Mobile Programming Pit Stop

Kirodict – a Compact, Lightweight JavaME mobile dictionary

Finally after spending a couple months working on this on and off personal project, I decided to release the final version of Kirodict – a lightweight mobile dictionary.

As it name implies, Kirodict was designed to be small in size while maintaining its functionality as a fully fledge dictionary for mobile and embedded device. Kirodict acts as a front-end to an RFC2229 (dict.org) compatible server which it obtain the word definition from.

Its small and compact size as well as its portability makes it an attractive application to be downloaded and installed on your mobile phone. Kirodict requires mobile phones with at least these feature :

• MIDP 2.0 /CLDC 1.0 compatible phones
• 128kB of free storage space
• Phone with network connection (3G, GPRS, Wifi, wimax)

With lower requirements, it can be installed on a lower end phone without much problem. Kirodict does not use additional storage space as it does not cache its results.

Kirodict can be downloaded from Kirodict Google Code project website and it is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0

How to get Phone IMEI number with J2ME / JavaME

International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is used to identify valid devices connected to GSM and UMTS network. This number can be accessed from a mobile phone by dialing *#06# on the keypad. IMEI is commonly use by software developers as part of software protection scheme to prevent it from being pirated.

JavaME developers however suffers from a drawback because MIDP/CLDC specification does not include an API to obtain IMEI from mobile devices. However there are few phone manufacturers included this functionality through System.getPropery() calls.

Here's how to get IMEI number from mobile devices of different manufacturers
Nokia

Note ; Requires signed midlet. S60 3rd edition device does not requires signing for this to work.

Sony-Ericsson

Note ; might not work on all model, YMMV

Motorola

Samsung

Siemens

Hopefully this information can aid you in your J2ME programming projects.

Quick Tip :
It's quite hard to determine the phone model/manufacturer well ahead beforehand. For a more robust solution, I suggest that you combine the above call with System.getProperty("microedition.platform").

[tags]j2me,javame,mobile,opensource,imei,nokia,sony ericsson,samsung,motorola[/tags]

Foundation Platform: Linux Mobile answer to Sun’s JavaME (J2ME)

Watch out! Because Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone has formed LiMo Foundation which aims to promote Foundation Platform, a Linux-based, open mobile communication device software platform.

The aim of Foundation Platform is similar to Sun JavaME in which it provides a well defined architecture and frameworks that enable software interoperability across Linux mobile devices.

The move probably would not be able to compete JavaME mobile devices directly as the Foundation Profile is only implemented on Linux-based mobile phone.

However the API standardization certainly looks attractive when compared with other proprietary system implementation such as Symbian OS and Windows Mobile based operating system which probably have a much higher licensing fee imposed to mobile phone makers.

[tags]linux, smartphone, pda, j2me, javame, symbian[/tags]

Makes your Wordpress Pocket PC PDA-friendly

Good news to those who wants to make their Wordpress blog PDA friendly. Now you can do just that without relying on 3rd party services. All you need to do is download this remarkable plugin Wordpress PDA and activate it on your Wordpress installation.

Your blog will be PDA/smartphone friendly as it will display a appropriate page when a mobile device accesses it. The plugin is smart enough to autodetect popular PDA/handheld device in to determine which page it should serve the clients.

Among popular handheld devices supported by Wordpress PDA are :

• Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Symbian-OS phone
• Sony PSP, Palm, Handspring,Pocket PC
• ...and browsers containing WAP in their using agents

I've already installed Wordpress PDA for this blog, give it a try :)

[tags]mobile,palm, microsoft, smartphone, handhelds, ipod, windows, cellphones, treo, wordpress, symbian, nokia, sonyericsson,motorola,pocket pc[/tags]

Google Talk Mobile Phone Client – MGTalk 0.2.2

MGtalk is for those who want to stay online with their friend that uses Google Talk network. The client itself require phone that supports Java (tm) application with MIDP 2.0 capabilities, and it is relatively small in size (53KB).

I've compiled MGtalk specially for my readers that include minor modifications from the standard MGtalk. The minor modifications are :

• Removed various System.out (used for debugging ?)
• Add application icon
• Obfuscate jar file to reduce size
• Use alternative authentication server by default
• Recompress the jar file to save space

Download MGTalk :

• MGTalk.jar [53KB]
• MGTalk.jad
• MGTalk-mod.zip (source code)

You can visit http://mgtalk.sourceforge.net for the original MGTalk client, written by vorobev
[tags]nokia,mobile,google talk,mgtalk,jabber, j2me, midp, javame, google talk client,gtalk,jabber client,mobile messenger,messenger[/tags]