So please comment on what you WOULD like to see, including the words "MDN WISH" in your subject line please.
- The MDN Team
]]>So please comment on what you WOULD like to see, including the words "MDN WISH" in your subject line please.
- The MDN Team
]]>Handango, the great warehouse of downloadable games and other apps, has long provided the mobile world with content. But always in the form of one-shot payment apps. Sure, they added their club discount and reward point systems, but you're still asking your end-users to pay $15 bucks for a game of Sudoku. It's a price point that makes people shop around and play your trials instead of buying your games.
Many of us are familiar with how well the BREW subscription model works. That recurring $3 subscription fee really adds up over time, and people don't think too hard about signing up for such a "small" amount. But we have had no equivalent billing mechanism at Handango - until recently.
The company is now pushing its Mobile Billing Portal (Mobile Billing API) which allows developers enable their mobile applications for all sorts of sweet new billing mechanisms, including:
Well, it's about time!
In response to the growing number of content providers producing service-rich applications and the interest in subscription billing functionality, we have launched an information portal about our Handango Mobile Billing API for subscription services.
Are you interested in developing subscription applications? Would you like recurring revenue streams from your customers? Here you will find information and overviews about our API, features, example applications using the API, technical resources, how-to's about selling subscription applications through Handango, and FAQs.
More At: GoPass Mobile Billing API
]]>Are you searching for a cell phone rental? Finding a cell phone europe can be hard, especially when you're traveling around the world. Next time you want an international cell phone rental, begin your search online!
This project is open-source and is intended for developers working with the WAP and Wireless. All the information listed here has been collected by many different people from many different countries. You are allowed to use WURFL in any of your applications, free or commercial. The only thing required is to make any modification to this file public, following the original spirit and idea of the creators of this project. This will help WURFL to grow better and better every day.WURFL - the main site, also includes links to Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, .NET, XSLT, and C++ tools and applications
freshmeat.net: Project details for Mobile Device Information - Java Swing application
WURFL - PHP support and download
Simple Perl WURFL Parser WURFLLite - Perl support
]]>There are quite a few sites out there that offer free eBooks. This site has a great list of free J2ME eBooks or eChapters... Other not so free eBooks are still often much cheaper than the paper equivalents. For example, Ray Rischpater's book Software Development for the QUALCOMM BREW Platform costs 50% of the list price when purchased as an eBook. Plus, you get the nice searching and cutting and pasting benefits, too! In fact, most of the wireless books by Apress are available in the inexpensive eBook format.
But still, acquiring eBooks might keep your bookshelf nice and neat, but it doesn't stop the fact that in our field, information gets old fast - often by the time the book goes to press, the info is already dated.
O'Reilly, my personal favorite publisher, has a great service called Safari bookshelf that has done a good job trying to address this problem. This is yet another way to manage your book smarts - cause let me tell you, I used to acquire tech books like a madwoman, and now I've got a bunch of outdated stuff I'll never use again gathering dust in my tech library. Safari helps solve this problem - it's kinda like Netflix (if that analogy helps). Basically, they have a huge selection of tech books (not just their own but other big names like Addison-Wesley, Adobe Press, Cisco Press, Java Press, Macromedia Press, Microsoft Press, and Prentice Hall) you can search for concepts, download chapters, and always have the latest info available.
Searching for an international cell phone rental? Finding a cell phone europe can be difficult, especially when you are traveling across the globe. Next time you want a satellite phone rental, look on the Internet first!
]]> Sennari (www.sennari.com) was picked by the OnHollywood editorial team based on a set of five criteria – innovation, market potential, customer adoption, media buzz and investor value creation. All OnHollywood 100 winners were selected from more than 1,000 companies nominated by leading venture capitalists, investment bankers and industry analysts.The combined capabilities of QUALCOMM's 3D graphics-enabled MSM™ chipsets, the BREW solution and support for industry-standard OpenGL® ES APIs offers game publishers and developers an efficient, flexible and high performance solution for creating the most advanced mobile games for mass market phones. Currently there are more than 40 3D games available on V CAST, retailing between $7.49 and $12.99 per title for unlimited gameplay or between $2.49 and $4.99 for a monthly subscription. When these games are delivered over a high-speed network, such as Verizon Wireless' CDMA2000 1xEV-DO-based national network, subscribers can rapidly access much larger and more compelling titles, generating excitement in the gaming community as well as significantly more revenue across the value chain.This is clear evidence that supporting the latest technologies can allow your applications to be part of a rise in demand. Technologies like this, to me, are a natural step forward, too. Mobile 3D gaming was popular on other devices first so it's natural to expect people to like it on these new devices. Now all we need are keypads that make the action games easier to play. ;)
Do you want to find international phones? Getting an international cell phone can be hard, especially when you are traveling across the world. When you want a satellite phone rental, start your search on the Internet!
The topics of his speech, The Future of Mobile Gaming and its Enemies, included:
For more about the keynote, check out more commentary on the keynote at GameDaily or check out the GDC Mobile website. Lastly, you can access the best of GDC 2006 at GDCTV.net.
]]>The Motorola Motocoder developer newsletter staff have written a nice technical doc that walks you through the functionality available in the Push Registry, lots of little bits of sample code to get you on your way.
The Push Registry is handled by the class javax.microedition.io.PushRegistry, and is part of the Application Management System, which handles all its events.
An alarm event is registered by specifying the MIDlet name and the time for launch.
There can only be one alarm registered for any MIDlet, therefore registering a new alarm will always overwrite any previous alarm in the Push Registry. This can be detected because the alarm registration method returns the overwritten alarm time if one existed.
The Wireless Messaging API can be used in conjunction with Push Registry to handle incoming messages by means of a Message Listener, which can implement the logic to handle the message payload after the MIDlet has been started by the AMS.
More at: Using the Push Registry in MIDP 2.0
]]>
So before we even turn the phone on, here are a few of our initial impressions. The yellow and white box arrived and inside were all sorts of goodies one can only really associate with a higher-end business consumer. The phone came fully charged with the battery and 32MB TransFlash card already inserted - a nice touch. The box also included an AC charger, USB cable, a TransFLASH adapter SD card adapter, a slick little wired headset with a single button and some manuals.
Now let's talk documentation. Ok, so you're a developer, what do you care about documentation! Well, you should. Come on, even we phone-crazed developers have had those moments of frustration trying to get something that should be relatively simple, like enabling phone-modem connectivity, to function. Whether you're a device developer or a mobile app developer, you're the one with the first-hand knowledge. You've got to tell your tech writers how it really works. Your users will thank you for it, you'll sell more phones, your stock options will be worth more... Do you get it now?
Your documentation should be detailed and concise and cover not only the basic operations on the phone but also the more advanced features. More people would buy all those sweet accessories if
Sprint has done a good job at including most of the important stuff. A full phone menu drill-down chart gives you a bird's eye view of how the phone menu system is organized. And more advanced topics, like BlueTooth pairing and using your TransFLASH card are touched upon as well. But when you get to the USB cable info, the documentation falls short. Way short.
As any phone developer knows, the all-powerful data cable is often essential to doing your job. Sprint's A920 comes with a mysterious USB cable but it's unclear what you can do with it. Will it charge the phone? What kind of data can it access? Why would we want to use it? And from looking around on the web, we aren't the only ones confused. First, we hit up the Sprint webpage for the A920 to see what this mysterious USB cable was capable of and here's what they said:
The Multi-function Data Cable is used in conjunction with compatible Samsung handsets for Pictbridge and handset-specific data transfer applications. Please refer to your handset user manual for functions specific to your device.
Multi-functional data cable - handset-specific data transfer applications - music to a developer's ears, you'd think. Leafing through the handset-specific product manual, we find nothing under "USB", "Cable", "Data" in the index or table of contents... A little contents list on the side of the box packaging just calls it "USB Cable", no mention of data, but it does say that the phone is "Phone-As-Modem" capable using the USB cable under the features list.
So we look up "Modem". After reading the entire page and a half the manual devotes to using the phone as a modem, we find that we will first have to have an internet connection and download the appropriate Sprint PCS Connection Manager and relevant drivers. That won't be nice in a pinch, but we like not having to buy the data cable separately, just the same. Still, if you're going to ship with the cable, would it be so hard to include a little driver cd?
In our last note on documentation, the manuals are all in English only, unlike some of the latest Verizon manuals that have included full Spanish versions. This may save some trees, but leaves us wondering about Sprint's user demographics.
]]>Sure, we do include marketing statistics and business news on occasion when we think the discussion merits it but generally we leave consumer reviews and the like to other great mobile sites like HowardForums, Kf6NVR Phone Reviews, Engadget Mobile, and Mobiledia, among many, many others.
If you use a computer printer at your house, you probably know how expensive Samsung toner cartridges can get. If you're looking for HP toner, Canon ink, or Lexmark toner then the Internet is the perfect place to purchase ink.
However, when people send us free phones with free service and ask us to give them feedback, we look at it as an opportunity to have some developer discussions using a specific phone as an example.
Last month, we were invited to join the Sprint Ambassador Program and check out the Samsung MM-A920 Sprint Power Vision Phone. Yesterday, the phone arrived.
So over the next couple of months, we'll use our impressions of this phone to start some discussions about mobile device development. But while some of our contemporaries like Shane Conder cover the phone's features from the view of a tech-savvy consumer, we'll try to keep our commentary developer-specific topics from the developer's role in product documentation to our impressions on how various EVDO networks are evolving to provide new services to the mobile world.
We welcome your feedback.
]]>
Up until recently, the FAA/FCC has held that devices emitting radiation can interfere with the airplane instruments and are therefore unsafe for use during flight, but people often don't know why. Some feel the claims of safety concerns are just a ploy to get people to pay the exorbitant fees of the built-in air phones, others think it's just to keep the chatter down in the cabin. But with business travellers and other consumers putting pressure on the airlines to provide affordable/complimentary services like WiFi and allow cell phone use, it's becoming clear that this needs looking into.
Some IEEE folks did covert studies of people using cell phones on commercial airlines, with somewhat surprising results. Despite the regulations, people often use their cells on planes, and not just in airplane mode to play games. They're using them to make and receive calls and messages. And the emissions from these devices do sometimes cause significant interference, especially with GPS navigational equipment used in take-off and landings.
The article talks not only about the state of regulation, but also offers some suggestions on more reliable testing of emission interference and how the regulating bodies could work more cohesively. The authors go on to show how some airlines are working around the problems and addressing the needs of their customers.
Is it safe to use cellphones on airplanes? The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) thinks it may be. In December 2004, the agency began soliciting comments on proposed regulations that would allow airline passengers to use cellphones and other electronic devices.
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We, on the other hand, have had our doubts that such use was safe.
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Our data and the NASA studies suggest to us that there is a clear and present danger: cellphones can render GPS instrument useless for landings.
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There will be enormous pressure to introduce new services as airlines search for sources of comparative advantage. Indeed, pico cell systems, which would allow passengers to use their cellular phones while in flight, have already been tested.
More At: IEEE Spectrum: Unsafe At Any Airspeed?.
So will airplane mode become obsolete? Will we be allowed to use cell phones and other communication devices on airplanes in the near future? Will it be safe? As Number-5 from Short Circuit would say, we need more input.
]]>The "Designed for S60 Devices" logo program is set up for developer
use in application marketing. The program features an S60 logo
specifically designed for developer use, with the aim of making it
easier for developers to communicate that a particular offering is
designed for S60 devices. Enrolling in the logo program enables you to:
- Associate your offering with the leading smartphone platform, S60.
- Demonstrate that your offering is designed for the S60 platform.
- Take advantage of marketing momentum built up by S60 device manufacturers.