Colin Charles Agenda

Not long ago I returned from Mobile Monday Melbourne, and this month I got to see Manny Christophidis from Streamezzo give a talk about what they do. Being my first Mobile Monday event, I had a great amount of fun and learning, and found out that many used MySQL in their work, sometimes passively without even knowing what database sat below them.

Surprised I was, to learn that this event had been going on for nearly two years. If you’re not in the mobile space, you tend to miss out on this not-very-well advertised event, I guess. Seeing as there are more mobile phones being sold these days than personal computers, I think this space is going to get even larger in time to come.

Back to Streamezzo. They make mobile clients, that are really lightweight (100kb Java, and about 200kb Symbian), that realistically serve as ad clients. As common sense would have it, they’ve found that putting ads at the application start and end seem to work the best (i.e. notice when fring is loading, it has a silly message saying “fring is loading…” - replace that with a targeted ad, Streamezzo says) and annoy the user the least.

Streamezzo’s server requires Java and can have either an Oracle or MySQL 4 (or greater) database. Back-end OS can be either Windows 2000 and up or Red Hat Linux.

Some of the more interesting things they’ve done is that they’ve re-skinned an entire mobile phone, and made the device home screen the actual portal. This ensures folk can pull down data based on the location (cell) they’re in. With all the modern rave about the online desktop, man, this sounds like an early version of the online mobile phone.

Applications they developed that caught my eye included:

• a promo for Nelly Furtado, which delivered rich media music (and video). One could preview songs from her latest album, buy the song, buy a ringtone, or preview video clips. These previews incidentally were controlled at the server (so they’re full-length songs in reality, but the server only pushes out say, 5s for a preview). The mashup with online chat seems to make this app pretty cool - if you’re a Nelly fan who got this app downloaded, you’re bound to want to chat to other Nelly fans
• a client for vpod.tv, which is the French version of YouTube. They speak video publishing for the masses, and they definitely use MySQL for their back-end as well

Sadly, Streamezzo’s stuff isn’t open source. They claim that with knowledge of XML, you should be able to create applications pretty quickly. Apparently it can set you back 0.75 Euro cents per active mobile client per month; this doesn’t include the minimum establishment fee as well. One might really be better off with Flash Lite (though I wonder how the free/OSS tools for creation of content fare).

In other quick news, omg.tv organise the event, and one of their specialities is Second Life, and more importantly, the Second Life Cable Network slcn.tv! I’ve got to give this Second Life thing a try, soon. Also, MTX Media develop a lot of primarily Symbian software, but also do Java based stuff and they’ve got some cool things that are out there - a targeted ad for Honda that gives users information about all available Honda’s, but what I found most useful is the Yellow Cab app - book a taxi, via the mobile web, without ever having to make a phone call! Coming to Melbourne in under-3 months, as its proven to work in Sydney. MTX back-ends are all MySQL Enterprise based, for what its worth.

Technorati Tags: mobile monday, mobile monday melbourne, mysql, streamezzo, mobile client, advertising, rich media applications, second life, mtx, java, symbian

While it would seem that using Mugshot is for core Linux geeks (it runs on Windows too, you know), I’ve not seen much adoption of the MySQL Mugshot Group, that was announced back in February. I’ve always enjoyed getting the Mugshot client running on my desktop informing me of new RSS feeds in Planet MySQL, so I can read new blog entries relatively quickly.

A new notification method has come upon us - its Twitter. When all is hunky dory, you get IMs or SMSes the moment a post is made from someone you’re following. So I give you the Twitter Planet MySQL Feed. Just add user “planetmysql” as a friend you’re following, make sure that notifications are turned on, and you’ll be notified whenever the Planet is pinged (which happens every 40 minutes once, I believe).

How is this possible? Largely thanks to rss2twitter. The interface is simple, and there are no controls, so I’m hoping it “just works”. The other option seems to be twitterfeed. It seems to require an OpenID login, plus a twitter login, and probably has a lot more controls and a blog to boot. Its the next obvious choice if rss2twitter fails me.

Update: I’ve started using twitterfeed. And in the first 23 hours or so, the Planet MySQL feed itself was broken, so no one got any updates. All is well now, it seems. Pinging once every hour, which is about right for Planet MySQL’s cron job.

Technorati Tags: mysql, twitter, planetmysql, planet mysql, mugshot, rss2twitter, twitterfeed

Surprisingly, managed to catch quite a bit this month.

• Knocked Up - funny, good comedy, not worth the cinema ticket price, but funny (really!)
• Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix - long, phenomenal, as I also had just read the book before-hand. Pity they chose to make Cho a “baddie’
• Oceans 13 - loved this series, and this one’s just as excellent. Where’d they chuck Julia Roberts though?
• Blow - feel sorry for those in the drug trade. Jailed repeatedly, but what else can you expect the pusher to do? I haven’t actually noticed many movie’s with Penelope Cruz in it either
• Pride & Prejudice - interrupted a lot, but an interesting show. The book, as always, is more interesting.
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off - funny, can’t believe it took me this long to watch! A must see.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - if anyone ever tells me Indian movies are silly because people run around trees and sing songs, you’ve got to catch this, as not only do they do kung fu, they fly when they do it! Show was enjoyed though, on a projector against a wall (so it was a very cinema-like experience, minus the sticky floors, dirty chairs and smelly environment)
• Premonition - slept half-way through, it might have been good, but all that dejavu made me doze off in the plane
• Blades of Glory - funny, if not a little gay. One of the better comedies.

In book sense, I read quite a bit, but I probably don’t have anything to note about the Harry Potter series. I read book 5, 6 and 7, all in one weekend (Friday evening->Sunday). Yes, that means I read book 7 a little late, but who cares. I did take away some quick quotes: “Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.” — Voldemort, in the Half-Blood Prince; “… but perhaps those who are best suited to ower are those who have never sought it. Those who have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must…” — Dumbledore.

I was at MODM4 yesterday, and as always, great fun was had. One common recurring theme though, was getting MySQL to start automatically upon a Linux server’s restart, something which I would have thought just came pretty naturally to sys-admin types. Upon further probing, these systems were all generally CentOS or RHEL based, and it wasn’t just MySQL that gave them problems - it was anything they’d installed out of the stock packages (lighttpd was a popular Apache replacement, that suffered from the same fate).

While I didn’t recollect the exact part of the manual it was stored in, I was informing everyone to make use of the chkconfig tool. Its really as simple as making sure there exists a /etc/init.d/mysql (it must be executable - chmod +x), doing a chkconfig –add mysql and making sure that it starts up at the correct runlevels (typically 3, 4 and 5). A simple chkconfig –level 345 mysql on and you’re ready to rock. Repeat, rinse for lighttpd or anything else, that has a startup script, really.

And read the manual - section 2.4.16.2.2. Starting and Stopping MySQL Automatically. chkconfig’s manual page is a little sparse, so consider some of the Red Hat Knowledgebase entries: How do I use chkconfig to enable a script for a service that accepts start, stop, and status options? and Why does an installed service, like ypbind, not show up in the chkconfig list, but I am able to start it manually? Kudos to Red Hat’s open KB as well…

Technorati Tags: chkconfig, rhel, centos, fedora, mysql

I’ve been a big supporter of Zimbra, because I think they’re one of the few projects/companies that get email/calendering/a groupware solution, right. Sure, I don’t necessarily like the model where they cripple the open source version in terms of say, backups (but this I guess will be fixed when MySQL supports online backups natively). No AdSense zimlet? Its easy enough to write one (with spare time).

What’s annoyed me of late with Zimbra, is its lack of ability to work with my Nokia E61i. Its a known problem (since February this year?), as it also affected the E61 (and probably other Series 60 phones, when you’re trying to access the Zimbra server over IMAP). You get the certificate being displayed, you get the headers, and when you try to open any email bodies, it just stops working.

The target for this fix, seems to be Zimbra 5, and according to their roadmap, we should see it in Q3/2007. The betas are already out, though I’m not about to load it on a production system. Watch zimbra#14850 - Nokia E61 sync with imaps if this affects you. There’s also a reference forum post. And here’s hoping to a good release, this quarter (2 more months to go!).

Technorati Tags: zimbra, zimbra collaboration suite, zcs, bug, nokia e61i, sybmian, series 60, imaps, email

A couple of my good friends have had some recent achievements that I clearly should help them blow their trumpets for.

First up, we have Ditesh, who’s an active proponent of ODF, have a little e-Note published on Electronic Document Standards. I got to read it back when it was in an ODF document (*grin*), and not much has changed since all the comments were pushed. Do read it, and consider giving it to upper management to read as well. Its a very well thought out document, and should be making its rounds on the Internet soon enough. Ditesh welcomes comments via email or his blog entry.

Incidentally, this is also one of the first notes that the UNDP/APDIP have published that carry a disclaimer - “The views expressed in this APDIP e-Note are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations, including UNDP, or their Member States.” I thought that was a little soft-cock, but this is the power of lobbying I guess.

Next up, we have Aizat creating haze.net.my, aka the Malaysian Air Pollution Index. Yes, do laugh out loud - Malaysia is very well polluted, and the API readings are pretty high usually, and the government of the day always insists its still safe. Aizat built it using Ruby on Rails, and there’s some active scraping of data (via hpricot), which then all mashes up with Google Maps. The site’s well designed (i.e. its simple), there’s an RSS feed if you’re so inclined to read details that way, and if you’re just interested about a certain area (say, Kuala Lumpur), you can dig deeper, and look at the graphs (via Gruff Graphs) of when it started becoming unhealthy and so on. Exporting it to CSV works too, in case you were using it for a project/paper on the haze.

All in all, a good side-project, very informative for those living in Malaysia or visiting Malaysia. Don’t see a good income stream (ads? pfft.), but definitely very informative. Maybe sell it to a ministry :-)

Technorati Tags: ditesh, aizat, e-note, apdip, undp, electronic document standards, malaysian air pollution index, haze, haze.net, malaysia, ruby, rails

Today I received most interesting mail from a training company in Australia. They want to use some of my (dated) open courseware, and obviously, I gave them permission. What was amusing was how they approached the situation: “We are prepared to not make a profit but will realistically have to cover printing and admin.“

Yes, they’re a training company. And this was from their Business Development Manager. How many out there think the courseware should be brought up to scratch, for modern versions of OOo and Linux?

Under a modern version of the CC license, though I’m not sure how many people are out there happily not-attributing and ripping me off, as we speak. Maybe just PDFs, and no sources? Definitely interested to hear anyone’s thoughts on this (via email, even).

Technorati Tags: training, courseware, open courseware, openoffice.org, linux, amusing