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Bossa Conference Video
The guys from INdT posted the Bossa Conference promotional video for next year's installment: Yours truly can be found a couple of times... so -- how many appearances do I have in this video? :D
Last day in Brazil
Sitting in the business center of the Beach Class Suites hotel trying to fix some strange bugs in ecore-native. In a couple of hours I'm leaving to the airport, travelling back to Frankfurt, Germany. This week in Brazil has been an amazing experience, especially the friendly guys at the INdT. There's a spirit of freedom and creativity hanging over the whole installation and it's not surprising at all that the results just rock. One of the key elements of successful software products is the communication between designers and developers -- and they got this one completely right. The Mamona team...
From Switzerland to Brazil
::: {.img-shadow} {width="200"} ::: As I have mentioned previously, I'm really trying to cut down the number of conferences I go to this year. However, both the OpenExpo in Bern (from which I returned last friday) and the Bossa Conference in Brazil (which I'm there since saturday) are too important to skip. OpenExpo went very well, I had some good talks with people regarding further platform development. I had a talk where I outlined three major factors of OpenMoko (Freedom, Experiments, Innovation) and the forthcoming middleware initiative. If you manage to understand german, have a look at the video. :::...
Back from Fosdem 2008
::: {.img-shadow} {width="200"} ::: Just returned from Brussels where FOSDEM 2008 took place. For the second time, the OpenEmbedded team had a booth where we presented embedded devices and talked about build systems and software for mobile and embedded devices. On show were some Zaurus models, an iRex Iliad, two Chumbies, and a Neuros OSD. We also demoed some FIC Neo1973 models with OpenMoko which received lots of attention -- the most frequently asked question was (of course) when the new hardware would be ready. I can't really comment on that, however John and Will from OpenMoko Inc. just brought...
Conferences Ahead
So I have promised to travel much less this year, however some trips are inevitable. For the first two quarters in this year I'm looking forward to participate at least at the following conferences: February: Fosdem'08 (Brussels) -- standing at the OpenEmbedded booth. March: OpenExpo'08 (Bern) -- giving a talk and standing at the OpenMoko booth. March: Bossa'08 (Recife) -- EFL/OE code camp. May: LinuxTag'08 (Berlin) -- applied for a talk, but visit anyways. August: Froscon'08 (St.Augustin) -- will apply for a talk and visit anyways. If you have a chance, then drop by and lets have a chat. Don't...
The Nokia N810
As reported in previous installments of this column, the Maemo team picked me for a developer discount on the new Nokia N810 internet tablet (thanks again, folks!). I also own a 770 but skipped the N800, so this has been a huge jump for me. The good The N810 hardware is pretty good. It features a fast processor, a nice display (not as highres as the one in the Neo1973 though), and a superb audio subsystem. The overall look and feel of the device is very convenient -- well done, industrial designers at Nokia. Maemo grew a lot during the...
Tempus Fugit
2007 was a very busy year for me. There has been great progress in the projects I care about, e.g. OpenEmbedded, OpenMoko, OpenEZX, Enlightenment, Maemo, Ångström, and some more. In 2007 I travelled more than in all the previous years in sum -- lets see whether I recall where I have been: Berlin (CCC, to meet colleagues), Bermingham (once for GUADEC), Bonn (for FROSCON), Brunswick (twice, to meet colleagues), Brussels (for FOSDEM), Denmark (for Mobile Developer Days), Siegen (to meet colleagues), Taipei (to work at OpenMoko Inc.), Zürich (for OpenExpo), and some more which I forgot about :D A couple...
First encounter with Vala
I just rewrote the openmoko-terminal2 application (a lightweight terminal for the OpenMoko environment using Vte) in Vala. Please compare with the source of the C-based incarnation here. In my opinion, Vala is nothing more and nothing less than the future of application coding for the GNOME platform. Vala combines a nice high level syntax (modelled after C# and Java) using GObject as the object model and compiles straight away to plain 'ole C. Yes, that means no runtime libraries, no bloat, no performance drawbacks. Vala removes the need of typing run time typecasts and endless function names and adds compile-time...
Usability through Bling
Let me point you to two publications I found interesting: Interaction Designer Peter Sikking shows the necessity of a holistic approach in order to create stellar UIs. Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri compares UI toolkits for "fancy embeded interfaces".
Framebuffer vs. X11
Putting some new fuel to the neverending fire -- whether the (undebatable) performance drawback of using a full-blown window system like X11 outweighs the benefits in flexibility; Just recently I built the Expedite benchmark utility (from the Enlightenment project) for my Neo1973 (266MHz armv4, VGA display, unaccellerated framebuffer). Thanks to the Evas canvas abstraction, Expedite has tons of rendering backends, including ones for the framebuffer and X11. And here are the results of the jury: I this is is quite shocking (I expected the framebuffer to win, but not by that far). With an average frame-per-seconds of 17 for the...