chrisblunt.com

Sony Ericsson has released what looks like a great new J2ME platform for its upcoming range of phones. The JP-7 release focusses on providing much greater performance and stability, and is the first to offer a multi-tasking JVM environment for mainstream phones. Coupled with some of the latest JSR additions (including advanced media control for fine-tuned camera management), it looks like the JP-7 phones will finally offer a solid and viable platform for developing mobile apps and taking advantage of the hardware available. The multi-tasking JVM means that J2ME can offer OS-style applications (such as email apps and RSS readers sitting in the background) - something that I hope to take advantage of in upcoming research and commercial social-mobile projects.

From what I’ve seen, JP-7 looks like it will be a good thing for social mobile apps, providing that enough freedom is given to develop in this exciting area. I’ve mentioned several times my dislike of network lockdowns (such as Three’s preventing access to the Internet), and was recently disheartedened to find that T-Mobile charge £7.50 per MB for GPRS data. While this was admittedly on their pre-pay tarrif, the sale agent’s insistence that this offered ‘great value for money’ defies belief.

I’ve now returned to Plymouth after a great (relaxing!) week at Costa de Almeria. During the break, I managed to track down a friend who has established himself as an artist in Spain’s South-Eastern desert region. As well as getting commissions in Spain and the UK, Mark is now publishing photography of the local area, and it’s well worth having a look around the Mazzaron / Bolneuvo bars to see his paintings adorning the walls.

Now back in the UK, the business is starting to gather pace, and I’m currently working on a few commercial sites as well as preparing training workshops for local businesses and the University. If all goes to plan, I will be running some coding lectures for Java and J2ME based apps.

With the lecturer strike is over, my final results are due to be published on July 7th, a few days before the graduation. I’m also continuing research and development on my social mobile platform and applications, and have been very interested to read about Sony’s new Java platform release…

Radar is an application that shares photos taken with cameraphones instantly with friends. Radar dissmisses any public sharing, focussing instead on the transaction between existing social networks. Radar is ‘a visual conversation between you and your friends.’

Radar photos can be posted via a Java MIDlet (see below), or by emailing them to a private email address, from where those photos are then shared to your friends.
Friends can then comment and leave feedback on your photos.

I hope to be able to access Radar’s phone software to get a more completee overview of the app - again, Three’s terrible network service means I can’t access the radar.net WAP site from my phone.

Nice to see this sort of development in the mobile2.0 space; radar looks
like it has the potential to be a busy application. I’ll post more details if I manage to get hold of the Java MIDlet.
Via: Smartmobs