Although only a month old, TechNation is a regular source of my daily startup news intake. Their Australian focus is especially refreshing; the start up and innovation community is lively in Australia, and this site covers it.

If you’re looking for a few good articles to read, I recommend starting with these:

• Jason Calacanis’ Tips For Aussie Startup Success
• Summary of Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Talk at OpenCoffee This Morning
• Disappointment Imminent for Aussie 3G iPhone Users?

We’ve started working on a number of features and improvements to the site, including more Slide Show customizations and better file upload.

We’re also excitedly working on the next customizable app scheduled for Gleemy. It’s a step up from Slide Shows. With it you’ll be able to make more personal, rich, and interactive mobile applications - all from our web based authoring tools.

…back to the code!

My favourite quotes from this SMH article:

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista.

“I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers,” [Jon] Shirley wrote to Ballmer.

Other emails from various Microsoft executives show that even they struggled to work out what “Vista Capable” and “Vista Ready” meant when buying a new PC.

Mike talked to us about Amazon Web Services and took questions from the group.

I gave Mike feedback on my experience with EC2. In the early days we used EC2 for hosting Gleemy, and it was great. We could start and stop a few Linux boxes as needed and we only paid for the time we used. For a small startup, that’s good news. When Flexiscale launched however, we couldn’t help but switch to it. I explained why to Mike:

• The biggest point of pain with EC2 is the risk of losing data. When an EC2 instance terminates or crashes, the disk is erased and any data you haven’t stored elsewhere is lost. Typically, you’d need to use a redundant server or periodically backup your data to S3. On Flexiscale, your virtual hard disk is stored on a SAN. This means your data persists after your instance goes down. Moreover, if a disk on the SAN goes down, it can be swapped for a new one without the need to power down your instance (and without you even knowing about it.) Mike told us this is a common complaint, and to expect EC2 to change accordingly sometime soon.
• Each time you start an EC2 instance, you are given a different public IP address. You need to use a system like dyndns for maintaining a domain name. Flexiscale gives you a static IP address which you don’t have to worry about changing.
• On Flexiscale, you can vary the parameters of your virtual host (memory configuration, hard disk size, OS) and pay accordingly. With EC2, you choose from one of 3 pre-configured instances.

Keep in mind, EC2 absolutely excels with distributed computing applications. Read their blog for some pretty amazing stories.

In this post, I want to show off 3 new features.

1. New mobile Slide Show app

The J2ME Slide Show application is built in to each Slide Show made by our users.

Here’s what’s new:

• When you view a picture that doesn’t match the orientation of your phone, an arrow appears to indicate which way you should turn your handset to see it the right way up. Previously, the picture would display the right way up always, but the sides of the picture would be cut off - not good when there’s text involved.

Good	Not good

• The ‘Share’ feature works better. You can now send a link to your Slide Show to multiple contacts on a single screen. Sending the SMS no longer blocks the UI, but shows a funky progress animation instead.

2. New Application Profile Page

There are two parts to Gleemy - making and finding Slide Shows (and soon, other types of apps) on your PC; and downloading apps to your phone.

The Application Profile page has been improved. Here’s a screenshot:

On the left is an emulator which you can fully interact with, to preview the application before downloading. On the right is a QR code which will take you to the mobile download page for the app. I’m delighted to see QR codes finally present in Gleemy, given how much I’ve been raving on about them lately!

3. New mobile portal (http://m.gleemy.com)

Even though Gleemy is in private BETA, you don’t need to sign up to visit the mobile portal and download Slide Shows made by the community. The site has been improved behind the scenes with more compliant XHTML. We’ve tried to make the ads (served by AdMob) as unobtrusive as possible. Device detection is currently provided by the DetectRight web services API.

…and tons more minor improvements like higher quality thumbnails and images, faster download times, and more! Not interesting enough to describe, but still good features to have implemented.

If you haven’t signed up already, why not try using Gleemy? We now have capacity for more accounts. Simply head to gleemy.com and request an invite.

Like everyone else though, I’ve been wow’ed by the Sony Ericsson X1.

The multiple home screens feature is a neat evolution of what’s available now. The UI is indeed sexy, a welcome departure from your average Windows Mobile device.

The clip below summarizes the device pretty well :

Device detection is something we tried to tackle early on. Our first approach was to use the open source effort WURFL. Our use of WURFL didn’t last long when we noticed data for a few popular handsets was either incomplete or just wrong. (Note: this was almost a year ago, so things may have improved.)

In the end, we chose to prompt the user to select their device from a list when downloading. It’s an extra step, but it still allows us to deliver applications optimized for whichever handset you use.

Our evaluation of DetectRight is underway, and I thought I’d share our experiences.

DetectRight offers both php and SOAP APIs. Since Gleemy is written with Java on the server side, we started with the SOAP API.

To consume a web service with Java, you start by generating a client stub from the WSDL file describing the web service.

The Java API for Web Services sounded like a good place to start, but alas no luck. (What does “[ERROR] undefined simple or complex type 'SOAP-ENC:Array'” mean?)

WSDL2Java (part of the Apache Web Services project) turned out to be a lot friendlier. Running:

java -cp axis.jar;commons-discovery.jar;commons-logging.jar;jaxrpc.jar;saaj.jar;wsdl4j.jar org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java http://www.mpwservices.net/MPWServices/soap.php?wsdl

produces a Java callable interface to the DetectRight web service, in the form of 5 java files. Awesome. Here are a few good methods from the stub:

public Hashtable getProfile(

String licence,

String manufacturer,

String model,

String schemaName

)

public Hashtable getProfileFromUA(

String licence,

String HTTPUserAgent,

String HTTPAccept

)

public Hashtable getProfileFromHeaders(

String licence,

Hashtable serverVars

)

This enables you to do things like:

profile = getProfile(myLicenseKey, userAgentString, null);

where profile is a hash table containing all known properties of the client device. Each call is marshaled across the Internet to the DetectRight servers.

You can print the profile like this:

private static void dumpHashtable(Hashtable h)
{
String[] keys = h.getKeys();
String[] values = h.getValues();
int i;

System.out.println(keys.length + " keys, " + values.length + " values");
for (i = 0; i < keys.length; i++)
{
System.out.println(keys[i] + ": " + values[i]);
}
}


I tested with popular user agents we’ve seen, and every time the API worked as expected.

We’re still playing with it. As part of any evaluation, you need to consider things like cost (DetectRight is a commercial service), license terms, level of service and so on.

I recommend you install a QR reader (unless your phone ships with one.)

This Nokia site lists a few reader applications - I tried to install each one though I was only able to test Kaywa reader and I-nigma reader with the handsets I have. Your mileage may vary depending on your handset.

I tried Kaywa reader and I-nigma reader on both S40 and S60 handsets. They work much the same, they only differ in that Kaywa reader shows an interstitial page with “Selected KAYWA mobile content” before taking you to your destination.

A significant difference between the S40 and S60 versions of both readers is that you only need to wave the phone in front of the code on an S60 (Symbian) device. On an S40 (Java) device you need to more carefully frame the code with the phone’s camera, then press a button and wait a few seconds for the picture to be decoded.

Why the difference?

Both Java applications are unsigned; therefore they have restricted access to features like acquiring pictures with the camera. The phone asks your permission by showing a prompt before passing the picture to the application.

Java applications execute much more slowly than native Symbian applications. With Java, I can imagine the camera API returns a JPG, the Java application retrieves the pixel data (the JPG data is decoded) then the application iterates multiple times over the array of pixels to decode the QR code. Array accesses are slow in Java as the virtual machine checks each access for out of bounds conditions.

Don’t let that deter you, if you haven’t already go ahead and install a reader.

Well, we did that, so last night I went along.

Gary Chan from Forum Nokia spoke first about Web 2.0 on the mobile, Web Run Time, Forum Nokia and Mosh.

My chief take away from his talk is on the direction Mosh is taking. Mosh will move towards connecting the long tail of developers with the markeplace by ad supporting developers’ content and sharing the ad revenue.

This probably doesn’t mean much to most people, but if you independently write mobile apps, with Mosh you at least have a chance of making some money. (Either that, or you can develop for Android to be in for a share of the cool $10M.)

The following panel discussion was about Mobile 2.0, and has been blogged here and here.

While taking time out, Eugene and I still wanted to keep an eye on the Gleemy server logs, and so before leaving for Melbourne I configured my Nokia N800 Internet tablet for the task.

Firstly, I upgraded my data plan with Three from $5 for 10Mb/Month to $12 for 100MB/Month. Pairing the N800 with my 6288 for an Internet connection Just Works.

I set up secure SMTP for sending mail and installed ssh for access to a shell on the Gleemy server.

Finally, I wrote a few shell scripts to notify us of important events on the server, which were delivered promptly to my N800, paired with the 6288 and usually kept in my pocket.

This set up worked great for monitoring the server and writing short emails. A bluetooth keyboard (or even, gasp, a laptop computer) would still be needed for non-trivial development, or writing long emails.

After arriving home, my use for the N800 wasn’t critical and so I promptly upgraded to OS2008. Man, is this thing slick. The UI is so much faster and snappier, the browser rocks, the on-screen keyboard feels so much better and affords fewer mistakes.

OS2007 was great last year, but was made crappy by OS2008 - a great example of Guy Kawasaki’s “Don’t worry be crappy” principle.

An innovator doesn’t worry about shipping an innovative product with elements of crappiness if it’s truly innovative. The first permutation of a innovation is seldom perfect–Macintosh, for example, didn’t have software (thanks to me), a hard disk (it wouldn’t matter with no software anyway), slots, and color. If a company waits–for example, the engineers convince management to add more features–until everything is perfect, it will never ship, and the market will pass it by.

Oh, and here’s a Gleemy Slide Show I made of a photo walk I took in Melbourne. Most of these were taken with a Nokia 6120 Classic. You can download it straight to your mobile by visiting http://gleemy.com/zqy8 with your phone - or - Preview on your PC with mpowerplayer. Or do both 23/2/08 UPDATE: Check out the new Slide Show Profile page to preview it on your PC: http://gleemy.com/#profile/0gva

The experience for most users has been glitch free so far. The biggest issue we found (and fixed!) was that some email wasn’t being sent properly. Mainly invite emails were affected by this one.

We’re now making room for more accounts - if you want to play with a new way of making Slide Shows for your mobile, request an invite at gleemy.com

We hope those who sign up will find the site fun - by both making Slide Shows and downloading Slide Shows made by others.

After creating your account, you’ll notice the public content is presently scarce. That’s where I hope you’ll come in. I hope you won’t be shy creating public Slide Shows - of wacky holidays, people you admire, places you love, and everything fun.

For those pictures that are more personal, you can keep your Slide Show from appearing on the Gleemy Most Popular - useful for sending pictures of family and friends.

Haven’t signed up yet? Wondering what the fuss is about?

If the idea of your own pictures neatly packaged in a mobile Java app; with a title menu, widescreen viewing support, and phone-to-phone sharing sounds good to you, then head on over to http://gleemy.com and sign up for an invite code.

Let us know how you go

This is a BETA and we’ll be doing our best to fix the issues as they come up. Let us know how you go, email any thoughts you have to feedback@gleemy.com.

How many models will they release in 2009?

Mobile devices will become a dominant computing platform; but instead of simply taking the word of market reports, or my word, I’d like to take you back in time to shed some light on the future.

Just over a few decades ago, the world’s computing was largely provided by mainframe computers - the sort that look like white goods, only they weren’t white and you needed so many that they filled a whole room. By today’s standards, there weren’t too many mainframes about, probably because they cost so much and were so big.

Technology advanced, and for a lot less, you could buy a mini computer. Mini computers were a lot like mainframes except they were a lot smaller and a lot cheaper. You could afford to put one in every department in the university, in each branch of the bank, in each regional office in the company. More mini computers than mainframes were sold and I hear the 70s was a great time to be in the minicomputer business.

Mini computers were soon followed by the introduction of the personal computer, by companies like Apple and IBM. Being so small and so cheap, every household could afford one, and companies could afford to put one on the desk of every employee. Personal computers were everywhere, and all this cheap computing power meant mini computers were less important. Consequently, fewer and fewer mini computers were sold (until finally, none were sold.)

PCs are great, but you can’t take them with you. You can’t take them to your lecture, or away from the office to work at home. Maybe it’s for these reasons that notebooks outsell desktop PCs.

In many ways mobile devices address the shortcomings of notebooks. Mobile devices fit in your pocket and are always on. You don’t need to carry your laptop everywhere to reach the web and email. Moreover, they make it more convenient to contact other people - there’s a phone built in!

Mobile devices are smaller and cheaper than notebooks. Just like notebooks influenced PCs (they outsell PCs) and PCs influenced mini computers (mini computers are dead) mobile devices will have an appreciable impact on notebooks and PCs in the years ahead.

Maybe that’s why I’m not surprised by the forecast that the size and growth of the smartphone market will exceed the notebook market for the next five years.

Kudos goes to the Frank Team for teaching this at their ACTIVATE workshop.

Begin by getting your team together to brainstorm all the tasks that lie ahead - shout them out as you think of them and write each task on its own card. It doesn’t matter what order you write them down, what matters is that you think of as many tasks as you can.

For instance your list might start like this: register the company, design the logo, obtain legal advice, set up the website, talk to potential customers to validate the idea, write a customer support policy etc.

When you’re done, write each milestone below on a separate card. (Your list of milestones might vary.)

1. Idea
2. Research
3. Resources
4. Design
5. Develop
6. Register
7. Project
8. Service
9. Make
10. Sell
11. Growth

Line the milestone cards across the top of a table/white board/wall, and place the task cards underneath the most suitable milestone. For extra points, try to logically order the tasks underneath each milestone. Having everyone in a group agree in this step is easier said than done!

There you have it. You now have a visual plan that outlines the milestones ahead and a the tasks needed to reach each milestone.

So, what is Gleemy?

Gleemy is an easy way to create, share, and find interactive media for mobile phones. Gleemy offers you online tools to customize and create your own unique piece of interactive media. We’ve made it easy for you to share your creations with friends. Browsing and installing content made by others is pretty simple too.

We’ll be blogging a lot more about Gleemy in the coming weeks, especially as the BETA approaches. Aside from Gleemy talk, expect us to chime in on mobile & web happenings, J2ME development, entrepreneurship, and anything else that blips the radar.