Joseph Reeves: Chrome: Putting the shine into mobile computing?
Google's Chrome has been keeping the bloggers very busy lately, and I was more than happy to leave them all to it until I could think of something that Chrome did that was relevant to Oxford Archaeology. Twm Davies' latest analysis on El Reg beat me to it (you might also be interested in Twm's blog).
Google is an advertising company; they make their money by giving you various free online tools that contain targeted advertising. Google aim to make better tools than anyone else, by doing so you'll end up using their software and being subjected to their targeted advertising. Things like word processors pose a problem for Google; they'd like you to be using theirs and looking at their ads, but the current browser world wasn't up to the task and Google's services were appearing to suffer as a result. The answer was simple; release the now famous Chrome browser. You'll have already read about this elsewhere.
Oxford Archaeology isn't an advertising company, but the vast majority of our applications are web based. The solutions we produce will often come with a web front end, as will most third party software we use on a daily basis; email's the big one for staff, but there's countless web interfaces I use daily for things such as the firewalls, PBXs, email admin, server admin, desktop admin, monitoring, helpdesks... A lot of these are big, java filled web 2.0, beasts, and a browser that doesn't completely fall apart when one tab has issues would be an amazing thing to behold.
My job isn't just about clicking things in FireFox, however; we're working on mobile computing infrastructures to be used within Oxford Archaeology and elsewhere. "Android" is what almost anyone will say to me just after I've told them that we want to develop mobile tools on mobile phones. Of course, Google is just an Ad company; I'm not convinced that Android will be open enough to allow for really interesting local applications. It seems more likely to me that Google will use Android to fragment the mobile market to the point at which developing locally installed applications becomes unprofitable, which will be fine because Google's web apps will pick up the pieces. Which is where Chrome comes in.
Chrome has two features highlighted by Davies that many others seem to be overlooking; Google Gears and containers. Containers are something I've considered before as potentially useful as Oxford Archaeology move to a increasingly web based means of application deployment. Google Gears allows these web applications to work when you're disconnected. We could provide a container for our web based email, for example, that would work when you were on a plane; with four offices spread over two countries, such an improvement to email would likely be appreciated by group management.
Unfortunately, laptops on planes aren't really mobile enough for me. The release of the Linux source code for Chrome will allow us to run it on the Openmoko devices, which should by now have an obvious appeal; Chrome on the Openmoko allows for the web applications currently deployed in the office to be deployed in the field. More importantly, it would allow for the development of new applications in rapid time and in the style we're accustomed to. Mobile data entry is the obvious example of this web API.
Davies suggests that Nokia's new services based business model will be in direct competition with a Chrome Mobile. This would likely be a competition that Nokia couldn't win. Google will give a single sign-in service that provides a wide range of applications and works at your PC or on your mobile; bad news for Nokia and likely a strategy that takes aim squarely at office suites installed on your computer. The technology that underlies this, however, would be very good for Oxford Archaeology and anyone else rethinking mobile computing.
Chrome's new and shiny (pun intended); let's not worry for now about the occasional sites that don't work with it. It's a beta, which is a shame because "beta" has almost become a piece of Google branding, but the important thing is that at this stage we should be thinking bigger; mobile phones, ubiquitous computing and a "who cares?" attitude to the old problem of not having a signal.
Paul V. Borza: A wonderful Google Summer of Code
There has been a wonderful Google Summer of Code for me, and for Openmoko Inc. I still remember the ‘Congratulations!’ email received from Google that announced me that Openmoko selected me for the accelerometer-based gestures project (out of the 13 people that applied for this project).
It seems like I’ve passed the final term evaluation, otherwise I couldn’t have uploaded my code to http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2008-openmoko/; follow this link to see, and download what the other nine students created for Openmoko’s Neo Freerunner. That means I’ve been a successful participant…
Regarding the accelerometer-based gestures project, I’ll continue working on it whenever I’ll have some free time; on that matter, I’ve bought two domain names, namely accelsense.org, and accelsense.com dedicated to my work. Don’t bother clicking on the links, there’s nothing there yet, but I’m hoping it will be ready by the end of October.
Thanks to my mentor, Daniel Willmann, and to the entire Openmoko community for helping me.
Have fun! There’s going to be an in depth look of Neo Freerunner’s accelerometers post really soon!
Joseph Reeves: Your work mobile and you
After my previous post concerning the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of the FreeRunner I received a couple of comments mentioning other Oxford Archaeology provided mobile phones, and a mailing list thread sprung up along the lines of "what is that long haired hippy on about now?"
What is SAR then? In simpleton terms (as in the terms I understand it), it's a measure of the maximum amount of phone's transmitted energy that ends up being absorbed into your head rather than travelling to the nearest mobile tower. Low SAR values are good. We're told that:
In Europe, the European Union Council has adopted the recommendations made by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP Guidelines 1998). These recommendations set a SAR limit of 2.0 W/kg in 10g of tissue. The UK Government has endorsed this limit (following a report by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones) and the five mobile phone network operators have agreed to voluntarily adopt the ICNIRP guidelines for public exposure. All mobile phones on sale in the UK comply with this limit.
Below is a table I knocked up to show the maximum SAR values of phones currently provided by Oxford Archaeology to members of staff. Also included (under the break) are a handful of phones that are currently kicking around the office within sight of me. The FreeRunner then is comparable to other phones we provide, although is at the top end; personal phones currently carried can have higher results, including Anna's "pie cooker" Sony Ericsson:
If your work provided mobile isn't in the list above, send me an email and I'll look it up for you.
FREERUNNER 