Morning Session

Morning session for Mobile and Embedded Dev Day

My opinion on the opening of the mobile platforms to developers is at the end of the post. Most of the rest of this post is just following the session.

Most of this is new to me since I haven’t really done a lot in the mobile and embedded space – mostly due to the Carrier lock down of devices.

There is a community that Sun is trying to run that is centered around the openJDK for ME

4 Messages for today
BetaVine and mobile and embedded community are from Sun are playing together. I really am impressed with their devZone and the things they have done with LifeRay

Eric Areneau – project owner to Sqwak, java on the microembedded devices – open sourced out of Sun Labs – the VM running on SunSpots

Phil Bender – Cable TV industry for developers

Mohamed – JXTA JAVAME Midp 2.0 – allows peering between JVMs on different devices that allows streaming and sharing between the devices.

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Up now is GoslingThe London underground card is a Java Smart Card and the whole London Underground system is run on Java for their ticketing and scheduling.The key to the whole thing here for him is the JVM as the integration Hub – many ways to write things that run on the JVM from Java to Cobol to XML and it then runs on many devices.

Large community – tons of developer communities from dev.java.net to OpenSolaris.org to jcp.org.

Now some talk about RealTime embedded stuff with Java such as robotic helicopters and robotic arms – 10 to 15 millisecond time range

Addresses the performance myths
On a server VM Java can beat C/C++ even close to FORTAN for performance though matrices are tricky. GC is a lot faster than malloc/free, it is more about making sure GC doesn’t cause the spike.

On to open source
All this means is you can check out and use the code for yourself – NOT that anyone can check stuff in, though there is a process for making that happen.

Cell Phone world
JSR 248 – MSA – Mobile Services Architecture
JavaFX – Richer user Experiences – all converging on JavaSE specifications

I forgot that Sun/Java wins if Blu-Ray wins since it is part of the spec. Such as the PS3

JavaFX
FX mobile
JavaSE6
JavaFX Script -
[I get bored and tune out though I did catch a slide saying that people can use photoshop and flash to produce interfaces. How is that going to happen]

James is done

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On to Hartti Suomela – Forum Nokia
Java ME Security Domain Policies
He is going to talk about all the stuff you have to agree to before you install a j2me app and why devs need to get their apps signed. I will try my best to follow along on this one.MIDP 2.0 and 2.1 use different terminology
Domains:
Manufacturer Domain, Operator Domain, Trusted Third part domain, unstrusted domain (in order of trust) Man and Op domain have always allowed access to APIs. Depending on which domain you verify to you get access to different things on the device. Access is granted at the group of functions level – not available at the individual function call.

ATT – unsigned apps basically get to do nothing
Identified still don’t get much – you really need ATT to sign it by being a partner.

Sprint – some more access but no location without help from Sprint

T-Mobile US – had problems finding and doesn’t sound easy to get going

Methods for changing permissions are different between devices and it seems kinda tricky.

[Got a phone call that I had to take]

Came back in to developers talking about storming the carrier gates. Seems like this is more head banging against the wall. Unless you have an app that will migrate users to a carriers network from a competitor what is the value for them. There is also risk for them. Poorly behaved apps can cause real network problems for them and people are generally less tolerant of their cell phones not working then an internet slowdown. And if your app doesn’t work on their phone or network consumers will also associate this problem with the carrier.

So while I want the carrier platforms to open up I don’t think Java’s domain model makes that any easier – if anything it makes it easier for carriers to not let that happen. Change here is going to come through Government, Google, or some other large player. The internet was not opened by developers, it was opened by the gov’t. Sure we can raise our voices but I am not placing my money on that horse…