Free Like GNU

First of all the Incognito is a US$130 no-contract mobile phone that runs java apps rather than a rather expensive, full GNU/Linux, Debian based handheld, can it really replace an n800 (untethered)?

What it has going for it built in, besides unlimited voice, text etc:

CDMA Data ( mobile internets that are not too slow )

Multi-server email client (pop/imap)

2MP Camera

60MB builtin storage for apps and stuff, Micro SDHC Card Slot

Where this device really shines is in the generous 60MB storage for apps if you use an SDHC card for music, pix, and whatever.  Considering that most java apps are about 250KB you can have LOTS of software installed. There are a few caveats…

MY FIRST QUEST

The built in MP3 player is basic at best.  You can point it to a folder of songs and it will play them in order of filename or tag.  **No shuffle**  There is a nice EQ and it supports a bluetooth stereo headset quite nicely with AVCRP controls like volume and track navigation.   I had to replace this because having a shuffling mode makes a large collection of MP3s is more enjoyable for me. This is where my troubles began…

THE JAR AND THE JAD

I searched google for “j2me mp3″ and many results came up, and I was really excited because I thought I could load all of these programs on my phone and find something suitable.  Some download links pointed to a “.jar” file.  the Incognito will not install these and you will have to find a “.jad” type file download link. “.jad” is really just a description of the “.jar” file and is just a plain-text file that you can look through.  The “.jad” has some important information that can keep you from installing a new program or cause a headache.  The only player I found to work well on the Incognito was KDPlayer by Knyzhov Dmitry version 0.5.6. The problem was that the links on the website contain no “.jad”  and I really did not know how to generate one.   With a little more searching I found another site that had the file with an accompanying “.jad” but there was another problem I receive an error message about an “Invalid Descriptor”.  I downloaded the .jad and .jar files and opened the .jad in a text editor.   There was a bad url in the .jad  file.  The “MIDlet-Jar-URL:” line should point to the file without any http://website.com/address/ stuff.  I made the line read

MIDlet-Jar-URL: KDPlayer.jar

and put the  KDPlayer.jar and KDPlayer.jad files in my own little webserver and pointed my phones browser to the .jad and got the app installed. When you first run it, it should ask for permissions to access Multimedia.

KDPlayer is an ok shuffle player but getting it to shuffle requires a Fn-U key-combo to make the number “7″.  Also don’t bother making a playlist of over 100 files or the program will take a long time to load it when you start.  Instead go into the “Settings”, turn off  “read tags” (optionally turn on autostart) and Save those settings.  Select “Folders for Scanning” and use the menu button to “Add” a folder. Accessing the SDHC card is tricky as you  may only see the internal storage folders listed.  Hit the Menu button and select “Back” until you get to the root of the device where you will finally see the “MemoryCard” and select the folder you have your music in. Playing mp3’s with a bluetooth stereo headset on a modern phone is a snap and I dont have the frequent skipping or crash issues I had on my n800.

Unfortunately the version of KDPlayer I ran will not let me advance songs with my bluetooth headset, perhaps a more recent version will have this feature?  Otherwise it has become my main squeezebox.  The other players I tried were LyricShow, but that player quits when I close the clamshell, but it could be fun for impromptu karaoke duets,  and Evan MP3 player crashes on this phone.

SNAPPY MAPPING APP

Mobile GMaps works great on this phone. Use the “unsigned .jad” link on http://wap.mgmaps.com/ from your browser.  The signed jad files will often give you a 909 error with something to do with a licence to access certain features of the phone.  With the unsigned jad you can allow access to most of the phones features once you run the program.  The text in the maps is very easy to read and exploring a map is very smooth.  You can use the great open street maps or yahoo maps.  Somet things that I learned about Open Street Maps project are that the maps are continuously edited by a very dedicated community of contributors.  They can update the maps very quickly and were able to respond during the Hurricane Katrina disaster by describing blocked routes quickly to aid relief workers.  Another important point is that commercial maps often contain errors on purpose as a primitive and annoying means of proving copyright.  Open Street Maps seeks rather to provide the most useful and accurate maps without such nonsense!  Check out their wiki.

The built-in web browser is a bit lacking and only displays mobile formatted pages.  I found OperaMini to be much more like browsing on a computer.  OperMini cheats in a way by sending web page requests to a server that does the actual request and reformats the page to render on the phone through OperaMini. There is no flash support for web applications but youtube videos run well as OperaMini utilizes the phone’s media player to render video.

Free-to-move around, free as in beer but not really freedom.

The biggest problem with many of the applications for a phone like this are that it is mostly proprietary software that may be free-as-in-free-beer, but the code is not accessible to the community.  Many of them are infrequently maintained or abandoned by their developers.  On the Nokia 800, it was great to have great Debian-style repositories filled with lots of useful little free apps, but mobile devices such as the n800, n900, and (even jailbroken) iPhone have very locked-down hardware which means that even GPL licensed software binary gets put in a “Debian-style” repository but without access to the source that can be compiled to actually work on that device!  Cydia on the jailbroken iPhone is an example where apps like MAME somehow become Adware!  Look and see if you can find a link to the developer who ported the software to the device and try to access the modified source!

But there is hope! May the source be with you, always!

That said, I have to mention some really great, truly Free Software does exist for our phones.  jmIrc is a well written app that lets you chat on iRC.  Setup was easy and it runs fine in the background.  If you use Bitlbee you can pipe all of your chat networks (aim, msn, gtalk, jabber, .mac) into an iRC session too! If you just want a dedicated ICQ client, give Jimm a try.  Want to access a remote computer via SSH or telnet shell?! midpSSH does a great job and there is something quite empowering about a remote shell to ones favourite server from a $50 no-contract phone!  A nice car-racing game was recently made free by GPLv3 license called Opposite Lock! The “Nokia 6630, Sony Ericsson K750″ version works fine on the Sanyo Incognito too.  It features 8 player bluetooth mode, but I have not had a chance to try that yet.  There are lots of Free Software projects being developed for our little phones.  Search the web for “GPL j2me” and let me know what useful apps you find!

A 909 state and unsigning an application.

If you run into an app that you really want to try and you get a “909 Authentication” error you can still install the app if you can get both the .jar and .jad files.  Simply remove the sections of the .jad that contain the key information:

MIDlet-Jar-RSA-SHA1: <lots of scrambled text>
MIDlet-Certificate-1-1: <lots of scrambled text>
MIDlet-Certificate-1-2: <lots of scrambled text>

put the .jar and the modified .jad in a web-accessible server and point your phones web-browser to it!

See this page for more info about all this ruckus.

CONCLUSIONS

with a no-contract little phone with a qwerty keyboard, I can now do a lot on the run.  I had no (cheap) way to access the internet on my n800 when not near wifi, but now I have the interwebs all the time and music too.

For reasons know only to the maker, some projectors are made with male serial ports and some are made with female serial ports. The most important points on which they must agree with other equipment are 2,3, and 5 (defining the ground) no matter the topic of communication. Some projectors are quite talkative (with their temperatures, fan speeds and current input resolutions) and some are more reserved providing only simple acknowledgement.

Finally got around to restoring the backup image following the exploited server re-imaging.

When one of the oldest and largest telco providers in the world cannot figure out how to run a pair of copper wires to an apartment in Chicago.  When it places a long-time customer on hold for most of the duration of a call to check on the status of his order only to transfer to someone who can only tell him to check back later.  When this company never calls or emails with a reason the customers order for service being delayed.  When the online status check tool tells him the account number sent to him is invalid.

I’ve been working on a game for my Web Art class and I think it’s far enough along to share.  It’s basically an interactive, but randomly generated story coupled with the classic game of Knights Tour on a very tiny board.  Mad Knight’s Tour is made in a single page (plus a file for CSS and some images) with JavaScript.  Enjoy!

Been busy with work and family lately.  I did finally upgrade all the machines to Ubuntu Hardy, I must say its been great, and am look forward to 8.10.  Intrepid Ibex is compelling with its updated wifi stack and hardware support in general.

It’s nice to not have to worry much about the OS I’m using.  I think GNU/Linux has several distros with mature desktop user design that will enable it to become ubiquitous on the desktop.  It’s fun to pop in a Ubuntu CD or USB stick a boot a modern, well equipped desktop into a machine that is not functioning with its original and often outdated system, and have everything working without an additional download!

I think we are getting back all the fun and sharing community that existed back in the earlier Amiga, C64 and neighborhood BBS days, but with added accessibility for newcomers, an atmosphere of conscientious freedoms, and a neighborhood that transcends not only distance but culture.  By conscientious freedom, I mean the awareness of responsibility we begin to feel as we understand the nature of Free Open Source Software.  Putting these beliefs in context with increasing endangerment and loss of our personal freedoms might make us more aware of what we need to do to restore hope and foster change.  Every bit helps.

The list is clouded by the use of sudo, hiding my most heinous acts of administration of my tablet from tender souls.

$ history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
117 sudo
67 xrandr
33 ls
26 more
26 cd
19 apt-cache
11 top
11 irc
11 dmesg
10 wine

I thought “man” would be in the list, and I’m a bit surprised how often wine comes up!

Because the dry-erase board at work is totally filled with coffeemaking data and commentary, we are forced to create a coffee wiki to keep track of all the yummy beans from all over the world. I’m not really surprised that my favorites are Ethiopian and Yemen varieties, as I’m such a slut for Turkish brewed coffee! Many thanks again to Deff_Jeff for acquiring and roasting and grinding, so expertly, the many excellent cups!

Visit the Coffee Tiki to join in the madness!

I’ve never escaped the bonds of time except when enraptured by the dream. The figures dancing about me speak strange and quick. I feel as though I can understand them, yet once I awake, all comprehension fades and what is left I cannot explain.

Tonight I played Monopoly with my wife and a GNU friend. It was a long game and there were lots of deals, ups and downs, etc. I had good luck throughout the game and came out a winner, but the more I won the more I felt how winning in monopoly is a shallow victory. Everyone else is bankrupted and there is nothing left for the winner to do. Therefore I propose an new game:

Freedompoly.

This is only the basic gist: All players start out with nothing but some skill cards and problem cards and attempt to somehow create a community in the game to solve their problems by utilizing their own skills and illiciting the help of the other players. All problems require more skills than any single player has and the player can only provide their skills for a limited number of problems until that problem is solved at which point all the players solving a problem recieve a bonus skill card and problem card. The game is over when all problems are solved and all players then win as a group.

The problems might be based on creating combinations of geometric figures of various colors or some other easily randomized but of visual, audible or tactile interest. Perhaps solving one problem creates another?

What do you think?