Wendong’s Smart Phone Weblog

Packt Pub kindly sent me a copy of LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers to review. Anyone who was
involved in professional Java ME development knows that one of the biggest challenges of
Java ME development is to write appealing and consistent UI across various devices. For the
past few years I found many Java ME UI frameworks on the web. Among those, LWUIT definitely is one on the top you should consider because:
- It is backed by Sun
- It is free and open source
- It is still under active development.
- It has a rich set of features and good development tool

Another question you may ask is: is Java ME still relevant? For the past two years, the landscape of mobile development have been changed dramatically. With the introduction of iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS and computer grade Maemo OS (Linux) based Nokia N900, mobile platforms are even more fragmented than before. However, if you want to target your mobile applications to majority of the feature phones and smartphones, Java ME is still the platform you should choose. (Sorry it will not run on iPhone).

Now back to this new LWUIT book. So far this book is the only LWUIT book available. It is a good tutorial and reference for Java ME developers who want to know more about LWUIT. To get more out of this book, you should have basic background of Java ME CLDC/MIDP, for instance the life cycle of MIDlet. But this book is written in an easy to follow manner to guide you through a comprehensive list of topics, including basic LWUIT architecture, UI components, layout, theme, custom font, animation/transition and other utility tools from LWUIT.

The author uses Sprint Wireless Wireless toolkit. That is also my favorite tool. It has built-in LWUIT support so it is very convenient to write and test LWUIT based application.

A couple of points missing from this book:
- The real world story
How does LWUIT perform on real handsets? - I read before that there were some technical challenges to make it run on Blackberry. I did not follow it closely so I did not know what is the current situation.
- Beyond CLDC/MIDP
Like on CDC, for instance this Java TV project

Overall it is good book to have if you would like to learn LWUIT. You can learn more about LWUIT new development beyond 1.1 by following Shai’s (one of the key developers of LWUIT) LWUIT blog.

The following is a sample chapter from the book:
[PDF] Using Themes

I admired that Apple kept such a perfect secret for the first generation iPhone before its announcement. Now it goes to the extreme: one 25-years old Foxconn employee, who handled shipment of 16 (4th generation?) iPhone prototypes, committed suicide after illegal detachment and lynched by Foxconn Security because of one missing prototype.

Here is the link to the original Chinese news, and a Google translated version.

Foxconn is the manufacturer who assembled the iPhone.

I am in shock by this news, but that is the only rational explanation: I am sure Yahoo knows that BlackBerry Curve is the number one smartphone in US, Symbian is still the number one mobile OS globally, and Android share could explode late this year.

Yahoo! has decided to cease development of the Yahoo! Mobile smartphone app effective Wednesday, May 20th. So you will not be provided access to the beta program for this product.

For the time being, we will be focusing our efforts on the newly-launched Yahoo! Mobile experience for browsers (available at new.m.yahoo.com) and for the iPhone (available via the Apple App Store).

It is the time to open source the Blueprint platform?

Last February AOL announced that AOL Open Mobile Platform would be available at summer time. Since then I did not notice any big news about it. There is no announcement on AOL OMP website or blog yet, but I received an email about OMP 1.0 release:

You have previously registered on the AOL Developer Network site http://dev.aol.com to receive more information about the AOL Open Mobile Platform when it becomes available. This message is to let you know that the AOL Open Mobile Platform 1.0 code is now available for download on SourceForge.net at the URL https://sourceforge.net/projects/openmobileplt/.

Please use the SourceForge Developer Forums for the project to send questions to the OMP team.

As AOL promised, OMP supports BREW, Java ME, Blackberry, Windows Mobile (C++ only?), Symbian and even Maemo. Android and iPhone are not in the list, since this project is based on some work from AirMedia in 2005. The source code is released under Apache License 2.0, together with documentation and sample applications (MapQuest, OpenAIM, Photo Viewer, LBS Coupon, RSS Reader.) The server package is Java based.

The following quotes from the original announcement probably is the best summary about what it is:

The AOL Open Mobile Platform is based on proven technology acquired by AOL that has been deployed across more than 150 different handsets on carrier networks in the U.S. The platform will consist of three components: an XML-based, next-generation markup language; an ultra-lightweight mobile device client; and an application server. A dynamic presentation layer will allow for rapid deployment of new features and easy optimization for a wide variety of mobile devices, allowing developers to build and update applications once, and then distribute them across all supported devices and platforms.

In addition, it will be possible to integrate applications built using the AOL Open Mobile Platform with third-party APIs, as well as with AOL’s open APIs for AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Video, MapQuest, Userplane, Truveo, Winamp, and others. The AOL Open Mobile Platform will also give developers the ability to monetize their mobile applications by utilizing advertising resources, such as clickable banner ads, provided by AOL’s Platform-A.

This video is hilarious: “When Bluetooth, Car Phone and BlackBerry team up, iPhone gets what he deserves.”

Thank you Dave for sending me the link!