slippery luposlip..

Went to tumblr.com!!

2010-05-06T11:23:00.004+02:00

After trying to finding a "better way" to do my blogging using TextMate Blogging plugin - which doesn't support blogger.com - I went to wordpress because of their MetaBlogger support (which is used by the TextMate plugin).

But it didn't work as I hoped for, because I tend to use Textile/Markdown for marking up my entries.

So now I went to tumblr.com instead. I hope you'll update your link (again)! This time the link is: http://luposlip.com. And it will stay there (if I change the underlying system again one day, the link will stay the same :-))!!

I hope to see you there.

Woopsie!!

2010-05-03T23:24:00.003+02:00

Great work, myself.. My new blog was private!! I just changed this setting, so now it's public again.

Please try again - my new wordpress-blog is here (and public): http://luposlip.wordpress.com/

New blog!

2010-03-27T11:56:00.000+01:00

From now on I'll update my blog at Wordpress instead of this one.

"Why" you ask - because I want to use TextMate for blogging, and blogger.com doesn't support the MetaBlog API (XML-RPC based) as the TextMate blogging bundle supports.

Please update your link, and visit: http://luposlip.wordpress.com

:-)

Apple bans "the A-word" (Android) from App Store

2010-02-08T17:19:00.002+01:00

Crazy!

Apple bans "the A-word" from apps submitted to their appstore!:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/188696/apple_bans_the_word_android_from_app_store.html

Crazy, crazy I say! When will they censor out a book from iBooks, an article from New York Times or a website from being accessed by the iPad?

Read here for more of the same complaining:

http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2010/02/apple-ipad-hmm-not-with-total-drm.html

Which electric car will win?

2010-02-02T14:28:00.005+01:00

I wonder which electric car will end up winning the title of my family's first electric car..

Will it be Tesla S - the coolest, biggest electric family car out there (but not available for the next couple of years):

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/index.php

Will it be the Renault Fluence Z.E., probably cheaper than the Tesla S but presumably not on market any earlier:

http://www.renault-ze.com/dk/#/dk/electric-cars-range/fluence-ze-concept-family-saloon-car.html

Or perhaps just the Mitsubish iMiEV as our second car - cheaper (though not exactly cheap), coming to Denmark next summer (2011) but much smaller:

http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/special/ev/

Or a fourth I haven't considered yet?

Apple iPad - hmm... Not with total DRM control!

2010-02-02T11:29:00.007+01:00

It took me a while. The first couple of days after the introduction of the iPad I felt a combination of disappointment and "yeah, but it'll be a nice tool for x, y and z".

The following link is a must read for nerds/geeks/techies:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

Note: The text is (in my opinion) not just Apple-specific, but specific to all vendors of closed app stores!

I'm actually not sure anymore that I wan't the iPad.

I think it's ok that Apple makes the hard- AND software inside of my laptop. Because I've never had a PC that worked as good as the one I have now (an almost 2 years old MacBook Pro).

But if I use the iPad Apple will not only control the hard- and software, but also the content on it - through their iBooks bookstore and which newspapers they make deals with.

I'm not being paranoid here, but I just don't like it. It's alright as long as my OSX is a FreeBSD unix I can tweak and hack as I want. My iPhone can be jailbreaked, but I don't want to. It's "just" a phone. But a tablet PC shouldn't be DRM controlled..

I still think the iPad looks great, and it seems to be possible to view non-Apple approved .epub and .pdf ebooks on it. But it's just easier and "more sexy" to buy content through iTunes/iBooks. And if Apple don't wan't a certain book (or movie for that matter - ever tried to search for "deep throat" in the iTunes Movie store?), then it's just not possible to buy it.

In the future - who knows if New York Times is allowed to write critical articles "against" Apple? Will Apple filter the article away? Will they kick out NYT in the end?

An iPad would be a wonderful email/surfing/movie/eBook-reading tool. But it should be open, not DRM-closed and controlled by a single entity.

Developers - please read the link in the beginning of this post, it's mandatory! :-)

But you shouldn't read the first one, without also reading this one (until the end):

http://gizmodo.com/5461485/ipad-snivelers-put-up-or-shut-up?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

Have a nice one.

Voice mail doesn't work after upgrading unlocked iPhone

2009-01-29T20:41:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I upgraded my unlocked iPhone from version 2.2 to 2.2.1.
After the upgrade, the Voice Mail my Voice Mail configuration was reset - i.e. it didn't work anymore.

So just for reference - here is the guide on how to set the Voice Mail number on the iPhone (at least this work on a Danish iPhone, originally bought from Telia):

If your Voice Mail number is (+1) 123-1234, you should go to the Phone app, open up the dial tab, and type in the following:
*5005*86*+11231234#

Just for clarification, the template is:
*5005*86*[VOICE MAIL NUMBER INCL. +LANGUAGE CODE]#

And then press the Dial button. That's it! You'll probably have to do this after each upgrade.

Please comment if the template looks different for your country/original service provider!

VirtualBox 2.1.2 on OSX

2009-01-28T23:44:00.008+01:00

Wow, I almost missed this one! VirtualBox 2.1.2 has been out for a week now, and I don't see it until now.

But this is the time for rejoice. An issue that's been bugging me for 4 months now (since 2.0.2) has been fixed! It was actually a pretty critical bug, in my opinion. The issue was that on OSX hosts (which uses a journalising file system) a sudden loss of power might render the windows guest OS unbootable! It took me some time to persuade everyone that this was actually a big issue. I saw it a day that I'd closed the lid on my Mac Book Pro, making it go into suspended mode. It was a friday afternoon and the battery had only about 5 percent left. During the weekend - in which I didn't use the Mac - the battery died, and my windows guest died. Reinstall "fest".

Looking in the changelog for 2.1.2 this is now fixed:

Mac OS X hosts: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level

This sounds as the exact issue I posted:
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/2267

This is SOOO great, thanks for recognizing the issue Sun! :-)

Outlook and networking

Another note on the changes in 2.1.0 (yes, not the newest one): When using outlook I've seen that in earlier versions outlook took a long time connecting to our Exchange server via http. Since VirtualBox 2.1.0 this is no longer an issue. This makes my day.

iLife '09 first impressions

2009-01-28T00:52:00.003+01:00

Today I got my copy of iLife '09 from the local Mac store on the way home from work.
I was especially keen on getting my hands dirty using the new face detection and recognition feature of iPhoto 8 (='09). Secondarily I looked forward into trying the new stabilizing feature of iMovie.

After installing the bundle I booted up iPhoto. It immediately began to search for faces in my about 5000 local photos. It took about 40-45 minutes (dual cpu intel mac book pro).

Then it was my turn. I found the first photo containing faces, and labeled the first one. Then it immediately suggested a lot of other photos that might be of the same face. At first it was a bit imprecise. But after just labeling 2-4 different photos of a face, it actually got very precise! After no time (read about 20 minutes) I'd labeled about 20 faces in almost 1000 pictures. Amazing.

It happens like this: iPhoto suggest a lot of photos when you decide to confirm faces (by clicking a button). Then the suggested photos are shown, where you can either confirm or reject the faces as being of that person. It all goes pretty darn fast.

I actually believe this is the photo management application I've been looking for in years! I used to use Adobe Photo Album 2.0, then Picasa (both on PC) but when I shifted to Mac about 10 months ago I started using iPhoto. I wasn't totally amazed by it, it lacked the speed of Picasa (and Picasas way of easy sharing to picasaweb and geotagging). But now iPhoto supports it all, and more. It exports to mobileme (of course), flickr and facebook. And rocks.

When you've tagged a lot of photos for the same face, it seems to be a bit more reluctant at suggesting new untagged photos, which in my oppinion is a bit of a shame. It gets a bit too precise at this point, ignoring pictures that match the face and those just close. I'd prefer this face search algorithm to be a bit too optimistic, in contrast of being too pesimistic.

Perhaps Apple will fix this in the next fix? Well, it's not a bug at all, just a little nuisance.

Then onwards to the new features of iMovie. I just used it for 5 minutes. But in these 5 minutes I took a small video clip from a family birthday (just under 1 minutes long) which was quite jerky on the stability side. In the 5 minutes before I started writing this blog, I succeeded in applying a theme for it (nice themes they've added!). A theme is a title, transitions and an end effect. Furthermore I added stability to the clip, virtually removing all jerkiness from the clip!

The way iMovie removes jerkiness is of course by zooming in at certain points. But you have full control over the maximum allowed zooming level so you won't loose important details.

I'm impressed. iLife ´09 is a bargain!

I can't help digging deeper into the new features (including green-screen filming and composition of iMovie, learning to play my synth in GarageBand and getting all my older photos imported into iPhoto. iPhoto is definitely my primary (and only) photo management app from now on!

Go fetch.

iPhone 3G and heavy rain

2008-09-08T17:11:00.000+02:00

Woopsie! A couple of days ago I came home from the grocery store, and put my iPhone (3G) away outside, just while emptying the car. After doing this I forgot all about the phone, and after a short while it began to rain. Heavily.

It rained for about 30-40 minutes. After another 30 minutes I went out, and saw the iPhone facing up, covered with large drops of water.. :-[

I thought to myself "stupid, stupid, stupid". I went inside, dryed the phone. I couldn't see any visual damage (water/moisture behind the display glass, water inside the speaker, the home button etc.). I turned it on, and everything worked like a charm.

Now after a couple of days of use, I can say that absolutely nothing went wrong with the phone. It is absolutely as before the 30-minutes-of-heavy-rain-facing-up-test.

Well built Apple! :-)

VirtualBox 2.0 for OSX vs. Parallels Desktop

2008-09-04T15:00:00.002+02:00

I know - it's been a long time since I've been blogging. There are new kids on the blog (tsk) that requires my attention. In more than one way that is.

And on to the point of this post..

I use OSX Leopard. Because of my work, I have to use Windows as well (for certain developer tools unavailable for OSX as well as Outlook).

Until recently I've used Parallels Desktop 3.0, because of the tight desktop integration compared to VMWare Fusion.

But the last couple of weeks I've used VirtualBox 1.6.4. The only thing I've had against VirtualBox during this period was the lack of host interface networking (bridged networking). This is a feature that has been present in the Windows, solaris and Linux versions, but not OSX (I need it because of some local servers on our network, on which I've needed to access LAN-only ports).

With VirtualBox 2.0 this is no longer a problem for OSX hosts - VirtualBox 2.0.0 supports host interface/bridged networking for OSX hosts! :-)

So I can only recommend VirtualBox for current Parallels Desktop/VMWare Fusion users! VirtualBox is free (as in free beer), and new features/bugfixes are coming up fast.

There are still a few things I miss from Parallels Desktop, but not enough to make me consider re-installing Parallels:

The possibility to have the Windows taskbar present in all Spaces in seamless mode
The possibility to have (selected) Windows applications appear in the Dock
The possiblity to use CMD-TAB to be able to tab between open OSX applications, without having to press the "host" button first (which per default is also the CMD key)
This is almost the same request as the above: The ability to switch between Spaces using a CMD-based shortcut, without having to press the "host" button first.

The two last points could perhaps be merged to a feature, that makes it possible to use certain (selected?) OSX only keyboard shortcuts/gestures - if they aren't used in the virtualized operating system, without having to "uncapture" the keyboard and/or mouse first.

Congratulations Sun - VirtualBox is truly an amazing Open Source offer, on par with the best commercial products. Where VirtualBox lacks minor nice-to-haves, VirtualBox seems significantly faster than - at least - Parallels Desktop 3.0. For most personal/business users this is much more important than a couple of nice-to-haves. Including myself ;)

No matter if you are using Windows, Linux, OpenSolaris or Mac OSX as your host operating system - go ahead: Use VirtualBox for your virtualization needs (and please comment if you don't agree, have additional facts or else you want to share).

UPDATE:
Another feature would be nice to have: Drag-and-drop between the virtualized and host desktops.

Bluray won the HD format war!

2008-02-19T15:58:00.001+01:00

Now it's official: Bluray finally won the HD disc format war over the HD-DVD format.
Just as expected I might say :-)

Today Toshiba announced that they will stop any further development of the media and players that support the HD-DVD format. However they will continue to support and repair the players and other gadgets already sold.

They say that they won't be doing any Bluray stuff themselves but rather focus on all the other areas that they can impact the adoption of High Definition technologies (such as TV sets etc.).

Congratulations to Sony for succeeding in pushing a new technology and helping Blueray to win over HD-DVD.

Microsoft stays silent on their future HD strategies.

Read the Toshiba announcement here:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

Choose Bluray, not HD-DVD!

2008-01-05T01:49:00.001+01:00

Today (about 3 hours ago) it was announced, that Warner Brothers - one of the early backers of HD DVD - have now chosen to exclusively back Bluray! :-)

Links to the announcement can be found here:
http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=60942

This just might be the beginning of the end of the format war. Joy to all us owners of PS3/BD players!

Personally I'd like to see Dreamworks/Paramount move to Bluray as well. Movies like Shrek the Third should definitely be on Bluray.
You can sign a couple of online petitions here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/BD1/petition.html
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/gobacktobluray/

BTW: If you're interested in Bluray and a Java developer, you should read about BD-J:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J
http://www.blueboard.com/bluray/

Blogged with Flock

Netbeans 6.0 final released

2007-12-04T10:38:00.001+01:00

Hey - I've been too busy lately. But one of my colleagues hinted me about the announcement of the final version of Netbeans 6.0.
Good work guys!

For those of you who haven't used NB6 yet because you wanted to wait for the final version - go get it now! ;-)

Get it here:
http://sunmicro.vo.llnwd.net/c1/netbeans/6.0/final/

Read about all the glory features here:
http://www.netbeans.org/features/

N95 20.0.015 software update!

2007-12-04T10:26:00.001+01:00

Nokia has released a new update for the software on the N95 - version 20.0.015.

It should increase the performance and stability of many major parts of the software (including Maps), and enhance the battery lifetime by about 30% while listening to music (from 9 to 12 hours of listening).

I haven't tried it out for myself yet, but I'll update this blog very soon when I have.

In the meantime you can fetch it for yourself here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4579163

Specs on the update can be found here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4577225

After updating you can install the new enhanced menu structure using this link:
http://nds1.nokia.com/files/support/nseries/phones/software/New_Menu_Structure.SIS

UPDATE: After installing it myself, I strongly recommend all you N95 users out there to do the same. The entire phone seems remarkably faster, in the menu, the applications (calendar, messaging, contacts) and in just about every corner of the feature set that I've visited tonight.. Go get it!

JRuby 1.1 beta 1 released

2007-11-06T02:08:00.001+01:00

Last Friday JRuby 1.1 beta 1 was released:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JRUBY/2007/11/02/JRuby+1.1b1+Released

The last time I tried to check out from trunk (about a week ago), I couldn't get it to work properly with the Rails support in Netbeans 6.0 beta 2, but I'll try it out again as soon as possible.

The performance is now better than MRI (the original C based Ruby implementation) in 14 out of 18 tests, and what's very important to many: It's even faster on Rails!

JRuby is now the most performant option for Rails deployments. w00t!

Congrats JRuby team! :-)

Blogged with Flock

More performance numbers on JRuby 1.1

2007-10-29T23:53:00.001+01:00

I finally got the time to take a deeper look at JRuby 1.1 (trunk).
just checked it out, and ran a small performance test.

Immediately after I ran the exact same test for MRI.

These are the results, showing an approximate 4-10 times performance from JRuby over MRI!!!

E:\ror\jruby>jruby -J-server -O test/bench/bench_method_dispatch.rb
Control: 1m loops accessing a local variable 100 times
0.422000   0.000000   0.422000 ( 0.422000)
0.282000   0.000000   0.282000 ( 0.282000)
0.141000   0.000000   0.141000 ( 0.141000)
0.156000   0.000000   0.156000 ( 0.156000)
0.156000   0.000000   0.156000 ( 0.156000)
Test STI: 1m loops accessing a fixnum var and calling to_i 100 times
3.781000   0.000000   3.781000 ( 3.781000)
3.625000   0.000000   3.625000 ( 3.625000)
3.125000   0.000000   3.125000 ( 3.125000)
3.110000   0.000000   3.110000 ( 3.110000)
3.172000   0.000000   3.172000 ( 3.172000)
Test ruby method: 1m loops calling self's foo 100 times
12.094000   0.000000 12.094000 ( 12.094000)
11.859000   0.000000 11.859000 ( 11.859000)
11.063000   0.000000 11.063000 ( 11.063000)
10.890000   0.000000 10.890000 ( 10.890000)
10.875000   0.000000 10.875000 ( 10.875000)

E:\ror\jruby>ruby test/bench/bench_method_dispatch.rb
Control: 1m loops accessing a local variable 100 times
5.625000   0.000000   5.625000 ( 5.672000)
5.625000   0.000000   5.625000 ( 5.625000)
5.562000   0.000000   5.562000 ( 5.562000)
5.704000   0.000000   5.704000 ( 5.719000)
5.640000   0.000000   5.640000 ( 5.703000)
Test STI: 1m loops accessing a fixnum var and calling to_i 100 times
18.891000   0.000000 18.891000 ( 19.328000)
18.937000   0.000000 18.937000 ( 19.344000)
19.016000   0.000000 19.016000 ( 19.235000)
19.375000   0.000000 19.375000 ( 20.125000)
21.172000   0.000000 21.172000 ( 23.781000)
Test ruby method: 1m loops calling self's foo 100 times
37.156000   0.000000 37.156000 ( 42.984000)
39.141000   0.000000 39.141000 ( 55.672000)
33.812000   0.000000 33.812000 ( 37.156000)
33.047000   0.000000 33.047000 ( 34.032000)
32.938000   0.016000 32.954000 ( 33.609000)

The Gimp 2.4 final

2007-10-29T23:37:00.001+01:00

Yup, the final release of The Gimp version 2.4 is finally out! :-)

Windows users - get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121075&package_id=250052&release_id=549292

Other users can find their version here:
http://www.gimp.org/

Netbeans 6.0 Beta 2

2007-10-29T23:32:00.001+01:00

I was too busy last week, didn't have much time to blog about anything..

Now is the time to briefly mention the most important news from the week that passed.

The first one is Netbeans 6.0 beta 2. Since I haven't been using much of it's Java features recently, I decided to go with the Ruby-Only version.
And what a joy that is!

It's a tiny download - about 19 Megs.
It starts in a flash!!
It rocks..

Get it - now - here:
http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/beta2/

Gimp 2.4 released tomorrow

2007-10-23T10:39:00.001+02:00

According to gimpusers.com, the Gimp 2.4 (final) will be released tomorrow:
http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2007-10-22/gimp-24-release-24-october.html

Joy to the (open source gfx) world!

Blazingly fast JRuby

2007-10-15T23:05:00.001+02:00

Yesterday Charles Nutter did some extreme performance work on JRuby, making it outperform the MRI in most cases:
http://headius.blogspot.com/2007/10/performance-update.html

A lot of individual performance tests are shown here at Ola Binis blog. The list shows that JRuby outperforms MRI at a factor of more than 20 in some cases! In most cases the JRuby performance is a little faster (from a few percent to 2-3 times the performance). In a few cases MRI is still the fastest (ie. regexp):
http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2007/10/mystery-expos-on-jruby-performance.html

Unfortunately the performance on JRuby on Rails are a hog.. The latest findings from Ola Bini shows that this might be a result from very, very, very slow regexp-performance in JRuby, alongside symbols:
http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2007/10/jruby-discovery-number-one.html

Congratulations on the fantastic work on the general performance! I think this is a milestone to remember.

When the performance issues on JRuby on Rails is fixed, JRuby will surely be the Ruby implementation to use! I'll test it on SAP NetWeaver as soon as I get the chance.

technorati tags:jruby, performance, compiler, charles nutter, ola bini

Joost open for the public

2007-10-08T13:47:00.001+02:00

Joost has now finished their closed beta testing period. This means that Joost is now open for the public.

The beta label is still there, but the version is now 1.0.

technorati tags:joost, open, public, announcement

JRuby Compiler #2

2007-10-04T20:36:00.001+02:00

Yesterday Charles Nutter - one of the core members of the JRuby Team, and the man behind the recently announced JRuby Compiler - raised the expectations on when to see a compiler for JRuby capable of producing normally-instantiable and invokable Java classes from Ruby ditto.

He says that he might be starting on it before JRuby 1.1, and that his best guess is to see it done before the end of 2007.

When "JRuby compiler #2" is finished, it will be far easier to call Ruby code from a Java app. Just as easy as calling Groovy classes from Java.

Read the post here
http://www.nabble.com/using-JRuby-objects-from-Java-tf4561533.html#a13018626

technorati tags:jruby, compiler #2, invokable, instantiable, java classes, ruby

New JavaFX stuff

2007-10-04T10:51:00.001+02:00

There is a new tutorial in the "learning curve" series for JavaFX at java.sun.com (part 3):
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/javafx/lc/part3/

The first 2 parts can be found as links in the lower part of the article.

Furthermore innovative guys are giving JavaFX Script support for GlassFish V2 UR1 application clients - interesting stuff!

technorati tags:javafx, functions, operations, glassfish, tutorial

New JRE preview (Update N ~ Consumer JRE)

2007-10-04T10:46:00.001+02:00

The long awaited "Consumer JRE" (now called Java 6 SE Update N) is here for preview:
https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html

This version is supposed to enable start of Java Applications in a speed comparable to Flash based applications.. This is particularly nice for projects relying on Java Web Start and Applets, but should benefit other usage types as well.

technorati tags:java 6 udpate n, consumer jre, early access, preview

JRuby Compiler done

2007-10-01T10:16:00.001+02:00

Last week (at JAOO!) Charles Nutter finished the bytecode compiler for JRuby. Congratulations on that one! :-)

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to take a look at it yet - I'm pretty busy these days - but I'll get it and share my first impressions as soon as possible.

technorati tags:charles nutter, jruby, compiler

The Gimp 2.4 RC3

2007-09-28T17:39:00.001+02:00

Woopsie, due to this weeks JAOO conference in Århus Denmark, I completely missed that The Gimp is now available in RC3 - also for Windows.

Download here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121075

I have a lot to blog about on JAOO, I just don't know where to begin ;) I'll be getting to it.

technorati tags:the gimp 2.4 rc3, windows, released

Conversations app on N95

2007-09-22T01:00:00.001+02:00

After reading this blog post, I installed the new Conversations app on my N95.

It the kind of messaging app I've always wanted for my phone. Actually a little bit like Life Blog, but just for the messages on your phone.

It shows the newest messages on you phone in a conversational format, a little like you might know it from Evolution or Gmail. Very nice actually, although it shows the all messages stored from a user in a conversation, instead just the ones that have been send and received in the same logical conversation. But it works anyway.

After installing Conversations it is "always on" through it's direct integration into the contacts application. Just as you might have seen in IP Phone apps such as Gizmo.

What I would have liked to see to make Conversations complete, was integration into the Call Log application. But who knows what sneaks into the app before it's beta tag is removed.

You can get the app here:
http://www.nokia.com/A4568203

Remember to install the services on the phone memory!

technorati tags:conversations, nokia n95, messaging, contacts integration, application, utility, oppinion, first impressions, beta labs

JRuby gurus in Denmark!

2007-09-20T16:18:00.001+02:00

Hey - I just realized that the two gurus of JRuby - Charles Nutter and Thomas E. Enebo - is visiting Denmark at next weeks JAOO conference.

I saw your presentation at JavaOne 4 months ago, and can't wait to see what you have to say now (I mean - things move fast nowadays).

See you next week guys!

technorati tags:jruby, charles nutter, thomas enebo, visting denmark, jaoo conference, java, sun microsystems

Netbeans 6.0 beta 1!

2007-09-18T13:45:00.001+02:00

Ohoy folks - it's time for Netbeans 6.0 beta 1!

After a quick run my first impression is that it seems remarkably faster than the M10 build. The Ruby editor is somewhat snappier and less reluctant. It is actually really nice to work with. More or less on par with the speed of a native windows application - and possibly getting even better before the RC and final version.

The welcome and splash screens have been updated:

As well as the it's icon:

But those are some of the least interesting of the changes. See the full change list here:
http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NewAndNoteWorthy#section-NewAndNoteWorthy-Beta1

Get it here (including link to the ruby-only IDE):
http://bits.netbeans.org/download/6_0/beta1/latest/

More info here:
http://cld.blog-city.com/netbeans_6_beta_arrives__cool_new_look_and_brimming_with_fe.htm

Jooooy!

BTW: A comparison of MS Visual Studio.NET 2008 and Netbeans 6.0 can be found here:
http://sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com/2007/09/visual-studio-2008-vs-netbeans-60.html

The updated documentation including the newest tutorials can be found here:
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/

Direct link to tutorials (also included on the welcome page):
http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/ruby/index.html

technorati tags:netbeans 6.0 beta 1, oppinion, first impressions, release, ruby rails ide, rails REST example

Mongrel, prepare for Glassfish!

2007-09-18T12:41:00.001+02:00

A couple of days ago Charles Nutter announced the preview version of the Glassfish server gem for JRuby/Rails deployments.

What's the biggie about this you ask? Well, you get high performance JRuby on Rails support out of the box, with way better features han running Mongrel. In other words - you get the benefit of the features of a state of the art Java Application Server, as well as the ease of use of the Mongrel...! Ok, Glassfish+JRuby is not as fast as Mongrel+Ruby, but will (hopefully) be with JRuby 1.1.

You download the gem here:

http://download.java.net/maven/glassfish/com/sun/enterprise/glassfish/glassfish-gem/10.0-SNAPSHOT/

Then you install the gem with this command:

gem install glassfish-gem-10.0-SNAPSHOT.gem

You run the server using this command:

glassfish_rails testapp

Charles reports that Glassfish has blazing performance on static files. This will be a really attractive option (if not first choice) when JRuby 1.1 hits the road.

technorati tags:jruby, glassfish, performance, rails, charles nutter, gem

JRuby Compiler - faster than MRI

2007-09-13T12:40:00.001+02:00

According to Charles Nutter himself his recent work on finishing the JRuby Compiler already made JRuby run faster than MRI (Matz Reference Implementation = the "original" c based Ruby implementation). Which is very nice - congrats!

You can read about the details on this blog post, as well as info on what is still missing from the compiler:

http://headius.blogspot.com/2007/09/jruby-compiler-update-and-nice.html

It's gonna be a long waiting time until the release of JRuby 1.1 ;-)

technorati tags:jruby, compiler, benchmark, MRI, ruby reference implementation

The Gimp 2.4 rc2 (windows)

2007-09-06T16:23:00.001+02:00

The Gimp has now been released in it's version 2.4 RC2.

About 7 hours ago, the installer for Windows became available on this link:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121075&package_id=240554&release_id=537331

Enjoy.

technorati tags:the gimp, 2.4 rc2, windows, release

New Nokia Map Loader 1.2

2007-08-30T12:03:00.001+02:00

While we're at the Nokia Maps, we might as well mention the new Nokia Map Loader 1.2.

The new version requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0! What a shame.. Why don't Nokia just use Java which just about everyone seems to have?

Well, the installer fetches .NET 3.0 for you, if you don't already have it installed.It takes some time to get, and a little more than a short while to install.. It actually takes quite some time, which is very annoying. But hey, it's only the first time (but what if I didn't want .NET 3.0 on my machine?).

After .NET 3.0 has finished installing, the rest of the installation takes only a moment.

Besides the splash screen, I can't tell the difference from Map Loader 1.1. It's probably just bugfixes, or perhaps the preparation for using new features in .NET 3.0. Anyone?

I still miss the feature that lets you see which maps you've already installed on the memory card. I hope this feature will show up in the next version.

Also check out this post for updates on the Maps application:
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/nokia-maps-10-finally-for-n95.html

technorati tags:nokia, map loader 1.2, update, oppinion, missing feature, .net 3.0

Nokia Maps 1.0 finally for N95!

2007-08-30T11:49:00.001+02:00

The official Maps 1.0 for N95 is now available here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4509291

Remember to make sure you have the newest firmware (12.0.013) before upgrading your Maps application.

I've now installed it on my N95. It looks the same as the beta version I installed a couple of weeks ago, but it should be more stable. The version is now called 1.02(1).

It is advised to install Maps in the phone memory. The actual installation is done onto the ROM alongside the Symbian OS. Which is why it doesn't show up in the application manager (which manages applications stored in memory or flash RAM).

If you bought navigation and/or city guides, you might have to re-activate your license. You do this by "buying it" again for the same areas/cities. But you don't pay for it again. The licenses are stored per IMEI-number, so if you haven't changed your phone, the license stays.

Everything seems the same as in the beta version. Probably only bugs have been fixed since the beta version - which is nice.

I saw a glitch in the beta version - if the Maps 1.0 beta wanted you to go in one direction while navigating, and you decided to go another way, sometimes it couldn't calculate a new route. I've seen this a couple of times, and hope this have been fixed in this final version.

UPDATE: If you actually got a new phone after you bought the licenses, there is help to get. Read the info in this post: http://myn95.com/?p=77

Also see this post for updates on the Map Loader:
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-nokia-map-loader-12.html

Earlier posts on Nokia Maps:
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-nokia-maps-on-n95.html
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/nokia-maps-10-update.html

technorati tags:nokia, maps, 1.0, final, release, oppinion, installation, license

JavaFX City Weather Sample

2007-08-30T11:06:00.001+02:00

I finally got the time to take a quick look at the newest Netbeans JavaFX sample application. The sample application contains a Java Service hosting weather data, and a (not very beautiful) JavaFX GUI showing the weather data. The weather data is animated in small "weather widgets", when you drag the slider beneath the date bar.

You'll need Netbeans 6.0 M10. Goto Tools -> Plugins (Netbeans Plugins Manager). Find the JavaFX Weather Sample application, and click "Install":

After completed installation of the sample app, goto File -> New Project -> Samples -> JavaFX, and select the Weather Sample app:

Finish the wizard, and run the application. When you drag the mentioned slider, the widgets are animated:

The sample is nicely structured, containing a JavaFX source file for each widget, and 3 Java classes emulating the service.

technorati tags:javafx, sample, weather, widget, netbeans, java

Follow-up: ActiveRecord-JDBC 0.5

2007-08-28T12:10:00.001+02:00

I've now had the time to test the new ActiveRecord-JDBC 0.5. It now works perfectly with MS SQL Server.

At least with SQL Server 2000 on Windows Server 2003, using Microsoft's own driver contained in sqljdbc.jar (I use version 1.1, compatible with SQL Server 2005).

Excellent work! :-)

technorati tags:jruby, RoR, jruby on rails, rails, activerecord, jdbc, activerecord-jdbc 0.5, microsoft sql server

ActiveRecord-JDBC 0.5 released

2007-08-27T10:44:00.001+02:00

As if it wasn't enough already with the announcement of JRuby 1.0.1, the guys behind ActiveRecord-JDBC have released version 0.5.

I haven't had the opportunity to try it out myself yet, but will do that in a short while - but the support for HSQL, MS SQLServer, PostgreSQL, Oracle and Derby has been updated. I hope this means that I will now be able to use JRuby with MS SQL Server (not that I'm particularly fond of that DBMS, but many danish Enterprises use it..).

UPDATED: Thomas Enebo's announcement has more detailed information on how to use the new version:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ThomasEEnebo?id=36

technorati tags:jruby, activerecord-jdbc, activerecord, rails, RoR, JRuby on Rails, MS SQLServer, SQL Server

JRuby 1.0.1 released

2007-08-27T10:39:00.001+02:00

I missed the announcement Friday last week, that JRuby 1.0.1 has been released:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JRUBY/2007/08/24/JRuby+1.0.1+Released

There should be enough fixes/minor enhancement for you to want it.

Among the very small enhancements is "my own" issue no. 1181 regarding batch files for the windows environment. As small and insignificant it may seem, I must say I'm pretty proud to have helped JRuby a tiny step ahead. And that I hope to be able to help more from the Windows platform POV in the future (and hopefully with code).

technorati tags:jruby, 1.0.1, released, announcement, ruby

Solution: N95 rebooting

2007-08-24T11:40:00.001+02:00

Remember how I complained about my N95 that kept on rebooting? And that I ended up having it returned to the reseller for service? And that I stated that it worked perfectly when I got it back?

Well, it didn't. It worked perfectly for the first day or so, and then it got just as bad as it was before it got its service.

Now I've found out what the issue is all about:
It seems that after I updated the firmware to version 12.0.013, the feature of synthetically speaking the name of who is calling you, makes the phone reboot (almost) every time somebody actually calls you. Not good.

But after I turned off that feature, it works perfectly again. Nice!

The synthetic voice-thing is turned off here:
Tools -> Settings -> General -> Personalisation -> Tones -> Say caller's name (-> Off).

That's it! :-)

technorati tags:nokia, n95, reboot, issue, problem, 12.0.013, solution, fix

The Gimp (for Windows)

2007-08-20T15:11:00.000+02:00

Apparently The Gimp (worlds greatest open source image editor in many ways on par with Photoshop) was released last week in its RC1 version.

This friday the RC1 got available for Windows as well.

Go get it now, here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121075&package_id=240554&release_id=532945

The Gimp 2.4 has many new features and improvements. Including faster startup time, and a polished look.
One of the funkier new features is the foreground extraction wizard..!

The full list of new features can be found here:
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/gimp-2-4-new-features.html

Netbeans 6 beating emacs?

2007-08-16T09:52:00.001+02:00

There has been a lot of fuzz about Netbeans 6 Ruby support. And there still is.

A lot of hardcore Ruby folks have historically been using (X)Emacs, among other reasons because of it's way of being easy to expand and personalize.

But hardcore Ruby guys, like i.e. Charles Nutter - one of the guys from the core JRuby core team which are responsible for making Ruby Rock on the Java platform - swears to Netbeans 6 ruby support.

Read his oppinion about Netbeans 6 and it's support for Ruby here:
http://headius.blogspot.com/2007/08/netbeans-ruby-support-is-bomb.html

In the comments to the post, a guy actually states, that he is one of those who has trashed XEmacs for ruby in favor of Netbeans! :-)

Charles' post includes links to Netbeans' Ruby features pages, and mentions the existence of a Ruby-only version of Netbeans 6.

The Ruby-only version can be found here:
http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/ruby/

The download is merely 30 MB!

technorati tags:jruby, ruby, netbeans 6, charles nutter, emacs, ruby only ide, xemacs

Getting started with JavaFX animation

2007-08-10T09:30:00.001+02:00

If you want to get started with animations in JavaFX, Chris Oliver just posted a short getting-started tutorial on his blog.

It shows how JavaFX makes it easy to make smooth running non-blocking (Swing based) animations, with no explicit use of threads.

Read the full post here:
http://blogs.sun.com/chrisoliver/entry/programming_animations_in_fx

Especially the Simple Path Animation is quite educational for beginners (link opens up JavaFXPad).

technorati tags:javafx, animation, guide, tutorial, howto, getting started, chris oliver, java, swing

Nokia Maps 1.0 Update

2007-08-09T14:21:00.001+02:00

Today I got my N95 back from service. And now it works perfectly again.. As a matter of fact, they even replaced the cover (Sand colored), which had got a slightly reddish tint at the edges, as well as the battery (don't know why - perhaps it's an updated version which lasts longer?).

And a couple of minutes ago I installed the Nokia Maps 1.0 pre-release update from the link found in this post:
http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/showthread.php?t=62157&highlight=nokia+maps

It works perfectly, and the user interface is now better and more informative. It support A-GPS and has updated colors on the maps. For a full review of the updated Maps, check out this preview:
http://thenokiablog.com/2007/06/15/preview-nokia-maps-10-update/

I found the link to the above post in this post.

UPDATE: For updated information, check out these posts:
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/nokia-maps-10-finally-for-n95.html
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-nokia-map-loader-12.html

technorati tags:nokia, maps, 1.0, preview, update, agps, a-gps, n95

Great JavaFX Tutorial!

2007-08-08T22:55:00.001+02:00

If you're the kind of guy/gal that needs good thoroughly worked tutorials to get started on new technologies, the JavaFX Tutorial from java.sun.com might just be for you.

I just stumbled upon it today, and it was a very nice read. And very focused on using what you know already (=Java) to learn JavaFX.

It's part 1 of a series of 3. The first part is a general introduction to the language, syntax, tools etc. The next 2 tutorials will be about handling client-server communication with JavaFX based applications.

Check it out right here:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/javafxpart1/

technorati tags:javafx, tutorial, getting started, article, introduction, jfx

JRuby moving to Java 5

2007-08-07T22:00:00.001+02:00

Currently JRuby supports Java 1.4.x, which is good for all us supporting enterprise customers still on this old platform (i.e.: almost every SAP customer I've come across).

For all new versions JRuby will only support Java 5. This goes for current trunk and forward.

The JRuby 1.0 trunk will stay compatible with 1.4.x, and the JRuby team will provide a Retrotranslator/Retroweaver version, slower than the 5-version, but compatible with 1.4.x.

After all this is probably the best solution for JRuby, but now I'm even more eagerly awating the enterprises of the world to move to 5.

Read the announcement on Ola Bini's blog:
http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2007/08/jruby-is-now-java-5.html

technorati tags:jruby, java 5, 1.4.x, ola bini, retrotranslator, retroweaver

Hibernate vs. Rails

2007-08-07T21:48:00.001+02:00

Patrick Peak - the (unbiased?) author of the book Hibernate Quickly, has made a comparison of the persistence model behind Hibernate and Rails (=ActiveRecord):

http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=RailsHibernate&asrc=EM_NLN_1944246&uid=2700586

The conclusion is, that Rails' ActiveRecord might be the best choice suited for small and simple data models, while Hibernate is best for complex data models with lots of joins and so forth.

While he might be right (I'm not in the exact right time and place to completely disagree on his conclusions), I wonder if he's aware of Mingle, and if he knows that Mingle is made in JRuby on Rails??

technorati tags:jruby, rails, activerecord, hibernate, mingle, comparison, opinion, RoR

Solved: JRoR, Goldspike + NetWeaver

2007-07-29T23:38:00.001+02:00

I finally managed to get a database backed JRuby on Rails application to run smoothly on SAP NetWeaver '04 (J2EE1.4 + JDK1.4).

What I needed to do to get it working was:

Adding the MySQL jar file to war.rb (thanks to Raphaël for leading me in that direction)
Moving my code to an empty rails application (perhaps something went wrong with the goldspike plugin?)
Creating the war file using goldspike
Building jruby.jar for myself
Deleting jruby-complete-1.0.jar from the war file, and adding my own jruby.jar together with a couple of other dependent jar files (seems to be the ones from retroweaver).
Packaging and deploying the war file to the NetWeaver Application Server

Note: I tried to just build jruby-complete.jar, but for some reason it didn't work (I got a NoClassDefFoundError: null in line 715 of Ruby.java). That's why I built jruby.jar instead.

So I actually have my first JRuby on Rails application running on SAP NetWeaver 2004 now! :-)

I'm all joy.

The SQL Server issue still remains, but is of less importance.

technorati tags:jruby, RoR, ruby, rails, goldspike, jdk 1.4, jdk14, sap, netweaver, solved, solution, issue, problem, trouble

Issue: JRuby on Rails, Goldspike, NetWeaver

2007-07-26T14:15:00.001+02:00

I'm having a couple of issues running a JRuby on Rails application on SAP NetWeaver Application Server.

First of all I wan't to be able to use the DBMS of the NetWeaver App. Server, which in my case is Microsoft SQL Server 2000. But currently there is no working support for SQL Server in activerecord-jdbc 0.4. Hope to find a work-around soon (tried different jdbc drivers, but those are not the issue - actually I know what the issue is, but not how to fix it because when using netbeans 6 you don't seem to get the sources for the gems you are using).

The next issue is that if I use MySQL instead of MS SQL, JRuby can't find the rubygems I use in the WAR file generated by the goldspike plugin (ServletException: Failed to load rubygems).

I just wanted to tell the world about my issues, because I can't seem to find an answer to my trouble anywhere, and the JRuby experts seem to be on (a well-deserved) vacation ;-)

If anyone out there have faced the same issues (or similar), please let me know. Until then I'll continue to try and find a solution (and let you know when I succeed).

technorati tags:jruby, rails, goldspike, netweaver, microsoft sql server, activerecord-jdbc, issue, problem, trouble

New Nokia Maps on N95

2007-07-24T09:52:00.001+02:00

The new pre-release version of Nokia Maps can be installed on N95, though the website doesn't initially say so.

This article describes how to install it on the N95:
http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/showthread.php?t=62157&highlight=nokia+maps

More information on the new features can be read here:
http://thenokiablog.com/2007/06/15/preview-nokia-maps-10-update/

Thanks to myn95 for the tip.

UPDATE: Check out these newer posts for updated information:
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/nokia-maps-10-update.html
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/nokia-maps-10-finally-for-n95.html
http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-nokia-map-loader-12.html

technorati tags:nokia, n95, maps, preview, update, install, guide

My N95 keeps rebooting!!

2007-07-23T12:41:00.001+02:00

Last week I got the time to investigate why my N95 often reboots when somebody calls me. It's been doing it always, but to begin with only occasionally.

A couple of days ago I deinstalled any third party software I've ever installed on it, and it kept on doing it. The reason for me to do this now is that it now reboots itself almost every time somebody calls me.. Argh!

Well, I backed it up, reset it to factory settings, took out my SD card, and gave it to my reseller to have him fix it. He borrowed me a Nokia 3130, which I'll have to cope with for about 2 weeks... Bummer!

Has anyone else out there experienced the same kind of reboot-trouble?

technorati tags:nokia, n95, reboot, restart, trouble

JavaFX Compiler; awesome performance

2007-07-23T12:37:00.001+02:00

While I was on vacation, Chris Oliver worked on the compiled version of JavaFX Script. And the preliminary results is awesome - the result for now is a amazing 54x performance gain!

See the post for yourself here:
http://blogs.sun.com/chrisoliver/entry/first_steps_with_the_javafx

technorati tags:javafx, compiler, performance, javac

Warning: Jealous computers!!

2007-07-23T12:32:00.001+02:00

A warning from jealouscomputers.com to all owners of nseries (and particulary N95) popped in during my vacation last week:

Thanks for the warning, Darla Mack.

technorati tags:warning, nseries, n95

Nokia Music Launched!

2007-07-12T17:36:00.001+02:00

Nokia just announced their launch of Nokia Music!

Strangely they don't seem to support other phones than 5300, 6085 and N75..!?

If anyone knows otherwise, please comment on this post. I couldn't find any information on how to access the service from the N95. But as far as I'm concerned, all the features listed on the Nokia Music site is already available on the N95. Features such as (taken from the feature list of the N75):

Dedicated music keys
Synching of music from media players
Support for many various formats
Playlists and equalizer
Stereo FM player
Stereo hands-free with 3D audio, and
Stereo Bluetooth audio

Hmm..

technorati tags:nokia music, n95, media player

Bidirectional binding in JavaFX

2007-07-11T14:00:00.001+02:00

In the next version of the JavaFX interpreter, Chris Oliver introduces a genious concept he calls bidirectional binding.

In short it means that you can now bind a value, Y, to a function of another value, X. When you change the value of X, Y changes automatically - this is ordinary binding.

The magic happens if you change the value of Y. Then JavaFX performs a reverse calculation, to rectify the value of X!!

A small example from Chris's blog:

// arithmetic
 var x = 10;
 var y = bind -x + 100;
 assert y == 90;
 y = 40;
 assert x == 60; // passes

Chris' blog post also contains an example for logical negation, as well as for sequence elements.

technorati tags:javafx, interpreter, chris oliver, bidirectional binding

New N95 Firmware (incl. A-GPS)!!

2007-07-07T11:29:00.001+02:00

By reading this I realized that Nokia has finally released the much anticipated new firmware for the N95.

The much anticipated new firmware for the Nokia N95 has arrived. And yes, it's the one that includes assisted GPS (A-GPS), which makes the GPS lock in to it's position much faster than before, as well as navigating indoor (well, perhaps not really navigating, but at least finding out approximately where you are, and in which direction you move).

Before you begin, remember to backup your phone memory! You can do this from Nokia PC Suite.

Afterwards, go to this site to get the update (and follow instructions):
http://europe.nokia.com/softwareupdate

This fetches the NokiaSoftwareUpdater_setup.exe (I got version 01.03.084.28415), which identifies the new 12.0.013 firmware:

After complete installation of the new update, disconnect the phone, and let it post install everything if it needs to (it took about 20 seconds on my phone).

Then you can restore your backup to the phone memory. You do this the same place as you took the backup. In my case from the Nokia PC Suite -> Backup -> restore.

That's it! :-)

Now it's time to play around with the new A-GPS feature. You can check that it is enabled in the settings -> general -> positioning -> pos. methods -> assisted gps.

When you start the Maps application, it will ask you to choose an internet connection, to let it ask a server for satellite positions (time based).

Have fun!

technorati tags:nokia, n95, firware, update, guide, howto, 12.0.013, assisted gps, a-gps, maps

Java SE 6.0 update 2 available

2007-07-04T12:27:00.001+02:00

If you missed it, you can go get the newest update to Java SE 6.0 (update 2) from here:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

The list of changes can be found here:
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/ReleaseNotes.html

technorati tags:java se 6.0 update 2, announcement

Netbeans 6.0 M10 released

2007-07-04T12:24:00.001+02:00

1½ days ago, the Netbeans team announced the availability of the Netbeans 6.0 Milestone 10 build!

It includes a lot of bugfixes/improvements, including JRuby 1.0 and much more.

Furthermore, it now includes both glassfish v2 build 53, and Tomcat 6.0.13.

Go get it! :-)

A list of changes can be found here:
http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/NewAndNoteWorthyMilestone10

technorati tags:netbeans 6.0, milestone 10, m10, announcement, jruby

Nice samples to (JRuby on) Rails!

2007-06-27T15:29:00.001+02:00

If you want to try out how easy it is to build Rails applications with JRuby and Netbeans 6.0 M9 (or newer), check out the following to sampes:

The first one actually took me almost 15 minutes, because my machine crashed (I think it's a bug in my graphics adapter driver from nvidia on windows XP, on a Dell Precision M70, and seems to have nothing to do with Java/Netbeans directly). If you - like me - use JRuby 1.0 instead of the M9 supplied JRuby 0.9.8, remember to put the derbyclient.jar into your JRuby 1.0 folder instead of the folder from the M9 installation ;-) - and if you've ever before heard of a "fist post", this is it:

The next Flickr browser application, is a bit more involved. If you - as I - already have a Flickr API key, it shouldn't take you too long. I got the application up and running in about 14 minutes:

Awesome examples! :-)

technorati tags:jruby, sample, applications, getting started, netbeans, rails

99 Bottles of Beer in Ruby

2007-06-27T14:03:00.001+02:00

Open up your JIRB (or IRB for that matter) and run this:

$i=99

def b()"#{$i>0?$i: 'No'} bottle#{'s'if$i!=1} of beer"end
$i.times{w=" on the wall";puts b()+w+", #{b}.
Take one down, pass it around,
#{$i-=1;b+w}.
"}

If you're a developer coming from the Java language, the above example represents unprecedented compactness (compared to the code needed to perform the same task in Java).

Mmmmmmnnhhh - the syntax. I like it!

Actually I don't remember where I found the above example a month ago or so. If you're the original author, I hope you'll forgive me ;)

It's easy to install Ruby/JRuby. But if you don't wan't to waste that 5 minutes of your life, you can run ruby code directly from within this site - clever!:
http://tryruby.hobix.com/

UPDATE: Found this site, showing examples of the above in 1103 different languages and variations - nice place to spend some hours ;):
http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/

technorati tags:ruby, bottles of beer on the wall, jruby, jirb, irb, try ruby

JavaFX interpreter updated

2007-06-27T13:37:00.001+02:00

Chris Oliver has updated the JavaFX interpreter, so it now correctly supports binding of local variables, and partially supports correct use of cardinality constraints (such as 0..1, 0..n etc.).

Try it out now, by opening the notorious JavaFX Pad here:
http://blogs.sun.com/chrisoliver/resource/javafxpad.jnlp

technorati tags:javafx, chris oliver, pad, update, binding, cardinality, constraints

YouTube mobile gone live!

2007-06-25T14:30:00.001+02:00

Just realized, that the mobile version of YouTube has gone live!

Check it out here:
http://m.youtube.com/

The mobile version of YouTube works perfectly on the Nokia N95, without installation of any 3rd party software. The videos play flawlessly from the pre-installed Real Player. The picture quality is quite nice, although I haven't tried to output the vide on my TV set. Yet.

UPDATE: Only a subset of the videos on YouTube are available in the mobile version! YouTube are working hard to "bring you more".

technorati tags:youtube, mobile, nokia, n95, nokia n95, real player

JavaFX SVG Translator

2007-06-25T10:17:00.001+02:00

Chris Oliver - the dude behind JavaFX Script (formerly known as F3) - posted a preview of his SVG to JavaFX Translator. This is sort of a converter engine, that transforms SVG to JavaFX.

Very, very cool work. I know a bunch of guys, that might actually use their current SVG knowledge, to get started with JavaFX using this translator.

It's also possible to view both the SVG and JavaFX code, after translation. The code is not editable, so it's not possible to edit and view the changes. I hope this will be possible in the final version. But the code can be saved, and used from JavaFX Pad.

Nice work Chris!

The screenshot below shows the famous SVG tiger in firefox, and in SVG to JavaFX Translator at the side:

technorati tags:chris oliver, javafx, svg, translator, preview, demo

More VOIP alternatives..

2007-06-22T14:07:00.001+02:00

For you VOIP-hungry N95 owners out there (and others as well), I'll just mention these to services, which in their own way are alternatives to both Skype and Gizmo:

JAJAH, and
Truphone

Both services are installable on the N95, but to be honest, I haven't tried them.

While Truphone seems quite familiar to Gizmo, Jajah is primarily a web based service. Without even registrering, you can enter your own (land line) phone number, and some other (land line) phone number that you want to call, press "Call", and voila - Jajah calls the number for you.

Note: you need to be at your own (land line) phone to try this - but try it, it's remarkably easy and working extremely well.

Gizmo - by the way - have made any call to landlines totally free. Forever.That's something.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, nokia n95, voip, gizmo, jajah, skype, truphone, free calls

Nokia Mobile Web Server - beta!

2007-06-21T00:04:00.001+02:00

Nokia just released the Mobile Web Server beta - free of charge.

Technically there is nothing revolutionary to it.
But in a use case perspective, it's impact could be immense.

As the name implies, you basically host your own small footprint web server, right there on your phone. Yes - a small web server, being able to render web pages dynamically. Yup! :-)

Suddenly adding a blog post to your mobile blog, is just as fast as writing a SMS. Or a MMS if you want the post to contain visual media.You write the post, add the picture, and click "Post", and it's posted. No waiting time, because the blog is hosted right there on the device.

So the real upside is, that you don't have to wait for the post to be "posted" on your blog, over a not-always-too-fast wireless connection. Sometimes even using obscure and slow add-ons. And you don't have to pay for uploading the photo etc... NOT!

Not - because the downside to all of this is of course, that you need to pay for uploading it, each and every time a new visitor wants to take a look at your post.

With the current sky-high rates for up- and downloading using 3G/4G services, it's not that attractive not to be able to control the cost of your next bill. But for Wifi-enable devices - such as the delicious Nokia N95 amongst other Symbian S60 devices, it's not less than a revolutionary new way of doing mobile blogging.

Furthermore you can share your calendar, and your friends can send messages to you from you mobile site. And this is only the beginning! :-)

Yes - the mobile server is for S60 devices only - not for other mobile phones. Perhaps someday a Java version will show up.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, mobile web server, symbian s60, nokia n95, mobile, calendar, sharing

CodeGear announces Ruby On Rails IDE

2007-06-20T13:35:00.000+02:00

CodeGear recently announced, that their Ruby on Rails IDE will be available later this year (Q3 more specifically).

They mention that their RoR IDE will be the "first real IDE for Ruby on Rails development". I will question that, with a rather huge question mark: What about Aptana IDE (formerly known as RadRails)? Netbeaans 6.0? IDEA 6.0?

Well, if you want to participate in the beta programme, you can apply by sending an email by clicking here.

A 4 months old comparison between Netbeans 6.0, IDEA 6.0 and RadRails can be found here:
http://tnlessone.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/ruby-rails-ide-comparison-idea-netbeans-radrails/

technorati tags:codegear, ruby on rails, netbeans, idea, radrails, aptana, comparison

Stereo headsets for your N95

2007-06-19T09:41:00.001+02:00

Symbian-Freak recently posted news about new stereo bluetooth headsets from Nokia, which works with current Bluetooth 2.0 compatible phones:

http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/007/06/nokia_add_three_new_bt_headsets.htm

For all you N95 (or Nxx) users out there who love music, but decent cables, you definitely should consider those. I don't use my N95 that much for music, so for now I'll be using my cabled version ;)

technorati tags:nokia, n95, bluetooth, stereo, headset

Nice JRuby/Netbeans intro

2007-06-18T09:38:00.001+02:00

Somehow I managed to overlook this nice introductory article about JRuby and Netbeans 6.0 from java.sun.com:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/scripting/jruby/

If you're still new to all this JRuby stuff (like I mainly due to time restrictions) consider myself, read it. It has lots of nice tips'n'tricks in it.

technorati tags:jruby, ruby, netbeans 6, java, sun

Add AIM & MSN buddies to Gizmo

2007-06-13T10:13:00.001+02:00

3½ hours ago, The Gizmo Project announced that it is now possible to add AIM and Messenger contacts directly to your Gizmo contacts (with Gizmo version 3.1.1.285).

As far as I can see, this new feature is only available on the Windows version og Gizmo, because the other builds (for Mac version 3.1.1.220, Linux version 3.0.1.70 and mobile phones version 2.0.0.56) haven't been updated yet.

But stay tuned, because it would be quite puzzling, if this feature isn't soon available for new builds for the other platforms as well.

technorati tags:gizmo, update, windows, import, msn, aim

JRuby 1.0!!

2007-06-11T23:12:00.001+02:00

Blurghz.. While we held our housewarming party all saturday - at 30 degrees centrigrade and absolutely no wind - the JRuby team announced JRuby 1.0!

Congratulations to you guys, both the team members themselves (Charles Nutter, Thomas E. Enebo, Ola Nibi) and you other guys!!

Once again, grab the gem, use for new developments and use it for testing your current ruby/rails applications.

technorati tags:jruby, ruby, jruby 1.0, charles nutter, thomas e enebo, ola nibi

Free webcam software for the N95

2007-06-07T09:22:00.001+02:00

I just found this announcement on Symbian Freak, mentioning the free WWIGO software (Webcam Whereever I Go). It lets a Series 60 2nd and 3rd edition sSymbian phone work as a high quality webcam, using Bluetooth for connectivity to the PC.

I wonder when it will be possible, to use the camera as a webcam, when using the phone stand-alone on a WiFi or 3G connection, without the need of having a PC next to it! :-)

For now, it works with Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live! Messenger and YouTube/Grouper.

It's also possible to use the phone for recording videos using the (faster) PC as storage medium.

Clever little application - can't wait for it to be stand-alone compatible with something like the upcoming skype (??) for mobile phones, or the already existing Fring! :-D

technorati tags:n95, symbian, wwigo, webcam, mobile, messenger, youtube, grouper, skype, fring, nokia, nokia n95

JRuby 1.0.0 RC3 released

2007-06-04T10:03:00.001+02:00

Yesterday the JRuby team released the final release candidate for JRuby version 1.0.0.

The announcement can be read on Thomas Enebo's blog:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/ThomasEEnebo?id=28

And on Charles Nutter's blog:
http://headius.blogspot.com/2007/06/jruby-100rc3-released-and-this-is-it.html

This is quite an announcement. The journey towards the first major goal of JRuby will soon be over. Go on, get the RC3 release, crash test it, and give the guys feedback if you find anything of interest:

http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/

technorati tags:jruby, 1.0.0, rc3

More tools for JavaFX

2007-05-30T00:54:00.000+02:00

If you are looking into JavaFX, you have probably seen the JavaFX Pad.

But other tools exist. Netbeans 6.0 M9 supports JavaFX (Script), after a quick update in the update center. And last week JFXBuilder appeared.
JFXBuilder seems interesting, not least because of it being brand new, but also because it claims to be "the first JavaFX graphical editor", which just might be right.

You boot it up simply using Java Web Start. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to run on Ubuntu using Java 6u1. But JFXBuilder is not surprisingly still a work in progress, so I hope it'll work soon.

Otherwise I'll try it from my Windows box, take a few screendumps, and let you know what I feel about it.

If any of you've tried it out, please comment.

JavaOne Presentations public!

2007-05-25T13:44:00.001+02:00

All presentations from this years JavaOne is now available online, right here:
http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/j1online.jsp?yr=2007

Enjoy!

technorati tags:javaone, java, presentations, session, pdf

Cool demo of JavaFX

2007-05-23T00:29:00.001+02:00

For those of you that have yet to see a cool demo of what JavaFX is capable of, I found a very cool JavaFX clock widget today:

If you want to play around with the source code, it is very simple and contains very few lines, and is easily launched. Open JavaFX Pad (using Java Web Start) and put this link into the "location" textfield, and hit the "Go" button:
http://sellmic.com/lab/dev/jfx/clock/Clock.fx

This very cool clock is animated and very glossy, and only 83 lines!! Amazing..

Today the clock got updated, to support transparent window, to make it a real widget. The transparent window part needs JNA, but you can see it live without worrying about that, using this link:
http://sellmic.com/lab/dev/jfx/clock/webstart/JFXClock.jnlp

The two original posts are linked to below, just wanted you to be aware of it, so you too could have a look at how easy it is to do cool stuff in JavaFX:
http://sellmic.com/blog/2007/05/20/javafx-clock/
http://sellmic.com/blog/2007/05/22/javafx-clock-update-now-with-transparency/

technorati tags:javafx, java, animated, clock, widget

Danish review of N95

2007-05-21T14:11:00.001+02:00

PC World Denmark has finally reviewed the Nokia N95:
http://www.pcworld.dk/art/8689?a=newsletter&i=313

To all you non-danish readers out there, the conclusion is, that N95 is "the perfect mobile phone, including everything in connectivity, camera, GPS and what ever you could want from a modern top level device".

It receives 4 out of 6 possible points, with the battery lifetime being the biggest down side. But the conclusion is that "the N95 is an impressive flagship, and a fascinating taste of what to expect from the mobile multimedia machines of the future."

technorati tags:nokia, nokia n95, n95, review, pc world, danish, denmark, anmeldelse, dansk, danmark

Gizmo for Nokia N95

2007-05-18T13:37:00.001+02:00

Today Nokia announced Gizmo for N80 and N95, which is official software from Nokia a bit like Fring, to enable chatting and VOIP'ing (=performing internet based phone calls) directly from the phone.

I just installed it succesfully. But the first time the installation failed. The reason being that I installed the first of the two necessary installation packages on the microSD Flash instead of directly on the phone.

So; install both packages on the internal phone RAM!

The installation consist of two downloads:

Nokia Internet Services Support Pack (includes something called Phonebook Shutter v1.0)
Gizmo v1.21 for N95

After the installation has completed, Gizmo is available in the programs folder, just as any other third party application.

The first step is to go online, and logon using an existing account, or create a new one (which I did). You can sign up directly from the device, using the web browser. You apply a user name, password times 2, an email address, confirm the license (after reading it offcourse), and clicking a button.

After registration/login, a button let's you have Gizmo to automatically configure your phone for SIP use.

The really nice thing about Gizmo is, that it actually integrated directly into N95's normal contact application (as a new tab), so you don't have to start Gizmo manually, and use it instead of the ordinary dialer.

After installing Gizmo, when you enter a phone number as you normally do from the stand-by screen, you can now choose to dial using the internet instead of normal GSM, so that too is nicely integrated into S60.

The not-so-nice thing about Gizmo is, that it doesn't integrate with Skype, but from the Gizmo Project web site, it looks like it can integrate with Google Talk, Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger. It's not clear from the installed application, but I'll have to dig into that.

I don't know anybody else using Gizmo, or VOIP, so I haven't tested it yet. And I suppose it's not possible to use Gizmo for calling to land lines or ordinary mobile phones, without some sort of VOIP account.

Until I found out more about Gizmo, I'll still use Fring for outgoing VOIP calls. But now Gizmo has been installed, so I'll definitely look more into it, and let you know when I know more.

If you know a lot about Gizmo, please comment on this post! ^_^

technorati tags:nokia n95, n95, gizmo, voip, skype, google talk

OpenJDK in Netbeans

2007-05-17T23:35:00.001+02:00

If you - just as I - want to experiment with Netbeans while getting to know OpenJDK, then I just found this nice guide on how to use OpenJDK together with Netbeans:
http://nb-openjdk.netbeans.org/get-and-build.html

By the way, if you aren't aware of Netbeans Magazine, you can read/download it here (May issue is 84 pages - and with lots about the new features in version 6.0!):
http://www.netbeans.org/community/magazine/

technorati tags:netbeans, openjdk, netbeans magazine

Netbeans 6.0 Preview M9

2007-05-17T22:41:00.001+02:00

The Netbeans IDE 6.0 is in it's preview state, and the team today announced their milestone 9 release.

Remember, Netbeans 6.0 is the Open Source Java IDE that Sun supports, with scripting support (hence Ruby/JRuby and Rails including graphical wizards!!).

Furthermore it has a better and smarter editor, a GUI Builder (Swing) with data binding (!!), Profiler, Web & Java EE, Mobility (MIDP/CLDC etc.), UML, SOA (Composite Application Builder) and embedded Glassfish V2 beta server (a.k.a. Sun Java System Application Server 9.1beta). That is, if you get the largest download at 116 MB.

The smallest download is at only 21 MB, but is "just" the Java SE IDE.

Hey, don't forget, that Sun already has JavaFX plugins ready for Netbeans, available from the integrated Netbeans Update Center. Further information can be found on the OpenJFX site and here:
http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1047

Don't hesitate, go get the new milestone build from here:
http://bits.netbeans.org/download/6.0/milestones/latest/

technorati tags:netbeans, javafx, openjfx, glassfish, netbeans 6.0, ruby, jruby, ruby on rails, java, ide

Hi, I'm not Ruby on Rails

2007-05-17T15:10:00.001+02:00

I guess you probably all know the "Hi, I'm a Mac!", "And I'm a PC" commercials from Apple.

The guys from RailsEnvy.com have made 3 similar "commercials" for Ruby on Rails, which can be found here:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbuyKUaKFo

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1NVfDlU6yQ

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5EIrSM8dCA

Check them out, if you're a developer geek.

technorati tags:ruby on rails, rails, commercials

Nokia N95 as a music player

2007-05-16T16:54:00.001+02:00

Now I've been using my N95 for about 4 weeks or so.

The feature which I've been using the least, is possibly the music player function, the reason being the lack of music stored on the device ;)

But today - when developing - I put some of my favorite tunes onto it, and used the standard delivered headset.

I used the built-in equalizer, to boost the bass. After that, the device actually sounds really, really nice with a minimum of noise, smooth sound and clear, crispy tonal reproduction of voices, instruments, high-hats etc.

If N95 is only to be used as a music player (besides a phone that is), it is too bulky, and it seems a little bit silly that the output for the headphones is at the side of the device. But if you - as I - are using it as a "pocket size computer", the music player is about perfect.

It's way of organizing the tunes in playlists, albums, artists, genrers and composers works like a charm, and is quite fast as well.

Who needs an iPod? The ones without a N95? Or consider the N95 instead ;)

technorati tags:nokia n95, n95, music player, iphone, comparison, oppinion, sound quality

Anonymous inner classes in Swing with JRuby

2007-05-16T16:44:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was tampering with Java Swing using JRuby, and doing stuff where I used ActionListener (duhh, being Swing and all..).

I found it quite annoying, that I couldn't seem to find a nice and easy way with JRuby, to declare anonymous inner classes for ActionListener classes on Swing components, using JRuby.

Luckily my ADSL modem turned off at 1am, and I was forced to either go to sleep or turn on the modem.

Today I searched for a nice solution. And I found this blog post:
http://blogs.dzone.com/daniel/2007/02/18/jruby-event-proxy/

which gives a great hint on how to use Ruby's elegant reflection to create a proxy_method. This proxy_method makes it easy to instantiate an interface (or class for that matter) and define how a method should be defined (or overridden). The content of the class is - not surprisingly - defined as a block for the proxy_method.

Notice the comments of the blog, where an alternative solution is suggested. This is actually the best, in my oppinion. The reason being that it seems much easier to get the actual ActionEvent instance, and call methods on that to enable stuff like:

listener = JProxy::ActionListener.new {
def actionPerformed(e)
puts "Clicked (#{e.actionCommand})!!"
end
}

Nice..

technorati tags:swing, jruby, ActionListener, ActionEvent, proxy method, java

Nokia N95 vs. N93 vs. Canon 10D

2007-05-14T12:46:00.001+02:00

There's a somewhat interesting shoot-out (or phot hout-out as the author calls it) comparing the camera of Nokia N95, N93 and a Canon 10D DSLR.

In some cases the DSLR clearly wins by numerous lengths (notably in extreme lighting conditions). But the N95 and N93 does really well in many conditions.

Read it here, it's a fast read: http://www.symbian-freak.com/reviews/n95_vs_n93_vs_10d/n95_vs_n93_vs_10d.htm

technorati tags:nokia n95, nokia n93, canon 10d, dslr, camera phone, shoot-out

Try Sun Grid, 200 hours for free!

2007-05-14T01:46:00.001+02:00

About a year ago, Sun launced their grid computing service called network.com. As a developer it was possible to try it out, but unfortunately for all the rest of us, only for developers living in the US.

Time is changing, and so it access to the Sun Grid. Now Sun has opened up for a limited time frame, for international developers to try out The Grid. Well, developers from 24 countries, to be excact. Countries that include Denmark (pheeew!), United States (naturally), Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

At the "James Gosling Toy Show" at JavaOne last friday, a guy from the grid team mentioned, that the use of the grid should be about as easy as creating a servlet.

He showed a demo, where a time consuming task normally took about 12 seconds per entry in a table. The demo showed 32 entries. Because he used the grid for computing, the 32 calculations took 12 seconds, instead of 32 times 12 seconds.. Clever!!

To try it out, you have to enroll, and write some stuff about yourself. Sun representatives then have to grant you access. So there is no time to wait - go and enroll, and get your 200 hours of free CPU time!! :-)

When I get granted (hopefully), I'll try it out, and blog about it.

technorati tags:network.com, grid, sun grid, javaone, grid computing, java

Dancing RS Media Robots

2007-05-11T20:45:00.001+02:00

The JavaOne keynote of today - the last day of JavaOne - contained a lot of great demos of what is achievable with Java.

Cool demos of BD-J (BlueRay Disc Java) enabled BlueRay titles with interactive trivia games talking to your friends over the internet and wikipedia-like learning content on top of the live BlueRay movie.

Nice demos of Ricoh's Java-enabled business printers acting as proxies and frontends for Glassfish-driven backends communicating with Bluetooth-enabled camera-phones and printing directly from the Java-driven screen on the printer after authenticating the user via JavaCard-based smartcards.

Extraordinary cool demos of Tor Norbye's Netbeans 6.0 plugins for doing Ruby/Rails applications communicating with existing backend classes coded in Java.

Amazing demos of DLight/Dtrace - plugins for Sun Studio (soon also netbeans), that lests a developer see the "DNA", "bloodpressure" and other stuff to characterize the inner workings of a (working or buggy) application in real time (will soon be available online, perhaps on this link, but right now it describes a very old version).

Great demo of the worlds fastest industrial computer, running on real time Java (RTJ), created by ABB with help from bright guys from Lund University in Sweden (it measures a lot of things once every millisecond, and is able to accellerate its swivelling arm at 10 G's!).

The funniest thing though, was the dancing RS Media (Robosapien 2+) robots from Wowwee. I used my Nokia N95 to record the show (in quite low quality because of my now limited amount of available Flash RAM on the microSD card), and uploaded it for you guys to enjoy, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-YJMQGVmU

technorati tags:james gosling, toy show, javaone, 2007, bd-j, ricoh, tor norbye, netbeans, ruby, rails, java, nokia, n95, nokia n95, video, rs media, wowwee, dancing, robot

More on OpenJDK

2007-05-11T00:53:00.001+02:00

Until today I thought that OpenJDK was a "product" that Sun would "release" in the same way that they are releasing OpenOffice, with it's own lifecycle, unaware of the commercial StarOffice.

I know that Sun's JDK aren't in that way a commercial product which they sell for money pr. license, but as a developer I think it would be cool to be able to download a binary relase of OpenJDK 1.0. Well, at least a source version with Ant scripts, called OpenJDK 1.0.

I know its a detail, because you can always download the latest OpenJDK, and build it yourself. But it's more difficult to tell people that "our software is based on OpenJDK build 200705101549 branch before-implementation-of-jsrxyz", than just "our software is based on OpenJDK 1.0, and is thus compatible with Sun JDK 7.0" or whatever.

Sun have no plan on giving OpenJDK versionnumbers like this. I proposed to them that they did so, if not only for marketing purposes, then also for doing the lifes of developers interested in OpenJDK easier. They listened, and admitted that they had actually not discussed things like this, and would propose it to the rest of their team.

The release of OpenJDK is a GPL-release. This means that the difference between JDK 6 and OpenJDK is, that the source code of OpenJDK have had all its licenses changed to GPL v2.

OpenJDK is by the way the same as the current branch of the "official" JDK 7 development version.

Gotta go - an interview awaits.

technorati tags:OpenJDK, Sun, JDK7, GPL

JavaFX announced

2007-05-10T01:54:00.001+02:00

At yesterdays keynote at JavaOne, Rich Green announced JavaFX together with Chris Oliver and James Gosling.

At the keynote, it was actually pretty unclear what it was.. It seemed smart, it seemed glossy, it looked like something everything should look like, it looked like a new web framework, it looked like a new language, it looked like a new mobile profile for Java - perhaps even a replacement for Java ME - it looked very easy (it always does at keynotes), and it sure looked a lot like Apple's iPhone (well, only the mobile part).

That is why I didn't blog about it yesterday - I wanted to know more about what it actually is, and in the last 24 hours I've become a little more knowledgable - knowledge that I will share with you now ;-)

JavaFX is a new product, which has many similarities to Adobe Flex. In that way JavaFX can be seen as the mediator for letting the Java platform (re-) conquer the market for graphically rich and compelling user interefaces for the desktop, mobile and the web.

JavaFX runs on every deskop with Java SE (version 5.x+) unmodified, which is nice. With todays performant mobile devices such as phones and PDA's, it should run on those as well. I haven't yet seen any details on what specs such a mobile device should have, to run JavaFX without any trouble, but I haven't had the time to look into all documentation yet.

In other words; JavaFX is all about being able to quickly and easily create modern, compelling graphical clients, which are hardware agnostic, runs on any device and automatically fits the constraints of the screen, hardware features etc.

JavaFX Script

JavaFX comes with this new language, to make it easier and much faster to create those compelling user interfaces. JavaFX Script is this new language, and should not be confused with JavaScript, or Java for that matter. The language itself has been developed almost 100% by Chris Oliver. It's focus is - not surprisingly - productivity.

JavaFX Script can be found on this URL: http://openjfx.dev.java.net/

I haven't been able to get a clear answer on why Sun choose to create a new language for such. From my point of view, it should have been possible to use languages like Groovy, JRuby or even JavaScript to accommodate the productivity, in combination with a nice Java API.

But JavaFX Script is statically typed, and is indeed a tightly focused DSL, so the reasons might be;

that Sun wanted the language to be focused on this thing only (which should make the task of marketing the language a lot easier)
that Sun initially wanted the full control of the language, or
that none of the other languages fit in the demands for JavaFX

I don't know enough yet to be able to see which reason is the right one. Or maybe even see the correct reasons.

Anyways - the language seems alright. Until now I've only seen 6 lines of code. For what I saw, it looked a lot like a UI configuration language, with dynamic additions, but time will tell.

I asked one of Sun's engineers about the similarities of Adobe's ActionScript and JavaFX Script, and the answer was, that the domains for these languages are the same, and the functionality, the purpose and the use of them are also pretty much the same. But JavaFX has a more Java like syntax (no wonder), and as mentioned earlier, is statically typed.

Later I attended a press conference with James Gosling. He confirmed that Flex and JavaFX is quite similar in many ways. But he stretched that the advantages of JavaFX over Flex are numerous, because you have immidiate access to all of the ordinary Java API's for security, system integration, I/O etc. In my oppinion this alone is a VERY good reason for a Java developer, to wanna have a look at JavaFX instead of Flex.

As of now JavaFX Script is an interpreted language on top of the JVM, and creates its user interfacs using Swing. Later there will be made a compiler (according to a Sun engineer I spoke to).

JavaFX Mobile

I haven't yet seen much detail on JavaFX Mobile, but the keynote included a somewhat succesful demo of JavaFX on a couple of mobile devices, and it looked very nice! In general the user experience resembled that of the Apple iPhone. It seemed a bit slower though, but it isn't finished yet, so I guess the performance will be improved quickly the next ½-1 year. We saw also, that the same JavaFX application automatically changed to the constraints of the screens of the devices used in the demo.

Furthermore Yahoo! demonstrated an application called Yahoo! Go, if I remember correctly, which used JavaFX. It actually looked very, very cool and responsive.

Whattabout tools?

As of today, there is plugins for both Netbeans 5.5, Netbeans 6.0 and Eclipse 3.2. So it should be somewhat easy to get started.

Can I see a demo?

Yes you can. If you've enabled Java Web Start, you can click on the following links. Note that Chris Oliver did the JavaFX version of the Tesla web site, in less than 3 days! Try and do that in standard Swing - ouch.. Well, I'm not a Swing expert, but it seems somewhat quirky to me ;)

The demos can be found here: http://openjfx.dev.java.net/#demos

When eventually I find the time to fiddle with JavaFX, I'll post a first-time review.

technorati tags:JavaFX, Mobile, Adobe Flex, Flex, Chris Oliver, James Gosling, Open Source, Swing, JavaFX Script

OpenJDK is out!

2007-05-09T22:45:00.001+02:00

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, OpenJDK has now been finished. It's assumably the fastest JDK ever, and it's been a wild and crazy journey. It took exactly a year, because last years JavaOne was where Sun announced that they would Open Source Java.

It should be, considering the huge amount of lines that needs to be checked for licencing, before Sun could apply the GPL v2 license to it all. Assumably it costed "hundreds of millions of US dollars".

Actually a few libraries couldn't be GPL'ed, and is therefore still only binary. But virtually anything is now truly Open Source.

Did you know, that Sun is the worlds biggest Open Source company? That makes JavaOne the worlds biggest Open Source developers conference, doesn't it?

An important note from Sun, is that they will do anything possible to make sure that anything will stay compatible. In line of this, they've also made the TCK freely available, to make it possible for ISV's to

Well, enough said, go fetch it and build it for yourself. You can find it all by clicking right here:

When asked what Sun wants to make money of, Jonathan Schwartz's quick answer is that what they invested in 3-5 years ago, is what they make money of now.

Sun seems to have a nice vision on making the world a better place, by cutting the cost of software, infrastructure and other enablers of IT, because they want Java to be "Write once, run anyone", instead of only "run anywhere -> everywhere". Together with the UN they sponsor the Youth Summit, which enables youngsters from around the world (about 192 countries as I remember) to collaborate, for better mutual understanding. They also want to cut the cost of mobile devices/phones, so that the underdeveloped countries can use them for navigating the internet. There is presumably 10-fold more users joining the internet daily using mobile devices, compared to ordinary PC's. PC's are simply to expensive.

With peer-to-peer networking, mobile solar powercells and mobile phones, we (=the "western world") just might succed in bringing "enlightenment" to the "underdeveloped" parts of the world (actually I don't really like using that phrase, but I do in lack of better terms).

As many companies want as few primary partners as possible, many companies choosing Suns (Open) Solaris or (Open) SPARC tends to choose from Suns other services as well.. This is what Sun makes money of, and they seem to be doing it quite well..

..And when asked directly, Jonathan states that they are NOT going to produce mobile devices/processors, but will support those who does (which is in line with what they've been doing the last couple of years).

But they might someday use OpenSPARC and OpenSolaris for mobile devices - in collaboration with companies producing these things.

technorati tags:OpenJDK, Open Source, Java, GPL, TCK

Want an invitation to Joost?

2007-05-09T22:20:00.001+02:00

If you wanna try out Joost - the new online and interactive TV experience from the guys behind Skype and Kazaa - then let me know by commenting on this post, and I just might let you in. I'll serve requests on an first in first served basis.

technorati tags:Joost, invitation

Practical experience with Nokia Maps

2007-05-09T07:43:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I walked around the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I started in the west end at Ocean Beach, and wanted to walk through the park to find the Japanese Tea House.

I thought it would be easy, and that there would be a lot of signs showing where to go for this and that. But there wasn't.

The solution (probably not very surprising) was Nokia Maps on my notorious N95.

Not only did it help me find my way through the Golden Gate Park, it also gave me the exact location of the Japanese Tea House, as well as their museum of modern art, botanical garden and more.

And yes, it worked like a charm, without buying either navigation nor local city guides.

Nice! :-)

technorati tags:San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Japanese Tea House, Nokia N95, N95, Nokia Maps

General note on language..

2007-05-08T22:51:00.001+02:00

Hmm.. I'm starting to have more visitors from outside of Denmark, than inside. And actually from all over the world!

Thank you guys, for showing interest. I'll honor it by shifting the preferred language on my blog to english. Sorry to you all danish readers, and welcome global readers! :)

If you danes still want a danish blog, I'll create a sub-blog in danish. Please let me know if I should do so, by commenting on this entry!

Thanks.

The next couple of days I will be focusing on Java related content, because of me attending JavaOne in San Francisco ;)

More news soon!

technorati tags:blog language, danish, javaone

JavaOne SF 2007 has begun!

2007-05-08T19:47:00.001+02:00

Hey, now JavaOne has begun.

The number of interesting announcements seem to fall over each others legs - there are lots of them, and it looks cool!

What about:

OpenJDK 1.0 finally out there
JavaFX Script/Mobile being announced (what's that? I'll keep you posted)
Global reach for all 6 million people in the world using mobile phones
Free education to everyone jointly developed together with the UN
RealTime Java (JSR-1 !!!) finally done!
Etc. etc..

I'll be posting more info later!

technorati tags:JavaOne, JavaOne 2007, announcement, javafx, openjdk, curriki

Ny firmware til N95

2007-05-01T15:45:00.001+02:00

Så kom der endelig ny firmware til N95'eren.

Det betyder at man nu kan gå fra version 10.0.018 til 11.0.026.

Gør som følger:

Tjek at din telefon ikke allerede har 11.0.026 (hvis nu din telefon kommer fra en nyere sending end min). Det gør du ved at trykke *#0000# i standby-mode (dvs. ligesom hvis du ringer til et nummer manuelt). Hvis du har en version ældre end 11.0.026, fortsæt. Ellers stop her - du er allerede opdateret ;)
Tilslut din mobil med USB-kablet i PC Suite-mode
Måske kommer der en besked om at der er ny software (nede fra System Tray'en i Windows) - hvis der gør, tryk på denne, og din browser åbner på opdaterings-sitet. Hvis ikke, så åbn sitet manuelt på linket: http://europe.nokia.com/softwareupdate
Bemærk at N95 stadig ikke står på listen. Vælg N80 i stedet (det virker - har netop gjort det. Det er ikke firmwaren, men Nokia Software Updater der hentes i denne ombæring).
Når Nokia Software Updater er hentet og installeret, start den.
Tilslut strøm til telefonen, og tag backup af telefonens data på hukommelseskort, hvis du mener det er nødvendigt. TAG BACKUP AF TELEFONEN, ALT I TELEFONENS HUKOMMELSE BLIVER SLETTET!!
Tryk på knappen "Start" i Nokia Software Updater
Tjek de ting der står på næste skærmbillede, og fortsæt vha. "Next"-knappen.
Nu bliver din telefon detekteret. Efterfølgende skulle det gerne se nogenlunde således ud:
Acceptér betingelserne, og tryk på "Update". Vent. Hold vejret. Hold fingrene fra tastaturet. Og telefonen. Det tager omtrent 5 minutters tid. Sådan en firmware fylder 113,5 MB!
Dernæst bliver softwaren opdateret - det er sikkert de installerede applikationer.. Det tager også nogle minutter. Lad være med at skrive eller bruge din computer til noget, for når Nokia Software Updater vil dig noget, får dens vindue fokus. Hvis du eksempelvis skriver, og trykker på mellemrum eller return/enter-tasten, kan du få sagt OK til noget du måske ikke ville have gjort hvis du havde nået at se hvad der stod. Det skete for mig, heldigvis efter den var helt færdig med opdateringen! :-|
Det var så det..

Efter genstart virker det som om N95'eren er lidt hurtigere, men Nokia har endnu ikke frigivet en changelog. Jeg poster den når jeg ser den.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, firmware, update, opdatering

PodCasting til N95

2007-05-01T00:40:00.001+02:00

Det er vist ingen decideret nyhed (ikke sådan en WOW-nyhed i hvert fald).

Men der findes en officiel applikation til at håndtere podcasts på N95'eren. Det er guld værd, hvis man eksempelvis gerne vil høre et radioprogram i toget på vej til arbejde om morgenen, se et TV-show på vej et-eller-andet sted hen i flyet, og så fremdeles. Det fungerer ligesom et RSS-feed, blot med lyd og billede/video i stedet for kun tekst. Jeg er ikke den rette til at fortælle hvad et podcast er, da det først er nu jeg begynder at bruge det.

Jeg har nemlig nu downloadet Nokia Podcasting til N95'eren, og givet det en hurtig tur i test-møllen. Det er ikke nogen imponerende udseende applikation, men egentlig er det eneste der er behov for også følgende:

At kunne se listen over podcast man abonnerer på, og se opdateret indhold i disse,
at kunne finde nye podcasts i et directory,
at kunne søge efter podcasts, og
at kunne afspille de podcasts man har hentet

Og det er lige nøjagtigt hvad Nokia Podcasting er i stand til. Og det virker. Og det er dejligt. Specielt fordi N95'eren har WLAN!

De downloadede podcasts (MP3, MP4 osv.) afspilles naturligvis i N95'erens almindelige medieafspiller.

Uha det er godt.. Jeg tror snart jeg vil opfordre folk til at komme med forslag til ting en N95'er burde kunne, men ikke kan. Jeg har efterhånden svært ved at finde på noget. Det skulle da lige være at agere grafisk remote control til Apple FrontRow/iTunes via Bluetooth/WLAN, men mon ikke også der er nogen der har lavet det? Jeg vender tilbage hvis jeg finder det.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, podcasting, itunes, frontrow

N95/SportsTracker og GeoCaching

2007-05-01T00:30:00.001+02:00

Ja, nogle af dem jeg arbejder sammen med på et af de mange projekter jeg deltager i gennem mit job, har gennem noget tid talt om GeoCaching. Selvom jeg synes det lød sjovt, prøvede jeg at ignorere dem på grund af generel travlhed.

Men efter jeg har fået min N95 er jeg åbenbart mere lydhør, for under frokostsnakken i dag - min første snak om GeoCaching efter køb af N95'eren - går det pludselig op for mig, at gadgetdimsen er genial og helt oplagt til denne sportsgren.

Til dem der ikke ved hvad GeoCaching er, går det ud på at man får nogle koordinater (længde/breddegrader), hvor der ligger en "cache". En cache er så vidt jeg har forstået typisk en beholder af varierende størrelse. Helt fra nærmest fingerbøllignende genstande til større kasser. Disse indeholder som minimum en liste, og når man finder en cache, skriver man sit GeoCache-brugernavn på listen, tager måske et par billeder, og smutter igen.

Andre caches indeholder ting, man kan bytte med ting man selv har med. Eksempelvis kan en cache indeholde bamser, som man kan tage en af, hvis man tilgengæld lægger en af sine egne medbragte bamser ned i kassen samtidig. Dette kræver naturligvis at man ved cache'en indeholder bamser, men det kan man læse om på forhånd.

Andre caches indeholder en form for mønter eller lignende med et nummer på. Dem kan man tage med hjem, og indtaste det nummer der står på dem. Så kan man se hvor mønten har været tidligere. Det kan være i Danmark, eller endda andre steder i verden. Måske kan man se hvor det er meningen den skal hen. Nogle af disse "tokens" har nemlig et formål - eksempelvis at være mindst én gang i hver af Danmarks kommuner. Eller én gang i hver verdensdel. Ja, GeoCaching er et globalt fænomen ;)

Som GeoCache'er får man point for hver cache man har fundet - man registrerer også den fundne cache når man kommer hjem til computeren (eller on-spot med sin N95'er ;)), hvor man også kan uploade beskrivelser/fotos (igen, hvorfor tage hjem for at gøre det?). Man kan også få point for at være den første der finder en ny cache (First Finder eller noget i den stil). Det er der nogle der går MEGET op i.. det er faktisk ret ekstremt.

Alle medlemmer - og det er i øvrigt gratis at blive medlem - kan lægge sine egne caches ud. Der er vist nogle regler for hvor tæt de må ligge, men det er vist også det primære.

Ja, du har gættet rigtigt. Jeg har tilmeldt mig - langt om længe ved jeg der er nogen der vil sige. I morgen er det min plan, at jeg skal finde min første cache. Jeg har nemlig en ½ fridag sammen med min søn, da hans institution holder 1.maj-fri. Jeg har tænkt mig at bruge Nokia SportsTracker, naturligvis på N95'eren. Den har en rigtig god og brugervenlig opbygning, og viser (blandt en masse andet) bredde og længdegrader. Farer man vild undervejs, kan man jo altid kombinere med Map-applikationen, så man kan få N95'eren til at hjælpe en på vej hjem igen. N95'eren tillader faktisk at mere end ét program af gangen bruger GPS-enheden samtidig. Det kan efter sigende ikke lade sig gøre fra en Pocket PC. På den måde kan man både logge sin rute vha. SportsTracker (med en masse statistik samt eksport af rute til Google Earth), samt bruge navigation/kort, og hvilke andre applikationer man ellers måtte ønske.

Jeg ser lidt GeoCaching som en sjov måde at blive stimuleret på mange planer; hang til gadgets/internet-baserede services, at få rørt sig, at være sammen med familien eller andre nørder. Faktisk er der mange af dem jeg taler med, der bruger det som en slags udflugtsmulighed med kone og børn, hvor gåturen om søndagen pludselig har et formål og bliver til en leg, i stedet for blot en gåtur fra A til B og tilbage igen.

SportsTracker er i øvrigt netop kommet i en ny version 1.42, der inkluderer GPS Filtering. Dette fikser en bug der var i den tidligere version, der gjorde at ruten nogle gange sprang meget pludselig, specielt når man var ved siden af høje bygninger. Det kunne også give pludselige kraftig stigninger i både højden over havet, samt (naturligvis deraf også) hastigheden.

Det er sandt, N95 er rent faktisk "what computers have become". Jeg ønsker mig absolut ikke tilbage til de dage, hvor det ikke var muligt at have sin computer med i lommen. For hver dag der går, synes N95'eren mere og mere uundværlig. Den er et arbejdsredskab, legetøj, kamera, en måde at få rørt sig på, og nærmest uendeligt meget andet. Phew.

Måske kigger jeg snart på Nokias Wellness Diary - stay tuned.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, sportstracker, wellness diary, geocaching

Ny præsentation fra JRuby Core Development Team

2007-04-24T22:45:00.001+02:00

En helt ny præsentation er netop blevet lagt ud i JRuby's download-folder.

Den stammer fra GoRuCo-konferencen i New York 21. april. Når man tænker på hvem der har skrevet den (Nick Sieger) og hvor ny den er, bliver informationerne ikke mere up-to-date! Skynd dig at læs den:

http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/talks/JRuby-GoRuCo-2007.pdf

technorati tags:jruby, prime time, goruco, 2007, nick sieger, presentation, præsentation

JRuby 0.9.9 frigivet

2007-04-24T11:25:00.001+02:00

Så er JRuby 0.9.9 frigivet. Som versionsnummeret antyder, er JRuby nu meget tæt på at nå version 1.0.

Siden version 0.9.8 er der sket en hel del, blandt andet er performance øget med 40%, Rails-understøttelsen er endnu bedre, og der er fikset 180 bugs (!!).

Læs mere på http://www.jruby.org/, og hent JRuby på http://dist.codehaus.org/jruby/.

technorati tags:jruby, 0.9.9, release

N95 førstehåndsindtryk

2007-04-23T17:27:00.001+02:00

Wow.. Det tager nærmest længere tid at prøve det hele i en N95 første gang, end at installere et nyt operativsystem på sin PC.. Jeg troede det ville tage et døgns tid, men..

Dette bliver ikke ret struktureret. Jeg vil gerne komme ind på detaljerne i hvert enkelt feature på et senere tidspunkt, men lige nu bliver det til et hurtigt overblik:

Boot
Det tager omtrent 10-15 sekunder fra man tænder "computeren" til man har indtastet pinkode og kan modtage opkald fra den. Det er en heftig forbedring i forhold til de godt 30 sekunder det tog min N70'er at boote. Maxpoint i denne "kategori" (5/5).

Skærm
Skærmen på N95'eren er også helt suveræn i forhold til hvad jeg har set på andre telefoner. QVGA (240x320 pixels) i 16 millioner farver. Kontrasten er klart bedre end på N70, og reflektionen (dvs. læsbarheden når baggrundsbelysningen er slukket), spiller max. i forhold til N70'erens skærm. Det faktum at der kan være rundt regnet dobbelt så meget information på skærmen, gør en verden til forskel. Nogle ville nok have ønsket at der var touch-screen, men det er ikke noget jeg savner. Jeg har haft en Qtek (for meget ;)). En skærm af denne størrelse (2,6") bliver ikke bedre. Næsten maxpoint igen - havde fået max. hvis Nokia havde brugt OLED-teknologien i stedet for TFT, men så var telefonen nok blevet en hel del dyrere.. 4/5 point.

Generelt
Symbian S60 3rd edition er den installerede brugergrænseflade, og den lader ikke meget tilbage at ønske. Den store skærm yder fuld støtte for alle de mange præ-installerede features, og den "aktive stand-by"-skærm giver blandt andet adgang til 6 brugervalgte favoritprogrammer, beskeder (sms/mms/email), kalenderaftaler, opgaver, medieafspiller, wifi-adgang m.m.

Man kan sætte tastaturet til at låse når man skyder skærmen ned over det, eller lade den spørge om den skal gøre det (eller naturligvis helt lade være).

Skyder man skærmen til den anden side - hvilket giver adgang til medieafspiller-specifikke knapper - vendes skærmbilledet 90 grader. Dette fungerer både i og udenfor medieafspilleren. Super god feature - rigtig brugbar blandt andet når man browser internettet!

Den indbyggede mængde RAM var nok til de to første dages brug, men jeg måtte hurtigt ud at investere i et 2 GB microSD-kort, så jeg kunne få plads til fotos, kort m.m. Godt at RAM-priserne er faldet markant på det seneste.

Det er rigtig rart, at Nokia har valgt at bruge et standard USB-interface til tilslutning til computer. Det er bare så meget rarere at arbejde med, end det proprietære interface der sad på (blandt andet) N70'eren. Et (stort) minus er dog, at N95'eren ikke oplader fra computeren, når USB-stikket er tilsluttet! Om den funktionalitet er mulig for Nokia at tilføje vha. en firmware-opdatering betvivler jeg kraftigt, men lad os håbe at Nokia overrasker hvad dette angår.

Lyden i de indbyggede stereohøjttalere er ret imponerende. Ikke nok til at sætte gang i mobildiskoteket, men særdeles udmærket til at høre radio, og suverænt til speakerphone-funktionalitet. Telefonen har i øvrigt 3D-lyd, så man kan få ens ringetoner til at snurre rundt om hovedet på en, lyde som om man befinder sig i en kloak og så fremdeles. En sjov feature, der nok ikke er meget bevendt, men dog viser hvor alsidig den medfølgende soft- og hardware er.

Størrelsen er - efter min mening - lige som en mobiltelefon skal være. Stor nok til ikke at blive væk, lille nok til at man ikke bliver træt af at have den i lommen. Den vejer 120 gram inkl. batteri. Når man tænker på hvad de 120 gram indeholder, er det faktisk ret fantastisk!

Kamera
En af årsagerne til at jeg valgte at give en mindre formue for N95'eren var kameraet. Jeg har et super godt spejlreflekskamera (Sony Alpha 100), men har for længe siden besluttet at købe en ny mobiltelefon, når der kom en med et fornuftigt kamera, der rent faktisk har god nok kvalitet til at kunne erstatte et dedikeret kompaktkamera.

Det bedste ved kameraet er rent faktisk dets evne til at stille skarpt, og styre kontrast og farver næsten perfekt. Ikke engang dyre kameraer gør dette bemærkelsesværdigt bedre end N95'eren. Det er svært at forbedre fotografierne på en PC, medmindre billederne er taget i modlys. Aftenfotos fungerer også forbavsende godt, og selv blitzen overraskede positivt, i forhold til N70'eren. Lyset er hvidt, i modsætning til det blå lys man ofte ser fra mobiltelefonkameraer (fra Nokia). Blitzen er så vidt jeg kan vurdere fuldt på højde med den i Sony Ericsson K800i. Og billedkvaliteten - samt naturligvis opløsningen - bedre.

Skarpheden er i mange tilfælde decideret god. Når man zoomer meget ind, kan man naturligvis sagtens se at linsen er mindre end i standard-kameraer, men forskellen er til at overse, hvilket ikke har været tilfældet i tidligere mobiltelefonkameraer jeg har stiftet bekendtskab med. Billedkvaliteten er på alle områder - undtagen skarphed omkring kontrastfyldte kanter - på højde med et almindeligt kamera.

Man skal helst holde kameraet relativt stille, hvis ikke der er dagslys. Når man trykker på udløseren, føles det som om der går ret lang tid før billedet bliver taget. Det er rent faktisk ikke tilfældet, og det skal man vænne sig til. Billedet bliver nærmest taget i samme øjeblik man trykker. Problemet er lydeffekten, der får kameraet til at lyde som et gammeldags kamera, der først bliver afspillet når billedet er blevet taget. Det kan heldigvis fikses ved at slå lyden fra, eller vælge et enkelt "bib" eller lignende. Det bliver forhåbentlig fikset ved første firmware-opdatering.

De fotos man tager kan man sende direkte pr. email, til flickr, til sin adressebog (knyttet til en person, så fotoet vises i mini-udgave når den pågældende person ringer) m.m. Mulighederne for at indstille kameraet er relativt mange. Man kan lave eV-manipulation, sætte kameraet i macro-mode, aften-mode og meget andet, og det er let at arbejde med. I forhold til mine forventninger til en mobiltelefon, får dette kamera tæt på max-point (lad os sige 4 af 5), hvor det sidste point røg pga. førnævnte til tider lidt lave responstid.

Sekundært kamera
Der sidder også et lille kamera på forsiden af telefonen, som man - ligesom med N70'eren - kan bruge til videotelefoni. Man kan naturligvis også bruge det til fotos og video af lav opløsning. Det er tydeligt at softwaren der optimerer billederne er den samme som der styrer det store kamera, for selvom opløsningen er meget ringe (vistnok kun 640x480), er kvaliteten (kontrast/farver) ganske udmærket.

Videokamera
Dette har jeg kun forsøgt mig med et par gange. Tilgengæld var det om natten på en bar med dunkel belysning, masser af larm og livemusik. Det blev faktisk også rigtig godt! Kun et dedikeret videokamera ville kunne levere bedre levende billeder (ja, jeg har også et "rigtigt" digitalt videokamera ;)). 5 af 5 point.

Musikafspiller
Som musikafspiller fungerer N95'eren super godt. Nokia har forbedret softwaren, og gjort den tilgængelig i "aktiv stand-by", så det er let at bruge sin telefon til alt muligt andet end at høre musik, samtidig med at man hører musik. I modsætning til N70'eren understøtter N95 en myriade af forskellige musikformater. MP3. AAC. eAAC og en masse andre. Der følger et (ikke specielt godt) sæt hovedtelefoner med, der som stort set alt andet i disse tider er produceret i kina. Der er ikke meget bas. Heldigvis kan man let tilføje mere bas fra telefonens equalizer, hvilket gør lyden ok.

Det medfølgende headset er todelt. Den først del indeholder mikrofon, knap til at tage telefonen, til at skifte til forrige/næste nummer, samt pause/starte musikken. Det faktum at det er todelt, er mildest talt genialt. Det betyder nemlig at man kan bruge en hvilket som helst standard hovedtelefon, og stadig bruge det som headset til telefoni. Man hiver bare den anden del af, og sætter sine favorithovedtelefoner ind i den første del. Cool! Man kan rent faktisk også skippe den første del af headsettet, hvis man synes dens finish lader for meget tilbage at ønske, og blot plugge sine hovedtelefoner direkte ind telefonen. Dette fungerer også fint, og så bruger man blot telefonens mikrofon når telefonen ringer.

N95'eren giver god lyd, helt på højde med så mange andre musikafspillere på markedet. Interfacet er ikke helt ligeså lækkert som iPod, men hvis man er ligeglad med det, er den helt på højde. 5/5 point.

TV-tilslutning
N95 kan tilsluttes TV, så man kan afspille slideshows (med foto) og videoer direkte på et TV. Dette er en rimeligt blæret funktionalitet, der faktisk fungerer rigtig godt. Man tilslutter et medfølgende kabel i samme standard 3,5mm stik som man kan sætte hovedtelefoner i, og så finder telefonen selv ud af at det skal smide et tv-signal ud. Det gælder naturligvis både lyd og billede. En underlig feature at skulle give point, da jeg ikke tror jeg kommer til at bruge det ret ofte (om nogensinde). Men eftersom det bare spiller, kan man vel ikke andet end at give det 5/5.

Wi-Fi
Aldrig har jeg haft så let ved at tilslutte en elektronisk dingenot til mit trådløse netværk som denne. Faktisk hverken Windows XP eller Mac OSX 10.4!! Og hastigheden virker som om den er ligeså høj som på en PC, om ikke andet tæt på (så tæt at man ikke lægger mærke til det modsatte).

For de fleste er det nok mest i webbrowsing-sammenhænge man bruger wifi-tilslutningen. Her er det browserens renderings-engine der sætter begrænsningen. Den er også hurtig, mere om det senere. 5/5 point.

Internet-browseren
Der er sket rigtig meget siden N70. På N70'eren installerede jeg Opera Mini så snart den kom på markedet, eftersom den indbyggede browser ikke var meget værd.. Det har jeg endnu ikke gjort på N95'eren, da Nokia's browser spiller.

Den gør det let at overskue store websites på en skærm der trods alt kun er QVGA (hvilket er stort for en mobiltelefon, men meget, meget småt i forhold til en almindelig PC), for når man scroller kommer der et lille thumbnail-agtigt billede af hele websitet, så man kan se hvor og hvor langt man skal scrolle.

Ydermere fungerer tilbage-knappen med lignende thumbnails, så man visuelt kan se hvor man vil hen i historikken.

Renderingen - dvs. optegningen - af de websites jeg har besøgt, fungerer naturligvis ikke helt med samme hastighed som Internet Explorer eller Firefox på en PC, da processoren er hurtig for en mobiltelefon, men ikke i forhold til en PC ;-) Dog går det så hurtigt, at det på intet tidspunkt bliver et irritationsmoment.

N95'eren har en Flash Lite Player installeret, der dog ikke kan afspille alt flash-indhold.

4/5 point, da der tilsyneladende i eksotiske tilfælde mangler support for javascript.

GPS
Den indbyggede GPS fungerer overraskende godt. Efter sigende skal man have skærmen slået op, og telefonen drejet 45 grader bagud. Selve modtageren sidder i bunden af telefonen, under den nederste del af tastaturet.

Sidder man indenfor er dette nok også en god ide, men sådan er det jo med alle GPS'er. Men udenfor er det faktisk ligegyldigt. Jeg har endnu ikke tjekket om den virker, hvis man blot har telefonen i sin taske/lomme. "Hvorfor skulle man dog også det?" spørger du måske - det vender jeg tilbage til.

Generelt får GPS'en hurtigt fat på satellitsignalerne. Jeg tror den bruger GSM-signalerne til at lave grov-pinpointing af positionen, så den sammenholdt med tidspunktet ved hvilke satellitter den skal forvente at finde. Dette kan den så bruge til langt hurtigere end ellers at finde signalet fra satellitterne, og foretage nøjagtig placering af N95'eren. Man kan i hvert fald vælge at N95 skal bruge både GSM, intern GPS samt ekstern GPS via bluetooth, og som default er GSM samt intern GPS aktiveret.

Den medfølgende kort-funktionalitet fungerer overraskende godt. Man downloader løbende kort til det sted man befinder sig. Hvis man vil beregne en rute fra et sted til et andet, skal der (naturligvis) downloades kort til hele ruten. Dette fungerer godt, selv over en ikke-3G GPRS-forbindelse. Der findes ikke som standard nogen måde at præ-loade kort til et område, så man har det klar inden man skal på tur, og derved sparer på telefonregningen undervejs. Men Nokia har igen tænkt sig godt om, og har lagt Nokia MapLoader til fri download fra deres egen hjemmeside. Med denne kan man downloade kort over mere end 150 lande, og kvit og frit placere dem på sin telefon (kræver hukommelseskort). WOOT!

Navigation - dvs. realtime kombination af hvor man er på en tidligere planlagt rute, som man kender fra TomTom m.fl., er ikke med i prisen. Men man kan tilkøbe denne funktionalitet mod en merpris. Man kan købe en enkelt dag, og helt op til 3 år. Man betaler pr. område. Til eksempel koster navigation til hele vesteuropa i 3 år, omkring 750 kroner. Det er ikke galt, hvis man spørger mig.

Kortmaterialet er opdateret, farverne er velvalgte og flotte, og passer perfekt til skærmen. Man kan downloade talte instruktioner til stort set det sprog man kunne få lyst til - igen gratis. Stemmeinstruktionerne fungerer langt, langt bedre end dem jeg kender fra TomTom Mobile 5, som jeg havde installeret på N70'eren. Den eneste (lille-biite) fejl jeg har kunne finde i dette software, er at den danske stemme siger "en hundrede meter" ;) Jeg kan næsten ikke få armene ned. At slippe for at skulle lade mere end 1 enhed når man kører langt, er næsten hele telefonens pris værd.

Kortfunktionaliteten er i øvrigt rigtig godt integreret med internettets muligheder. Man kan let vælge at se hvilke cafeer, hoteller og så videre der ligger i nærheden af den position man har på et givent tidspunkt. Dette er i øvrigt gratis! Dette gør telefonen nærmest uundværlig, når man er turist i en ukendt by. Ønsker man mere info af denne slags, med guides til familier med børn osv., kan man får omtrent 60 kroner købe city-guides til rigtig, rigtig mange byer rundt omkring i verden. Disse guides giver adgang til en næsten ubegrænset mængde information om den by man befinder sig i, inkl. beskrivelser, telefonnumre og så videre.

Jeg kan ikke sige andet end, at jeg er begejstret for GPS-funktionaliteten. Det spiller bare max., det virker hver gang, det virker som man forventer. Og i forhold til TomTom 5 Mobile har man langt flere funktionaliteter af den sjove slags.

Jeg er lidt ærgerlig over at jeg ikke kan give mere end 5 point, men jeg må jo nøjes med de 5/5.

Andre installerede programmer
Jeg vil ikke nævne dem alle, for der er mange. Men her er et lille udpluk:

stregkodelæser (!!) - læser både de 1- og 2-dimensionelle af slagsen
trådløst tastatur (bluetooth - smart til mobloggere og andre folk på farten)
Quickoffice - viser officedokumenter
Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF)
Søgning (søger på dimsen eller nettet)
Visual Radio - jeg tror ikke at det der "visual" virker i DK, men radioen fungerer fint, ligesom på så mange andre Nokia-telefoner
Snakes - et 3D-spil der også var på N70'eren
System Rush Demo (også et 3D-spil)
Videocentral - en masse videoservices gjort tilgængeligt i en slags Apple FrontRow-lignende interface'
RealPlayer
Chat

5/5 point for præ-installeret lir.

Ikke-præinstallerede programmer

I de dage jeg har leget med telefonen, har jeg installeret:

SportsTracker - et genialt stykke software der kan logge gåture, løbeture, cykelture, og andre transportmæssige begivenheder, hvad angår hastighed (max, gennemsnit, aktuel), højde, tid, afstand m.m., vise grafer for hele turen, og eksportere til blandt andet Google Earth!! Det kan hentes fra http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/SportsTracker/
Fring - gør N95'eren (og i øvrigt en del andre telefoner) til en VoIP-enabled telefon, der kan bruges Skype (inkl. SkypeOut!!), MSN, Google Talk og SIP til at tale med andre over internettet. Genialt når man er i nærheden af et wifi hotspot, og skal chatte/tale med andre der er med på disse services, eller når man er i udlandet og gerne vil ringe hjem via SkypeOut.
WidSets - et framework der gør det muligt at vælge mellem en masse forskellige "widgets", der får deres data fra internettet, men som også fungerer offline. Der findes blandt andet widgets til flickr, wikipedia, soduku og meget andet.
ShoZu - gør det muligt at uploade fotos, video m.m. direkte til flickr, picasa web og en masse andre online-services.

Man kan hente mange, mange flere tredjeparts-applikationer. Blandt andet webcam-software, der gør N95 til et super webcam kompatibelt med MSN, Skype og alle de andre gængse applikationer man måtte ønske at bruge det til.

5/5 point for muligheden for at hente mere lir når man føler sig klar til det! :-)

Hold øje på bloggen - det er sikkert ikke sidste gang jeg skriver om N95'eren.

Woot!

technorati tags:nokia, n95, gps, mobile, phone, mobiltelefon, mobil, sportstracker, fring, shozu

Min nye Nokia N95 dims!

2007-04-19T13:45:00.001+02:00

Hey - så fik jeg mit nye Nokia N95 "konvergens-device" (=telefon, 5 mpix kamera, dvd-agtigt videokamera, gps, musikafspiller, videoafspiller, radio, internetadgangsapparat samt VoIP-aggregat):

Jeg har kun lige pakket den ud af æsken. Bemærk særligt 3 ting, der overraskede mig positivt:

Stikket i bunden af dimsen er standard (mini-) USB! Så man kan bare smide den i en hvilken som helst computer, sætte dimsen til at være "USB Mass Storage", og så kan man bruge den ligesom man bruger en hvilken som helst USB-nøgle. Eller kamera. Eller iPod for den sags skyld.
Opladeren er nu blevet endnu mindre. Ja, det er den lille dingenot der har en lang ledning nederst til venstre:
Jeg vidste godt at telefonen (ja, lad os bare kalde den det, det gør det nok lettere for alle) har et standard 3,5 mm stik til hovedtelefoner, hvilket er super sejt. Men at der også leveres et audio/video-kabel med til at vise fotos og video på TV og spille musik på et anlæg, det vidste jeg ikke.

Her ses N95'eren sammenlignet med min gamle (udtamponerede) N70'er:

Nå, nu vil jeg lige putte lidt strøm til den, så jeg igen kan modtage opkald ;)

Jeg vender tilbage engang i aften/i morgen med "first impressions", når jeg har afsluttet dagens arbejde, og fået tid til at kigge lidt nærmere på den.

technorati tags:nokia, n95, sand, n70, box contents

Nu virker alle gardinerne

2007-04-19T13:33:00.001+02:00

Glemte at blogge at vores gardiner i karnappen nu virker som de skal - alle sammen:

Så nu kan sommersolen bare komme an!

technorati tags:garant, faber, gardiner