Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

Flash 10: Hydra and AIF (Adobe Image Foundation) and Hardware Rendering [ draw.logic ]

Very interesting stuffs those days around UI. Adobe is PUSHING (is it big enough?) , and really trys to begin a direct MS WPF/SilverLight/.NET direct competitor… they even have a server part (for Flex).In this annoucement what I find particularly interesting is the following: From Adobe here is what AIF is:

The Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit (…) includes a high-performance graphics programming language (…), codenamed Hydra, and an application to create, compile and preview Hydra filters and effects. (…). It currently ships in After Effects CS3 and will be used in other Adobe products in the future. The next release of Flash Player, codenamed Astro, will leverage Hydra to enable developers to create custom filters, effects and blend modes.

Hydra is a programming language used to implement image processing algorithms in a hardware-independent manner. Some benefits of Hydra include:

• Familiar syntax that is based on GLSL, which is C-based
• Allows the same filter to run efficiently on different GPU and CPU architectures, including multi-core and multiprocessor systems in a future update
• Abstracts out the complexity of executing on heterogeneous hardware
• Supports 3rd party creation and sharing of filters and effects
• Delivers excellent image processing performance in Adobe products

At last usage of hardware! and with the recent annoucement of AMD licensing some ATI hardware IP to Freescale and Qualcomm…. this is coming to mobile phone and perhaps faster than we think.

The only issue for me is … that I don’t see a real use beside video encoding/decoding for now , but it will come.

Thomas

Hello all…

Last week I attended the Open Source in Mobile conference in Madrid, at which I could get a demo of the “One-Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) XO device from Jeff Waugh, a prominent figure of the GNOME project.

For those of you not familiar with this project, the “One-Laptop Per Child” foundation wants to bring laptop computers to schoolchildren in developing countries. I will not here dwell on the price or success of the device, but rather focus on its software and really innovative user interface.

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I’m back ….before some more complete article : here is a great one about Data Visualization:

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics

example:

Shape Of Song: What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see – literally – the shape of any composition available on the Web.

Hi all

For my first post here, I have decided to just be an aggregator, i.e. spare you the hassle of browsing through all these blogposts about the most-hyped CE product ever: the iPhone… now you have it all here summarised in neat bullet points.

Kudos to Engadget Mobile for their extensive review, The Register for their numerous and humorous articles, as well as iFixit for their step-by-step reverse engineering.

Also worth noting that there is now a very extensive entry for the iPhone on Wikipedia.

In short: it’s a great device in terms of usability and design (so long as you share Apple’s tastes), but suffers quite significant shortcomings when it comes to business productivity (notably due to its poor email application) and lack of capability to have 3rd-party applications installed.

/Guilhem

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Checkout this amazing Video from : Microsoft Surface Video – Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table – Behind the Scenes – Popular Mechanics

Official Microsoft web site

Ok, it not new, but really not so far from production

Diagram by Intoaroute

Something that really buzz me about those new kind of interfaces is obviously the “home” and “personal” application and services, but I see also some possible tremendous change for the software development : with the raise of multi-core, parallel programming will be mandatory, and to leverage this horsepower, a paradigm shift is needed, to break the C/C++/C#/php/ruby, etc sequential view. And this new paradigm may be graphical programming. See this LabView/QNX article or this one at DevX:

The U.S. government, through DARPA, had previously awarded contracts to proposals for High-Productivity Computing Systems. A major premise of this thrust is that the performance of computers is outstripping our ability to harness the power through programming. It is logical to conclude that we need better methods to program them, and DARPA had funded three research languages. All three programming languages are textual X10, Chapel, and Fortress. It seems that the research has run its course, and the answer is that the breakthrough opportunities fall short of the grand hope of catching up with computers. This just makes me wonder all the more if a graphical approach will ultimately be an avenue for a programming breakthrough.

Technologies like those multi-touch screen may bring a lot to the developer ability to dig and build his system….and it is needed: look how poor are the current graphical languages in the “graphical” and above all the user interaction aspect: (below a LabView screenshot)

First a A4 Electronic Sheet of paper by Philips/LG Technology, found via Clubic:

This sheet of electronic paper is based on the E-Ink technology, and is able to display 4096 colors, for a 180 line of sight… with a thickness of only 300 micrometers. Battery friendly the E-Ink technology is only consuming juice when display is changing.

Then this one from Sony (thanks I4U):

A completely different technology: OLED/organic TFT on a flexible substrate, size of 2.5 inch and a resolution of 120*160 pixel …and 16,7 millions colors.
100 cd/m2 brightness, 1,000:1 contrast ratio and 300 micrometers thickness.

Great , the E-Ink technology is hanging around for years now, but really it is, for me, the most credible replacement to paper … if it needs to be replaced after all: I don’t know for you but the majority of what I read is on screen (computer, smartphone, nokia tablet), and what is not … it is BDs , books where the reading experience of paper is hard to challenge.

The OLED one is really interesting : imagine a device where a big screen is rolled inside, and you only deeply it when needed (either a smartphone or a laptop…).

Some great things are coming….and just for fun: the Teleglass T3-F to watch TV when commuting

MSX is releasing gaxoo : it seems to be an embedded graphical framework plus a server side part to manage subscribers: very interesting, I really would want to know what kind of technologies they are using.

From their press release:

The MSX Platform extends this ODP functionality to include complete
control of phone functionality as well as the ability to download
new phone applications (also known as widgets). These can vary
from RSS/Blog widgets through to photo sync, branded media
players, storefront and customized promotions.

The xPhone UI works on a variety of high-volume consumer phones
and employs advanced visual effects including alpha transparency,
gradients, anti-aliased vector graphics, fast dynamic scaling and
rotation, as well as 3D transitions.

Really good read over at : The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

The bulk of most services will be on a web server. Google Maps Mobile, Widsets, Opera Mini or Gmail are all good examples of extremly capable mobile applications supported by a strong web service. These are all java applications, but as web browsers in mobile phones grow more capable we will see XHTML or Flash Lite-based applications. Widgets, if you like that term.

The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

Yes and this is a point I’ve discussed already (Back to the future mainframe, centralized computing anyone?) where the clear split between local and server is fading away, but is it really applicable to mobile phones? Not sure for now due to the high latency of the current mobile IP networks, but things are only beginning to be sorted out in the PC world…Mobility is next, for sure.

Web Developments frameworks (like Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight) are already migrating little by little to the mobility space, especially through the crop of On Device Portals that are, more or less services delivery platforms, with a “rich client” on the device, running some kind of Ajax/flash/svg/xml/javascript (put your favorite widget/UI/web2.0 technology here) framework to deliver “content”, content being here the service.

Ray Ozzie recently presented MS silverlight, outlining the following interesting trend:

Ray Ozzie outlined two types of web apps – what he calls “Universal Web” apps, meaning ajax, html, browser based apps. Then he discussed “Experience First” apps – xbox, mobile, pc desktop apps. He pointed out that “the most sucessful solutions have an element each of universal web and experience first”.

Ray Ozzie Keynote at MIX, Las Vegas

So really this is about integrating and adapting:

• On one side the service itself: how to render it, implement it as best as possible.
• On the other side: the device on which it is used: the write once runs everywhere mantra is definitively dead, long live to adaptative or even adapted software!

I’ll quote again the same Mobile Web Tablet article:

The problem with todays phones is not about access to the native OS, but rather how the web or downloaded applications are second grade citizens within the phone GUI. This, however, will change.

Nokias recent move to integrate a widget platform in S60 is a sign of exactly what I’m talking about. Sony Ericssons multitasking java and standby midlets are some other and so is the Apple iPhone. Good and useful widgets are really just a small window to a much larger web service.

The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

I sort of agree with this comment: service integration is KEY, and while VERY difficult right now, next generation UI (iPhone, LG Prada, SonyEricsson Feature phones (not smartphones, UIQ is for me inferior to their mainstream but I digress), etc) perhaps won’t help cause when a graphical designer is involved to define the whole SUI, it is very very difficult to complement it with new services from the outer world without compromising the phone UI integrity: this is where the notion of “system”, as a collection of services and “Master of Ceremony” of those services interactions is coming to life (I’ll certainly comment much more on this notion on my blog later…).

On the other hand I’m not sure that access to natives phone hardware and services is enough today for mass market phones (this is after all on of the Open-Plug purpose ).

Something I’m not sure today is how those kind of service platforms will be implemented: after all mobile phones are still, and will be for a foreseeable future and for the biggest part of the market really low CPU, low RAM devices, so I’m not sure how to technically leverage this service approach on the mass market (see here for some data ..but my point of view has evolved since then ) , but I’m looking for

It seems that C. Enrique Ortiz is also digging , and found with Dojo an interesting property: working cleanly offline:

But Dojo off line touches on a very important and needed characteristic, a key feature that future mobile web browsers must support: “The ability to work disconnected”, or “Support for disconnected or off line browsing (cache), allowing the Mobile Web application operate as an occasionally connected application”

C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog

And you? any clue? vision on what this platform will be?

I’ve missed this one:

Nokia has just unveiled a new dual-touchscreen concept phone, called “Achieve”, which allows users to quickly and easily share ideas. Video after the jump.

Members of an architectural firm work feverishly together to win a competitive new project. Virtual teamwork is made effortless through smart wireless conferencing and remote presentations. Bluetooth audio ensures strong and clear communication. When mobile technology ascends to this level, we will achieve great things together

TechEBlog » (Video) Nokia Unveils Dual-Touchscreen Concept Phone

Always fun to see this kind of UI concepts…

If anyone doubted Texas Instruments’ sincerity in taking the mobile projection world by storm, now would probably be a good time to start boiling some crow. Making good on its wishes to cram DLP into even the most minuscule of locations, the company will be demonstrating its newfangled DLP pico-projector to select media groups…

TI showcases diminutive DLP pico-projector – Engadget Mobile

Check Texas Instrument DLP web site for more information about the technology.

So here we go: this little baby is named or branded OMAP also (I desperately wait for an OMAP car, kitchen sink or coffee machine). Anyway the concept seems great to share your latest desperate housewives show with your subway buddies .

Stop kidding, here are some data (in French from Clubic):

Doté de trois lasers, et nécessitant pour l’instant une alimentation externe, le micro-projecteur présenté par Texas-Instruments, qui rappelons-le est à l’état de prototype, affiche une image de la taille d’une feuille de papier A4 en 640×240. Pour l’heure, Texas Instruments n’a annoncé aucune date de disponibilité pour ce nouveau dispositif qui promet d’équiper de futurs téléphones portables.

Téléphone mobile projecteur par Texas Instruments

Short translation :

• 3lasers,
• external power supply,
• prototype onlmy
• resolution : 640*240, for a projection the size of a A4 paper sheet.

So yes, it will perhaps come one day, and may offer good virtual screens, so matching movies on the plane, or showing of some PPT, demos, etc, or playing games may really have a “fun” and productivity boost.

Even if you will always need a hardware screen on your phone for your “phones” activities, or “on the move” ones.

Wait and see, btu THIS IS innovation….