Palm, Microsoft, Verizon team up

Palm is moving to some direction that is not what I was expected. Is the software and not the hardware which make sense for me, if someone like WinCE so much, he/she could have bought a iPaq and not a Palm. If Treo selling good in the market, PalmOS could have diminish from the market slowly, then we will have less choice.

Ed Colligan(Palm), Bill Gates(Microsoft), Denny Strigl(Verizon)

Linux on PDA is still not popular, may be Nokia can do a better job than PalmOS.

Let see if WindowCE run better on Palm Treo than on iPaq H63xx, that could be interesting.

CMU Sphinx

I tried a voice recognize program which was written by one of my colleague, during university time, she can't remember what is the library that used in the program, I found out is Sphinx, an opensource project from CMU. The program was written in Visual Basic and running on Windows platform. It used some sampling data to convert the voice to text, it support English and Bahasa. Since the program more focus on Bahasa, is more accurate when use in Bahasa mode. Only certain words in the sampling database will be recognized, but is good enough, very impressive. The sampling data is quite big, about 150M. I told my colleague, there is a few area that we can apply the technology. I have a Sun server which do not have a console login, every time I need to telnet into the server to shutdown the system, may be I can use the sphinx as the interface to shutdown the server, by just saying, "Server shutdown!". How nice it will be! Another area that we can use it in our office is the PBX phone system, by integrated into the Asterisk. When anyone call in to our office, if they do not know a person's extention number, he can just say the name, then the system will connect to the person's extention automatically. Anyway, that's for fun and brain storm, no one is going to spend the time on doing it.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7

I have upgraded my firefox to 1.0.7. According to mozilla security web page, version 1.0.7 fix a list of vulnerabilities. Today a new exploits was found. There is a report from Synmantec says that, firefox browser is more vulnerable than IE, and for sure the debates goes on. Another report shows that the growing of firefox browser has slow down, which I think is normal. IE which still dominate about 80 to 90 percent of the browser market.

Palm ppp to os x

Spending few hours of trying and trying, finally I am able to connect my Palm PDA to the internet through OS X system, using the usb-serial cable. I follow the macoshints website, setup a pppd on os x, but it always give me a DNS error on palm. I miss out ms-dns option in the pppd script.

Later I try to connect ICQ and GoogleTalk using ICQ for palm and jabberpalm, but no luck. I can't connect using both of the palm client, is already 4am in the morning, so will try next time.

I am able to connect to the mobile version of yahoo mail. wap for yahoo. (Sony Ericsson T610 can direct connect to this yahoo wap site) google pda.

I should blog the method for palm connect to the internet through serial and pppd script, on both windows and os x platform.

Business oppotunities

This website (from korea) for small and medium enterprise, help you to match your business partner. They invite you to Korea, provide free accommodations of 3 days 2 night in Seoul, visit electronic show and meet your potential business partners in Korea. Register through email before 30 September, trip is at October.


ACM 2005

I get this website from ACM (ASEAN Communications and Multimedia) 2005.

Birth of pilot

Some history for Palm, not really a good article for me. Jeff Hawkins startup Palm Computing in 1992, is not easy for Jeff Hawkins and Palm Computing, before the palm device hit on the street. Financial support, hardware design, hand writing recognition software, and most important the operating system and the PIM software.

Japan's Access to acquire PalmSource

Oh! I miss out this important news. Access is a no name company (for many people), which create the very popular embedded netfront browser.

Good service

Since I can't sync my Palm's data through IntelliSync to Yahoo, but I can sync Avantgo using its client on the Palm, I suddenly think of FusionOne. FusionOne provide a service to sync the pda data to in the internet, I have stop using it since I can sync it to Yahoo. Is good enough to have it on Yahoo and my desktop.



Unfortunately it complains, client too old. I try to login to the website, it reply me, "account not active". I write a email to fusionone support, immediately I get an auto reply that my request will be process as soon as in between 24 hours.

Just a few hours later, I get a reply that fusionone has stop the free service, and my last sync of the data is year 2001, which is 4 years ago! This is what I call a good service, they still give customer support for a free service, and a service that they have stopped. For a good service like this, I don't really mind paying a small amount of money for it.

Where is my category?

I try to sync my Palm PDA data to Yahoo, using IntelliSync. I just want to sync my Palm's memos, so I disable all sync option except memos in Palm Desktop (v4.0), but the memos sync nothing to my palm desktop.

I try to install the version 3 which came with my Palm Vx, but it can't launch the old version of the Palm Desktop on my XP properly, so I have to use the version 4.

Since the Palm Desktop v4 can sync my address book, I want to give it a try, to sync the address book to Yahoo. I have done it before with IntelliSync and it works, but I have forgotten exactly which version.

This time I make a small mistake, after I have installed the IntelliSync it change my setting, enable all the sync option that I have already disable earlier. Worst thing is, it deleted the category setting of my expenses, and all records group as 'Unfiled'.

It happened before especially when I do the 1st sync on the new version of Palm Desktop. Last time it deleted my Address book's category, and now is Expenses. Too bad.

Avantblog

I found an website to blog through avantgo. I use it to write this blog using it.


Avantblog

Avantblog is Avantgo plus Blogger. Avantgo is an online and offline browser available on palm a WinCE PDA.

wAntAn productions

Jason told me he meet Jon in RMS talk. Jon is our ex-colleague, that I never keep contact for a long long time, seems like he work in Cyber Jaya after he left Tokuii, I am wandering which company in Cyber Jaya. DHL?

Jon

Backup the blog

Cassandrappg's blog is down because it was hacked. Xia Xue's account was hacked too. I think is time to make a backup of the blog.

Blogger don't provide a backup solution, but can follow the instruction here. It sound dangerous to me, I will only try when I am free.



If you miss the cassandra's blog, this girl play warcraft!

I found the interview in Taiwan, when she was invited by HiNet.

eBay to buy Skype

Finally the news is out, eBay announce to buy Skype for 2.6 Billion (USD), half in cash and half in stock. There will be another 1.5 billion from eBay, if Skype meet eBay's expectation in the future.

news from New York Times.

Three billion Skype

There are many romors around, eBay want to buy Skype for 3 billion. The exact number is not sure, but eBay is not the first company putting up the offer. Once heard Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Google, Yahoo and some other Telcom company. 3 billion is a lot of money, who know is reasonable?

Skype founded by Niklas Zennstrom and the others.

Aplix's JBlend

Which Java vitual machine on mobile phone? JBlend? There is a news here on Samsung to adopt Aplix's Java Execution Environment, JBlend. According to some information on the internet, JBlend is popular deploy in Asia market, their market should expand better when ARM (Jazelle) has team up with Aplix (JBlend). What J2ME virtual machine is used in other mobile phones?

Automake tutorial: xtris example

I write a few automake tutorial before, and this is just another one.

Normally I will write a hello world program as a sample for the automake tutorial, but hello world is just too simple for a automake tutorial, so I use xtris as an example.

What is xtris? xtris is a multi-player version of the classical game of Tetris. The program just base on Xlib and nothing else, most unix operating system have Xlib, so xtris can be compiled on most unix platform eg. Linux, Solaris.

There is a windows port by Vedran Vidovic.



xtris license under GPL, you can download the source code (version 1.15) from here.

Why xtris is good for an automake tutorial?
1. GPL. The program license under GPL, so I can just make modification on it.
2. Easy to compile. The program can be easily compile in major unix platform eg. Solaris, Linux, so less problem to solve for compilation, user can focus on automake itself.
3. xtris doesn't came with configuration script, you need to edit manually when you compile xtris on Solaris operating system.

Automake for xtris
xtris does not came with configure script. It is a very easy compile program, but you might need to make some modification to the Makefile, to make it compile on Solaris sytem.

xtris is a graphic base program written using X11 library and not depend on any other GUI toolkit. The X11 headers and libraries path for Linux and Solaris is different, Linux use /usr/X11R6 but Solaris (normally) located at /usr/openwin. Ya, Solaris use Open Window and not X-Windows.

Another problem came with socket command. On Solaris, need to link with the socket library, but on Linux is not necessary.

Some programs provide imake file to solve the X-Window library problems, I don't really like the imake. Some programs privide two Makefile, one for Linux and the other for Solaris, but the automake and autoconf script make the compilation in unix world much more easier.

Basic step for automake
1. make sure you have automake, autoconf, and m4.
2. use autoscan to generate configure.scan, and modified configure.scan to configure.in
3. aclocal and autconf
$ aclocal
$ autoconf
4. create Makefile.am
5. automake

That's it, you should have configure script now, and you can use the script to generate the Makefile:

$ ./configure

Let's start
You cane use autoscan to generate a configure.in template, or just create one manually. Different version of autoscan may create different configure.in template, the sample I give here base on old version, but should work.

1.
$ vi configure.in
# Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure.script
AC_INIT(xtris.c)
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(xtris, 0.99.0)

# Checks for programs
AC_PROG_CC

# check path and header
AC_PATH_XTRA

CFLAGS="$CFLAGS $X_CFLAGS"
LIBS="$LIBS $X_LIBS"

AC_CHECK_LIB([nsl], [inet_ntoa])
AC_CHECK_LIB([socket], [accept])

AC_OUTPUT(Makefile)

2. create Makefile.am
There binaries to be created, xtris, xtbot and xtserv.
xtris compiled from xtris.c
xtbot compiled from xtbot.c, xtbot.h, decide.c decide.h
xtserv compiled from xtserv.c

$ vi Makefile.am
# process this file with automake to produce Makefile.in

XTRIS_PROGS = xtris xtbot xtserv

bin_PROGRAMS = xtris xtbot xtserv

xtris_SOURCES = xtris.c
xtbot_SOURCES = xtbot.c xtbot.h decide.c decide.h
xtserv_SOURCES = xtserv.c

xtris_LDADD = -lX11
xtbot_LDADD = -lX11
xtserv_LDADD = -lX11

3. Create configure script
$ aclocal
$ autoconf
$ automake [--add-missing]
Automake need install-sh, missing and mkinstalldirs script, normally automake will make a link to these 3 files, but other system might not have these 3 script file for you compilation. So I remove these 3 links and copy it from the system. eg.
$ rm -f install-sh, missing, mkinstalldirs
$ cp -p /usr/local/share/automake{install-sh,missing,mkinstalldirs}.

Few other files like NEWS, AUTHORS could be missing complain by the system. I just create a file for the system to check
$ touch NEWS AUTHORS

4. Now you should have a configure script, which generate the Makefile
$ ./configure
$ make
==> generate xtris

Note:
Complain of VERSION redefined, I just modified:
$ vi xtris.c
#ifndef VERSION
#define VERSION "1.15"
#endif

5. package into tar.gz
$ make dist

Conclusion
This is a very simple makefile tutorial, my modification to the xtris is more than this. I move all the manual file to man subdirectory, add control for gcc and Sun Workshop C compiler, but I don't have any hosting area to upload my modified version of xtris.

Phil Katz and arc wars

There are many compression utility and format available, eg. zip, arj, lha, rar, Z(unix compress), gz, bz2. The most commonly seen now is zip (windows), gz or bz2 (for unix platform).

I read this interesting article name arc wars, SEA (System Enhancement Associates) sue PKWARE (PK is Phil Katz) for copied ARC's program code and violated on using the name ARC. Since Katz's code (from PKWARE) is much more faster than SEA's ARC program, SEA is not happy with it.

The result is obvious, costly legal suit hurt them both, financially and reputation. Phil Katz release a new compression format Zip, which was widely used until today.

Phil Katz died in year 2000 at age of 37.



link:
arc wars from hacker dictionary.
A story by Thom Henderson, of SEA company.
A smaller world.