n900

2010 Mobile Tech Predictions

Posted Sun, 2010-01-03 17:30 by Roland

Hard to believe that I didn't make any predictions in 2009 (my 2008 predictions)!

Herewith again some randomly ordered Mobile predictions which are worth what you paid for them!

Mobile

  1. Google will introduce a "comes with data" mobile phone featuring an easy environment to write HTML5 & JS apps
  2. A Canadian mobile phone carrier will actually sell mobiles other than the iPhone that have current software & aren't 6-12 months old :-) The current "sell old phones with old firmware with bogus customizations" model of Rogers, Bell and Telus will be over in 2011.
  3. Apple's tablet will be introduced, it wil be big seller and a great creator and consumer of multi-media and it will be closed and have the iPhone App Store model rather than the Mac app model.
  4. Nokia will deliver Maemo 6 and an N900 successor but it won't be good enough for the mainstream but will be awesome for me & other mobile devs because mobile Firefox will offer superior HTML5 and JS experience (yes working for Mozilla I am biased :-) !)
  5. The next iPhone will boast a 5 mega pixel camera and other still and video imaging improvements which will be more than good enough for old cameraphone snobs like me and accelerate Nokia's decline among mobile multimedia creators.
  6. Mozilla Messaging (my employer!) will introduce a version of Raindrop that doesn't require you to do geeky things like install things like CouchDB yourself and it will rock on Android, Maemo and any other modern open mobile web  environment (sorry Blackberry, iPhone and Symbian but you lose since you are all neither open or modern or both :-) !) Just kidding, it will rock on any modern mobile web browser open or closed methinks :-) !

 

My ideal mobile mad scientist language

Posted Tue, 2009-11-24 22:35 by Roland

After some digging and research around the web, my ideal mobile mad scientist programming language would:

  • have the 2D and 3D graphic manipulation power of Processing, Nodebox and Shoes
  • be cross platform mac, windows, linux, maemo on mobile, iPhone, android
  • be 'web native' i.e. REST, JSON, XML and all the other web API stuff built in and not bolted on like it is Processing, trying to use the flickr api from Processing is shall we say kludge-o-rama (awesome code from bryan chung but indicative of the unnecessary struggle one is forced to engage with in Processing and other non web native languages)
  • not use a Java-like syntax, death to curly braces and wasted semi-colons
  • be dynamic, death to the Java/C++ cargo cult of typing for no reason 
  • be easily adaptable to new APIs and new sensors through the ability to create a domain specific language and/or easy to use and beautiful foreign function interface
  • be open source, sorry but for my mobile art,  i can't use programming environments and languages that are not open source
  • support the REAL loop, I don't want to spawn threads for the sake of questionable 'concurrency' like I am forced to with OSGI and the Bug Labs Bug

IF I were an idealist that pretty much rules out everything :-)

Fortunately I am a pragamatist. So I will continue my experiments in:

  • Nodebox & Python on the Mac
  • Cocoa Touch and Objective C on the iPhone

What about Processing? Sorry can't handle the Java syntax and the pain of doing XML and JSON and REST programming and the kludge-o-matic way to access Java libraries. processing.js? too early and too much impedance mismatch to use all the lovely JS libraries out there. And Shoes is promising especially if it were improved so you could easily use normal Ruby gems but given its current "hibernation" "post-Why" not sure it will continue to be improved.

What should I use on Maemo if/when I get an N900? Ruby plus SWIG or some such foreign function kludge er interface :-) to access the sensor APIs which I assume are only available in C and C++ ?

What should I use on Android if/when I get an Android device?

What should I use on Windows? Not that I really care :-) But it would be lovely to have Windows people join in my fun without having to do anyting. Eines Tages!

Somehow I think the "mainstream" world is moving towards my ideal solution and the mainstream solution for what I want will look more like processing.js and ruby-processing or smalltalk i.e. scratch then it will look like Processing, Nodebox or CocoaTouch

Belated Nokia N999 er N900 Congrats

Posted Wed, 2009-09-16 21:17 by Roland

The N900 is the closest thing to my N999 vision that Nokia has announced. More like this please. Still prefer a separate company/stealth division. Still really want a device that caters to  mobile, social multi media creators like  myself. Still want an optical zoom. Still don't need a QWERTY keyboard. Congrats, Nokia, anyway on thinking a wee bit different for a change. And good-bye to S60/S^2/whatever crazy re-branding Nokia wants to give you.. You'll always be my first mobile crush but yes I have jilted you and it will never be the same between us :-)

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