symbian on mac: it’s possible (they say)

Being totally into mobile development at the moment, I was preparing myself to fight against the lack of official development tools for mobile on the mac platform.
To compile a J2ME app on this platform is not easy at all, wanna talk about symbian?

The tools form Sun and Symbian/Nokia Forum are for windows only, probably because of the Intel specific instructions, but I don’t wanna go too deep into it.

The hope on J2ME comes from MPowerPlayer, which is the only working MIDP2 capable emulator and libraries package available on mac.
It’s completely Java based and runs pretty well.

I had it easily set up on Mobile Processing and a bit less easily setup (with many issues) on Eclipse with EclipseME installed.

Another alternative is to use ME4SE, which points at porting the J2ME (still relying on Java1.4) to Java 2 (1.5).
The project is open-source, and I’m willing to look into it, although I’m using MPP at the moment.

Then today I was looking for something to deploy Symbian applications (.sis) on mac, and I was pretty hopeless until my google (god bless it) search returned this site and its exciting headline:

Xcode Plugin for Symbian OS – 27-Mar-2006: Xcode Plugin 1.0 released

Having installed XCode last night to get some MIDP code to compile (with no success so far), I decided I’ll give it a try, and finally start doing some C and Symbian (the thing I hate the most is have to wait for people to develop for me, when I know I could do it.)

My extensive google searches and some tips from Rui Carmo‘s wiki got me a small collection of useful links.

J2ME on mac
Florian Beer wrote a tutorial explaining how to use it with NetBeans (using the Linux mobility pack and tweaking it on mac).

MobUser writes about how to configure Eclipse to use MPowerPlayer or ME4SE.

J2ME Polish is a nice set of tools/libraries to ease mobile java development.

Symbian (UIQ, S60 2.x, S80)

So far I just found Tomsci’s Xcode plugin, but I think it’s enough for now.

I keep looking for new tutorials and stuff about mobile development, mainly targeting Nokia’s devices for work reasons.
My del.icio.us mobile collection is always up-to-date

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online newspapers and the denyal of being blogs

As some people know I have 48 feeds subscriptions in my NNW.
I’m a feed addict, and I know. I never denied it.
I’m a young blogger too, and I follow the basic rules of blogging, among which giving credits to whatever source I pick inspiration from, or directly linking to a post if I blog about something read elsewhere.

This is sort of common practice among most bloggers, I rarely found a post not mentioning sources, or tipsters etc.

The same doesn’t happen with online newspapers.
How many times do you read a post on digital newspapers one week after seeing it on one of these sources:

• BoingBoing
• Wired
• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• Make
• O’reilly
• we-make-money-not-art
• Apple Insider

?

How many times have you found a link to the original (cause you know it is) post?
Very few!

My favorite case is an italian online newspaper (which I’ve been mentioning quite some time the last week): repubblica.it.

the funniest thing about this site, is that even when they talk about a website, there’s no link to it.
today’s example is this post.

It is about a virtual travel agency in Russia.
They offer virtual journeys to people who can’t afford a real one (which I find pretty sad).

Repubblica.it’s article, even shows a screenshot from the agency’s website, but there’s no URL, not even a not hyperlinked one.
It would be nice to read about something and then clicking somewhere without the need to look it up on a search engine.
Wasn’t that the reason why HTTP was invented?
Where’s the HyperText?

This might be the reason why “real” blogs get more credit in the online community than online branded magazines.

Hence:
welcome bloggers.
welcome thanking sources and tipsters.
welcome HyperTextTransferProtocol.
welcome HyperTextMarkupLanguage.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Italy’s elections: Berlusconi attempts to create a new law…

This is as funny as sad.
Berlusconi tries to use his yet to be drawn powers to create a new law that requires the votes to be recounted.

The aim is to waste time before the left party takes control.
How much time?
Enough to make it happen after the new Republic President is elected.

He’s trying to become the maximum authority in Italy: EMPEROR!

if there’s a god, this is when he has to send a stroke the right direction.
Oh… right… if he hadn’t had one already he wouldn’t be that mad.

I’m sorry.

if you can read italian here’s the article

Popularity: 1% [?]

italy’s almost safe, but the right is learning from the US

it’s no big secret that italy’s information is owned by the right (in the name of mr Silvio Berlusconi and his friends).
and it’s no big secret that mr S (to be read as “mister …”) is sucking up to his idol in the US and the US information system.

now the latest craze:
how to hide the success of the left party with an outrageous first page header on Repubblica.it, as you can see from the picture below

they present this incredible news item stating that the most dangerous man in the world (I suppose mr B.L. is a bit upset now),
an old man that probably can’t even tie his shoes, has been arrested.
the title is “The Boss of the MAFIA” (I translate it using my special italian english to give it emphasis).

Provenzano, a mafia boss who was hiding in the bushes (or in mr S mansion… as it happened for other mobsters),
has been miraculously caught the day the elections results are proving bad for mr S’s party…
a great success for the authorities and blah blah blah.

there’s nothing as bad as not willing to accept what happens around you.
now the only problem is that 50% of the italians, the ones that are on mr S side,
are going to be thinking this thing happened because of the actual government.
that’s not true.
smoke in your eyes.

let’s see how far they’ll go.

UPDATE:
it gets better as they just changed the picture of the “mafioso” to make him sport a younger look.

up to you, world.

UPDATE 2:
guys… it’s never ending. this picture is even older… you can notice a grain in it that was only possible in the late 1800′s :)

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Bose TriPort Headphones… what a feeling!

Last week I was in london, and for the second time I entered the Apple Store trying to keep myself from spending money.
I failed.

I came out of the store after waiting 20 minutes for the store guy to bring a pair of these marvelous headphones.

I didn’t want to buy them, as I saw they costed 200 € (quite a bit more than 200 $), but when I was presented the price in GBP (119 £, which is essentially the same price) I felt less guilty.

What to say…
Well worth the money.
On the plain I couldn’t ear any other sound but the one coming from my iPod.
Now I’m sitting in my studio and listen to music. I’m surrounded by clean sound.
I simply love these headphones.
If I was you…

enjoy.ubi

Popularity: 1% [?]

a collection of (free) books on electronics

Since I was a kid I was fascinated with hacking, and my first experiments were lighting systems in lego-bricks built houses (I was just a child).

Electronics has been in a part of my life, as mechanics was, but I never entered the matter.
You know… school, math, physics.
Then you’re suddenly 30 and you realize you need this stuff.

Now I experiment with PICs, Wiring board etc.
I even got myself a brand new Ersa soldering station for the price of € 200.

Now I realize I lack at lot of theory, and want to start electronics from the basics, but It’s quite hard to find books in stores (Electronics is not Macromedia Flash).
I had to dig the web for a few days to get links, pdf’s, tutorials.

Well, to cut a long story, I just found this and wanted to share

Lessons In Electric Circuits [last revision Jan 18 2006]

I’ll read it, although some sections are still incomplete, so I still don’t know if it’s any good.
It could be useful to many people, or it could just prove bupkis.

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