Gartner: No New Unix Apps to Emerge After 2009

Gartner: No New Unix Apps to Emerge After 2009
This was a really strange post - to the extent that I really want to comment on it.

What is the definition of Unix? As far as most of the world is conserned, there is no such thing? You have HP-UX, I don't see that going away that soon. Then you have AIX which will probably stay with us for some years. Solaris, Irix, and probably a few more - some are quite dead, others live. If you make an app for any if these, wouldn't that be a unix application.

More important, you have MacOSX which is very much Unix. And you have all the freenixes, including Linux. For all practical purposes, you make an Unix app when you create anything for one of these platforms. I know that there are certain archaic rules that must be fullfilled before an operating system can get the label Unix, but when it comes to the applications, these days it usually only takes a recompile to get your app on one of those if you program with portability in mind.

Ah, enough. The original writer probably live in a Microsoft world and don't have a clue. It's Gartner after all. And I just wanted to write something tonight...

Ikke min oppgave, men noe må da lagres...

For de som ikke aner hva nam er, og heller ikke kjører mc, les videre eller gå et annet sted. Av og til faller noen utsagn i baren som bare bør tas vare på. Jeg er vel kjent med at dette er en oppgave som egentlig tilligger andre, og jeg er stort sett bare en lurker i baren. Men allikevel, noen utsagn må jeg bare lagre. 10. September finner altså Morten det for godt å uttrykke:

Søndag var jeg ute for å ta en liten tur. Nesten den første vårturen. Det viser seg at jeg har glemt å kjøre noe særlig i år. Faktisk har det så vidt jeg husker bare blitt en t/r til jobben etter at jeg skiftet batteri i vår.

Vel, vrir rundt nøkkelen og ser med glede at jeg har nok strøm på batteriet til å få lys i den røde dioden som sier at jeg har nok olje. Jeg prøver om lyset virker, og får da nullstilt instrumentpanelet. Heldigvis er Aprilia 250 uten startmotor. Den røde dioden klarer ikke å
holde på lyset samtidig som coilene skal få strøm, men den starter da likevel. Etter en grundig marinering av garasjen i totaksolje og uforbrentbensin kommer jeg meg avgårde.

Ned til bensinstasjonen for å få litt luft i dekkene, sjekker at bremsene fortsatt virker og at ikke drittungene har skrudd styredemperen min helt til. Ut på tur.

Ikke lenge etter at jeg kommer meg ut på veien legger jeg merke til at temperaturmåleren til kjølevannet viser litt rare verdier. Må RS250 er det en gammel myte som sier at kjølevannet bør ligge rundt 68 grader, og hvert fall ikke utenfor 60-75 grader. Detter krever en del tape på
radiatoren for å passe til varierende værforhold. Denne tappingen er noe man ikke skal holde på med alt for lenge uten at det blir litt hysterisk. Uansett - Responsen på kjølevanntempen er ganske rask. Kjører man opp en bratt bakke stiger den fort noen grader. Ute på E18 legger
jeg plutselig merke til at tempen nå er helt oppe i 83 grader. Jeg ventet at det var litt kaldere nå enn ved første tur i vår, så før start hadde jeg lagt en stripe tape midt på radiatoren. Kunne det ha blitt alt for mye tape? Så la jeg merke til at kjølevannstempen nå var blitt enda
mer følsom for hvor hardt motoren arbeider. Jeg gir bare litt gass, så fyker tempen opp mot 87-88 grader. Så slipper jeg opp, og raskt synker den ned mot 70 grader. Jeg vurderer raskt situasjoen og kommer på at David en gang hadde litt samme problem en gang han hadde luft på radiatoren. Det blir ikke ordentlig gjennomstrømning, så da kjører man jo nærmest uten kjøling. Det kan vel neppe være veldig bra, så jeg bestemmer meg for å kjøre inn på nærmeste bensinstasjon. I det jeg skal ta av legger jeg merke til at tempen nå er helt nede i 50 - urovekkende. Samtidig snur jeg hodet til høyre for å se i dødvinkelen. I det hodet vris tilbake sveiper øynene over det høyre lcd-panelet. Med litt liten skrift står det 67, en liten sirkel og så en C. Dette tyder på at tempen står på høyre lcd-panel og ikke på venstre. Ved nærmere inspeksjon ser detut til at det står km/h bak det store tallet på venstre lcd-panel.

Moralen er: Husk å lese bruksanvisningen før hver gang man opererer kjøretøyet.

(klippet verbatim fra no.alt.motorsykler, bare editert formatering og en opplagt trykkleif).

Hugin auto-align in Qtpfsgui

I am still working on the interface to the align_image_stack program in Qtpfsgui. The maintainer of the OSX-port of Hugin, Ippei Ukay, has been so kind to provide us with a statically linked version of the program that at least work quite well on my computers. I have some issues with making Qtpfsgui picking up the location of the binary automatically, but for now you can download the binary here, and place it in a directory usually in your PATH environment. The directory /usr/local/bin may be a good place to store it, but if that does not work put it in /usr/bin. Qtpfsgui v.1.8.12 should then be able to find and use the align_image_stack program.

[edit:] Remark, after you download the align_image_stack binary, you need to set the executable bit on the file. Open a Terminal and do 'sudo chmod 755 /usr/bin/align_image_stack' (assuming you placed the file in /usr/bin).

In the future, the Hugin image aligner will be included with Qtpfsgui, so no extra work should be required to use it - I hope!

[edit2:] You may as well download the align_image_stack binary inside a zip-file - by popular request!
Take care

Two weeks with Ubuntufied Oqo O2

I have now spent about 2 weeks with Oqo O2, and most of that time with Ubuntu installed, so I guess it is time for a status update. I'll focus on the Linux issues with the device as other people are raving about how great the Oqo is - like folks over on gottabemobile.com and other places. I agree with all the positive comments, and like to emphasize that it's truly a portable computer - I carry it with me to places I didn't brought my other computers in the past. Which was the main point of buying it.

As I wrote in the previous post on the topic, Ubuntu works on the Oqo O2, and it works great too. As I have mentioned in a previous post, it take some effort to get there, though, but it is worth it. There are also a few things that still does not work, which I will mention further down in the post. But let's start with the stuff that works.

• Wireless network. Oqo O2 have an Atheros chipset for Wifi of the abg-kind. Ubuntu detects and set this up out of the box, using the ath_pci kernel driver. Remark that the restricted-modules kernel add-on must be installed, as the closed source firmware for the radio is in that package. Usually, reception seems to be on the bad side when looking at the bar-chart in the panel that indicates signal strength. But in practice I don't have any problem with the network connection. My guess is that power is turned down a bit to save the battery. But that is just a guess, and I don't know if it is possible to crank up the power in some way. And as I said, it has not been a problem so far.
• Bluetooth works without any problem. It is some kind of chip set attached to the usb bus, it shows up in the output of lsusb -v. The bluetooth support on Linux is still not perfect, like when I wanted to attach the iGo stowaway keyboard, I needed to edit some config files (according to howtos found online) - there is room for improvement. Now, I like to edit those files so it is not a problem for me personally. But it is a problem when it comes to acceptance of Linux among Joe average user.
  
• Keyboard. The Oqo O2 have quite a lot of special keys, which you get by using the Fn function key in combination with other keys. This includes screen brightness and volume adjustments and back lit keyboard. Most of these keys do work Linux. Some keys that don't work are screen rotation and zoom in/out buttons. I don't care much about those things anyway, but being able to remap the keys to something else would have been nice. So far, I haven't figured that out.
  
• Power management. CPU frequency scaling works great in Linux, and so does the speed scaling for the fan. These mean that most of the time I can run on 25% CPU speed and have the fan running on a low speed causing very little noise. And when I need more juice, the system responds quite fast.
• As far as I can tell, the Oqo O2 don't have a speaker. If it is there, I can't turn it on at least. But headphones can be plugged in to hear sound. I installed the audio driver for linux from www.viaarena.com (but not sure it is needed, as it took me a while to realize that I had to plug in headphones). I have not tested stereo bluetooth sound yet, as I don't own such headset yet. But I plan to aquire one such that I can test this - I think this will be a great plus in combination with thje Oqo.
• For graphics, I have tested a few different drivers. I have tested the drivers from viaarena, the OpenChrome driver from openchrome.org, as well as the via-driver in both Ubuntu feisty and Ubuntu gutsy (still in alfa stage). I have so far ended up with the generic vesa driver. There is a description on the ubuntu site on how to install the experimental OpenChrome driver from source. Bottom line is that there are issues with all of them unfortunately. I have to go deeper into this in order to do a proper review - hopefully I can do a separate post on this topic in the near future. What I can say so far is that the vesa driver does not have any dual-head capabilities, the driver from viaarena has (the package even include an application that can be used to enable/disable different outputs like vga, hdmi/tv-out, and enable or disable Xinerama - this works ok). But the computer occasionally went into deep freeze when using the viaarena driver, and it was hard getting back from suspend. The OpenChrome things I tested up to now seems to be the worst of both worlds.
• When it come to suspend/resume, I said in my first post that it works. I have to moderate that statement, unfortunately. Using the regular suspend on the log-off menu in Ubuntu, I can suspend and resume once. If I try to do it twice, the keyboard turn unresponsive, the fan goes to full speed, and the display stays on. Only solution is to press the power button for a while (10 seconds) in order to trigger a hard shutoff. From time to time, I also have to unload and reload the kernel modules for the wireless card to enable wifi after resume. A couple of times the computer also have went into freeze shortly after the first resume. So suspend/resume is really unusable in real life. Which is very very bad as this is very important for my intended use of the Oqo O2. I have had limited success with the s2disk from the uswsusp package (software suspend), which is a kind of hibernation. This only seems to be usable one time. The s2ram application for suspend to ram from the same package does not work on this computer. The hibernation option from the regular log-off menu in Ubuntu does not work either. So, there are a lot of room for improvement here.
• Wacom digitizer does not work. I can not find the device for it and doesn't know whether it is usb based or serial. I have posted a question to support at oqo to see if I can get more information on this. On the other hand, I can live without the pen although I use it a lot on my Fujitsu P1520 (which have the plain touch screen). I get back to this if I make it work or get some information.
  

If we ignore the bad things for a while, the Oqo in Linux is usable as a small, carry around computer. I even booted it and did some work on a turbogears/mysql application in the waiting room at my doctor the other day, using 3G from my Nokia e61i over bluetooth as network connection. But the vesa driver for graphics mean that graphics probably take more power than it should (more work done in the main CPU), and refresh is sluggish when switching between virtual desktops which really is a must on such a small screen. And the suspend/resume issue is more or less a show stopper. Since it takes more than a minute to boot the thing, the opportunity to quickly catch up on email may have passed before I get online. So I have to solve this somehow.

Hope you got some answers to your questions. If not, please use the comments, and I will try to answer (and test if necessary). If you have suggestions for some of the issues, please feel free to post those to - I'm happy to test things out!

Take care!

Qtpfsgui news!

Hi, Giuseppe figured out the problem with qtpfsgui 1.8.12 on OSX today, and created a sucessful fix. The 1.8.12 version now compiles and runs just fine on the Mac again.

I have uploaded the new version over at sourceforge, please grab it there. In the process of eliminating sources for errors, I have also upgraded my tool chain a bit. There are therefor now newer versions of most of the dependencies, but since most of these are linked directly into the binary you should not need to do anything. I have however updated my version of Qt. I believe that Qt is sufficiently backwards compatible such that this should not cause a problem, but if you get any problem running the new binary, please update Qt by downloading the newest version from this link. You may also visit http://trolltech.com/developer/downloads/qt/mac where the download-link for the diskimage can be found, as well as sources.

Now that 1.8.12 is out the door, I will look into the alignment functionality that Giuseppe have included, to see what kind of problems that pose on the Mac.

Take care.

Oqo-folks, I am impressed!

I have been using portable computers on a daily basis for about 10 years now. Yet, I have never before had a notebook that I was able to use comfortably outdoor in sunshine. I knew already that the screen on the Oqo O2 is bright, but doesn't realize before now how good it is outdoor!

Right now I am sitting on my veranda, and pulled out the oqo to see if I was able to connect my Canon 350D and get some photos off it. For a change, it is also nice summer-weather today, with bright sunlight. And I can use the Oqo O2 just fine. I can even keep the screen brightness on about 50%. This was totally unexpected. I expected it to be possible with some effort, turning with the sun and try to fine some shading, and so on. But I can just use it . Great!

Just had to tell you! Take care!

Ubuntu linux on Oqo O2

In short terms: it works! It even works well.

But if you want to test the same thing your self, you should know that there are a little more to the story. There were some issues during installation, and there are some during use. The main things during installation was:

1. Small screen makes installation harder
2. Necessary modifications to boot the machine right
3. Modifications for X.

While some of these points are rather important, I think it is a quite short list, shorter than I expected when I started on this task. Let's describe each issue in some more detail.

1. Small screen makes installation a bit harder. The reason is that the standard Ubuntu installer (at least for Feisty fawn, or 7.04 if you like) is optimized for larger screens. I'm not sure it is possible to use that installer on the small Oqo screen at all, and if it is it is at least not easy. Tick the checkbox for 'alternate cd' when you download the Ubuntu iso-image from www.ubuntu.com, as that gives you a text-based install instead. And don't be afraid, it is rather slick to be a text-based installer!

Boot from the alternate cd, choose to install the system. For partitioning, I just use the 'Entire disk' option as I like to wipe out the Windows, but you may have other preferences. The whole install takes about an hour and gives you most of what you need.

2. After installation is finished, you may not be able to boot into the new Ubuntu system. I couldn't at least. The reason is that the hardrive, or actually the ide controller, is not detected correctly by the kernel. What I recommend is to just leave the alternate install cd in the drive and reboot. Then you will choose the Rescue mode option, choose your root filesystem according to how you partitioned, and finally execute a shell in that root. Now you need to edit the file /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and add a line with 'ide-generic'. This will trigger that the module 'ide-generic' is loaded when grub boots the system, and your drive will be detected. After you close that file, you will need to run 'update-initramfs -u' to update the initrd file.

3. While you're in the shell in the root filesystem, you should also open the configuration file for the X server, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and add some necessary information for the screen. The lines you need to have in the "Monitor" section are:

HorizSync 30-92
VertRefresh 50-85
Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509 +HSync

Also, add the mode "800x480" in the Modes line for the "Display" settings inside the "Screen" section.

These are all the changes you need. Exit from the shell, and reboot - remember to remove the install cd from the drive. You should now boot into the Ubuntu system and are ready to go.

As mentioned by others who have tried similar things, the mouse pointer will behave funny in the beginning. Most people belive it has something to do with the data from the touch scrollers. After a short while the mouse pointer settles down and you can use the system. The other thing that does not work out of the box is the wacom pen - so far I have not figured out how to configure that (If someone knows I like to hear!).

Things that do work out of the box: Bluetooth (I am writing this on the ThinkOutside iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard), wireless network (I am connected to the wireless network in my house right now!), wired network on the docking station. Also, suspend/resume works - which makes the mouse problem after boot less important as you really shouldn't need to boot that often. Hibernate does not work out of the box, though, so I still have some research to do there. Maybe I just need to prepare a device or something, I really haven't used hibernation much in the past but see that it may be important on the Oqo.

Now, I will use the device for a while and write up things about my experience with it later on. I guess interesting things will be how I move data on and off the device to have what I need when on the road, battery life, applications, and so on.

Take care!

Linux on the Oqo O2

I'm on to the main task of the week... installation of Linux on my newly aquired Oqo O2.

I started out doing some experiments with Puppy linux to make sure that basic things like the display and wireless network is functional. Puppy linux is a great little linux distribution that can be booted right off a USB pen, very convenient for checking out simple things. Next, I grabbed the latest Ubuntu, v. 7.04, and booted the live-cd to verify that Ubuntu works just as well as puppy. No suprise there. As the screen on the oqo is quite small, only 800x480 pixels, the graphical installer of Ubuntu really does not work so well. By ticking the checkbox for an alternate cd on the Ubuntu download page, you can get an iso image that contains a textbased installer instead. I grabbed and burned that one, and went on to the installation task.

Right now, I have wiped the Windows XP from the machine, replacing it with the Ubuntu. More reports later on!

Take care!

Oqo is here!

Yesterday I picked up the package from Dynamism.com delivered to my office by FedEx, the contents is the oqo I ordered, including some accesories like a docking.

So far I have only tested the operating system included in the package, and I will not say much about that. But expect some linux-info very soon. And some pictures.

Take care!

New stuff comming up!

Soon, the summer of 2007 is in our memory only, as just another summer the goes from future into history. Norway is slowly getting back on track with new energy. Now, the summer hasn't been the best thinking about weather, so if the fall is great it may take a few more weeks before we are really ready for a new long and dark period. At least we are collectively slowly returning to normal life.

And to get up to speed as quick as possible, I finally decided it was time switching some of my equipment. The Nokia e61i does it job just fine, but most of the time I find it is not the right tool for me. There are occasions of course when I type out an email or two using the nice keyboard on the phone, both the gmail app and the web browser are quite functional as well as some of the other apps. But this summer I have still used the Fujitsu P1510 a lot. Not for its size, as it is a bit too big usually (if I really need the big iron I grab the Macbook pro remember). But it has the stuff I need to do serious things, which is the reason I use it so much. But I could have used it more had it been even smaller. The phone however, is just fine as a phone and good for some email and web browsing when I don't feel like bringing the small computer. Still, too often I find it a bit to limited for what I need to do.

As mentioned before, I have looked at the Oqo O2 for some time, but did not find a retailer when I visited US earlier this summer. But there are of course online dealers, and today I finally ordered one. It should be small enough to carry most of the time and really just as powerful as my P1510, as the Oqo has more memory and a comparable cpu. The Oqo will therefore replace my P1510. If I carry the Oqo as much as I think I will, the e61i will also be replaced with something else. I'm thinking Sony Ericsson K850, but I do not want to rush that - I'll test the Oqo for a while first, keeping the Nokia until I am comfortable with my new setup.

All who knows me have probably figure out already that I will load some kind of Linux on the Oqo, so expect some information on linux on Oqo O2 as soon as I have the machine in the door. I probably go for a standard Ubuntu, but I'll keep eye on the Ubuntu mobile project as well.

Let the wait begin! And as always, take care.

Nokia E61i as a modem for Macbook Pro

I had some questions regarding Nokia E61i as modem for my Macbook Pro in the past. I have posted how I got that working as a comment on one of the E61i posts (the one about Nokia and Papyrus, I'll dig up the link).

Please, read my comment, and post further questions here!

Btw, I am posting this from my Macbook Pro connected to the 'net over bluetooth and the E61i. So it works!

update: This is the interesting post!

Take care,

Oqo, where are you...

As I am in Santa Clara, California now, I thought about picking up an Oqo O2 while I am here. Being in the technological center of the world, I supposed that should be possible. Also, since Oqo is San Francisco based, it should be even more possible.

According to the Oqo website, MicroCenter is a retailer for the Oqo, and there happen to be a shop just a couple of blocks away from the hotel I am staying in. So I went to the shop and asked for the Oqo. Unfortunately, they were out. Not even out as in no exemplar for sale, but they even didn't have one on display. The salesperson told me that the Oqo is so popular that they got a list of people waiting for one, and as soon as they get shipments, they call people on the list and the Oqos goes out of the door again. I saved some $2000, which is probably not a bad thing.

I can go buy one on the internet of course, but it is kind of scary buying something I even have not held in my hands. As I have mentioned before, I am happy to this day that I didn't got stuck with the Sony UX50 as it turned out to be horrible in my hands when I finally got to hold it. I think the Oqo O2 is very different, but I have to be sure.

I am visiting Chicago on my way home, maybe I can pick up one there...

Some of you might wonder what's up with the Usenix annual tech conference, as this is where I am right now. I think it is kind of average. Some good talks, some not so good. And nothing special to report like big braking news or anything like that. I got the chance to speak with Guido van Rossum though, which was of course kind of cool for someone like me using Python all the time - I enjoyed that. I have also made some new friends, both from Norway and from USA - which is always good and a main reason for going to conferences. So all in all, it was ok for me to be here. Tomorrow I take off and head east.

Take care!

Well done, Apple!

That was it for this year - the WWDC'07 is history. My first post, based on the impressions from the keynote, was a bit harsh in the tone, so I figured I should say a few more words.

First, I must say congratulations to the folks who put together WWDC'07. Just face it folks, they must have had a big problem. All the announcements were done in 2006, probably under the assumption that everything would have been on the streets this year. Which did not happened. Still, they managed to put together an impressive program. While the keynote was a bit bad, and as a side note - I am not the only one who have that opinion; most of the people I spoke to at the event shared my view - the rest of the event was very good. Unfortunately, all the other sessions are under NDA so folks that did not attend will not know much about that. But because our shared opinion was that the keynote was not outstanding, the people at Apple who was responsible for the program and the content and the presentations deserved a big thank you. Many of the presentations was excellent both in content and delivery. And especially in the developer tools sessions we saw and heard a lot of new things. Which we can not talk about of course. But, developers out there, expect cool stuff :)

Hopefully that set the record straight. I still have to just dream about my favorite 10 inch touch-screen macbook pro though, as now new hardware was revealed. We'll see what they can come up with next year.

Now I am off to the more academic Usenix Annual Tech, and can speak freely again! That does not mean that I have something to say, of course. By the way, I can also still play with my Leopard seed dvd which I must say is quite functional :)

Until later, take care!

Qtpfsgui - new version

Hi guys, Giuseppe have put together a new version of qtpfsgui, and as always, I try to keep up with the version for OSX. As I happen to be at the Apple developer conference, WWDC'07, right now, it's a great time for poking around with this stuff.

So, alas, the 1.8.9 version of qtpfsgui for OSX is out on sourceforge now. Besides that, there is not very much to say, I have not done any special mac-tweaks this time. Check the regular files for general changes.

Again, I do not provide a version with Qt built in, as I have not seen any request for that. Head over to trolltech and get Qt there if you don't have it. I understand that version 4.3 of Qt is out now, but I still put this together with the previous version. I plan to grab the new Qt and check that everything works as it should, but if someone gets ahead of me, please comment on success or failure.

The WWDC'07 keynote

This years WWDC'07 keynote is history. As always it was delivered by Steve Jobs. I have to say it was a mediocre event. The presentation was smooth enough, but Steve seems to be a bit uninspired. And with good reasons, as much of what was delivered was just a repetition of what we heard last year. No new hardware was presented, the shipping date for the "Leopard" is still october and the iPhone is not out yet.

The only new things really was that there will be a new desktop and a new finder (the file browser and management thing in OSX). Not a very big deal, mostly graphics tweaks that people like myself tend to avoid anyway. There was quite a few animated demos on stage, but notting to brag about to be honest. Sure, Leopard will be great and everything, don't get me wrong. But we know most of it already!

There was also announced that EA and id will have more games on OSX in the future, which I guess is great for people who avoid apple due to limited gaming support. And then Apple will start pushing browser to windows users, but I don't care much about that either as I use firefox anyway. It might be good for IE users, though. And it is supposed to be fast, too.

There has been some discussions on iPhone and development tools. This was but was not presented, too. What apple had to say on this is that iPhone will have a full safari engine inside, so people can do web2.0/ajax style applications that can be used on the iPhone. Which is a no-solution solution. It was not mentioned whether such applications can be downloaded and installed or have to be run from a webserver all the time. It was mentioned that such applications should get access to the phone and network services of the iPhone, but nothing specific was presented. I think this was another mediocre part of the presentation. Maybe good enough for some, but certainly not what most developers had in mind when they asked for development tools. It remains to be seen if Apple is right on this one.

What else is there to say? A large crowd was gathered as usual, more than 5000 persons we was told. And apple did the usual but very annoying marketing trick of lining people out before we could get in - had to stand in line for quite a long time. Now, I'm usually not the line-standing kind of guy, but I am still somewhat on the Norwegian timezone as I flew over only yesterday, and couldn't get much sleep after 5:30 in the morning anyway. So I get out of bed, had a shower, went to a breakfast place which was quite nice - Cafe Venue, I'll post the address later on if someone care. And then I went down to Moscone convention center. There I found a long, long, long queue of people waiting to get in. Which is only marketing of course. It was 7:30 in the morning, and a couple hundred people waited to get in as this was a rock concert or something. There where rumours around that someone was getting into the line 3 in the morning. That is simply a freakshow.

So, Apple, I have this suggestion for you for next year. If you don't have anything more to give us than we got this year. Please, just open the doors and let people walk in and get a seat, just as we usually do. No need to be so annoyingly special all the time.

Ok, that's it for now - I'm off to more presentations. While the keynote wasn't that good, I hope the other presentations will be. At least, the rest of the week will have more technical content delivered by engineers. I'm looking forward to that.

Take care!

Travelling from home to SF

As I told you already, I have left safe home for San Francisco, CA, USA, and
the WWDC'07 as well as USENIX Annual Tech in Santa Clara. Leaving home was easy
enough, as my wife drove me to the central train station in Oslo. After kissing
wife and kids godby, I entered the airport express train.

The train starts rolling, but after a few hundred meters it wants a rest. Power
is out, the crew announces. Now, this was easily fixed and after a few minutes
we are rolling again. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that this travel wasn't
supposed to be like every other travel from home to US I have done in the past.

After some 20 minutes on the train, I arrived at the airport and mentally
prepare my self for endless queus, as I assumes I have to check in at the
counter. But, hey man, turns out I can do self service check-in even when going
as far as US. Great! After a quick visit to the check-in station I am all set.
Only that the machine was out of baggage identifying tapes or what you call
them. So, that was unusual event no. 2. I was lucky bumping into some helpful
guy that fixed the baggage for me and after a line with only three others, I
was all set.

Security check at Oslo airport Gardermoen has improved a lot recently. There
was almost no queue at all and I passed through in a matter of five minutes. At
this stage I am impressed and forget all my concerns about the unusual travel.
But it is not supposed to last. Next thing coming up is a delay. The flight to
London Heatrow is 35 minutes late. There should still be enough time for the
transit at Heatrow, but we better be in the air after those 35 minutes. And we
are - the pilot even manage to get some extra speed out of the stylish Boeing
737 so we are only about 20 minutes late when we arrive at the airport of every
nightmare, London "Nightmare" Heatrow.

Everything looks just fine when we enter the terminal, but after following the
"flight connections" sign for a few minutes, I see a looong queue in front of
me. I assume that queue is something not concering me and walk by on the side.
To be sure, though, I show my ticket to some airport person and ask where to
go. You guessed it right - back at the end of that queue is where I belong. So
I line up, check the time, and start moving very slowly. Wondering why there is
such a queue - must be something unusual I think, stupid me. Clock is ticking,
I should be at the gate 13:30 and when it passed 13:00 I know for sure that I
will have to run thorugh the terminal. It's the security check of course. Don't
get me wrong, I have nothing against the security checks, I am all for safety
on board. But here they obviously squeeze everyone just using Heatrow for
connecting one international flight with another thorugh I bottle neck of only
four scanners. That is way to little. So all the hundreds of people have to
line up, sweat, become warm and angry and mad and every other silly thing. Not
me, of course, I just observe the madness. Still, I may have one or two thing
to say to the managere of "Nightmare" Heatrow. This does not cut it at all. I
hope they have something in the works. For the record, I will say to everyone:
Avoid Nightmare-Heatrow for connections if you can!

After finally getting through the checkpoint, I am a bit behind schedule as
clock has ticked passed 13:30. I start walking as fast as I can, looking for
places to check gate information and try figuring out in my head which flight I
am supposed to be on. "Flight is closing" blinks on the screens behind UA931 to
San Francisco. I walk faster and almost run and find gate 27 in terminal 3 and
it's still open. Turns out that flight is delayed to. So, thats probably
unusual thing no. 3 - only this turnes out to be helpful! I get on the plane
and stay there for 11 hours. Nothing particular interesting to say about that!

And with that I have had my share. I was prepared for a similarily long queue
at the US border check, but apparently there was mostly US citizens arriving at
this time, as there was only a very few persons in line at the non-us visitors
counters. My bag appear on the belt rather quick, and after a quick ride on the
BART metro system, I arrive at the hotel. Next thing is checking in at the
event, but that will be for another post.

Take care!

On my way to WWDC

I am taking off to WWDC right now - I'm looking forward to see what
this year will bring to the table; will some of mine or the numerous
others expectations out ther be met? Will it be good?

I will do some reporting here, if you have questions, please don't
hesitate to use the comment function! And to all of you that will also
be there, hope we can get in touch :)

Nokia E61i and Papyrus

Hi, I got some questions about the E61i and Papyrus. To be more exact, the question was if it was possible to see detailed notes on tasks and events. Today I have downloaded and installed a trial version of Papyrus for Symbian S60, v.9.1. The version of Papyrus I have installed is 1.2.13, as the latest version, 1.2.14, use some funny language when used on my E61i with Norwegian menus.

I can at least confirm that the longer notes does show up when Papyrus is used. So you guys out there who want the notes and like to use Papyrus - you can go ahead and make the purchase.

Besides that, thanks for the tip about Papyrus. It looks some much nicer than the default calendar application! I guess I have to buy it in order to test it as default calendar application (now, I have to open it each time I want to look at it). Comments are appreciated on that.

Take care,

More on FoneLink and phones

A couple of days ago, I raved about the FoneLink program from novamedia, a very slick program for transferring information between my nokia E61i and a OSX machine. After a few more days of use, I realize that iSync still has its niche - the everyday simple syncing is probably better than with iSync. Bur for transferring documents, sounds, pictures, and in general organizing the content on the phone, FoneLink is better.

After blogging about FoneLink here, I got in touch with novamedia. I obtained a bit more information from them about a few issues that I and maybe someone else wonders about.

First, the note or description on events and todos. The reason this does not appear on the E61i and similar phones is that it is not supported by the default calendar app from Nokia. We can beg Nokia to fix this, or we can maybe use something else like papyrus (which I still have not got around to evaluate). At least, FoneLink can not solve this problem.

Further, I had to more questions for the FoneLink guys. As most of you know, the smartphones from SonyEricsson has really terrible support on OSX. So my follow-up to novamedia was whether support for the smartphones (like M600i , P1 and so on) from SonyEricsson was planned. On this question I was told that it is in the works, and probably available in about 3 months time. That will be really great - maybe I can go back to my favorite smartphone :)

My other question was about combining usb and bluetooth for syncing a device with FoneLink. Usually, you just want to connect with bluetooth for the everyday syncing, but from time to time you have larger amount of data you need to transfer. Today, a device in FoneLink is a combination of the device and the connection, so my E61i over bluetooth and the same E61i over usb is two different things. This mean that I can not choose the connection to use dependent on the amount of data I need to transfer. Now, there are ways around this but it will be rather neat if it get supported out of the box. I was told that novamedia is working on this, although I did not get an estimate on when we can expect this to be available.

So much about FoneLink and the great guys at Nova Media doing this fine application.

I have another problem with my E61i - predictive text. With all the smartphones I have had the last years, I have been able to start typing a word and the application I use, whether it is email, sms, or some other text, will suggest matching words from the dictionary. This is something I just expect to be in place, so I didn't gave it a thought at all when buying the E61i. After fiddling with settings and buttons quite a few hours, and reading manuals as well, I went to google. Just to find out that there are no predictive text support on this phone. Some claim in formus and the like that you don't need this on a phone with qwerty keyboard. But they are plain wrong. The M600i from Sony Ericsson for instance, have this - and a full keyboard, and I wrote messages much faster and more comfortable on that one than I do on the E61i.

So if someone hear me - please!

And while I wait for the perfect device, I note that every small device has it strengths and weaknesses. Maybe the manufacturers do this to have people like me hunt for the perfect all the time. I have been on the search for 10 years now, and I am still searching.

For a few days my plan was to replace the Fujitsu Siemens P1510d I am writing this on with the Oqo O2. But now I read online that there seems to be some quality problems with the oqo, which gives me some doubts. The most recent device seems to be the Everun from Raon. In addition there is the new Q1 ultra umpc from Samsung which seems to be interesting, as well as the Fujitsu U8240. I doubt any of these are the perfect device, but maybe close enough that I am willing to give them a try... The big question is of course how well they can run Linux, as I am allergic to bad operating systems.

Take care, folks!

Nokia E61i and FoneLink

Today, there was a post on JKonTheRun about a product named FoneLink. This is supposed to be a better piece of software for syncing information between a Mac and a Symbian S60 based phone.

As I have both a Mac (actually, a couple of them) and the Nokia E61i, I wanted to give it a run. I grabed the demo version at the webpage. Installation was OSX-smooth as usual, and then I launched the application. And, man, this was a smooth experience. It quickly figured out which was the relevant phone among my bluetooth connections, and started collecting information after my confirmation that this was the right device to collect from. It went stright away making a backup of all the information in the phone, but it is also possible to put the backup procedure into the background to perform other tasks at the same time.

I just mess around in the application for a while. This works really smooth, and seems to be so much nicer than the iSync. If I can get this to sync my Mac and the Phone regularly whenever those are close to each other bluetooth-wise, I think this is a keeper.

For those who like to know such things - the notes in events and todos does not seems to be synced over to the phone with this application either. Have to look more carefully into that (and have not got around to test papyrus yet, as suggested in comments here).

This was just a short notice, I have to go to bed now. More on FoneLink if I buy it!