ZEDRAY

verb
1. Having an unreserved seat, laptop computer and a 2h30m connection on Deutsche Bahn.
2. Time to sit down, collect my thoughts and write down some of the things that I’ve had running through my head over the past week.

Somewhat ironically, today I was asked if I was interested in taking on either an iPhone or a Java-Flash-Light-widget project.

Having some Flash experience makes that tempting, although realistically the iPhone would be an opportunity to dive into a more complete platform.

Both have merit, although I stand by my decision to build a prototype for Android, as it’s the only platform that promises to run Snowball freely and without restrictions.

However will all have to wait a year to see if any of Google’s “openness” promises actually materialise in the market.

• Warm up the emulator and install all your required apps well before you are required to start. The emulator takes a while to startup, and can sometimes get stuck on the Cylon animation, which (for me at least) seems to require a reboot to put right. Don’t risk doing this messing around when you have 50 people already seated and waiting for you to start.
• Do not try and use the maps or browser feature if you have an intermittent internet connection (i.e. a conference Wi-Fi). There is a bug in the current release which means that no Google service will be able to achieve a network connection if it couldn’t find one on startup. If you encounter this bug, consider restarting the emulator (see above)
• Demo Snowball. At least it will keep working even after you’ve lost connectivity.

Tips for doing a presentation on the iPhone SDK

• Read those SDK terms and conditions again and you will find that you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement with Apple“all information disclosed by Apple to you that relates to Apple’s products, designs, business plans, business opportunities, finances, research, development, know-how, personnel, or third-party confidential information” as “Confidential Information” — excluding specific information that is available elsewhere. You must agree not to “disclose, publish, or disseminate” any of the aforementioned Confidential Information, and not to use it “in any way, including, without limitation, for your own or any third party’s benefit without the prior written approval of an authorized representative of Apple in each instance.”

  This effectively means you’ve signed away your right to talk about iPhone when you signed on to Apples developer program.

• Maybe you’ve developing for the wrong platform?

Anybody got any more tips while we are at it?

It seems that the town of Düsseldorf really knows how to put on a public spectacle, I mean look at those fire hoses??

Soviet space shuttle Buran cruises Rhine for final home (click)

Buran (spacecraft) Wiki (click)
Flickr (click)

Its official, I will now be presenting at the JAX08 Conference with a presentation entitled:

Where am I? Location Based Services
Location Based Services stellen einen der großen Benefits mobiler Devices dar, der weit über die Bestimmung der eigenen Position hinausgeht. Im Java-ME-Umfeld werden derartige Services u.a. mittels Location API (JSR 179) realisierbar. Die Session zeigt die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen Java-ME-basierter Location Based Services und führt sowohl in die theoretischen Grundlagen als auch in die praktische Verwendung der Location API ein. Darüber hinaus wird anhand einer auf der Androids-Plattform basierenden Beispielanwendung eine Alternative zum klassischen LBS-Ansatz aufgezeigt. (click)

I will be co-presenting with my CEO - Lars Roewekamp of OpenKnowledge GMBH.

A very exciting time to be in mobile development and location based services in general.
I will also slip in something on Snowball and demo a few Android proofs of concept applications.

A new year and a good opportunity to look at all the mobile related stuff in my portfolio since:

2004

• EdiMap (MSc Edinburgh University)
  Tourist map of Edinburgh, with downloadable POI.
• NotPacMan (Self training)
  The familiar PacMan game.

2006 (Starting at OpenKnowledge)

• 
  Barometer, Horoskop and Lovecheck (AirMotion)
  Fun and games, and a lot of device testing.
• MiniMove (BMW via BBDO)
  Rotate the BMW mini on your mobile.

2007

• 
  MobileAct (Sony Ericsson via AirMotion)
  Weekly magazine content to go with the Channel 4 series.
• 
  MiniMove China (BMW via BBDO China)
  Rotate the BMW mini on your mobile in Chinese.
• 
  
  Mitch&Co Blackbox (Tchibo via MINICK)
  Explore the latest Mitch&Co fashon range on either male of female models.
• NowHere (Burda Wireless)
  Photograph where you are and upload as a NowHere POI.

2008…

• Ads by a [big mobile network operator]*
  Important stuff
• Google Android
  Self training on the new mobile OS from Google
• Snowball - The Mobile Location Based Search API
  My world beating business idea.

* To comply with my company’s code of conduct for blogs, I have removed all references to customers and projects currently in progress.

Use either the hideously overpriced Adobe Acrobat, which is currently available on a one month free trial with annoying popups that manage to appear even when you are not using the software.

…Or use CutePDF Professional, cheaper and also available on trial.

Follow the windows tip of using diruse. click

Turns out a hidden folder called C:\WINDOWS\Installer contained 21GB of data, used for uninstalling and repairing installed programs. Most of this data appears to be either duplicated or from software that didnt unstall correctly. It is not safe to delete this data, so I downloaded the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility tool as recomended.

It turns out that the tool itself dosn’t help, but comes bundled with an unsupported command line utility called MsiZap.exe which can remove orphaned files.

Usage
C:\Programme\Windows Installer Clean Up\MsiZap.exe G

This deleted 99% of the data without affecting anything else. I now have around 400mb of data in the installer directory which shounds about right.

January
Feburary
March