Earlier this week Google announced that it was buying Motorola Mobility for $40 per share or $12.5 Billion total.

Motorola Mobility which was previously known as the Mobile Devices division of Motorola, is a major Android hardware manufacturer with products including the popular Droid, Xoom and Atrix devices.  Motorola Mobility also builds and sells a large number of TV set top boxes for digital and IP based TV. With the acquisition, Google now owns a way to control the complete Android stack from hardware to operating system, to apps. Google also now has the means to build hardware for its Google TV concept.

There is a fear that having Google create Android hardware will give it an unfair advantage over other Android hardware manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC. Google has claimed that it will operate Motorola Mobility as a separate business and that Android would remain fully open. Judging from these quotes, other Android partners are welcoming the buyout.

Does Google Really Want to Get Into Hardware?

After all of this time, does Google really want to get into the  hardware business? I doubt it. The real goal of the Motorola buyout is for Google to protect Android from a patent war from competitors Apple and Microsoft. Motorola Mobility has about 14600 patents granted and 6700 pending. A large number of these patents are in the mobile field and could be used as ammo in a patent lawsuit.

With the recent acquisition by Apple and Microsoft of Nortel’s patents and the recent patent lawsuits flying around in the mobile space, I guess that Google felt the need to protect the Android ecosystem against lawsuits by providing deterrents in the form of possible counter-suits using their newly expanded patent portfolio.

I find it quite sad that this patent war has escalated to the level where tech giants have to spend their efforts suing and defending lawsuits instead of generating true technical innovations.

For a long time, New Brunswick lacked a true industry association which could speak on behalf of and for the IT companies and interests in the province.

Certainly there have been many groups accomplishing great feats in the promotion and growth of IT such as KIRA, Tech South East and PropelICT. Each group had their own goals and operate fairly independently.

NBICT arrives on the scene

In 2009 lead by Larry Sampson the New Brunswick Information Technology Council was formed hoping to be the association to represent NB IT firms and interests. The council has had some success in growing and working to achieve its goals. The council seems to be consulted by government when developing strategies and has developed position papers and has lobbied the government on behalf of the members.

One detail which I found unsettling however was the possible overlap or competing interests of the various IT groups in the province. Were they in competition with each other? How much overlap was there between the groups? Which groups should be engaged with whom? The industry is small enough in New Brunswick that competing and overlapping groups cannot possibly be not very effective.

Because of these concerns, I was very happy to hear read the news: Tech South East, PropelICT, and ITAC Join the NBITC Board . Hopefully all of the groups across the province can come together and work together towards the strengthening of the very important sector to the New Brunswick economy.

From the groups, I would like to clearly see the differences between the groups identified, to clarify their roles in NB’s IT ecosystem and ensure that their energies are put to the best use for the province as a whole. For example as an outside company, which group should I talk to engage with and why? Will the NBITC now act as the primary provincial IT body and direct people or inquiries to the various groups as appropriate? PropelICT seems to be more focused on the entrepreneur and startup side of the industry but at least to me it isn’t clear how all of the associations fit together.

What is your opinion on the various IT groups around the province? Should they be merged into one organization with regional chapters, perhaps?

Will the New Brunswick Information Technology sector finally have a strong and unified voice to speak for them?

ESRI is to soon release ArcGIS for Android which is an application which allows users to use ArcGIS content directly from their Android device. Users of ArcGIS for Android (which will be available from the Android Market) will be able to display and browse maps, query remote ArcGIS map layers and data, use data from ArcGIS online and collect GIS data.

There is also an API as well as an Eclipse plug-in that developers can use to exploit some of the capabilities such as geocoding and geoprocessing of ESRI’s ArcGIS Server from an Android mobile phone or tablet device. There is currently a beta program available for sign up Java developers who wish to beta test the new Eclipse plugin and API from ESRI.

Update: ESRI has delayed their release of ArcGIS for Android from Q2 to Q3 based on “feedback from internal and external beta sites”

Update 2 : ESRI has released version 1.0 of ArcGIS for Android in the Android Market.

Update 3 : ESRI has released an updated version 1.1 of ArcGIS SDK on their website and version 1.5 of ArcGIS for Android on the Google Market.

A new Pita Pit location has recently opened up on Fredericton’s northside on Brookside Drive in the newly developed West Hills Plaza across the street from the Brookside Mall. Being the second Pita Pit location in the city after the York Street location means that people in the area are already familiar with the product and northside residents will no longer have to cross the bridge and head downtown for their pita fix.

This is a great location as this is a growing area with many new homes being built nearby. There is also several apartments and condos nearby which will have easy access to the restaurant.  The Brookside Mall also has a fairly large provincial government office which recently moved in which will definitely boost the Pita Pit’s lunch crowd.

Of note is that this new Pita Pit location is the first franchise in Canada to have a drive thru.

Personally I’m glad to have a close alternative to the nearby Subway on Douglas Avenue as quick meal option. I wish the owner Jeremy Fox all of the best with his new business.

As has been widely publicized, New Brunswick along with the most Canadian provinces as well as the federal government have recently been struggling with budget deficits. Reduced revenues in forms of income and corporate taxes along with additional stimulus spending has converted break-even or small deficits into major problematic deficits. New Brunswick in particular has been running deficits of approximately $750 million per year with no clear indication of when or how it will return to a balanced budget. This troublesome trend was noticed by Moody’s Bond rating agency who downgraded the province’s credit rating in August of 2009 and by S&P who cut its outlook for New Brunswick’s long term credit.

The Quest to Spend

Why did the NB government spend so much over the last few years when revenues were down?

1. Stimulus spending : Spending was increased to stave off undesirable effects of the recession. By increasing spending governments in Canada and indeed around the world cushioned the economy and prevented what could have been a much worse recession. There are questions as to whether perhaps the New Brunswick government spent too much money in the name of stimulus when the economy was relatively less impacted by the recession especially compared to the manufacturing focused province of Ontario.
2. Matching federal funds : In the name of stimulus and combating the recessions, the federal government offered matching funds for many project via the Economic Action Plan. The provincial government of New Brunswick took advantage of the availability of these funds to help fund projects where possible. While this is seen as a good way to help fund projects the fact that the province typically had to match any dollars that the federal government provided meant that there was a large expense to outlay by the province. Overall through the various stimulus funds including the Building Canada Plan the federal government contributed almost $500 million in New Brunswick which forced Fredericton to contribute a similar amount.
3. Politics and Elections : Election years are known to raise government spending as parties in power try to placate voters with spending promises. 2010 was no exception as Shawn Graham and the Liberal party tried to battle back from strong public backlash against a failed proposed NB Power sale to Hydro Quebec as well as other earlier unpopular decisions such as changes in French Immersion programs in schools.

All of these factors have led New Brunswick to go from a break-even budget in 2007-2008 to a $800 million deficit in 2010.

Next question: What can be done about it?

Do you have a business idea that you would love to see come to fruition? Are you working on developing an innovative idea into a product? Do you need more resources to make your dream come true?

If so, check out New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru business plan competition.

Breakthru is a competition to designed to help foster innovation and entrepreneurial spirit in New Brunswick as well as help mentor participants and prepare their companies for growth.

First place in the competition will receive funding of $100k cash along with services from the competition’s partners which include PriceWaterhouseCoopers, CBC, Fredericton based design company OrangeSprocket and legal firm Cox & Palmer.

Second and third place both receive a $50k cash investment along with services from the above firms.

All that is required to enter the competition is to submit a 60 second video elevator pitch of your idea, an executive summary, a $75 entry fee and a filled out application form (PDF) by January 10th, 2011.

For more information go to http://nbif.com or download the Breakthru participant’s handbook (PDF).

After 7 months on the market, Samsung announced that it has reached the sales milestone of 10 million Galaxy S Android phones. This might pale in comparison to Apple’s achievement of 14.1 million iPhone sales in its fourth quarter but this remains a remarkable achievement and a definite indication that the Android market has reached a critical mass and is a platform that needs to be considered when developing mobile applications.

Android becomes the leading smartphone OS

The Galaxy, Motorola’s Droid and other phones have led Android to become the leading mobile OS for new smartphones while tablets such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and even devices such as Logitech’s Google TV Revue imply that there is an ever greater market out there for Android apps.

There are always uncertainties in the market such as Apple’s next move (perhaps to new carriers, new iOS version), how RIM’s new Blackberry OS releases or its upcoming Playbook will be accepted or how HP will handle Palm’s Pre and its WebOS but it is clear that Android is going to be a major player and is not going to let Apple run away with the mobile OS market.

Proposals have long floated around to eliminate the Canadian penny but recently a senate committee report recommends killing the penny. Note that we are not the only country to have this debate as New Zealand and Australia have already eliminated their pennies in 1990 and 1991 respectively and the United States have also had ongoing debates to eliminate the American penny.

Why remove the cent?

The penny actually costs 1.8 cents to manufacture; more than its face value. Just to manufacture the approximately 816 million pennies required every year it costs approximate $33 million. There is also a significant cost for the Royal Canadian Mint to distribute over 2000 tons of pennies across Canada. (PDF)

As well as the manufacturing and distribution costs, pennies add a burden to business in that they have to accept them and count them. In the United States it has been estimated that the extra time of handling pennies in transactions is worth more than $300 million.

As some have noticed, there is a hassle of having pennies and other change and have created machines to allow you to exchange change for bills. These machines often take a cut of the money (often 7-10%) although some banks are piloting free change machines.

How would I pay without pennies?

With the elimination of the penny, cash purchases would likely be rounded using the Swedish Rounding method which was used when Sweden removed their 1 and 2 öre coins from circulation. Basically, purchases ending in 1, 2, 6 or 7 are rounded down to the nearest nickel. Purchases ending in 3, 4, 8 or 9 are rounded up to the nearest nickel while purchases ending in 0 or 5 are left unchanged. Electronic payments such as debit, credit cards and cheques would be paid to the penny in the exact amount and no rounding would be necessary.

What next?

I haven’t seen any indication as to whether the House of Commons will follow the Senate’s recommendation and introduce a bill to get rid of the lowly brown cent or whether the recommendation will gather dust on a bookshelf as the value and usefulness of the penny keep dropping.

Personally I hope that they proceed to eliminate to eliminate the penny. My pockets will become a lot lighter; besides I haven’t seen penny candy available anywhere in a long time.

Google has released Google Maps for Android and has made major modifications to how maps are rendered. This is major update with some really interesting new features. Google is really paying attention to the needs of mobile users and making Google Maps for Android one of the premier apps for their mobile OS.

Some of the new features include:

1) Vector maps: Maps now uses vectors to draw maps instead of bitmap images. This allows for easier zooming, rotation and markup.

2) You can now use a compass mode to have the map rotate as you change directions. Labels will also be redrawn to face you.

3) 3D buildings are now displayed when available for increased realism.

4) Better offline capabilities: With the change to vector formats, it is now possible to perform limited zooms in and out without having network connectivity. This updated version will also pro-actively cache some detailed views around your frequent places so that you have access even if you connectivity is unreliable.

See: Official Google Blog: Under the hood of Google Maps 5.0 for Android.

The browser wars are still in full swing with major browser implementers fighting for which company can bring the fastest and most compatible web browsing experience for users. The status of the ongoing battle can be judged by looking at the recent release of Microsoft’s IE9 previews, Firefox 4 beta release and now Google has released a Chrome 8 beta which has many nice and intriguing new features.

WebGL support

These features include support for Web GL specification which aims to bring plugin-free 3D to the web. All major browser vendors except for Microsoft are part of the WebGL Working Group and so it is anticipated that eventually the specification will be supported by most browsers.

Hardware acceleration

Along with WebGL support, the new Chrome update support hardware acceleration which lets your graphics card offload any graphics intensive processing from your CPU in an effort to speed up web page display times.

Chrome Instant

The most innovative introduction to Chrome is a feature called Instant which like Google’s instant search feature predictively begins to load and display pages or web sites as you type in the URL. Instant will also take advantage of URL search auto-completion from Google Instant to complete URLs as you type based on Google’s search volumes.  It will take some time to see how this feature works in the wild and whether it becomes an annoyance or a pleasure to use.  I anticipate that if you are on a fast network connection, Chrome Instant will be a nice enhancement to an already solid browser.

The federal Liberal government has recently released a party initiative designed to open up and add transparency to government.

The Open Government Initiative will

• restore the long-form census reversing the unpopular move by the current Harper conservative government to cut the census
• make as many government datasets as possible available to the public starting with Statistics Canada
• make available online access to information requests, government grants, contributions and contracts

This move is following a major trend in other countries such as the United States and the UK as well as municipal governments such as Vancouver which have adopted similar open government policies.

As noted by Micheal Geist and Elizabeth Judge note, there may be some complications implementing some of these proposed ideas due to legislation such as the Crown copyright which would also need to be changed in order to allow unrestricted access to government data and reports.

I love the initiative and would be interested to see similar policies from the other major federal parties.

See also : http://danny.damours.net/wordpress/free-and-open-government-information-online-how-about-it-canada

Google has recently released Google Earth 5.2. There are some really nice new features including visualization of tracks captured by GPS devices.

Installing under Fedora Linux can be a bit of a challenge if you have SELinux enabled.

What is SELinux?

SELinux is feature which provides the ability to have access control policies which confines processes and users to the minimum required access level. For example the httpd process can be confines to only have access to files under it’s document root. Because of this confinement, there is a decreased risk if the httpd process were to become compromised and damage due to a security flaw is minimized.

Making Google Earth work with SELinux

The default install of Google Earth does not properly set the proper SELinux access controls and so if you have SELinux enabled, Google Earth will not start properly. One option with I’m sure that many people have done is to completely disable SELinux. Although this approach will get Google Earth working, it eliminates the benefits of SELinux and makes your computer less secure than it could be.

Recent versions of SELinux have a tool which gives suggestions of how to fix problems when violations occur. However on Fedora 13, the suggested command of ‘restorecon /usr/local/google-earth/googleearth-bin‘ didn’t fix the problem. I was still getting the error:

“./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libcommon_webbrowser.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied”

The key was to allow text relocation for the lib files in the install directory so typing in:

“chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/local/google-earth/lib*”

Now Google Earth runs beautifully under SELinux.

Browsing the web can be a quiet experience. Except for the odd Flash based video, web pages are typically quiet and don’t have any sounds associated with them.

The new W3C HTML 5 specification introduced a new audio tag which finally allows web pages to play sounds natively without having to resort to plugins such Flash or Java.

Taking it to the next level

Following on the introduction of basic audio, the W3C has formed and Audio Incubator Group which according to the group’s charter will explore possibilities of reading or writing raw audio and synthesizing speech or sound.

Members of the incubator group include Mozilla, the BBC and Google.

I think that it will be interesting follow this group and see what this incubator group comes up with.

Fredericton, New Brunswick has been featured as a Google Earth Cities in 3D success story.

In January 2010 over 100 3D representations of buildings were added to Google Earth. These models are photo-textured and have quite a bit of detail in them.

The City of Fredericton in collaboration with the nearby Canadian Forces Base Gagetown’s Army Learning Support Center for Tactics School developed the models. The city provided a lot of the data and the Armed Forces group created the models which they use for simulations and tactical training.  They also integrated the 3D models into a first person game to teach tactics and for simulating various possible scenarios.

By uploading and sharing the models with the rest of the world through Google’s cities in 3D program, the groups have allowed others to get a different perspective. As a fringe benefit, it strengthens Fredericton’s reputation as a city on the forefront which understands, promotes and uses technology in everyday life. Considering that Fredericton is a high tech city and home to IT firms such as RIM, CGI, Radian6 and the National Research Council, this is a good reputation to promote.

The corner of King Street and York Street in 3D

The Android mobile platform has a lot going for it. It has a large mind share thanks in part to its huge backer, Google. Android also has something that Apple’s iPhone platform lacks: Diversity in devices and vendors.

The Open Handset Alliance which backs the Android platform consists of 65 members from various parts of the mobile industry such as handset manufacturers such as HTC, Sony and Toshiba along with semiconductor companies such as Intel and Nvidia to software providers such as Google and eBay to mobile network providers such as NTT Docomo and Verizon.

The members’ diverse backgrounds, business models and needs ensures a healthy mix of devices, services and software for the platform. Although a healthy diverse mix of devices and implementations is healthy, it can also lead to problems such as fragmentation.

Platform Fragmentation

Fragmentation can occur when different implementations have different core feature set and different user experiences. With the iPhone platform, once you’ve used an iPhone you know that all of the iPhone devices will behave the same and run the same applications and have a similar user experience. With Android however, you can get radically different experiences based on handset being used as well as the Android version being used.

Some handset vendors have implemented their own UI customizations such as Mototola’s Blur and HTC’s Sense which alter the user experience even more and can prevent or delay uptake of new operating system revisions as they are released. Depending on the customizations, developers must also consider how their applications might work in each of these customized environments. As any web developer knows, having to support multiple browsers is not a fun tasks. Supporting multiple slightly differing mobile platforms isn’t considered fun either. Worrying how you application will look or run at 10 different possible resolutions is much more of a pain than iPhone’s 1 resolution fits all model.

As users may be stuck waiting to a handset vendor to provide OS upgrades, they may be unable to install of use some applications. For example, the recent release of Google Earth will only run on Android 2.1 or later which most Android handsets are not yet running.

Combating Fragmentation

Google has started trying to address the fragmentation issue. One of the approaches is to decouple upgrade of major applications and components from the Operating System. By being able to upgrade major components independently, users could simply download the latest and greatest without having to wait for their slow vendor to provide upgrades. Being able to easily upgrade the browser or the input functionality could reduce the number of people running different feature sets and different levels of code. If you can run all of the latest applications and code, do you really care if you are on the latest OS or not?

Google has also stated that development and releases of the core Android OS will most likely slow down soon as the platform has matured and there will be more focus on applications and features built upon the more stable core.

Hopefully Android users will be able to get the best of both worlds, a diverse set of handsets, applications that will run on all devices and not have to wonder if they are betting on the right handset vendor.

Research in Motion makers of the ever popular Blackberry has announced that it has purchased QNX Software Systems from Harman international.

QNX which is based in Ottawa, Ontario was formed in 1980 and is a leading provider of embedded systems. QNX has a very strong real-time operating system (RTOS) and has especially been a strong player in the in-car entertainment sector.

There is speculation that RIM will attempt to create a more seamless integration between it flagship Blackberries and in car systems. This integration could lead superior user experience which could help differentiate RIM from Apple iPhone or Google’s Andoid platform.

Then again perhaps it is just a cheap source of patent protection.

Will Internet Explorer 9 finally pose a challenge to the technically superior upstart web browsers from Google, Mozilla and Apple?

Microsoft recently revealed a platform preview of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser at its MIX10 conference. The preview browser is far from complete with a lot of the user interface components such as tabs and navigation buttons but it does show off the renderer and the Javascript engine which allows developers to see what features are coming in the future. Microsoft’s IE team has also committed to update the preview every 8 weeks which will allow users to see the progression of IE9 development.

Microsoft getting a new (standards-based) religion?

It appears that IE 9 will finally adopt and comply with some of the web standards. The initial preview scores a respectable 55//100 on the CSS Acid 3 test which is a huge improvement over IE8′s score of 20/100. Support for some new HTML 5 features is also present in the IE9 preview build such as the much touted video tag as well as SVG support. The video tag will have support for the H.264 codec which is also being supported by Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

Microsoft has also improved the performance of the rendering engine by leveraging available hardware. Graphics cards will now help offload some video and graphics processing from the CPU. IE9 has also been made increasingly multithreaded and optimized to take advantage of multiple cores in a system. For example the Javascript engine can use a separate core to compile Javascript code in preparation for execution which leaves the primary core available to do additional processing. In fact, Javascipt performance has been increased so much that on certain tests, IE 9 is faster than Firefox.

Will a strong IE9 release slow the momentum of the competing browsers which have been nibbling away the market share from Microsoft? A strong IE will definitely reduce the incentive for people to switch to an alternative browser.

One caveat which may play a factor in IE9 adoption is that Internet Explorer 9 will not be compatible with Windows XP.

Ars Technica has a great write up on the preview : Platform Preview gives Web developers first taste of IE9.

After a long wait, Canadian can fully get aboard the Google Android train. Google has announced that Canada will get paid apps and that the Nexus One is available on Rogers in Canada as well as also being available on AT&T’s network. The Nexus One is available in Canada for $529 USD from http://www.google.com/phone, As did our American friends, you need to create a Google Checkout account to purchase the phone.

Previously, Canadian developers were prevented from putting their Andoid applications for sale on the Android Marketplace. Hopefully the increased international availability of the Android Marketplace, the platform and the Nexus One will increase the availability of applications and adoption of the Android by phone manufacturer and users alike. Developers might also have more incentive to develop for Android with a larger target user base.

As an open mobile platform, Android is different from the iPhone where every application is vetted by Apple and users can only go through Apple’s app store to get applications. Android Marketplace showcases Android applications but users and developers are not forced into using the Marketplace. This differentiator can be very important to some folks. Indeed it appears that Android’s open platform has already attracted a new high profile employee in Tim Bray.

Google has recently introduced a new and interesting Labs feature for its popular Google Maps service. In the same fashion as its Google Labs offering, Google Maps Labs allows users to opt-in to beta versions of features currently in development or testing.

By clicking on the little green beaker in the top right hand corner (currently with “New!” in red beside it), you are given the option of enabling beta features currently ranging from the extremely useful Click and Zoom which allows quick zooming to a selected rectangular area to the interesting rotatable maps to the humourous ‘BETA’ feature which as far as I can tell, simply adds a beta graphic to the Google Maps logo – as the features states: “Gmail isn’t the only one that can enjoy a BETA tag.”.

To have beta map features enabled for future visits, users must be signed into their Google account.

The intention with Google Maps Labs is that popular and well tested features would get integrated into the full Google Maps version. Even if none of the features make it past the beta stage, it is still interesting to see some of the possibilities.

For more info see: Google LatLong: Introducing Google Maps Labs, your passport to a world of new features.

The Trinity Development Group has a map of planned development of the Corbett Centre. According to the map it appears that the electronics big box store Best Buy is planning to set up in Fredericton. Other stores that appear to be slated for the Corbett Centre include home fashion store Bouclair and a new Tim Hortons. The long rumoured Tim Hortons store would fill in the gap (according to some Tim’s addicts) created by the closing of the Regent Mall location last year.

The Trinity site claims that these new stores will open in the spring of 2010 while Costco’s planned warehouse store is marked as a highly unlikely Fall 2009. Perhaps these are construction start dates as opposed to store opening dates.

New Competition in Town?

A new Best Buy store would likely be the second store in Atlantic Canada after a recently opened store in Dartmouth, NS. A new Best Buy which sells laptops, big screen televisions, digital cameras and other electronics and opening would not only bring some needed competition to the current electronics giant in town Future Shop but it would also be a win for Fredericton in the ongoing battle with Moncton and Saint John to attract retailers to their cities. Is Fredericton gaining an upper hand in attracting retailers to its city?

Are there any other retailers that you’d like to see open up in Fredericton?

Mobile review provided a sneak peak at the soon to be released Nokia RX-51 aka Nokia N900. This new internet tablet / phone which has also been referred to as Rover, is a follow on to their N810 internet tablet which received critical acclaim but remained more of a niche product with out the phone connectivity that Nokia is famous for.

The RX-51 review has tons of pictures of the device and some of the screenshots of the user interface. Since this is the first internet tablet from Nokia to use the Fremantle or Maemo 5 software, many people are curious how much change will be ushered in with the new operating system and device. The UI definitely looks more polished and a lot slicker than the older Diablo release (4.2) but it is hard to determine the user experience without having the software in your hands. The hardware looks very similar to the older N810 with a slide out keyboard and 800 x 480 resolution screen but there have been some improvements such as the included 5 megapixel camera.

Will it compare to the iPhone?

As I mentioned in a previous post about the Nokia N900 and Fremantle, the N900 / RX-51 is also the first of the N series internet tablets to include phone capabilities. Previous versions only had wi-fi connectivity and as such were not direct competitors with Apple’s iPhone or RIM’s Blackberrry devices. It will be interesting to see if this new Nokia mobile offering will provide some competition from the other smartphone players.

The Obama administration in the United States is forging ahead with a policy to open up access to as much government data as possible in open formats for people to use. The website http://www.data.gov will be used to host and disseminate government created data.

What is Canada’s position on open access?

Canada on the other seems to be trying to lock government files and data away and often require a ransom to be paid to get access to it. A large proportion of data generated by government agencies require payment to access. For example, Statistics Canada create maps of postal code to census boundaries but charges $10000 to download it? Why should I have to pay to get information that Statistics Canada collected using my taxpayer dollars? Why should I have to file an access to information request (and pay $5) to get information about government dealings? Shouldn’t the default status of information created by the government be free and widely available? Do only the rich have the right to information? Not only would opening up database, documents and other available data increase transparency, it would also remove economic barriers for companies and individuals that could benefit from the amazing amount of data that could be made available to the public.

Vancouver opens its data

The city of Vancouver has adopted a similar strategy of opening up its data and information as the Obama administration in the United States. Additionally, Vancouver is also in the process of examining open source software and how it could be use at the municipal level. Their strategy has already generated some interesting ideas such a garbage reminder service.

Will Canada be left behind?

Hopefully we will see other Canadian cities, provinces and the federal governments be forward looking and follow Vancouver’s example. There is an enormous untapped potential for using data that is generated and currently locked away in vaults, behind firewall or simply in proprietary formats that require expensive software to use. Who knew that opening up GIS signals and data to free civilian use would result in such a large number of indispensable and powerful inventions that build on GIS. Just as democracy opened up the political and decision making process to all citizens, opening up information to all empowers all citizens and not just the elite royalty that can afford it.

Hopefully Canada will be able to realize its potential.

I love this YouTube video. Very powerful and well done. It has been online since 2007 but the video gives a great view of why the computers and the web are so powerful. You also can’t help but wonder how much more untapped potential there is to be found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Fredericton, New Brunswick based PQA – Professional Quality Assurance has announced its intention to grow its workforce from the current 91 to almost 400 over the next three years. The province of New Brunswick has announced an assistance program for PQA which will see an average of $7544 per full time permanent employee that PQA hires over the next three years. This assistance is for training and equipment for these new hires.

Who are PQA?

Founded in 1997, PQA is a software quality assurance vendor which provides services such as software testing, QA consultants, content quality assurance and e-learning or training development services. They currently have three offices with their headquarters in Fredericton and satellite offices in Moncton, New Brunswick and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. With this latest expansion there are hints that PQA will open additional offices in other New Brunswick locations, likely in Saint John but possibly in smaller and economically hard hit cities in northern NB such as Miramichi or Cambellton.

Software Testing is a dirty job

As many software developers know, software testing is very difficult as you become accustomed to the warts and consciously or sub-consciously avoid trouble areas or scenarios in your application when testing. In addition, software testing, developing training materials and documentation are often pushed back to the end of the development cycle are are often the first tasks to get short changed when the pressure to ship starts to build. By farming out these tasks to a third party, your developers are free to concentrate on developing quality and compelling software.

A fresh, experienced and independent point of view

Just as a third party audit of financial records is a good idea (and often necessary), a third party software quality assurance can give your code a professional and independent critique before it ships to customers. An outsiders’ fresh view of your software may reveal omissions in your documentation or bring to light implicit or explicit assumptions that were made in the software design and development cycle. Identifying and addressing these issues prior to shipping can save a lot of money in fixing software as well as in support costs. Even more valuable than saving on support costs, by fixing problems you can ship a higher quality product and enhance the customer experience. Creating a quality experience for your customer can raise your reputation and brand. Remember: “Every Touch Counts“.

Third party QA can identify software bugs, performance and scalability problems, user experience issues, user interface inconsistencies and documentation issues. Although some of these problems can be identified and addressed in house, a more thorough assessment by a third party quality assurance vendor can make your product that much more stable and bulletproof as well as give your product that extra usability edge over the competition.

Money well spent I’d say.

Created in 2006 as a way of bringing people with common interests together, Mugshot was designed by RedHat as an open source site. The intentions was to allow interaction between users using not only its own site but by plugging into other networking sites such as Facebook and del.icio.us. Mugshot included the ability to chat between users, share links, facebook updates and read RSS feeds.

Mugshot did have some innovative features such as a desktop client which allowed quick and easy access to network updates and to quickly post items or share links with your friends or interest groups.

Where did it go?

Despite some initial promise, in April of this year, the website went offline with a “Mugshot is currently not running.” message and as of earlier this May, the URLs for http://www.mugshot.org get redirected to http://www.redhat.com.
I have been unable to find any official confirmation that Mugshot has been killed and will not come back but it does not look promising.

Why did it fail?

Unfortunately Mugshot never seemed to get much traction outside of a small group of Linux (mainly RedHat) enthusiasts. Whether it was a lack of marketing or a neglect of website and network can be debated but after its initial launch period, RedHat almost seemed to ignore Mugshot perhaps hoping that organic growth could occur with open source community updating and introducing new features. Competition from Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook may have also helped put Mugshot on the chopping block.

Another part of the reasoning behind RedHat’s apparent neglect and eventual abandonment of Mugshot is that the social network concept never seemed to fit well into its strategy to be an enterprise Linux vendor. Right from the introduction of Mugshot, there appeared to be confusion regarding why RedHat was pursuing this product.

Mugshot champions gone?

It also appears that a few of the Mugshot champions from within RedHat such as Christopher Blizzard who has moved on to the Mozilla Foundation and Havoc Pennington who is currently at litl.

In a March blog post, Havoc even mentions the validity of the concept despite the lack of success with Mugshot:

It’s gratifying that the new default home screen of Facebook looks a lot like Mugshot.org, a site some of us came up with at Red Hat. We coded Mugshot’s personal-lifestream-thingy before Facebook’s news feed came out and before FriendFeed came out. Not saying either site copied us, but it’s still nice to know at least our idea was good (even though there were lots of reasons we weren’t the ones to get anywhere with it).

What’s next for Mugshot?

As of today, the source code for Mugshot is still available at http://svn.mugshot.org/ and it appears that a fork of the Mugshot code will live on in project magnetism at: http://code.google.com/p/magnetism/. There is no indication of that a free shared Mugshot type service (like RedHat was offering) will be made available.

The release of Fedora 11 was recently pushed back by a week and then another week to June 9th due to some blocker bugs still being open. The new release date however is still just around the corner so I’ve decided to look at what is coming in Fedora 11.

What’s New in Fedora 11

• Gnome 2.26
• Firefox 3.5 (currently at beta 4) which introduces HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags an a Private Browsing Mode (aka Porn Browsing Mode)
• ext4 is now the default filesystem when installing a new Fedora 11 install
• Improved fingerprint reader experience with a improved detection and a GUI configuration tool (authconfig)
• gcc 4.4
• faster boot up times with the goal being a 20 second startup
• upgraded rpm to 4.7 for performance improvements
• OpenChange introduce for native Microsoft Exchange integration
• Xserver 1.6 which brings with it improved performance, stability and RANDR 1.3 support
• improved graphical drivers including

• kernel modeseting in Intel drivers for graphical bootup sequence
• new default NVidia drivers (nouveau) which supports more cards, has performance improvements over the current nv drivers and supports RANDR 1.2
• improved ATI/AMD Radeon drivers allowing r100/r200 based cards to work with modesetting and DRI2

Try it out

I decided to install a Fedora 11 Preview copy in a VMWare Workstation virtual machine to see first hand what changes were in store. After booting off of the Live CD and clicking on Install to Hard Drive, the install process went very smoothly. Installation seems faster than previous versions as well though I did select more packages on my previous Fedora 10 install.
Here is a screenshot of F11 in action:

Screenshot of Fedora 11

More info and reviews

For additional information there are podcasts including an interview with Fedora’s release manager Jesse Keating and Spot Callaway discussing the upcoming Fedora 11 features available at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F11_release_podcasts. Another interview with Richard Hughes on the improvements to PackageKit are available at : http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1637

If you would rather see than hear about Fedora 11, there is also a screenshot tour of Fedora 11 available at: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Screenshot_Tour.

Not content to have the dominant position in the data center virtualization market with its VMware Infrastructure products including the widely used ESX, VMWare strikes out on another platform : mobile devices.

Virtualizing mobile devices

VMware MVP(Mobile Virtualization Platform) is a product which allow mobile operating systems to be virtualized. A small piece of code (about 20k) is run on a mobile device which effectively virtualizes the resources of the device allowing other operating systems to run on the virtualized hardware.

As Ars Technica describes, VMWare demoed a Nokia N800 running Google’s Android as well as Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS. Although there is some obvious overhead and performance penalties to virtualizing hardware on a mobile device (as on a server or desktop), freeing your mobile device to run the OS of your choice could prove quite valuable.

Currently VMware supports Windows CE 5.0 and 6.0, Linux 2.6.x (which would include Maemo and Android), Symbian 9.x, eCos, µITRON NORTi and µC/OS-II. It does not appear to be available for sale yet but you can contact VMware to get more information on MVP.

The future?

Although it is fairly new and probably rough around the edges, perhaps VMware MVP will get rolled into VMware Workstation 7.0 which would allow developers to easily access multiple mobile platforms for ease of development and testing.

Now if they could only emulate the iPhone and Blackberry using MVP. Then you would truly be able to use the hardware and software combination that suits YOU best.

Has the Sun set on MySQL?

Has the sun set on MySQL? I don’t think so. Even after the buyout from Oracle, Sun’s MySQL is still looking up. With a new release coming down the pipes, there is little reason to shy away from MySQL.

After a controversial release of version 5.1 in December 2008, Sun’s (and soon to be Oracle’s) MySQLdatabase is quickly coming back with a preview version of MySQL 5.4. Part of the reason for the rapid successive releases is the shift to a new release schedule based on time instead of the previous feature based releases. Because of this shift, 5.4 won’t include any major new features such as the Falcon transactional storage engine but a more incremental set of features.

Sun making its mark

This is probably the first release in which we will see Sun’s influence over the databases’ evolution. Sun is interested in making their hardware (and OS) platform more appealing to run MySQL on and so emphasis on better support for Sun’s hardware and Solaris in particular should come through in 5.4 and future releases.

The major enhancements between 5.1 and 5.4 are scalability improvements. This new version adds the ability to address more than 4 CPU’s or cores (at least for the InnoDB engine). This allows MySQL to scale up much better on larger servers such as 16 way x86 boxes and up to 64 way on Sun’s new CMT servers.

There are other scalability improvements including the inclusion of Google’s SMP and IO patches, a new thread concurrency algorithm and more efficient read-write lock mechanism.

Optimizing queries

Subquery optimizations and improvements in how joins are performed have provide dramatic improvements in execution times for certain queries. A specific OSDL DBT-3 query was changed from a 12 minutes query requiring 9 million reads to a 1.8 second query with 153,000 reads. Obviously this is probably an extreme example but many subqueries will be sped up due to these changes.

Other changes which clearly show Sun’s influence on MySQL include the inclusion of DTrace probes on Solaris, porting of Google’s SMP patches to Solaris and “operating system specific optimizations”

So how does it perform?

Overall performance according to benchmark looks quite a bit improved including a 59% improvement in EAStress2004 benchmark and generally improved read only and read write benchmarks on both Linux and Solaris.

One of the nice things about 5.4 is that most of the improvements and enhancements don’t require and database changes or altered configurations.

Looking forward to final release

For the last few weeks, people in Fredericton and along the Saint John river valley have been anxiously watching the water levels in the river to watch if the river will flood as in 2008.

After a near record snowfall in the winter of 2008-2009, warm and wet weather early in April quickly rose the river levels. After rising to the flood level of 6.5 m in Fredericton around April 8th, cooler and drier weather allowed the snow melt to slow down. This allowed the river level to drop more than two meters to 4.35 m, providing people living near the flood zone some breathing room.

And the Saint John River rises

Due to a lot of rain and warmer weather over the last week or so, the river is back on the rise. New Brunswick’s Riverwatch is now forecasting a rise past the flood stage on Friday morning and rising to 7.0 m on Saturday morning. Although the weather forecast is calling for dry weather for the next few days, the temperature is also forecasted to rise to over 20 degrees which will increase the rate of melting for the remaining snow that is left on the ground.

Even with the river rising over the official flood level of 6.5 m, at 7.0 m damage to low lying areas should be fairly minimal although I would imagine that a few basements will be flooded. The river would have to rise over another meter in order to attain last year’s high water mark of 8.35 m ( Map – PDF ) at which point there was extensive damage to many building along the waterfront.

Additional resources:

• Environment Canada’s real time hydrometric data shows present and past river levels through New Brunswick and the rest of Canada
• The city of Fredericton has a Riverwatch site with information including maps of previous flood levels and flood prone areas of the city
• The province of New Brunswick’s Riverwatch site has detailed river level forecasts as well as additional planning and emergency information
• The city of Fredericton has a few webcams which can give you a view of the current river levels

Fredericton Flood Watch 2009

As the snow begins to melt in the Great White North, thanks to the great Fredericton flood of 2008, one question that has been on people’s minds here in New Brunswick is whether or not there will be extensive flooding on the Saint John River again this year. The images of the floods and fear of possible flooding in Fargo, North Dakota and in the Red River valley in Manitoba remind us of what we experienced in Fredericton, Woodstock, Edmunston and all along the Saint John river a short year ago.

From Sean McGrath's Flickr stream

Just like 2008?

Thanks to the NOAA website, we can examine the current snow depth and snow water equivalent for the western portion of the Saint John watershed. We can also compare the amount to last year’s record amounts as a benchmark. Luckily it appears that the snow depth and water content is less than last year even though they are both above normal in most areas.

NOHRSC Interactive Snow Information.

Unknown factors

There are still several additional factors which could affect the possibilities of flooding this spring. Rainfall and the quickness of the snow melt can have significant impacts on the water levels in the river. Last year’s floods were caused in part by a large storm which dropped over 100 mm of rain in the upper Saint John river valley in northern NB, Maine and eastern Quebec just as the snow melting was taking place. Another large storm of similar magnitude or a quick warming trend could quickly increase the river’s water levels and make all previous predictions useless.

And the rain falls

The last weekend (April 4-5) brought some heavy rains over New Brunswick and the weather forecast for the rest of the week is calling for more rain which does not bode well for keeping the river under flood levels.

Due to the recent rain and warm weather, there is already some flooding being caused by ice jams in the upper Saint John river valley near Hartland. Tributaries such as the Nashwaak and Oromocto river are also nearing flood levels. The water level in the Saint John river at Fredericton has also risen dramatically in the last few days going from 2.5 m to a current reading of near 5 m with a forecasted rise to 5.8 m by Wednesday. Flood stage is defined as 6.5 m while the high water level during last year’s major flood was 8.36 meters.

Hopefully the river will crest near flood levels and spare people living along the river a lot of grief.

About a week ago, I finished reading a book that has long been on my reading list: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond.

After being very impressed when I read his Pulitzer prize winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, I was eager to read Diamond’s take on civilization collapse and the reasons behind their failures. Here is my review of it.

Stories of Collapse

The book examines several fallen civilizations such as Easter Island in the South Pacific, the Anasazi in which is now the southwestern United States, the Maya civilization in Central America. There is also a deeper examination of the Vikings and in particular Greenland which was settled in 900 AD until approximately 1400 AD.

Each civilization and culture is examined and emphasis is placed on environmental factors that contributed to their weakening and collapse. Deforestation, soil erosion, overfishing/overhunting and population growth are recurring activities which influence the ability of a society to support itself. For example, the deforestation that occurred on Easter Island severely limited the ability of the people there to use fishing to support themselves.

As in Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond uses multiple fields such as archaeology, anthropology biology and geography to provide evidence to his claim that the environment played a pivotal role in the downfall of these cultures.

Diamond examines a few situations in which a society collapsed while another with similar issues made different choices and managed to avoid a collapse. This case occurs today with the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic which share an island. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere has recently had many struggles in comparison to its relatively well off island neighbour. The author argues that history and societal choices helped determine the diverging destinies of the two neighbours.

Another case which is examined is the Norse civilization in Greenland which became extinct while the culture of the Inuit in the same region experienced the same environmental conditions and due to their lifestyles and choices, survived.

Collapse is all around

Collapse is not only a study of ancient civilizations but also a reflection of issues which the world is currently facing. A few case studies of recent or ongoing “collapses” remind the reader that we as a society are still vulnerable to possible collapse if we as a society are not careful. The cases examined include the recent genocide in Rwanda, Haiti and possible collapses in the making in China and Australia.

Though I was not completely convinced by the case studies of Australian and Chinese collapse, the author does point out some major issues with environmental degradation (drought, erosion, that are having impacts on Australian and Chinese societies but I’m not sure about the severity or the eventual denouement of these situations.

Not all doom and gloom

Collapse is not all doom and gloom. In addition to examining societies that have collapsed, Jared Diamond also examines a few societies in which responses to crises lead to a sustainable society. Japan for example ran into issues due to deforestation and population pressures in the 1600s. Using a combination of population growth controls and effective timber management (along with imports from other countries), Japan managed to keep collapse at bay and in fact thrived due its choices.

What are we to do?

Collapse ends on the positive notes of hope with Diamond suggesting that if societies value the environment and make wise choices based not only on short term results and profits that we can thrive as a society and avoid collapse. Perhaps it is too late as some ( http://postcarbon.org/shape_recovery ) are speculating that this economic recession that has just started might be a sign of our current civilization hitting a wall.

Should I read it?

I quite enjoyed reading Collapse:How Societies choose to Fail or Succeed quite a bit. The book did feel a little environmentally preachy at times but overall it was a good examination of societies, some of the environmental challenges they face and how their response to those challenges dictate whether the societies will collapse or thrive. A great read for the environmentalist in you but even if you aren’t a green to the bone type, the book could still appeal to you with its great examinations of past societies, how they lived and how they failed or succeeded in the face of challenge.

The Forward Music Group is a independent music label and management company based in my city of Fredericton, New Brunswick. They represent a variety of musical acts and bands from the East Coast of Canada including Grand Theft Bus, Olympic Symphonium, Share and Sleepless Nights. In fact they were recently nominated for Label of the Year at the 2009 ECMA awards.

Two sampler albums for the price of one!

Recently, as I was going to buy a Grand Theft Bus CD, I noticed that they have two sampler CDs available for FREE DOWNLOAD. One sampler CD is called the Christmas sampler which contains previously unreleased tracks and some live material from various bands that Forward Music Group represents. The other sampler is simply called the “Forward Music Group Sampler” and contains some really good tunes especially for a FREE download. My favourite is Private Wars from Grand Theft Bus. Great tune.

Share – Ukelele Tragic

There is also another CD available for free download from the same site from the band Share. The album is called Ukelele Tragic. I do like the two Share songs that are on the sampler so I’ll have to download Ukelele Tragic and give it a listen.

Support the Artists

Give the albums a listen and if you like what you hear, support the artists by buying their full CDs or going to see one of their shows.

I’m interested to hear any feedback on Forward Music and their artists.

Previous entry on Forward Music Group : http://danny.damours.net/wordpress/index.php/archive/forward-music-group

It appears that the effects of the recession are starting to show in the habits of computer buyers.

• HP has missed its revenue targets by $3 billion (but hits profit targets).
• Apple sales have gone from 50% year over year increases to – 6%

I guess after laying off a lot of staff, companies have a bunch of spare hardware laying around so that they don’t need to buy any more desktops and laptops. Meanwhile the unemployed Joe Six Pack no longer has the money to buy Jobs’ latest flashy MacBook or a cheap new Windows desktop.

I have a feeling that this recession won’t be as short as they were previously predicting.

Recently Google has added magazines to its Book Search service. The entire release from Google can be found at Google’s Official Blog.

The magazines in Book Search are indexed in their entirety and appear to be completely available in their original form with advertisements and all. Access is via a reader “application” which displays the pages as well as allow zooming and navigation.

What Magazines are available?

Although I haven’t yet found a complete list of magazines which are being indexed, some of the more interesting ones that I’ve come across are Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, New York, CIO and Men’s Health. The list if magazines appear to small but hopefully Google is hard at work collecting, scanning and indexing other archives of magazines and hopefully these indexed archives will be made freely available to the public soon.

Screenshot of browsing June 1970 issue of Popular Science

History at your fingertips

One of the most interesting things about Google’s indexing of magazines is that the entire history of the magazine is available so it is possible for example to browse a 1872 issue of Popular Science or you can read about the future of airships (Zeppelins that is) and the opening of the Windsor-Detroit Ambassador bridge with the world’s longest suspension bridge span in the February 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics.

A valuable learning resource

This newly available and indexed resource could become a very valuable tool for research and education purposes. The value in letting student examine past writings in a historical context is immense. To see issues of the day being discussed can give a great historical context and perspective.

Looking to develop applications for Android but don’t want to get a contract with T-Mobile or like me, can’t sign up with T-Mobile due to geographical constraints in order to get an HTC G1 Android phone to develop with?

Google’s Android Dev Phone 1

The Android Dev Phone 1 from Google is essentially an HTC G1 which is SIM unlocked and hardware-unlocked. At $399 USD, the Dev phone is more expensive than what you would pay to get a G1 from T-Mobile but without a contract and restricted hardware and software, the Dev Phone should appeal quite a bit to developers interested in developing for Android.

The bootloader that come with the Dev Phone is unrestricted and in addition, the bootloader does not enforce the requirement for signed system images as does the T-Mobile G1 smartphone. This open bootloader open the possibility of customizing the Android framework itself or perhaps even booting into a different OS on an Android based device.

Available around the world

One of the largest limitations of the T-Mobile’s HTC G1 exclusivity was that interested consumers and developers couldn’t get their hands on Android based phones unless they were located in the United States. With the Android Dev Phone, Google is making the phone available to 18 countries including the US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, India and Japan.

In order to order the phone, one must be registered with the Android Marketplace for a one-time fee of $25.

The eighth annual Silver Wave Film Festival is taking place in Fredericton, New Brunswick this week from Thursday November 13th until Sunday November 16th. Screenings will take place at Tilley Hall on the UNB campus, the Charlotte Street Arts Centre and the Centre communautaire Sainte Anne.

Not the Toronto International Film Festival

Although it is a smaller film festival with 82 films being screened compared to the 312 film week-long extravaganza called the Toronto International Film Festival, the Silver Wave Film Festival is big enough to bring in directors, producers and other film industry professionals to town for the weekend to give presentations and workshops for budding film enthusiasts.

Local and International

Part of the goal of the Silver Wave Film Festival is provide a venue to showcase local films and talent. As usual, this year’s line-up features a large number of local and regional films with almost half of the screenings being from New Brunswick. However, there is also international flavour to the festival with several international films being screened including feature films from the UK, Mexico and the United States along with shorts and documentaries from other countries such as Germany.

One of the stand out events for me include the opening gala screening of the Moncton, New Brunswick shot Growing Op (trailer)which has received rave reviews. Another interesting showing will be Gruff and Ready: The Mazzuca Story which profiles the locally famous Mazzuca brothers. There are several other interesting shorts and features being screened throughout the weekend that I hope to catch.

Bigger and Better

It looks like an exciting festival line-up and it seems to keep getting better every year. It really is nice to have an opportunity to see something other than the multi-million dollar budget predictable ho-hum Hollywood movies. Looking forward to 2009′s Silver Wave line-up.

For quite a while now, it has been possible to use Google’s geocoding service which allows developers using the service to obtain a latitude / longitude pair for a given address. This service is quite useful when searching for specific locations such as stores, houses or other points of interest.

Enter reverse geocoding

Up until now, however there hasn’t been an easy way to determine what the address was for a particular point on a map. Google has recently unveiled a reverse geocoding service.

The GClientGeocoder.getLocations method can now take a GLatLng as a query parameter in which case it will perform a reverse geocoding and if possible return the address for the given location.

It will be interesting what kind of applications pop up which use the reverse geocoding functionality.

Video conferencing took another step with the first use of a virtual presence or “holographic” reporter on Election night on CNN.

Pulling off Virtual presence

The remote reporter, Jessica Yellin, was in Chicago’s Grant Park covering the scene as supporters waited for Barack Obama’s victory speech. After stepping into a specially engineered booth or “tent” Jessica’s “presence” was apparently beamed to CNN’s New York studio for a one on one chat with Wolf Blitzer.

The special booth was apparently equiped with 44 cameras which were shooting the remote reporter from all angles (notably her feet seemed to be clipped out). It appears that the stream of video images were then recomposed into a 3D model of the reporter which was then projected as a three-dimensional hologram in real time to studio in New York studio.

Bringing it home

I’m not sure what the perspective and experience was from either reporter’s perspective but as a viewer it came off as pretty convincing. Now I guess we’ll need to upgrade out new HD video conferencing unit to holographic conferencing devices. Can’t wait to see the budget for that upgrade.

More info at: USA Today

Some details are beginning to emerge about the next major release of Nokia’s Maemo platform, Maemo 5, which is being codenamed Fremantle. Although nothing is guaranteed until the bits ship, there appears to some fairly major new features coming with this release.

Among the new features

• HSPA / 3G support which will allow users to be always connected even when out of Wi-Fi range
• OpenGL ES which is a fairly powerful subset of the full OpenGL specification which has been designed explicitly for embedded systems
• OMAP3 support in order to take advantage of Texas Instruments’ latest processor designs and capabilities.
• Hi Definition Camera support
• A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and AVRCP (Audio/Video Remote Control Profile) for an improved Bluetooth interactions
• Adoption of recent Linux technologies such as Upstart, gUPnP, PulseAudio and OHM management deamon

In addition to a high level feature list, there is also a list of planned packages for the alpha version of Maemo 5 – Fremantle.

New Maemo, new tablets?

Judging from the feature list, it does appear that a new model of Nokia Internet tablets will be released in conjunction with Maemo 5 (Nokia N900 perhaps?).

Judging from the OMAP3 support to be included in Maemo 5, it is likely that the new N series tablet will include a new TI OMAP3 processor. Judging by Texas Instruments’ site, the new OMAP3 line should offer some significant improvements in power and capabilities. The OMAP3440 at the higher end of the processor line, embeds an Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX graphics core which supports OpenGL ES 2.0 in hardware. The OMAP3440 also includes an IVA 2+ accelerator which enables MPEG4, WMV9, RealVideo, H262 and H264 encode and decode at 720 x 480 at 30 frames per second. The OMAP can also support XGA (1024 x 768) resolution at  24 bits of colour (16M colours).

Added to a new processor, the new tablets will likely have a high resolution camera, improved Bluetooth (A2DP and AVRCP) and 3G support. I haven’t any other clues however to what other hardware changes might be coming down the line in the new tablet.

What is available?

Google has released the entire codebase for the Android SDK as the Android Open Source Project. From the bootloader (a minimal reference version unfortunately) and runtimes to the end user applications such as email, calendar and the voice dialer are available for download and use.

Unfortunately there is still only one hardware device capable of running Android but the HTC G1 (currently only available from T-Mobile) has demonstrated some of the capabilities and some of the promise of the Android platform.

Not completely open

The bootloader will most likely be customized for various phone providers. Some of the code will also be stored on the device ROM and will not be reprogrammable without reprogramming the ROM with some kind of jailbreak. Some argue that because of this, some argue that Android is not truly open source. The underlying code is available and open source and I would argue that this is a huge step in the right direction when compared to previously closed mobile platforms.