J2ME on Mac OS X

I use Mac OS as my primary dev. platform and ended up putting together a fairly complete build environment for this class. I finally got around to putting a description of the system online here. It includes an ant build file that automates compiling, preverifying, packaging, signing, app loading, and debugging.

Also, I put our team's S-expression parser and builder online. It provides a fairly lightweight alternative to XML.

• SExp.java


• SExpException.java


• SExpBuilder.java


• StringReader.java

MIT Mobile Reusable Component

A basic HTML Parser.

http://web.mit.edu/bryant_h/Public/21W780/HTMLParser.java

What kind of phones do people have?

I thought it'd be helpful for everyone to share what kind of phones they have, just so that we can all have a decent idea of how well our applications would work among our peers.

As a survey to check and see what kinds of personal phones people have, please add yours to the list them below:

Josh Wilson - Treo 650 (Sprint), Nokia N73 (T-Mobile)
Bryant Harrison - Motorola (Verizon) - nojava
Stephanie Chiang - Audiovox (Verizon) - nojava
John Pope - PocketPC - (Sprint)
Jacob Stultz - Samsung (Verizon)

Service provider is important because to my knowledge, some carriers (Verizon and Cingular) tend to not support 3rd party java apps. I know that Sprint/T-Mobile do support them with certain security access restrictions.

Thanks,
-Josh

automated signer

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone is having a good spring break. I finally got around to posting the signing program I wrote... it's a windows .bat file and a JAR that does some output file formatting.

If someone wants to mod the script for *nix/whatever, knock yourself out! I only work on windows machines and I really on wrote this to save myself 5 minutes each time I wanted to sign a JAR.

Instructions are zipped up with the file, which can be found at http://web.mit.edu/camick/Public/780signer.zip.

Bear in mind that this program is elegant in no way at all... pretty much everything is hardcoded into either the JAR or the bat. Should save some minutes, though...!

- Charles

some Cell ID info

22539: 5^th floor student center, Bexley, back of zcenter, Simmons, New and Next House

60491: 1^st floor student center

22279: 1ast floor student center, Bldg. 1,3,5, Killian

22277: Killian, Bldg 4, Hayden, Walker, EC, MIT Med, Sloan, bldg 68., kresge

22538: Bexley, E52, Kendall Sq., Coop, bldg 68, back of zcenter

21809: Bexley, Killian

40341: 77 Mass ave.

20350: 77 Mass ave.

20359: 77 Mass ave.

Mobile Application Design from SXSW

Here are some notes that Dan Saffer took at a recent (Monday) panel on mobile application/interaction design at the UX side of the SXSW conference in Texas. Definitely some things to think about for this course and especially the next two classes.

Cell ID Assignment

MIT Mobile's Cell ID info can be found at
http://web.mit.edu/bryant_h/Public/21W.780/campus%20cellID.xls

Some People Dislike Their Mobile Phones...

Hey-

It happens...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2026579,00.html

--Dan

Signing Midlets

Our group got together yesterday to work on Tuesday's assignment, only to find that getting the certificate signing is a long and tedious process. We followed the instructions and altered the .jad for a HelloWorld program that already worked, but with both certificates, the phone rejected the application when we tried to upload it from midway (Failed. Invalid File.). Do you have any ideas about what could be going wrong?

Thanks,
Mark

bluetooth GPS

Some of your projects seemed better suited to GPS than cell ID. A quick search on Froogle showed bluetooth GPS units that can talk to your phones from about $50. It might be something for your group to consider if you really want precise outdoor positioning or velocity.

T-Mobile Users: Beware

Hey-

Check this out - T-Mobile is disallowing access for third party phone applications (like the ones you guys are writing....):

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/02/27/009220.shtml

--Dan

Skype Asks FCC to Open Cellular Networks

That's the title of this Slashdot article I came across, which reads:

"Skype has just asked the FCC to force wireless phone companies to open their networks to all comers. Skype essentially wants to turn the wireless phone companies into just another network of the kind currently operated on the ground. This would require carriers to allow any phone to be used on their networks, and for any application. Users would simply purchase a voice or data plan (though these could easily converge into a data plan if VoIP calling is used) and then use the device of their choice to access the network of their choice. Think of it as network neutrality for cell networks. Given the competition that exists within the industry, is this needed?"

Mostly, the ensuing discussion is a really interesting one.

Aseem

On the note of carriers restricting the market.......

I was really interested in developing our project for the iPhone since it's the next cool, new thing, but unfortunately, it turns out that such a thing is not possible.

This article explains it all very clearly from a very unbiased approach. It's a great read:

http://theocacao.com/document.page/408

It'll be interesting to see how Cingular restricts such development in the future -- will third parties ever be able to develop for the iPhone, and if so, will it be under strict guidelines of what is and isn't allowed?

Aseem

Straight From Class...

Hey-

I seem to recall someone lecturing about this very subject...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802169_pf.html

--Dan

Slides and push registry clarification

I just posted the slides from Tuesday's class to the course syllabus page.

I also wanted to answer the question from lecture that I was unsure about for the MIDlet Push Registry. The final argument is the list of allowed senders that can activate the application. In my example it was "*" meaning that any host can send data to that port to wake up the application.

According to the article from Sun, this is the format of the push entry for the JAD file:

MIDlet-Push-<n>: <ConnectionURL>, <MIDletClassName>, <AllowedSender>


where:

* MIDlet-Push-<n> is the property name that identifies push registration, and where <n> is a number starting from 1; for example, MIDlet-Push-1. Note that multiple push entries are allowed.
* <ConnectionURL> is a URL connection string that identifies the inbound endpoint to register, in the same URL format used when invoking Connector.open(). For example, socket://:5000 reserves an inbound server socket connection on port 5000.
* <MIDletClassName> is the fully qualified class name of the MIDlet to be activated when network activity in <ConnectionURL> is detected; for example, j2medeveloper.basicpush.PushMIDlet.
* <Allowed-Sender> is a filter used to restrict the servers that can activate <MIDletClassName>. You can use wildcards; a * indicates one or more characters and a ? indicates one character. For example, 192.168.1.190, or 192.168.1.*, or 192.168.19?.1, or simply *.

Cellphone users complain about 'function fatigue'

Interesting...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070214/tc_usatoday/cellphoneuserscomplainaboutfunctionfatigue

EclipseME plugin will not work with Eclipse 3.3

You will have to use Eclipse 3.2. However, the good news is that you can keep both 3.3 and 3.2 on your computer at any one time, and just load 3.2 for EclipseME stuff. =)

News From 3GSM

Hey-

How's this for a first post?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/technology/mobile1.php

--Dan