SevenClick! Mobile Technology Evangelists

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. :D

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

Thanks to Xataka Móvil, we know about the Boincoid project, an Android port of BOINC platform, that is one of the most famous platforms for grid computing.

BOINC was released by Berkeley University and serves as the foundations for grid projects like SETI@home (a reference in grid computing), Rosetta@home, ClimatePrediction and many others.

Now, an Israel-based team has managed to port its 40,000 lines of open-sourced C++ code to Android platform. They have announced an upcoming Java platform version, as well.

Their first goal was Android Developer Challenge, but once they are not in the Top 50, we hope they will go on with the project.

Anyway, mobile grid faces some barriers that makes its adoption a bit harder than PC-based grid computing. First, power comsumption. Battery life is a very precious thing in mobile devices - despite PCs, where it can be simply not considered. Second, data plans. Nowadays, data plans of mobile carriers are not cheap enough in order to people spend their money on grid computing.

Via XatakaMovil
Link Boincoid

It doesn´t sound new, we can use this technology in laptops for example, but it sounds interesting if it is finally developed for cell phones.

LG has entered into a license agreement with Iridian Technologies, to license proprietary iris recognition software from Iridian. In December 2006, Oki Electric has already announced their Iris Recognition Technology for Mobile Terminals in Japan. This technology is based on OKI’s original iris recognition algorithm using standard optical cameras that are equipped in mobile terminals.

The new Iris Recognition Technology for Mobile Terminals can use a standard camera that is embedded in a mobile terminal. This technology is embodied in a compact program for easy embedding, so it can authenticate the iris in a sufficient speed even when using the limited processing capacity of a mobile terminal.

Wow?

Via Xataka movil

Next please!, Who is next?

Imagine booking your turn for the fruit shop through your mobile avoiding stand in line. Impossible? Not so far from reality.

Somebody called Rosco has developed a system for students which allows booking computer equipment with a mobile phone device. Consists of a J2SE server application and a J2ME application. Both interact together with Bluetooth.

Is is called BluetoothRBS and it has been created for the Glasgow Caledonian University Campus Life 2008 competition.

It is at least interesting, and maybe useful.

Via Xataka Movil