I installed the Nokia Developers Suite for J2ME today and was able to get the Nokia Series 60 Emulator up and running a MIDlet I’ve been working on for the last couple weeks, which you can see at the right. The Series 60 SDK, still in beta (version .3 as I understand it) supports both Windows & Linux and can integrate with Borland JBuilder Mobile Edition, Sun ONE Studio and the Sun J2ME Wireless Toolkit, which I’m using.

I haven’t been able to hack with the Nokia UI package yet, but apparently it gives you the ability to control lighting and vibration from the com.nokia.mid.ui package… Lots of MIDP 2.0 specific stuff, which doesn’t help me as I’m using the 3650 (which is stuck on MIDP 1.0). I don’t see anything about being able to control the camera (although I guess that’s specific to the phone and not Series 60). More later on the toolkit.

One of the difficulties with J2ME is that while a J2ME app will hypothetically run on almost any J2ME compatible device, not all devices map the same button to the same Command. For instance, as I’ve been working on this app, I’ll create 2 buttons. On the WTK Emulator, I’ll see the two buttons next to each other, when I deploy the same app to my phone via Bluetooth, I get a menu selection with 2 options. In the listening I’ve done on KVM-Interest, it looks like can do one of three things: a) develop your application for a specific phone, b) don’t worry about where the buttons show up on each device, or c) develop your own custom UI components, rather than using the MIDP 1.0 UI components. I need to download and use more MIDP apps to find out what the majority of people do, although I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say!

Sony released the final version of their SDK for J2ME and guidelines for Java developers.

Russ mentioned a couple weeks ago that the 3650 supports Sun’s Media API; apparently the T610 supports a subset of it: “The Mobile Media API (MMAPI) extends the functionality of the J2ME platform by providing audio, video and other time-based multimedia support to resource-constrained devices. As a simple and lightweight optional package, it allows Java developers to gain access to native multimedia services available on a given device. The T610 supports a subset of the MMAPI. The T610 MMAPI implementation allows the developer to access the audio functionality on the device. In particular, the T610 implementation provides support for ToneGeneration, IMelody, AMR and MIDI audio formats. The T610 MMAPI implementation does not support any video formats.“

At Javaworld.com, Let the mobile games begin: “… a mobile driving-directions example to discuss how the Java and .Net platforms work together from end to end with the help of XML Web services.” The author (Michael Yuan) also has a list of very interesting articles he’s written for various publications.

I got my Bluetooth USB adapter in the mail today from Amazon. Took a couple installs to get it working, but now, instead of incurring large data fees from AT&T to get the pics off my 3650, I can just use Bluetooth to transfer them to my notebook.

By the way, May is when it finally gets green and the flowers show their faces in New England.

Sooner or later I’d like to begin writing some easy apps for the 3650 I just bought. I’m looking for J2ME resources specific to Nokia and came across a couple tonigh:

Developer Discussion Boards

Nokia Java/J2ME Tools

Nokia Tools and SDKs

Wireless Web Services: A great article that introduces the use of kXML-RPC in lieu of using SOAP on a J2ME device.

Looks like there isn’t a handset emulator for the 3650 on the Nokia site,

AT&T has their own program, called the “Data Developer Program“, which is absolutely impossible to register for… I’ve tried about 10 different username combinations and passwords… none of which work.. I’m thinking they’re having major issues with the application, how frustrating. I’m currently getting the following error when trying to login:

Please correct the following or provide more information
— Unable to process your login attempt at this time

Helpful, isn’t it?

Russ reviews a J2ME blogging app for the 3650: BlogPlanet Rules: J2ME Blogging MIDlet for 3650s, excerpt:

“This is a J2ME app, but the 3650 supports Sun’s Media API (as well as the Messaging API) so it allows you to turn on the camera and save the pic. This is unique among camera phones right now and is just another reason that the 3650 is so far ahead of every other device out there. The data that the picture saves, however, is NOT saved outside the J2ME sandbox, so you can’t access the phone’s photo album, for example, but for snapping shots for moblogging, it works.“

I mentioned yesterday that the wife let me get the Nokia 3650. AT&T Fedexed it overnight to me, so I got it on Tuesday… I struggled to get mMode mail working (I still haven’t), but I was able to get my personal mail working very quickly… sending pics from the phone is even easier.

Anyway, Russ quotes PDABuyersGuide.com today, which mentions (in no uncertain terms) that the 3650 features were well known by a certain Palm exec. For good reason! The 3650 is a phone and pda and camera and video recorder with bluetooth… but a phone first, unlike anything that will ever come out of Palm (because Palm makes PDA’s first and phones second).

The wife let me get one of these. I’m pretty excited about it…

Russell posted an extra long description of why he wants the Nokia 3650 on Mobitopia. This phone seems to be the next ‘big one’, Jeremy Allaire’s got one as well… It’s got everything my phone has, plus video recording, plus camera, plus memory expandability, plus Java MIDP 1.0, plus Symbian. By the way, my phone, the Sony Ericsson T68i, don’t bother, it gets absolutely horrible reception (either that or T-Mobile sucks). It drops just about every call I’m on, I frequently miss calls and I frequently have no service. Not happy about that at all. Maybe I can convince the wife that I need a 3650 as well.

In some sense I guess I’m getting what I deserve: I dropped Sprint after 2.5 years of great service for a phone that had all the gizmos, only to find out that the one thing I really want to do on the phone is uh… make phone calls.

Ole Bluetooth, King Harald, Would’ve Loved This : “I am in Levi, Finland, at a meeting where we are talking and playing and working wireless. I pull out my laptop, fire up the bluetooth manager to connect with my cell phone to dial up a connection and … whoa … is this slooooow … where *did* the connection go … and just when I am about to give up I see hundreds of bluetooth devices on my laptop’s bluetooth manager! Headsets, phones, devices, all revealing themselves in low security mode.” [via boingboing.net]