SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

Some weeks ago the Firefox Mobile Concept spread over the specialized blogosphere. It´s well known how Mozilla works and how much they care for the quality of their software, and we could hardly wait for a first beta. Unfortunately, such event still don´t have a concrete date as Fennec (the product codename) has just born and is in a pre-alpha development stage.

We´ll have to stay in wait since 9th September for a first official alpha release, but right now Fennec it´s more than a concept: its Milestone 6 (M6) provides a functional prototype working on Linux devices like Nokia Internet Table N8x0 (install instructions here), showing a beautiful UI as well as nice tabs: the concept made real.

According to the official Fennec Requirements, M7 is going to be released next tuesday. This milestone is the last one before the first alpha, and for sure it will sketch out even better the future line of the browser. Anyway, after being able to test the concept on a touch-screen device, would be great to test M7 on a simpler smartphone without touch capabilities.

Via Mark Finkle´s Blog
Links Fennec Wiki – Fennec Requirements – Installing Fennec on Nokia N810

LiMo, the Linux Mobile Platform founded by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung, and Vodafone has just released seven new phones. This increases the number of available phones running LiMo to 21.

Over the new phones, the Motorola Motozine ZN5 stands out thanks to his 5MP camera with Xenon Focus and KODAK Imaging Technology, achieving shots with an unusual level of quality which you can share through WiFi.

These phones demostrate that LiMo has a promising future. Another important move that point this out is that Texas Instruments, member of the Open Handset Alliance (Android), joined the LiMo Foundation as a board member on April. So a war has begun and LiMo is out and armed, precisely on a fragile moment for the Android platform, as its development seems a bit stuck.

Via The Register
Links LiMo Foundation, Open Handset Alliance, Motozine ZN5, Kodak Imaging Technology

W3C has released its 10 commandments to be a great mobile parishioner

1. Design for one web. Content designed with diverse devices in mind reduces cost, increases flexibility, and reaches the needs of more people.
2. Rely on web standards. In the highly fragmented market of devices and browsers, standards are the best guarantee for interoperability.
   
3. Stay away from known hazards. Thoughtful design can help reduce usability problems due to small screens and keyboards, and other features of mobile devices.
4. Be cautious of device limitations. When choosing to use a particular Web technology, consider that mobile devices vary greatly in capability.
5. Optimize navigations. Simple navigation and typing become critical when using a small screen and keyboard, and limited bandwidth.
6. Check graphics & colors. Images, colors, and style brighten content, but require care: devices may have low-contrast screens or may not support some formats.
7. Keep it small. Smaller sites make users happier by costing less in time and money.
8. Use the network sparingly. Web protocol features can help improve the user experience by reducing the impact of network bottlenecks and latencies.
9. Help & guide user input. Keyboards and other input methods on mobile devices can be tedious to use, so effective designs minimize the need for them.
10. Think of users on the go. Web users on the go want compact information when time is short and distractions many.

Please follow the father´s word to navigate in a better mobile web world.

Amen

Via W3C

This is one of the most interesting news in mobile software development i have heard in months.

A great system allows you, through a wireless sensor network, to know wich of the 24,000 metered parking spaces in San Francisco are free at any moment. Great!

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

Read here the full article.

Link Streetline
Via Core77

Caixa Penedes by the hand of SevenCLick, company of  the TBS Group specialized in development and consultancy services on mobile technologies, presents its Online Banking application completely developed fo the iPhone.

Coinciding with the launch of the iPhone 3G in Spain next July 11th, clients of Caixa Penedes could accede from this link mobile.caixapenedes.com to new surroundings of acces for iPhone in which to consult and operate with their accounts, as well as visualize corporative and commercial information and social responsibility of this entity.

Accounts and cards global liquids, account movements consultancy, money transfers between own accounts or another accounts, charging prepaid mobile phone accounts, branch and cashier localization via Google Maps, are some of the features supported, all of them specifically developed for the first time using to the limit the capacities of the famous device of those of Cupertino.

Link Press release
Link CaixaPenedes
Link MobileCaixaPenedes

OpenMoko Freerunner came out past July 4th, after some months waiting for this new release of the most open cellphone in the market. We have talked about it a couple of times.

As Neo 1973, the target of Neo Freerunner is mainly developers and hackers more than mainstream users.

It includes some very interesting features:

• AGPS
• WIFI
• 3axis Motion Sensors
• 2,8” touch screen VGA (640×480)

… but lacks some others like 3G and camera.

Anyway, the release seems to have been succesful since OpenMoko’s web store has sold out the GSM 900 model. OpenMoko also has a handful of distributors, but no data about availability is provided.

Link OpenMoko

Nokia has released today this big news:

Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DOCOMO announced today their intent to unite Symbian OS(TM), S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) to create one open mobile software platform. Together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone they plan to establish the Symbian Foundation to extend the appeal of this unified software platform.

The Foundation will provide a unified platform with common UI framework. A full platform will be available for all Foundation members under a royalty-free license, from the Foundation’s first day of operations.

The Foundation will make selected components available as open source at launch. It will then work to establish the most complete mobile software offering available in open source. This will be made available over the next two years and is intended to be released under Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0.

“Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia.

The Foundation’s platform will build on the leading open mobile software platform, with more than 200 million phones, across 235 models.

This is one of the biggest announcements in mobile phones field in years, mobile leades to unify a software, mainly to beat the iphone´s career. I think. iPhone keeps your chin up.

Link Nokia Press Release

Sound Of Motion have brought together originality and a simple idea, and they did it so well that their “Mobile Bicycle Computer” has earn a few awards, as well as a finalist position on Nokia´s Mobile Rules contest, Technology Innovation category (see awards booklet, page 64).

With just a bluetooth adapter for your bicycle wheels, and a bluetooth enabled phone, you will enjoy full statistics of your trainings, family trips or whatever you like to do with your bike. You can also customize your own “Velotones” which will told you the speed withouth the need to look at your phone.

See how it works here:

Via XatakaMovil
Link Sound Of Motion

Android live demo was presented yesterday on a HTC device, rumored HTC “Dream”, at the company’s I/O conference in San Francisco.

Check in the following video how android runs.

Google StreetView is awesome!

Google Maps looks great too.

That is great and i love the unlock screen, that is so fresh!, but, what about the multi-touch features?

Via EngadgetMobile
Link Screenshots

When it comes to develop Java ME applications, every developer knows how problematic is to provide a consistent user expierence accross a set of different devices. Each manufacturer has different implementations of the standard.

On Sun’s words, “Due to implementation differences in fonts, layout, menus, etc. the same application may look and behave very differently on different devices. In addition much of the advanced UI functionality is not accessible in LCDUI and requires the developer to write very low level ‘paint’ type code.”

Very clear.

For overcoming this annoyance, many developers implement their own UI code or make use of some UI frameworks like J2ME Polish. We have talked about it.

Now, Sun comes to rescue with Lightweight UI Toolkit, promising “look and behave the same on all devices using a programming paradigm similar to Swing”. This is what all we were waiting for.

The toolkit includes not only UI controls, but other advanced theming, transitions, animations, etc.

By now, only what they name “early access library binaries” are available with a Sun License Agreement (SLA), what enables using the library for free in commercial applications. Source code will be soon available with a GPLv2 license.

Will this UI Toolkit become a de facto standard for solving – at least, helping to solve – fragmentation in JME?

I have not tested it yet, but this enters number one in my to-do list.

Via MobilePhoneDevelopment
Link LightweightUIToolkit