Alcides Fonseca

Handivi

In the Portuguese Web scene there were two projects that caught my eye. The first one is Tarpipe and the second one is Handivi.

I’ve been in touch with the 7syntax team and I was waiting the first alpha preview. Until that moment I knew nothing about it, except that it envolved Python and J2ME. Python for server-side, and J2ME for the client. Because that were what the were looking for in their job boards.

The application

For an alpha preview, it was pretty advanced, in my understanding. Only a few features missing, a few small bugs, and the deploying is yet to be well-designed.

The app is really nice to use, but it’s not for everyone. You need a 3G enabled phone (or a lot of pacience) that runs a Java Virtual Machine, this is all the 3G nokias around and a few more.

I tested it in my TyTN through wireless and it was fast enought., but I didn’t had the camera support.

The concept

At this point you should be wondering what this app does. Imagine a twitter clone, or maybe a jaiku one, since you can post video and pictures, and you follow friends. Just that, but always mobile.

Handivi is all about you sharing experiences with everyone or just your friends from anywhere. It’s a free, easy to use application for Java™ enabled phones on 3G mobile networks, where you can express yourself, create and socialize using photos, videos and messaging.

This is my understanding of it from what I’ve seen, and I hope the team doesn’t keep limited to this. Because it will not succeed as it is. Why?

One of the few things people mentioned in Twitter is that the need of an internet connection all the time will be too expensive for people to use. I don’t agree. This is not a product for this time, it is being developed for the next years, and phone carriers will have flat-fee 3G dataplans.

The problem is that we’re confined to the cellfone. When I’m at the computer, I dont want to see things in my small cellphone’s screen, I want to be able to use my computer as well. And I believe they are not forgetting this, and that a web interface is also in the works.

I know that in Japan people dont really need computers, and can do this stuff all from their mobile. But we aren’t them, and I don’t believe they are handivi’s target audience.

Ok, so if there is a web interface, is just a jaiku clone, with a J2ME client, instead of their S60 one. And Jaiku is owned by Google, so if they get one or two of their smart geeks making a J2ME client like Handivi, I bet they will ruin 7syntax success.

But I also don’t think this is the right approach. I don’t want to open a program to be able to access all my friends activity (or publish mine). Why can’t I do it natively from my phone’s SMS, MMS or Email service? That is the integration I like. If I wanted to open something to explicity ask for this information, I didn’t want to open a Java application, but rather my mobile browser. That all current phones have, unlike the J2ME.

Just as a final note, I understand the choice behind J2ME. Web-Browsers don’t have the system integration developers would want it to be. You just can’t take a picture or record a video from a website. And browsers should start thinking of this integration. Right now you can only archive this with plugins. That’s what I did with my webcaminput project and with Flash and Silverlight moving to the mobile, this might be the solution in 2–3 years, the time handivi kind of application will be really boosting.

¹ Photo by Ricardo / zone41.net

So Microsoft went back and announce Standards Mode would be the default one in the upcoming IE8, but with the second beta, things have changed a bit. For Intranet websites, IE8 will still be using the IE7 mode.

It was the pressure from their big clients, that develop intranet solutions using their ASP.NET technology that is designed to work with IE7. And they don’t want to have to rebuild all of those applications. I still don’t believe this is the solution. First of all, if IE8 still uses IE7 rendering for intranet, we are not seeing intranet developers adopting standards anytime soon, right? And what if they make their web applications available not only inside their intranet, but also through the internet? The rendering will not be consistent.

Oh, and a small technical doubt, if IE8 needs restart between IE7 and Standards mode, how will it switch between modes between intranet and internet?

Take some time to explain how in the hell a newbie is supposed to get this project up and going so they can starting looking around to contribute. If I look up after checking out the source and the clock’s little hand has moved while trying to figure out that I was supposed to run “ant build pleasegod -Dtest=john3:16″ to have the initial project actually work then it sucks. You are bleeding away potential developers because we don’t want to jack around with this stuff. Clean up your build instructions, automate as much as you can, and put a quick rundown of what needs to be done on the project’s website. Simple.

Why your open source project isn’t getting attention – A few tips for managing your OpenSource projects, that I will follow.

Deparei-me hoje com um post do Michael Foord sobre a saga que ele teve com a empresa Dabs.com por causa de um portátil com uma drive defeituosa, que recusaram reparar 2 ou 3 dias depois do fim da garantia e diziam que foi o utilizador o autor do defeito, sem sequer ver o portátil. Claro que em Portugal, embora a garantia seja de 2 anos, se fosse depois da garantia, a empresa não tinha nada que dar qualquer compensação.

In my previous blog entry about this several of my American readers seemed to think that Dabs’ response was reasonable – after all the laptop was outside warranty. This leads me to believe that consumer law is a lot stronger in the UK than it is in the US. In the UK, if someone sells you something, it has to be fit for purpose and not suffer from manufacturing defects – which includes a requirement that it stay working for a reasonable period of time. If something stops working then the fact that the manufacturer or retailer offers a limited warranty (limited in time or liability) does not reduce their legal responsibility or your statutory rights (UK Sale of Goods Act).

Wow, realmente faz sentido. E obriga a indústria a fazer produtos de qualidade. Para álem da garantia. Porque os computadores vêm com garantia ed 2 anos, mas quando os compramos, tencionamos usar no mínimo 3 anos, e deviam durar uns 5 anos.

Mas ainda há melhor:

Because I was fairly confident of this I decided that I would take Dabs.com to the small claims court (the County Court in England). The whole procedure was pretty straightforward, and correspondingly interesting. It is the first time I have done this as an individual

bq.The first step is to send a ‘letter of action’ to the company, stating exactly what you want and giving them a timed deadline to do it and warning them that you will proceed with a claim if they don’t.

Having done that (and received no response) I then filled in the court paperwork, asking for three hundred pounds compensation for the repair of the laptop. The fees for this are thirty pounds which will be added to your compensation if you win.

Ou seja, eles têm um tribunal para estas situações que envolve pequenos indivíduos e empresas. É fácil preencher os documentos (como podem ver no post original) e os custos (aceitáveis – 30 libras) do processo são pagos pela empresa caso esta seja culpada.

Se houvesse uma coisa destas em Portugal, eu já tinha recorrido umas poucas vezes, e já tinha recebido umas poucas indemnizações de algumas grandes empresas. Eu sei que temos a Deco, mas é preciso ser sócio, e não se compara a facilidade que lá se tem.

Mr Socrates, can I has small claims court plz?

Pode ser para alunos do 3º Ciclo, mas eu adorava estar presente em A Ciência não morde, quer pelos nomes no cartaz, quer pelos temas apresentados.

Via Que Treta!

Estava a dar uma olhadela pelo Expresso quando vi estas reacções todas em relação a um cartoon da semana anterior. Como eu acho que estes católicos extremistas são um bocadinho parvos, fui ver qual era o cartoon que estava a gerar tanto desconforto. Obrigado ao Ricardo Martins por me ter arranjado o cartoon original, e não vejo onde é que aquele cartoon é ofensivo. E com tantos cartoons que são feitos, porque é que o papa tem de ser tratado de uma forma diferente dos outros caricaturados? Para os cristãos pode ter uma consideração especial, ser pai deles todos, representar quem eles quiserem, até ter poderes sobrenaturais. Mas não deixa de ser uma pessoa comum e com os mesmos estatutos que todos os outros¹. Não é por ser papa que não pode ser caricaturado. E desde que se saiba que é ficção, a vossa santidade não o pode processar por difamação (senhores de direito, corrijam-me se estiver equivocado).

¹ Exceptuando talvez os países onde não existe democracia

Hardware:

• Desktop (Running Windows XP)
• Macbook (Mac OS X)
• HTC TyTN
• MyBook Network Storage 500G
• Shared Hosting in Dreamhost (not my hardware, but it’s available storage)

Projects

Being school or work related, I have them in a SVN repository in Dreamhost. So I always have all the versions before in the server. Some of my personal code projects are not in SVN, but in GitHub, as I am trying to migrate over to git.

Dreamhost

I need to backup all my production websites in Dreamhost, along with the database. Luckily, they provide a monthly backup I can request, and I store all the database dumps, and tarballs form the user directories in my storage backup.

Documents in Macbook

I have a backup.sh that uses rsync to backup all my work-related stuff from the macbook to the external backup drive. I run it almost daily (after I work on something). Works pretty well, but I intend to buy a small usb external disk for time-machine backups.

Storage and Backups in the MyBook

The Storage (Movies, Music, Software) and the Backups from the Macbook in the MyBook are backup’d to my desktop. Yes, I am doing backup of backups, and you should too! I am using the fantastic SyncToy to keep those in sync.

PDA and PIM information

As for Windows Mobile, I sync it using SyncMate with my Macbook, and the contacts are also sync’d with Google Contacts (through the com.apple.iPod.plist hack). My todos and calendar are also backed up to Dreamhost account, through CalDAV.

As for email I use Gmail, but I keep a copy of my me@alcidesfonseca.com email in dreamhost. That and Google Reader, allow me to have access to them anywhere and always be up to date, but I am relying on manual OPML exports for GReader.

SyncToy is a nice Microsoft Powertoy for Windows XP that allows you to have pair of folders sync’d.

It rocks as a backup solution!

The geek web trembled with the announcement of Ubiquity, the QuickSilver for the web. Well, it happens that I am not a fan of that application. I rarely use Spotlight to open my apps (which is fine for me). Why? Because I’m a Mouser, I am more productive using it, and shortcuting through all applications.

I’m happy that I wasn’t the one thinking the same:

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fairly fast typist. But my problem is I can’t remember commands. Putting a keyboard command in my head is like putting sand in a sieve. The reason I love graphical interfaces is because I can’t remember shit. I wish I could, because I am sure I would be much more efficient. Keyboards are much faster than mice and GUIs. The problem is when you are staring at a keyboard you have to remember what to do. A GUI is for me a giant cheat sheet.

Same applies to me. I have two modes. The one when I’m writing code from scratch and my both hands are on the keyboard, and using the cmd+s shortcut a lot! Or I have one hand on the mouse, poping up menus, and clicking in buttons, and the other in cmd+c,v.

Even a long, long time ago, when I used to live without a mouse in Windows 3.1, I use the Alt shortcuts that allowed me to navigate through the menus, instead of the Cntr shortcuts that had to be memorized.

So most of the geeks are productive with their keyboard, and even in terminals and terminal-based editor like emacs or vim, but I’m really happy in my GUI software just like the majority of users, to whom the only keys they use in the keyboard are the letters, numbers, space and enter :)

And IE8 beta2 is out

I’m a critic of IE7 and now IE8’s UI layout, because it steals the worst parts of the new Vista organization, and the Vista organization is just not that good. (Short aside on the Vista organization if you missed it: menus are gone, except when they’re not. If you’re going to uproot things, go all the way because that’s the only way you’ll make it work. Also, many programs are now somehow web pages with flow layouts and links. That’s the closest analogy I can find, but it’s not perfect because it implies that IE should fit hand in glove, and it just doesn’t.)

Read the whole post from Jesper about IE8 beta2.

Beta 2 has yet to provide any new breakthroughs, which is a bit unnerving since a fair bit of the previous process turned out to be the same old game of providing the solution using new standards — even standards that had been shot down in the HTML5 working group before!

Outch!

WebcamInput

This project aims to be a easy-to-include unobtrusive code to transform a input type=file into a webcam input. People can then click to get a picture, and upload it.

I am developing this in order to scan some book covers easily, but I believe this could also become very popular in the Social Network world, where you take an instant picture for your avatar.

Show me the files!

Here they are or maybe you just want to try it yourself online

How it works

It consist of a Flash swf file to get the webcam, and some javascript glue. In the server side, you just have to guess if you are receiving a file (if the user is not using javascript) or if it is a string and base64 decodeit.

A simple php file that has that condition for you is included. You might want to tight up the security, too.

Todo List:

• Make a Django Widget out of this

My master’s thesis project was a web collaboration tool that I felt people needed to explore ideas, resolve issues, track progress, and be more productive.
Availability, scalability and highly asynchronous communication were a priority, enabling efficiency and full interactivity.

I have actually seem a live demo of the project, and it’s really impressive. It is not available in HD; so it might be hard to understand most of it, but¹ it’s a project manager, that also let’s you collaborate on real-time. The technologies used are also something interesting. Jabber, SVN and long-lived http connections.

¹ Scroll down to the bottom of the page and download original quicktime movie.

Anacom já abriu concurso para o quarto operador móvel

Nos termos definidos pelo regulador, as entidades que já detenham licenças móveis, nomeadamente a TMN, a Vodafone e a Optimus não podem concorrer a esta licença.

Sim, esperemos que não aconteça nada parecido com o que aconteceu em 2002 com a OniWay. Gostava de ver um operador realmente inovador a estragar o mercado dos outros, nomeadamente internet 3G nos telemóveis a uma flatfee barata.

Ou então, era um operador japonês investir cá em Portugal, mas já estou a sonhar alto.

O Barcamp Portugal nasceu em 2006 e pretende ser um ponto de encontro de gente que se junta para falar nos mais variados temas que, normalmente, gravitam em torno de Inovação, Empreendorismo e Web.

Depois da fantástica edição do ano passado, não poderia deixar de me inscrever este ano. Uma concentração de geeks num fim de semana e partilha de ideias que aconselho a qualquer um.

Vão ao site (que é opensource!) e inscrevam-se. E já que estão por lá sugiram uma sessão. Porque para quem não conhece as regras dos barcamps, não há espectadores, é suposto que todos participem activamente no evento! E é o fruto disso que faz o evento tão especial.

Side projects are less masturbatory than reading RSS, often more useful than MobileMe, more educational than the comments on Reddit, and usually more fun than listening to keynotes.

You should really REALLY read this! Or watch the video

After Twitter loosing the SMS service in Portugal, most of the people have migrated to jaiku (that has sms’s) or friendfeed. What to do when my contacts are so spread apart?

iGoogle, add widgets for each of the service I’m in and what to communicate with people, and just let it be on my browser (that was how I was using twitter, via the website!).

( I don’t like the screen real estate that iGoogle takes on top and side, so I might be switching to netvibes, where I can remove that stuff)

Today I came across Plastic SCM which I believe it might be Distributed VCS solution for the Enterprise.

Although it’s written in C#, it runs in Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris (thanks to the mono project) but lacks the server version and GUI tools in the last two.

Of course it doesn’t provide as many command-line utilities like git, but there are plenty of them and one thing that makes me like it: A task-driven workflow. I know that git is just small tools to make your own workflow, but I kinda like this default one.

For project management, you can track the different branches quite easily and even get a 3D visualization of the versions

For enterprise (specially if you are a Microsoft-based house), Plastic has really cool integrations. Visual Studio, Eclipse, JDeveloper, CruiseControl(.NET), VersionOne, Trac, Bugzilla, you name it. And you can import your CVS, SVN and SourceSafe, so no one can call you oldfashioned any more.

But what is really cool about Plastic, is the code merging tools. Besides the 3way code merging, it gives you merging of Binary files, like images, folders, Word files and other binaries. This is the future I want!

Oh and it’s free for Education and OpenSource Projects!

LindenLabs have started to roll out the Mono-powered simulation servers

This means we’re one step closer (really really closer!) to start using IronPython and IronRuby in the Second Life virtual world.

O Presidente da República, Cavaco Silva, devolveu hoje à Assembleia da República, sem promulgação, o diploma que altera o regime jurídico do divórcio, utilizando o chamado 'veto político'.

De acordo com o site do chefe do Estado, "o Presidente da República decidiu devolver hoje à Assembleia da República o Decreto nº232/X que aprova o Regime Jurídico do Divórcio, solicitando que o mesmo seja objecto de nova apreciação, com fundamento na desprotecção do cônjuge que se encontre em situação mais fraca - geralmente a mulher - bem como dos filhos menores a que, na prática, pode conduzir o diploma, conforme explica na mensagem enviada aos deputado

Fonte: Expresso

Apesar de ser a favor de que caso um dos cônjugues queira terminar o casamento, o possa fazer, considero que o nosso Presidente da República fez bem em vetar o projecto de lei, visto haver algumas lacunas.

O exemplo apresentado é de um casal, em que a mulher sofre de maus tratos por parte do marido, que é o único a sustentar a família. Caso ele peça divórcio, ela fica prejudicada pois pode ficar sem direito a dinheiro nenhum. No entanto se calhar fica com mais alguma liberdade, talvez para denunciar a violência familiar de que foi vítima. Apesar de não se poder aplicar nenhuma regra a estes casos, se calhar poderia haver uma solução melhor prevista no projecto de lei, assim como em relação aos filhos do casal.

College presidents from about 100 of the nation's best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.

But the statement makes clear the signers think the current law isn't working, citing a "culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking," and noting that while adults under 21 can vote and enlist in the military, they "are told they are not mature enough to have a beer." Furthermore, "by choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law."

Source: CNN Health

So I’m straight-edge, I seriously hate drunk people and I don’t know why 21 is the minimal required age in the US to drink. I’m pretty sure that an high percentage of 18yo already drink alcohol that their parents or their older friends buy. Or that fake their IDs. And they are old enough to vote, but not old enough to drink?

In Portugal, where I live, the minimum age for drinking is 16 (and you see 14 yo drinking in discos). Most of the young people drink when they go out at night, but it’s not that serious, since they can’t drive until their 18. And the serious problem is driving drunk. And maybe start drinking before would teach them something.

So why wouldn’t a 19yo like me drink? I won’t, but I don’t see why not. I am perfecty aware of the dangers, as well as everyone else my age.