Mobup

Mobup and the 24 Hours of Flickr Project

2007-05-03T07:54:00.000-01:00

The Flickr team has organized a very cool project to happen on May 5: "24 Hurs of Flickr" and - as they say "grab your camera and whatever else you need, and chronicle your day in pictures".

Join the 24 Hours of Flickr group to get ready for the big day. After the big day, post your best photo to the group

They also accept geotagged photo; another reason to use Mobup to upload shots from your day life directly on Flickr and place them on the map.

The Pool for 24 hours of Flickr will open 6AM Pacific, Saturday May 5, 2007 (find out what time this is where you are). You will have until May 21 to contribute your photo.

Mobup.org domain missing in action

2007-01-21T20:45:00.000-01:00

The mobup.org domain is not working anymore. It was provided for free (together with server space and bandwidth) by Consultechnology (the company where Mobup was originally born before going opensource) - which now appears not to exhist anymore; I checked the whois database and it still reports it to be a Consultechnology property, so I'll try to check with their legal rapresentative whether it's possible to have it transferred to me.

For sure it won't be possible to access Mobup site from mobup.org org but just from the blog address (http://mobup.blogspot.com). Damn.

Should you have any suggestion on how to manage this, pls don't hesitate to drop us a line.

Having problems installing Mobup?

2007-01-14T07:06:00.000-01:00

I've received a couple of mails from Mobup users who couldn't get how to insert their Flickr user detail into Mobup.

Well the process is quite straightforward since you don't need to insert any username or password in Mobup, you just need to enter the Flickr application allow code; just follow these simple steps:

open Mobup
open the "options" menu (launch it using the main left button on your N73, just below the phone screen)
select the "configuration" option
insert the Flickr allow code with no dashes "-" between numbers.
select ok
let your phone connect to the internet
Enjoy Mobup

But don't hesitate to drop us a line should you need further help!

A cool usage of Mobup

2006-12-03T20:11:00.000-01:00

It's nearly a year we released the first version of Mobup on Sourceforge and - among the 3000+ downloads and nearly 800 photos mobupped to Flickr - I'd like to point you to one of the brightest usages of this tiny little piece of software for mobiles.

Mobosk is a mobile blog by Max Boschini, a visual artist from Italy, made up using just a Nokia N70, Wordpress and Mobup (aka multidimensional mash-up :-).

Good luck to Max and his new adventure in moblogging!

3 talks about Mobup

2006-11-22T12:31:00.000-01:00

Today I found this post on one of 3 (aka Three, the 3G phone company) corporate blogs which introduces Mobup to its readers.

Thankyou Frangino!

Mobup 0.5 out now

2006-11-20T21:33:00.000-01:00

We recently released a new version of Mobup (download it here) which marks the entrance in a new subversion, the 6th in a year or so.

We haven't added any hypening functionality but concentraed ourselves in listening to our users: bugs fixing, device compatibility and usability related functions that Mobup users suggested by email or on our development site.

The whole 0.5 series will be dedicated to this kind of stuff, but interesting things are coming up for the next major release.

Till then, start mobupping your phone shots now.

Mobup with Geotagging now available

2006-08-30T09:47:00.000-01:00

Flickr has recently released a new tool to display geotagged photos and manually geocode existing ones.

We're very happy to announce that the NEW version of Mobup (v.0.4) is now freely available with a function to automatically geotag your photos using an external bluetooth GPS device.

We're supporting ALL the external GPS devices that could be used paired with a bluetooth cameraphone. If you don't have any you could buy one for few bucks on eBay (I've bought mine there, and it's plain great!)

All your Mobup geotagged photos will then visible not only on Flickr and its maps but also on our very own mash-up prepared by Tom Landspurg.

What you're waiting for? The wonderful world of geotagging is waiting for you!

Thomas Landspurg taking the Tech Lead role

2006-08-29T07:30:00.000-01:00

I'm very pleased to announce Thomas Landspurg, CTO at the French mobile ganming company In-Fusio, has accepted our invitation to officially join the Mobup development team as Technical Leader.

In his role Tom will define our future technical strategies and drive the programmers team at the implementation of the forthcoming version of Mobup which will feature automatic geotagging of your photos.

Mobup named in the Top 10 of Java Mobile Killer Apps

2006-07-07T06:24:00.000-01:00

I'm very happy to announce that Mobup has been nominated as one of the 10 killer application developed using Java technology for mobiles (J2ME) by Wendong’s Smart Phone Weblog

Mobup has been awarded with the 3rd place after Widsets (WOW!) and Comedy Central Take Out.

Between all those apps my preferred one is The Voice, a great tool for blind users on the move; this is also one of the possible ultra-vertical apps that could lead to huge success of low-cost mobile devices in the developing countries (for my thoughts on this you can have a listen to this podcast - MP3 – 5.6MB – 24min or - to a lesser extent - take a look at this post on my blog).

Mobup at the Java Conference / Milan

2006-06-24T20:06:00.000-01:00

Next Wednesday, June 27 I've been invited to join the Java professional community at the Java Conference, main national event on Java related technologies that will be held at the Milanofiori congress hall in Milan.

I'll quite oviously talk about Mobup BUT since the event is so important, I'll provide my audience with the very last nightly build of Mobup which has

Bluetooth capabilities

Intelligent geotagging

This great step has been reached thanks to the technical effort by Thomas Landspurg, who's the In-Fusio CTO. Tom provided the great expertise he got in Geotagging for mobile devices (he's the mind behind J2MEMAP) to the Mobile project; we're still in private testing but let the software become public in the very next weeks (for the moment you might want to take a look to a couple of pictures and - if you like - try to mash-upping them using apps such as GeotagIt!).

At the moment Mobup (note: not available to the public yet ) automatically geotags the photos using an external bluetooth connected GPS device but my plans are to overcome this "limit" (making it just an option) using GSM cell geodata (one of the solutions in the countries where this kind of data aren't provided by the operator is connecting to freely available databases such as GSMcells).

Next live appointments with the Mobup tour

2006-06-13T20:49:00.000-01:00

The future features of Mobup are going to be introduced in two cream of the crop events in Italy this June:

This Friday 16th at The Interaction Frontiers at The Milano-Bicocca University

Wednesday, June 28th, 3.30pm - Java Conference 06 - Milan

Hope to meet some of you there.

Version history

2006-05-15T11:16:00.000-01:00

Suggestion: Subscribe to the versioning RSS feed to be immediatly informed of updates

What's new in version 0.3.3 (download it)

Unlimited length text-fields

"Cameraphone" auto-tag

Automatic title and description when left empty (see here for an example)

What's new in version 0.3

Manual Photo quality setup - the user can manually modify the setup, thus being able to upload photos in 160x120, 320x240, 640x480 resolutions.

Flickr groups management

What's new in version 0.2.1

Now available independently from your screen size

Support for a better standard resolution on Nokia devices

What's new in version 0.2

Maximize compatibility on Nokia devices

improved app size (just 35KB!)

improved feedback system

What's new in version 0.1.4

Lazy-user tags management (add a keyword without typing by choosing it from your 10 most popular tags)

Add your photo to your Flickr photoset(s)

What's new in version 0.1.3

One step Flickr registration

Improved user experience in blog publishing

What's new in version 0.1.2

Automatic integration/posting with Flickr declared blogs

JAD file inserted in the download package

What's new in version 0.1.1

New photo resolution at 320x240

Some major usability improvements:
- Right button always used to confirm actual action and proceed do next screen
- Wait messages when waiting for camera
- Feedback messages during configuration, photo capture and uploading on Flickr

new Nokia cameraphones natively support Flickr

2006-04-27T09:37:00.000-01:00

It's with extreme joy that we welcome the new Nokia N93, Nokia N73 and Nokia N72 cameraphones tha will be delivered with a native support for Flickr uploads.

The mobile caperaphones are finally becoming what I call "infinite virtual memory digital cameras": great optics, optimal resolution, and a virtually infinite memory - the internet (with tools such as Flickr).

But if you don't want to wait for these new camera phones to come out and don't want to spend other money on the next gizmo give Mobup a try: spectacular integration to your Flickr account with your cameraphone. NOW (and - by the way - for free)!.

Latest updates

2006-04-15T13:05:00.000-01:00

In the last month we delivered two minor releases of Mobup, with some nifty new features such as:

Auto title
If you don't write anything in the title field Mobup will automatically add "Another wonderful mobupped shot"

Auto description
If you don't write anything in the description field Mobup will automatically add "Uploaded with Mobup"

Auto tag
Following our users requests Mobup bow auto adds the tag "cameraphone"

Hope you enjoy these new features, just download the latest release.

Mobup on The Mobile Media Show

2006-03-23T15:30:00.000-01:00

I've had the pleasure to be interviewed (via Skype) by Keren Flavell for a podcast on Mobup to be published in the current number of the Mobile Media Show, one of the blogs under The Podcast Network.

We spoke about the philosophy behind Mobup and our future plans (which include, by the way, the support for video), you'll know how and why the Mobup project was born and how I think vertical mobile devices could help solving the digital divide in developing Countries better than the mass adoption of computers.

You can find the podcast in MP3 format (24mins / 5.6MB) published here.

How to use Flickr book's out

2006-03-17T10:17:00.000-01:00

Richard Giles's "How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution" book is finally available in bookstores: this book might be the missing "Flickr manual".

The book features a small interview I had with Richard on Mobup, definitely worth a look (you can already buy this Book from Amazon)!

Mobup in Sun for JMDF

2006-02-08T08:16:00.000-01:00

Mobup will be hosted in the Sun offices in Milan next 21st of February thanks to our friends of the Java Mobile Development Forum. This is going to be a one day free seminar packed with great content on J2ME and mobile applications (see the whole program).

We're going to deeply explain the code behind Mobup with some live examples about the camera controls and the Flickr APIs integration.

There're still some seats available, to join just send your subscription request to jmdf_meeting@sun.com.

Mobup 0.3 released!

2006-01-30T21:25:00.001-01:00

The Mobup project is pleased to announce the release of version 0.3 of the java mobile uploader for Flickr.

This release brings a number of improvements and new features. The most important changes are:

Photo resolution

new release
The best photo resolution for each device is automatically checked. But now the user can manually modify the setup, thus being able to upload photos in 160x120, 320x240, 640x480 resolutions.

Add photo to public group

Mobup now automatically retrieves the Flckr groups (http://flickr.com/groups/) the user is subscribed to and makes possible to add the photo to one or more of these groups.

You can also subscribe to the versioning RSS feed to be informed when new versions will be released.

Upcoming Mobup events

2006-01-26T12:27:00.000-01:00

In the very near future Mobup will feature another interesting Usergroup meeting related to the world of Java and mobile phones. More on this very veryu soon once all the details will be settled.

In the meanwhile Consultechnology (the company behind Mobup) released a press release (Italian only, sorry) which generated a huge amount of traffic in these days and a lot of links pointing to Mobup.

Mobup development hosted on Sourceforge

2006-01-19T09:51:00.000-01:00

Mobup development finally moved to Sourceforge, the world's largest Open Source software development web site: . now own both the client and the source code will be officially hosted there.

This move also led to the change of the Mobup license: from CC to GPL, find more details on this license here

Among the many advantages (bug tracking, forums, feature requests, etc.) you'll now have access to the versioning system which is used to work on the various releases in order to have the code available right when we publish it. This is the place where you can upload you modified code.

The important thing is that to access these features you'll be asked to register (it's free and it only takes a few minutes) and then add Mobup to your projects. Just drop us a line should you encounter any problem or have any feedback.

I'm pretty sure Mobup project will greatly benefit from this move.

Mobup in tour

2006-01-05T12:56:00.000-01:00

In the next weeks we'll deliver a series of speeches on the development of Mobup providing an analysis of both the user experience and the tecnical aspects of the application: a load of code will be displaied and explained by Vincenzo Lembo, the leading programmer of the Mobup project while Matteo Penzo, who originally invented the Mobup philosophy, will deliver high quality insights on Flickr, moblogging and the user experience behind Mobup.

12 January 2006 - 6.30pm CET - Milan, Italy - Mac@work (organized by the Milan Java user group)

Mobup on Sourceforge

2005-12-11T15:19:00.000-01:00

Due to the fast growing community of Mobup developers we've chosen to move the open source project to the Sourceforge platform in order to offer proper software versioning, forums and better community control over the source code. We think this is also going to help Mobup with better OS placement and access to a broader audience.
During the next weeks more infos on the subject will be provided.

Working on version 0.2.1

2005-12-01T12:17:00.000-01:00

We (and with "we" I mean CT|DND team and some of the open-source project developers and the beta testers) are working in order to have Mobup running *at least* on the Sonyericsson K750i (obviusly we already support a large slice of s60 devices and some Motorola devices).
What we're planning is to have an installer file which detects the platform on which Mobup is being installed and consecuently changes some variables (e.g. The image width and height).
Should anybody be interested in helping us on this particular topic just drop us a line and you'll receive the latest, not yet published, nightly build.

Working on Sonyericsson compatibility

2005-11-25T09:08:00.000-01:00

Thanks to the support of our programming and beta testers community we're finalizing Mobup compatibility versus Sony Ericsson K750i device. We're still having some problems regarding the data download/upload which we plan to solve by the end of today in order to release a version 0.2.1 which will be fully functioning.