Martin Notes

The iPhone contains a nice 3G radio and a bluetooth radio, so I thought I’d let my Ubuntu laptop connect to the Internet through the iPhone’s 3G. A little research showed that it is quite straight forward to connect Ubuntu to a 3G service there days (since 8.10), so I didn’t expect a lot of problems.

To my surprise the setup failed at the very first step. I checked the iPhone’s bluetooth capabilities by finding the bluetooth address:

hcitool scan

And looking up the capabilities:

sdptool browse <address> | grep Networking

To my surprise the iPhone doesn’t support a dailup connection through bluetooth. Isn’t it rather strange that Apple sells us a phone that doesn’t allow us to share it’s network with the rest of the world? I would assume the TelCos wouldn’t mind, actually I’m surprised they even accepted it.

Apple has been down this road before, the whole Mac OS 9 and earlier was closed to the outside world. You’d have to buy Apple stuff to make it work. Mac OS X improved that a lot, and the hardware support also improved: USB, standard VGA. It’s strange to see that Apple is going back to the more closed approach now. The iPod was still a bit open; you can upload songs from Linux, but the iPhone can’t even be used without iTunes.

Watch it Apple, you won’t be able to hold this so much longer. There will be competition at some point, and then people will start to make different choices. So far you’ve been the best in what you’re doing, but you’re not the only one.

I hope Apple will start seeing that competition is not bad, but that they should learn from them.

Linux, Opinion, Personal, Ubuntu, iPhone bluetooth, iPhone, Linux, Ubuntu

Ok, I have an iPhone now and I’m really happy with it. It’s a beautiful design, brilliant piece of technology, the app store is very cool. I’ve downloaded the most useless and useful apps, so I’m a happy camper.

But.

Why did Apple try so hard to make it impossible to use such a nice device without using other Apple products? First of all in the Netherlands you can only buy it  with T-Mobile. Since I’m a corporate phone user, I can chose between Vodafone. The solution is to buy a phone in Italy or Poland and insert a Vodafone SIM card. That works, but it’s annoying.

When I received the phone, I wanted to use it immediately. But you have to unlock the thing with iTunes. There is NO alternative. This means that you have to run either Mac OS X or Windows to even be able to use the iPhone. I don’t have that at work. I’ve tried to install iTunes in VirtualBox, but VB still has some problems with USB devices. Which is stupid, but not the point right now. So after trying to get it to work for an hour I gave up and asked a colleague if I could use his Mac to unlock the phone.

Ok, I’ve got a working phone. Nice, nice, nice. Good GUI, nice apps, GPS works great, wireless up and running in 10 seconds. For at least an hour I’ve been pinching, dragging, configuring and being happy.

Then I found out that the 3G network didn’t work. I only solved that when I got home. After some Google activity it appears that some iPhone vendors use the ‘Enterprise capabilities’ to lock the phone to their network. So, not SIMlock, but only the network capabilities. I had to download a configuration application to create a configuration profile that I has to mail to myself to install it on the iPhone.

Now it’s working and of course I’m happy and droowling but there is a weird aftertaste. Why did Apple take this approach? Do they think they won’t make enough money otherwise, or is it their idea of controling the quality of service to their customers? I don’t get it. Most people won’t care at all, they are running windows and don’t think about this. I do care, and I think Apple should care.

Opinion, Personal, iPhone iPhone, Ubuntu

I just installed the new release of wordpress. The 2.7 is a major update from the 2.6 that I was running. The admin GUI improved a lot. Apparently it also supports gears now, I still have to try that.

The update is pretty smooth, just follow the guideline on wordpress. Don’t forget to update your wp-config.php by hand, it has changed. I was stubborn and I didn’t remove the wp-admin and wp-includes directories before I upgraded. That doesn’t work; remove them.

Personal Wordpress

(mike): HEH, THIs Is AMuSINg
(mike): I Got a WiNAMP pLUgiN THAt BLInKS THE KEYboARD ledS tO THE MUSIc
(mike): BUT IT acTUALLY turNs THe CAPsLOcK On AND oFF iNSTEad OF JuST the LIGHt

Do I feel nerdy, I actually find that hilariously funny! Check for more l337: http://qdb.us/leetness

Personal funny

So, here I am in Berlin at an IBM Websphere Portal technical conference. I’ve absolutely zero experience and knowledge about IBM portal, but I’m learning fast now. My notes so far (yes, they are sketchy):

V04
systemic analysis of competition:
- M$, Oracle, SAP, jboss, liferay, exo, jetspeed
? mitigate business risk? trend?

Campaign management

(down) Admin->footprint, site analysis
Performance -> IBM throughput is the highest?
TCO rises for competition, IBM stays more or less equal

WSP can consume sharepoint func/data

(Oracle portal dies?)

WSP can consume SAP func/data

Liferay: departmental focus
OpenSource: IT dept. use it to extend their own ability
func is low, TCO is high, risk is high

B01
Permissions: locks: lock a part of the page
Attribute based admin: business rules for visibility
–> can also instantiate pages
WSP: exposes a lot of api methods as rest services
semantic tags
ajax proxy –> proxy ajax call to other sites through the portal
Situational applications (and the long tail)
possibility: move situational apps into the enterprise env. (not yet finished, next months)
virtual portals –> like desktops/teamsites
create through a wizard
edit thought customization GUI
accelerators: working example implementations

V01
Skipped

D13 - Mainsoft
Goal: give access to sharepoint through WSP, NOT give edit capabilities
–> meaning: sharepoint will still be the point for editing

challenges: functionality, content, security
solution 1: expose sharepoint lists in WSP
solution 2: SP SDK to build composite apps across .NET and Java

Security integration: credential vault, 1 user account, kerberos
Chose: direct link between office and sharepoint OR link through WSP
–> through WSP you lose the sharepoint integration
–> it becomes readonly (download)

Create java portlets from .Net –> use Visual Studio, compile (using the Mainsoft compiler) from .Net to Java –> delivers .war file

Web 2.0 mashup
share content and knowledge
spaces
find colleges
Find and contact experts

(Quickr = sharepoint)
Quickr is build on top of WSP
-> Lists, livetext, …

Lotus connections
-> social networks for business
profiles, communities, blogs, dogear (bookmarks), activities, homepage

Lotus Mashup
-> business/enterprise mashup
create mashups, list mashups in a directory (hub)

Personal conference, IBM, WebSphere portal

Swype is pretty cool, it might even work in real life!

Personal gadget, review

Do you write a text or do you want to share some information? Do you create a drawing or do you want to explain some idea?

I think the current desktop is either application- (Windows, Gnome) or document- (Mac OS X) oriented. But why? I don’t use my computer to open applications or create documents, I like to get a task done. I’d like an interface that is task oriented!

Task oriented design is a well known approach for interaction designers but somehow this never entered the desktop metaphor. The desktop is still mostly aimed at starting applications and handling files. Which is nice and important, but very inefficient. I think the desktop should be able to do those tasks for me. Gnome DO is quite good at finding the application I want to open, and Nautilus is quite good at organising files.

An idea would be to give the user the possibility to create tasks for itself. For example: I want to create a project plan, instead of: open OO Writer, select the project plan template and start writing. I hear you say: “You can use the templates for that!”. Indeed, I could, but then the flow would be: go to a folder where I want to create the plan, right click, find the template I want, create the file, name it, open it. Not efficient.

I’ve written a doc a while ago about a webbased task oriented desktop. Maybe I should expand that into something that fits on the desktop. Next holiday I’m going to work on that…

[Update]

• http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/932/
• http://gabriel.hurley.googlepages.com/userinterface
• http://www.qdh.org.uk/wordpress/?p=244

GUI, Opinion, Personal document oriented, task oriented

do?

Personal

My personal barcode

Personal barcode, Personal

I’ve blogged about this before, but I really like the Elementary Desktop Project. Since they have a real site now. I thought I spend a little attention to them again. It made me change desktop wallpaper.

GUI, Linux, Personal elementary deskop project