Friday, January 18, 2008
So. In addition to blogging here (sort of), I’m now on the blogging team over at the sleek-and-shiny new Nokia Nseries Workshop site. (I love the official Nokia Sans font, just to note.) Anyway. I write about mobile technology and about how to do cool things with Nokia phones and other Nokia tech. Since I’ve been slow about blogging on this site, I figured I would post a collection of links to my articles over there every once in a while. So you could see what I’m up to. And maybe learn a thing or two if you’re getting into mobile application design yourself.
So here we are — my four most recent articles for the Nseries site. (I’ve added extra notes after some of them.) They’re all about writing software for your Nseries phone. Enjoy.
“Put your N800 into developer mode and you’ll be able to write and run your own Python scripts. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how it works.”
The N800 is a funny little device. I won one at the MobileBarCamp a couple of months ago as a part of some jokey business plan pitch competition. (My group came up with something involving the remote torture of pets.) It’s not a phone at all — it’s a hand-sized Debian Linux box. It can run Apache. Ruby on Rails. PHP. It doesn’t seem to want to run Java, but whatever. Anyway, it’s probably been getting the most use as a video player on flights. And it’s good for small games. I’d call it an iPod Touch for the Linux crowd. What it lacks in sex appeal it makes up in hackability. And though I haven’t yet tried it as such, I could see inexpensive N800s being used for applications in which you need a bit of computing power but not much. Like as a Tivo for your radio (see next article).
“The Nokia N800 internet tablet has a feature you may not know about: a built-in FM radio tuner that you can script using Python. Here’s how it works.”
Now — finally — I own a radio in New York City. Turns out radio kind of sucks.
“Find out what it takes to install Python, run a basic “Hello World!” script and get started with your own scripts on the N95.”
I’ve had the N95 for about a month as a development unit. It’s fun. It’s so easy to write J2ME apps for, which is my big thing right now. And it’s nice to have access to the GPS, as well. A few of us have a clever new idea we’re fleshing out at the moment for the N95 (and other GPS-friendly phones) — I’ll share more about that later. I’ve been using it as an iPod lately, as well, but I’ve kind of decided I don’t like having my phone and iPod as the same device. I get so bothered when people call me while I’m listening to music — especially if I’m jogging. First, it stops the music and rings in the earphones. Yack. And then I have to fumble around to ignore the call and get back to what I was listening to. No good. Otherwise, though, it’s a lovely device. Maybe I just need to get used to shutting off the phone part when I don’t want to be disturbed listening to music or watching something.
“Mobile Processing is a great application that makes writing Java (or, more specifically, J2ME) apps for your N95 simple. Learn how to set up Mobile Processing and write your first application.”
And more coming soon…
Yup. So that’s them. Let me know what you think! Either here or over there, though if you comment over there you’re more likely to get discussion.
Pictures of cairo
Posted Sat, January 19, 2008, 11:05am EST by lauren
Josh- I would really like to use your photo of the suuq in Cairo for a project I'm doing. I'm a designer and i live in Ireland. let me know if you could send me a higher res and i'll tell you more about it. God you've travelled alot. i feel pretty farm bound here!
lauren
Suuq photo -- Lauren
Posted Mon, January 21, 2008, 2:39pm EST by Josh
Lauren,
Hey -- drop me an e-mail. I'd be happy to hear about the project and share a higher-res version of the photo.
Me: chasing@spaceship.com