Ahhh .... release ...

It is Wonderful to have the release of version 2.4.0 this past weekend.

As one who has worked in many different industries building software, banking, lending, flight operations, financial, data transformation, translation tools, language tools, Unicode, ... it's always very satisfying to make a contribution to an existing product that is currently being used. This is my experience with this software: to hear that there are thousands of downloads a month is very neat!



The most challenging part of getting involved was getting my environment configured and getting to a place where I could build and debug the applications. Being an open source project, I used free Java environments and ended up staying with NetBeans IDE for both the Creator (PC application) and the Core (Mobile J2ME project).

The software is pretty straight forward and easy to understand: thanks to the work of those who have gone before (Thanks Jolon and others).

This is a great project and it's being actively used right now. There are more tasks that are slated for work, but as the story often is ... the workers are few. If you are able .. consider getting the source and see about making a contribution that will continue to give long after you stop working on it.

[photo: part of my desk where I worked on GoBible these last several months (off and on)]

Go Bible v2.4.0 release

Go Bible software version 2.4.0 was released earlier today.
Visit the Go Bible Forum for details.

Thanks to D. Hinton for all the programming effort over the last few months.

Converting JavaME applications to the Android platform (revisited)

The author of MicroEmulator, Bartek Teodorczyk in Oslo, Norway, has posted a guide to converting Java ME apps to the Android platform. This link is to his updated version.

This may appeal to some of our Go Bible developers.

A ten-minute guide to setting up a WAP site

A ten-minute guide to setting up a WAP site

This article describes, very briefly, the steps involved in providing WML pages to mobile devices, in particular WAP-enabled mobile phones. It assumes that reader is already familiar with HTTP, HTML, and Web server operation, but knows nothing about WML or WAP protocols. The article does not attempt to describe WML, but does provide a simple example.

SIL Open Font License (OFL)

SIL Open Font License (OFL): "The SIL Open Font License (OFL) is a free and open source license specifically designed for fonts and related software based on our experience in font design and linguistic software engineering."

Intivation's solar powered mobiles

On Saturday, the Telegraph (one of Britain's main broadsheet newspapers) carried an informative article in the technology page by reporter Matt Warman, under the title, "A ray of sunshine for Haiti". You can read the full article online here. It begins,

Dutch mobile phone firm Intivation has donated 1,000 of its solar-powered handset to the earthquake-stricken Caribbean country. Haiti’s prime minister has described the damage done to his country by January 12’s earthquake as “a disaster on a planetary scale”. Earlier this week Jean Max Bellerive spoke of nearly a quarter of a million homes destroyed, 300,000 people injured and 200,000 dead – and nearly a month after the event itself, Port au Prince was still nowhere near resurrecting its power system.

But the Caribbean nation’s mobile phone networks were back up within a few days – most within just 24 hours. In a country where mobile phones are owned by one in three people, and massively outnumber landlines, the crucial issue for many residents was not being unable to communicate, it was being able to keep their phones charged. A number of people were saved because they were able to send text messages while they were trapped underneath the rubble from collapsed buildings.

Some entrepreneurs immediately saw a business opportunity – thousands were prepared to pay for 15 minutes connected to a car battery to recharge their mobiles. Dutch mobile phone firm Intivation, however, has long realised that its solar powered handsets were a solution to the problems of Haiti’s unreliable infrastructure. First launched in the Caribbean nation, the devices have subsequently been sold in seven more countries by 11 operators.

The company’s idea is a simple one: in countries in emerging markets, there’s often enough sun to make the latest solar power technology a viable way of charging phones, even in normal use. Where other companies use a number of solar cells, Intivation’s method of using a single, larger cell and adapting the power output is just one feature that makes their technology, on a cloudy day, more than 20 times as efficient as traditional solar technologies.

more .....

The concept of using solar power for mobile phones in energy starved countries is such a good idea, that I thought it merits having some attention drawn to it in this blog. Visit the main Intivation website to learn more about the business, the technology and their products.

GSM cell phones - statistics of interest

There are a total of 4.3 billion cell phones in general use, 3.5 billion of which are GSM phones. 80 percent of cellular traffic is over GSM.

cf. Total world population (2010) is estimated to be 6.797 billion.

Does anyone doubt the importance of getting the Bible on to GSM cellphones in as many languages as possible?