Sony Ericsson has announced that it is planing to release a first of its kind software solution that will bridge the Abobe Flash Lite and Java ME development platforms. Billed as Project Capuchin, the new tech will make it possible for developers to make use of each platform’s unique strengths when coding ‘content-rich’ mobile applications.
Although this might not mean much unless you are really interested in how the guts of your mobile phone functions, what is interesting is that Project Capuchin will basically allow for Flash Lite content to be lodged in Java ME applications, effectively making content created by Adobe Flash technology appear as Java ME applications. That means lots of apps that make of use of flashy (excuse the unintended pun) graphical flourishes running on the ubiquitous Java platform that almost every mobile phone supports.
Sony Ericsson is hoping to make the technology available later this year which means it will probably be 2009 before we are actually able to buy applications that benefit from Project Capuchin. We’re guessing the platform will be given a snappier name before then; hmmm, Flash, Java - how about Flava? Actually, maybe not.
Things may be looking up for those anxious early adopters who are desperate to get their hands on a real live Android phone.
Bug Labs have announced that their upcoming modular gadget kit will supoort Google’s new mobile OS, allowing anyone with just a little too much time on their hands to start developing Android apps.
Bug modules are an “open source, web-enabled, modular software and hardware platform”. What this means in practice is a collection of self-contained gadgets like touch screens, accelerometers and GPS receivers that snap onto a base unit and can be programmed using Java to create completely new gadgets. They are somewhere between incredibly cool and irredeemably geeky.
There is no mobile phone module as yet (i.e. nothing you could plug a SIM card into) but the devices can use wifi for internet access so knocking up a VoIP device should be relatively simple.
Could 2008 see the first homebrew gPhone?
Talk about late to the party. Trundling along some months after the release of emTube, YouTube Pocket and YTPLayer to name but three, YouTube have released a beta of the official mobile YouTube client.
YouTube for Mobile is a Java app that should in theory run on any half-decent handset. Despite this, YouTube claims it is only suitable for use with the Nokia N73, N95, E65, 6110 and 6120 and the SonyEricsson k800 and w880 phones. There is no indication that it is using any special features of these phone, so it’s a bit disappointing that YouTube are blocking downloads from non-blessed handsets (and from my perfectly legit N73, for some reason)
The app is decent enough, and will let you log in to the site using your usual id and leave comments, etc. but compared to something like emTube it does feel a little clunky.
Still, it’s early days and it’s good to see YouTube embracing mobile video, albeit a couple of weeks behind everyone else.
GPSed is billed as ‘a location based service for trip tracking’. What this means in practice is another GPS-aware mobile app that connects to a web service.
There are versions of the app for Symbian, Windows Mobile/Pocket PC, Blackberry, Palm OS and Java that can work with either built in or external GOS units to track your movements in real time, updating a database on the GPSed site and displaying your progress via Google Maps.
In other words, this is Nokia Sports Tracker, but with the emphasis on travel and geo-blogging, rather than sweaty trainers and number crunching performance stats.
Once you have recorded your ‘tracks’ the site makes it easy to share them with family and friends and will even offer a real-time view of your position on the map.
GPSed also provide a windows photo album that associates photos with geo-data and displays them with a nice ‘pin board’ metaphor via Google Earth. This is currently offline-only but there are apparently plans to let users share geotagged photos via the GPSed site.
Hold the front page! Yahoo! has released a new version of its Go! on-device portal for apps and services on your handset.
Seriously though, the already quite handy and easy to use downloadable portal has been given a re-fresh to make it even easier to use.
The last version offered map and routing services linked into a handset’s built-on GPS (if the handset is GPS-enabled anyway).
The new version (3.0) has apparently got improved email handling, more news services, satellite-generated maps and live traffic updates. All in one simple Java download. Bonus.
You can get it by going to get.go.yahoo.com on your smartphone’s browser and downloading it. Go on, you know you want to…
Nokia Beta labs have officially released MUPE - Multi User Publishing Environment - a sort of applications framework-cum-social network thing that makes it easier to create multi-user games and apps.
To use it, you just need to install the (Java) client on your phone and you can then download any of the apps that have been created with the MUPE developer tools. So far, most of these seem to be games, but there are a growing number of social apps like Books and Gathering.
MUPE apps can be location-aware (on supported handsets) and this opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, both for local social-networking and location-based games (Nokia laser tag, anyone?)
MUPE has been available as an open-source project for a few months, but now it has been adopted as a Beta Labs product you can expect more developers to join in the fun.
Google and Yahoo! quite clearly dominate Internet search engines but on mobile there’s more scope for a mobile-specific engine to stake a claim for itself.
We recently tried what we thought could be one of the easiest mobile search engines around Taptu, but now there’s another pretender to the crown – Boopsie.
Ignore the odd name, because Boopsie is something different. It uses Smart Prefix to search via short codes. Instead of having to type the whole search term on your phone’s fiddly keypad, Boopsie requires only the first few letters of each search. For instance, “Arctic Monkeys” would simply be “ar mo”.
The potential for incorrect searches is naturally high, but Boopsie reckons its users can reach over 90% of Wikipedia entries in only seven button presses.
To help, Boopsie has organised searches into specific categories like Wikipedia, sports scores, weather, local listings etc, to help make it easier.
Boopsie works on almost any Java handset and pretty much every mobile OS, and the free app can be downloaded from Boopsie.
As users of the world’s biggest probably-correct encyclopedia - Wikipedia - will know, a Wiki is an easily-edited collection of linked web pages. What is less well known is how useful a personal wiki can be for organising notes and scraps of information.
Unyverse Mobile Wiki works as a client app for Wikipedia, allowing quick searches and offline browsing. It also lets you maintain a number of other public and private wikiwebs. These act as discussion groups, notepads and contact lists.
This is a lot for a mobile app to cope with (not to mention a lot of typing to perform on a tiny keypad) and so Unyverse works in tandem with a web app that lets you cut ‘n’ paste data and sync it to your mobile.
Unyverse is a free download for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Java phones.
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