Enroute to OSCON Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I'm currently holed up in the Renaissance London Heathrow on my way out to OSCON 2008 being held in Portland in Oregon, at the Oregon Convention Centre.

Unlike last year the journey was fairly pleasant, just over two and a half hours in a straight run down the east coast main line from Leeds, where I was watching my wife graduate with her doctorate, instead of a torturous seven and a half hour journey across a flood torn west country.

However I've got a four thirty am check-in tomorrow morning, so right now it's time to get some sleep. More from me when I hit Portland...

Update: We took off late from Heathrow due to the late arrival of the equipment, we lost more time in the air due to adverse headwinds, and yet more time racked and stacked over a fog-bound O'Hare. So while I'm now on the ground in Chicago, I'm here two hours later than I should have been. Fortunately, for various values of fortunately, my trip through US immigration was relatively unscathed, and my onward flight turns out to be just as delayed going out as I was coming in. So I'm now camped out in the newly rennovated Red Carpet Club near B18. I'll let you know how things go when, or if, I make it into Portland later today...

Update: Finally made it into Portland. My connecting flight out of O'Hare was delayed, delayed again, and then delayed again. Then suddenly moved forward by an hour without warning, to a slot only a few minutes away. Apparently our plane was still sitting in Toronto, and United had decided to give us a different one at short notice. Presumably some other people were now without a plane, however...

This meant that I had to run across the terminal. Although I made it onto the flight ahead of most people, who no doubt had retired to the bar, or just taken a nap secure in the knowledge that had at least another hour to wait.

I also made it onto the plane before the flight crew, who took another hour and a half to arrive after we'd fully boarded. The cabin crew were looking distinctly nervous towards the end...

Once the flight crew arrived, did the safety check and the pre-fight, we'd closed the doors and started to pushback, one of the cabin crew noticed we had an extra passenger. The plane was full, every seat was taken, but there was still one poor guy still standing in the aisle clutching a valid boarding pass, but without a seat. After a brief discussion about whether he could sit in a spare jump seat, they finally decided that they just weren't allowed to do that anymore, he had to go...

So we had to find ourselves a new ground crew, return to the gate, and offload the guy. At this point we were getting close to the point where our flight crew were about to go illegal. We didn't pushback, for the second time, much ahead of the point where they'd have had to find us a new flight crew. Considering they probably couldn't do that the second pushback, and subsequent take off, was expedited. I was listening in on to the tower chatter on channel 9, and from the sounds of things we ducked in ahead of a fairly big queue, and rolled almost without a pause directly from the gate to the end of 32L and into the air.

That said, I arrived into Portland only two and a half hours later than planned, and I got to take a minor supporting role in an excellently produced farce. You can't complain too much...

The 2.0 firmware for the iPod touch Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

For Apple the events of the day are best described as a bit of a disaster, especially for iPod touch owners like myself who have been left in update limbo all day long.


However bypassing iTunes, which is still periodically claiming that the previous 1.1.4 firmware is the latest available, I managed to download the 2.0 firmware directly from the Apple servers and have now successfully upgraded my iPod to the new firmware.

Now I just have to push all my content back onto my iPod and I'm done...

Update: But at least I didn't have two cranky toddlers to cope with...

Perl SAMP Alpha 3 Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I've just brought my pre-Trieste Perl Hub and test clients into line with the post-Trieste Working Draft document that Mark Taylor pushed to the SAMP mailing list at the tail end of June. Both the Perl Hub and the clients have been tested with Mark's Java SAMP kit pre-release and Luigi Paioro's SAMPY alpha 1 release. This release is being tagged alpha3, and is available under the terms of version 2 of the GPL license.

The new Perl Hub currently lacks callAndWait( ) functionality, I'll be adding that in this week, but should in all other ways meet the 1.0 WD and be interoperable with the other emerging toolkits.

Apart from a quick update towards the end of the week to add callAndWait( ), which will be tagged alpha4, this will be the last 'initial' release. After this I'll take some time to clean up the code, add some documentation, and make the client toolkit a bit more pleasant to use before making a 'first' release.

However if you want to get your feet dirty ahead of that, you'll need the following Perl modules installed: XMLRPC::Lite (part of the SOAP::Lite module), XML::Simple, DateTime, File::Spec, Carp, Data::Dumper, Getopt::Long, Socket, Net::Domain, POSIX and Errno. Depending on your version of Perl some, but not all, of these will ship with the core distribution. The rest can be obtained from CPAN. I think I've caught all the dependancies, but if you notice any I haven't listed any let me know I've forgotten them.

As with my initial release of the prototype SAMP Hub back at the start of May, the code comes with no guarantees except there will be horrendous bugs. There is no documentation. Many of the Perl modules have inline POD, however most of it didn't keep up with the pace of development so it's out of date. However, once you install the additional modules, open up a terminal window and start the Hub as follows,

% tar -zxvf perl-samp-hub-alpha3.tar.gz
% cd perl-samp-hub-alpha3/
% ./samp_hub.pl

you can put the Hub through its paces by opening up two more terminal windows and running the testbed clients. You should start the listener client in all cases,

% tar -zxvf perl-samp-clients-alpha3.tar.gz
% cd perl-samp-clients-alpha3/
% ./listener_client.pl

this is the test client that listens for notify( ) and call( )'s from the Hub. In the second window you can either start the client that exercises the notify( ) method, or the other than exercises the call( ) method. So

% cd perl-samp-clients-alpha3/
% ./callAll_test.pl

or

% cd perl-samp-clients-alpha3/
% ./notifyAll_test.pl

These two clients have a heart beat which will dispatch a call or a notification periodically. The first heartbeat will happen 15 seconds (or so) after the client has completed its registering with the Hub.

As always, feedback is appreciated...

Update: There is now a binary release of the Hub for x86_64 Linux and Intel Mac OSX. Just download the relevant zip file, unzip the executable, and run it. The dependencies, including Perl itself, should be taken care of using the magic of the Perl Packager.

Update: Apparently the x86_64 binary is fairly sensitive to installed library versions. This could just be my unfamiliarity with the packager. Reports of working, and non-working, installations would be good. Advice by people more familiar with PAR::Packer than I am would be warmly welcomed.

Worlde Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I must admit to being impressed by Wordle (via Orbiting Frog), enough that I had to give it a tip of the hat in passing...


My del.icio.us tag cloud as a Wordle...

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

It's a real pity that it's a Java applet and you can't use it as a component and build cool stuff on top of it. A clean room implementation as a web service using Python on Google's App Engine anyone?

Petrol crisis? What petrol crisis? Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

In the wake of the current industrial action by tanker drivers, and more planned action at the middle of the week, some garages have been raising prices.

Here in the South West we're amoungst the worst affected by the strike, by now pretty much all of the filling stations in mid-Devon seem to have run out of diesel, while most of them have either run out, or are now rationing, unleaded petrol. There have also been some price rises by those forecourts that still have fuel left, although it's debatable with this to protect supply or simple profiteering. But even here in the South West 199.9 pence per litre, well above the average pre-strike price in Devon of 117.9 pence per litre, now being charged by one forecourt in Exwick is a little extreme.

CREDIT: BBC News

For my North American based audience that's £9.09 per Imperial gallon, or US$14.85 per US gallon at the current exchange rate of £1.00 to US$1.96.

So please stop complaining about your US$4 gallon of gas. Because its getting annoying, and even at the average pre-strike price, it looks awfully good to us over here. It's been a long time since anyone in the UK paid 54 pence per litre for petrol.

Despite reassurances by Downing Street to the contrary, I think a US$15 gallon of gas, with two more weeks of on again, off again, industrial action still planned, counts as a crisis. Don't you?

Update: Makes me wish for the good old days...

Find eSTAR on Facebook Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

I just got round to creating a page for the eSTAR Project on Facebook. I've never really "got" Facebook pages, so I guess we'll see how it goes...

A giant like Google Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

An iPod killer never arrived, and it seems unlikely to do so until some new technology comes along to kill it as dead as the Sony Walkman. Despite that the industry is already looking for an iPhone killer, but I think they're looking in the wrong direction. Because the iPhone is not a phone, it just happens to be able to make phone calls.

A few weeks ago Google announced (via Hack A Day) the winners of the first round of the Android Developer Challenge. Perhaps somewhat interestingly, only four of the winners chose to withhold details of their applications from public view. I'm not entirely sure what that says about the winners, but I'd be interested in finding out how many of the losers wanted their ideas kept secret if they'd won.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats - Howard Aiken

This call was actually something I kicked around some ideas for, but in the end got side tracked into writing for the iPhone and playing with Arduinos. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day where you're not actually doing work you're paid to do.

However from the list of winners two applications stood out...

Jigsaw by Mikhail Ksenzov stood out because it's an application for something I do a lot. People with mobile phones taking pictures of the white board are pretty common during meetings.

Applying a geometric transform to the photograph

While I can't find a website for the application from the screen shots and description in the PDF it looks to scratch an itch I've been having for a while. It comes with edge detection, geometric transformation and image enhancements pre-canned to help you capture that vital architecture diagram. If I end up getting a 3G iPhone I might get round to doing a clean room implementation, just for fun.

I've actually done what BreadCrumbz does without the automation, or the sharing, or the mobile phone come to that. I'm not alone, if you go to the directions page for Liverpool ARI you'll see that the text is annotated with links through to pictures of useful landmarks [1, 2, 3] enroute. So while it's not an original idea, it looks to be a good implementation of a good idea. Which is probably better for them in the long run, they're helping people do stuff they already want to do rather than trying to convince them to do new stuff. The second one is always harder than the first.


Of course what stands out for you depends on what you do, I'm fairly sure an application to take pictures of white boards doesn't have a mass market appeal, you have to be a geek like me...

What's the point? Well the winners were applications that you'd find on a smart phone. But the iPhone isn't a smart phone, it's an ultra-portable that can make phone calls. Google Android has the potential to unseat the iPhone, if that's the market they push it towards, but Google has to make a decision. Whether to go for the smart phone market, or to go for the iPhone. Of course, maybe smart phones are just about to become as dead as the Sony Walkman? They were never a good compromise ergonomically speaking anyway. Maybe the iPhone killed them?

The 3G iPhone Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Well we've all known it was coming, and that it was 3G. Engadget are hands-on with the new iPhone...

CREDIT: Engadget

However despite the hype surrounding the new phone, Read/Write Web injects a healthy dose of realisim by noting that all Apple is doing is playing catch up. While Dean Bubly points out that the 2MP camera was obsolete on the previous model, let alone this years model. It's a point I can certainly sympathise with, as I no longer own a digital camera. With a 5MP camera on my current phone, why would I have to?

My biggest problem with the old iPhone was Bluetooth, or rather the lack of proper Bluetooth support for anything other than the Headset Profile. Unlike the US, where Bluetooth really hasn't got a lot of market penetration, Bluetooth is everywhere here in the UK. Most, actually thinking about it, all of the devices I carry around with me (apart from my iPod touch) come with Bluetooth and unlike the States we're never suffered from the "crippled Bluetooth" problem. The new iPhone claims to come with Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. However, whether this means that we finally have proper Bluetooth support remains to be seen.

On the down side, at least in the US, the "novel" at home activation via iTunes has gone the way of all things, and activation is in-store only. I doubt they're going to get away with that here in the UK, almost nobody I know buys their phones in a bricks-and-mortar store. I'm sure some people do, there wouldn't be as many mobile phone stores if they didn't, but everyone I know orders their handset online and it arrives the next day via courier. Worryingly however, if you go to the Apple website, only O2 and Carphone Warehouse are listed as places you can get a new iPhone.

On the up side, the iPhone is heavily subsidised here in the UK and will be free (via TechCrunch UK) from O2 on tariffs above £45 per month. The tariffs themselves, and here our friends across the pond must remember that in the UK you're not billed for incoming calls and text messages, are actually quite competitive.

Over the last few years we've been fighting an ongoing rear-guard action against longer contracts here in the UK, and regrettably, the iPhone might be the final nail in the coffin for traditional 12 month contracts. Although I'll note that O2 didn't quite have the guts to try and push the 24 month contracts that are standard with AT&T in the US. Unsurprisingly perhaps, I doubt anyone would buy the handset at all at that point, a longer contract would be far more off putting that anything else they could do apart from charging for it in the first place.

The only remaining problem? How do I hide the purchase from my wife?

The WWDC'08 keynote Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Unlike the January keynotes I tend not to live blog the WWDC. So if you're looking for up to the minute coverage you should head over to Engadget, Gizmodo, Macworld, Macrumors or ArsTechnica, all of whom have live coverage of tonight's keynote...

Update: A big list (via Robert Scoble) of places to get live coverage of the keynote, including a live audio stream, although that already seems to be buckling under the load with just under an hour to go before the keynote begins.

Update: As predicted, we have a new 3G iPhone.

Update: The keynote in 60 seconds from Mahalo Daily, or the full keynote from Apple.

Where everybody knows your name... Español | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Português

Sense Networks emerged from stealth mode earlier today with a press release announcing both themselves and their products. It shows that even behind the most boring press releases some very cool technology can be lurking.

I wouldn't have taken a second look at the company based on the rather dry press release, but fortuntely they took the time last week to talk to Brady Forrest over on the O'Reilly Radar, who in turn took the time to talks about Sense Networks and CitySense. They also got some coverage from TechCrunch as well, but you'd expect that. TechCrunch covers everybody...

CREDIT: Sense Networks

CitySense shows you how active locations are (top) and which ones are abnormally active (bottom) in real time.
This startup is interesting. A big problem for location-aware startup companies is that they need location data. Normally they try and get this from their users, but most of the time their applications aren't really that useful until they get a critical mass of users. But getting a critical mass of users without having any a useful application is almost impossible. It's a classic Catch-22...

Sense Networks on the other had has been able to obtain data from taxi cabs, and it uses the origin and destination data from those taxi journeys to model the city. Then on top of this initial data they can then add in their user data, in accordance with a reassuringly strict privacy policy. Users get immediate benefits from the application, as Sense Networks have found that they can get a fairly good picture of the ebb and flow of city life just using the data from the taxi journeys, and that means it is that much easier to gather a critical mass of users to make sure their application takes off...

The immediate worry is that initially at least, reliant as they are on data from taxis, the application will model a specific demographic rather than showing a true representation of how the city functions. However that might be my European perspective getting in the way. The way a US city works, even a faux European city such as New York or Boston, is very different to the way a UK or European city works. Over here they might be better off relying on data from local buses rather than on taxis.

However that aside, I've seen a couple of attempts at solving similar, but actually less ambitious, problems. They've more or less all failed due to the "critical number of users" problem. But to get off the ground Sense Networks doesn't need a critical number of users, they can answer the question "Where is everybody?" without them. With them they hope to be able to answer the question "Where is everybody like me?", that's impressive stuff...

Of course as well as the current Blackberry application, Citysense is coming soon to the iPhone. But I guess that's only to be expected?

Update: As predicted, we have a new 3G iPhone.