to move a particular bookmark from the bottom of the list to the top, then you would have to click Manage->Move Up every single time until the item reaches to the top. Especially if your list is huge, any new bookmark appears at the bottom of the list and it becomes a pain to move this new bookmark to the top of the list.

Viewing in Landscape and Portrait modes:

This is one feature which not just cool but also very useful. Most of the phones these days have bigger screen which are tall but not wide. (there are exceptions, for example, my Nokia E61 has a wider screen which gives you landscape view). For these kind of phones this is useful feature where you can rotate the screen to make it into a landscape mode thus giving you more reading space on the screen. I highly appreciate this feature because very few phones have this inbuilt capability to rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode (Nokia E60 has this feature inbuilt). "*#" will toggle between landscape and portrait mode.

Screen in landscape mode.

Screen in portrait mode

Apart from these viewing modes, in each of these modes you can choose to have these pages displayed in Full screen mode. "**" will toggle between full screen mode and normal mode.

In Normal Mode

In Full screen mode

Search Engines:

There is inbuilt support for some of the popular search engines to which you can issue a query. Since Opera has tied up with Yahoo, they seem to have not included Google and MSN search. I was not sure how to add a new search engine, say Google, all by myself. Though I added Google to the list of search engines, but when I issued a query, Opera says the page could not be found.

Multiple Search Engines

Settings:

From the settings screen, you can choose to disable images from being loaded. Disabling images would make you pages load even more faster. You can also choose an option to make you web page fit to the screen's width.

Settings Screen

You can also choose your default viewing mode: Landscape/Portrait and Full Screen.

Settings Screen (contd.)

Verdict:

Pros: Great browser with great usability and performance. Support for Portrait/Landscape mode of viewing. Easy shortcuts for doing almost anything.

Cons: It is a pain to reorder your bookmarks. Cannot search within a page. Not sure how to added other search engines. Some (very few) web pages are rendered blank.

But on a whole, this is the best mobile browser around. Guaranteed.. you will be hooked to it for a very long time.

Below are some of the screenshots of other web pages that were browsed using Opera Mini.

Twitter - Mobile Version

Google Reader - Mobile version

Mini Techmeme - Mobile version of techmeme

Page Information for the web page being displayed

Mobile web is not all that bad

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:51:00 +0000

There was this post from Scott Karp on why Mobile Web sucks for him. I could hardly agree with what he had to say and I really wanted to post this message as a reply to that. I guess lot of others would also disagree the fact that Mobile web is bad and Russel Beattie's post expresses his opposition to the fact that Mobile web browsing sucks (well.. Ahmm.. good post Russ.. except that my ears are bleeding with so many f*** :))

I think mobile surfing (and mobile computing in general) is really picking up recently. As Russ has pointed out, lot of popular web services have started providing an alternate web link which serves mobile-optimized web pages which start with http://m.theirdomainname.com/ (well not necessarily all follow the same format. For example, Techmeme's mobile site has this URL http://www.techmeme.com/mini ). But for web sites who don't provide mobile versions of their web pages there are going to lose out on a huge number of users who browse from mobile devices. As I had mentioned earlier, the are vastly underestimating the need for a mobile optimized web site.

I know lot of us have trouble finding web services which are optimized for mobile browsing. I had the same frustration trying to figure out such mobile web pages. That's the reason why I am maintaining a list of web sites which are optimized for mobile browsing. I have been updating this list as and when I find newer web sites.

Coming to Scott's complain that mobile browsing is slow, I agree with that, but its not really that bad. There are ways to circumvent this. Just like Russ, I too use Opera Mini beta for browsing on my Nokia E61. One thing that Opera does intelligently is that it does not download the web pages to the phone as it it. The web pages are first fetched into the Opera proxy severs and then they are optimized and reduced in size (to a factor of 70-90% approximately) and then pushed on to your phone. So the browsing experience (fetching and rendering them on the phone) is very fast.

Mobile Computing is the future and the whole world is slowly moving towards it. I know there are problems with mobile computing but I am sure these are being addresses as you read this.

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/09/mobile-web-is-not-all-that-bad.html]

Free Screen Capturing on Symbian Phones

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Are you a reviewer like myself who wants to take screenshots of your symbian phone. Whatever might be the reason for screen capturing, many of us find it difficult to locate a free tool for doing the same.

Eventually we would end up finding this nice free tool called Screenshot for Symbian OS which was developed by Antony Pranata.

This mobile application is a freeware and its source code is also available for you to modify under GPL.

Screenshot for Symbian OS is available for Symbian OS S60 (1st, 2nd and 3rd editions) and UIQ 2.x platforms.

Features of Screenshot for Symbian OS:
- Capturing Mode: Lets you capture one shot (default) or shots every 1, 2, 5 and 10 seconds.
- Shortcut: Lets you choose from 5 predefined pair of keys which need to pressed for taking a screenshot. Default is + key combination.
- Image Format: You choose to save the image as JPEG or PNG of different qualities.
- Location: You can either choose to store the capture screen images either in the phone memory or external storage card.
- File name: Choose the prefix text that is used to form the name of the captured image file.
- Directory: Choose a directory name under which the screen capture image files are stored.
- Delay of first shot: You can choose to give a delay before taking the first shot. Default is "No delay".

When you launch the application, it has a back button for hiding the application in the background. The application shows the last captured screenshot on its home screen. You can choose to send this to a different phone or your PC based on the connection capabilities of the phone. You can also choose the deactivate screen capture if you choose to such that screen capture does not work if you press the keys combination.

Ironically, this tool does not let you take a screenshot of the settings screen of this application.

On a whole, this application does a great job of capturing the screenshots on your phone.

Home screen

Folder showing the captured images.

Settings screen captured on a Nokia E61

Tips: Format any web page for viewing on mobile phone

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:22:00 +0000

There are a lot of websites which are not optimized for viewing them on mobile phones.

These web sites/pages can be reformatted for viewing them on your mobile phone.

Go to Google Mobile Search web page and click on settings. In the settings screen, choose the "Yes" for the option which says "Format web pages for your phone".

After having done this, in Google Mobile Search (http://mobile.google.com/search) give the URL(web address) as the search string.

If the URL (of the web page which you need to be reformatted) is valid (i.e. if the webpage exists) then it should appear as the first search result.

Now, opening the URL from the first search result will open up the reformatted web page. Great isn't it!!

The way it is done is that Google automatically reformats the web page for viewing on mobile phone. Thanks to Google!!

Mobile Phone optimized web pages

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:33:00 +0000

One of the biggest problems which a person faces while surfing the internet from their mobile phone is to find a web page that has been optimized for mobile phone screens. Having personally realized this pain, I've with a round up of web services which are optimized for use on Mobile Phones.

I know there are lot of other web sites which are optimized for mobile phones. So, I would be updating the below list periodically.

Also, please feel free to let me know if you've come across other websites which I am missing in the list below.

Web Mail:
Yahoo!
Mail - http://m.yahoo.com/mail
Gmail - http://mobile.google.com/gmail

General News:
Google News - http://mobile.google.com/m/news
The New York
Times - http://mobile.nytimes.com/
BusinessWeek - http://businessweek.mobi/index.jsp
Reuters News - http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Home

Technology News:
Mini-Techmeme - http://www.techmeme.com/mini
Technorati - http://m.technorati.com/
Zdnet
news - http://m.zdnet.com/

Social Networking & Blogging:
Facebook - http://m.facebook.com/home.php
WordPress.com
Blog - http://m.wordpress.com/
Twitter - http://m.twitter.com/home
Jaiku - http://m.jaiku.com/

Search & Other Indexing:
Google mobile search - http://mobile.google.com/search
Wapedia - Mobile
Encyclopedia - http://wapedia.mobi/en/
Technorati - http://m.technorati.com (Famous Blog Indexing service)

RSS Reader:
Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/
Newsgator - http://m.newsgator.com/

Chat Client:
Y! Messenger - http://mm.yahoo.com/?Referer=yahoo&card=d&Referer=internal

Photos & Videos:
Picasa Web - http://picasaweb.google.com/m?source=mobileproducts&pli=1
YouTube
Mobile - http://m.youtube.com/

Others:
Google Mobile services - http://mobile.google.com/
MSN Mobile - http://mobile.msn.com/device/en-us/default.aspx

About Mobile Computing Trends

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:15:00 +0000

Mobile Computing Trends is a blog run by Mohasin where he covers topics on mobile computing.

Please feel free to leave your comments/feedback about Mobile Computing Trends in this post.

Thanks for visiting this blog. Make sure to bookmark this site to ensure that you do not miss any news/stories on mobile computing trends.

Hope to see you again!!

Wordpress's mobile phone optimized web interface

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:47:00 +0000

I am so relieved to find that wordpress provides a web interface optimized for mobile phones. I dont remember wordpress supporting this earlier.

Mobile blogging has always been a pain for me earlier and to some extent even now. Blogger, for instance, provides a mail based posting of blogs. You can mail your post by mailing it to a predefined mail address (thats how I am posting this message). But its not very covenient though. I need to open my mail client to post the message and also formatting on the posted message looks bad. Also, it does not provide a way to tag the message and also does not provide me with a dashboard.

Web service providers seem to vastly underestimate the need for a mobile phone optimized web interface. The whole world is moving towards mobile computing and web service providers better realize this.. For their own good.

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/08/wordpresss-mobile-phone-optimized-web_26.html]