The AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ audio formats

Nowadays everyone is buying a smartphone, or feature phone, whatever, you name it.

When I find friends talking about the memory space available on their mobiles and the MP3 thing, I always advise them to check if their phone can play the eAAC+.

I have hundreds of songs in my mobile today :)

Today the vast majority of good Nokia phones use it and I have explained it so many times that I always wanted to find a good (user) article about it. Here is the finding ;)

Sound start to music on mobiles

The Virus threat

That is why I like Symbian and to have PlatSec (platform security) in place.

Mobile viruses (in Portuguese).

Let us go to Singapore. Shall we?

In a few hours I will be departing to Singapore, such a great place to visit. I will be attending the next Forum Nokia Champion event, meeting great friends and getting to know some new faces, fantastic!!!

Everything is clean and safe, polite people, technology, good food. The best fact is that currency (Singapore dollar) is not that strong if compared to Brazilian real and it is a great place to buy new gadgets...oh my God, my credit card is going to have hard work.

What a nice trip :)

If you have never heard about Singapore, here is the entire profile.

About Singapore: A city-state situated at the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore has always been at the crossroads between the East and the West.

In this present age of globalisation and knowledge-based economy, Singapore is fast becoming a major hub for the Asian countries which are keen to tap the Republic's experience and knowledge of running one of the most successful economies in the world.

Singapore in figures:

• 1965 - The year when Singapore became an independent country and was officially known as the Republic of Singapore.
• 685.4 km2 - Total land area of Singapore
• 25ºC - 32ºC - Average temperature
• 4.35 million - Total population as in 2005, which comprises 3 major ethnic groups (Chinese: 75.6%, Malay: 13.6%, Indian: 8.7%) and other smaller ethnic groups (2.1%).
• 4 official languages - English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. English is the working language used in the administration and major institutions.
• 29,252 - Total number of graduates from the institutions of higher learning in 2003, of which 16,117 were from the polytechnics, 10,363 from the universities and 2,772 from the National Institute of Education.
• 4.25 million - Number of mobile phone users in 2005.
• 8.9 million - Number of tourists who visited Singapore in 2005.
• S$3.60 - Price of a Big Mac.
  

Uniquely Singapore (the best, and official, in my opinion)

Singapore (in Portuguese).

My hotel

Some friends - Mobile Monday Singapore

All right, here is one of my best friends - Bai Wansong from China.

Wibree forum merges with Bluetooth SIG

Wibree forum merges with Bluetooth SIG

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft has unveiled a new touch-sensitive coffee table-shaped computer called "Surface". In my opinion touch interfaces are the next big thing in mobile computing and as you know Microsoft is a real player on the technology market, so it is worth the read. Nice read ;)

Microsoft unveils table computer

China volumes

Read this article and you will understand the reasons why every big technology company in the world is considering China as crucial to their operations.

China Postel orders 20 million devices from Nokia (in Portuguese).

Military stuff

Since the teenager days when I was an electronic technician (yes, I have studied, designed and participatend in engineering projects applying both analog and digital circuits in the past, oops) I know that the cutting-edge and really hard components, harsh ones, are the ones used in military circuits and components. While this is not so directly related to mobile stuff, sometimes I think about the gadgets those guys are using today. Cyber soldiers are a reality nowadays...and their infrastructure is fantastic!

Bandwidth leap for British forces

This is what I really consider as mobility. I am wired...

Those guys are crazy, I would rather to be in Porto de Galinhas or Itacaré. I like beaches...and safety...no doubts :)

Highest mobile call climb begins

The new pick

Hello there,

Below is the new pick.

Although I am not a beginner mobile developer anymore I am buying two new books aimed at newbies but they seem to be quite interesting books anyway, that is why I am paying for them, of course ;)

The first one is Programming Mobile Devices: An Introduction for Practitioners by Tommi Mikkonen. What caught my eyes is that this book discusses some assumptions and conventions taken into consideration when defining the Java ME and Symbian C++ runtimes, the two technologies I am focusing on during the last couple of years.

The second one is S60 Programming - A Tutorial Guide by Forum Nokia Champion fellow Dr. Paul Coulton as it is about S60 programming focusing on GUIs and also the S60 3rd Edition version of S60. Quite cool!

Check the list yourself, now my library is really solid and complete. I am about to master that all :)

Symbian OS Platform Security
* Author: Craig Heath
* Published by Symbian Press
* Publication date: March 2006
* 250 pages
* ISBN 0-470-01882-8

Symbian OS Internals
* Author: Jane Sales
* Published by Symbian
* Publication date:October 2005
* 918 pages
* ISBN 0-470-02524-7

Smartphone Operating System Concepts with Symbian OS
* Author: Michael J. Jipping
* Published by Symbian
* Publication date: April 2007
* 336 pages
* ISBN-10: 0470034491

The Symbian OS Architecture Sourcebook
* Author: Ben Morris
* Published by Symbian
* Publication date: April 2007
* 640 pages
* ISBN 0470018460

S60 Programming - A Tutorial Guide
* Author: Paul Coulton, Reuben Edwards, with Helen Clemson
* Published by Symbian Press
* Publication date: February 2007
* 344 pages
* ISBN-13: 9780470027653

Programming Mobile Devices: An Introduction for Practitioners
* Author: Tommi Mikkonen
* Published by: John Wiley & Sons
* Published in: February 2007
* ISBN-10: 0470057386

Mobile adverstisement is the $ - Microsoft buys ScreenTonic

Mobile adverstisement is where the money is flowing according to Google. Microsoft is listening.

Microsoft buys ScreenTonic (in Portuguese).

Good friends around

During the last year I have been buying and reading some really interesting books, so far the list of strong stuff is below:

• Nokia Smartphone Hacks
• The Accredited Symbian Developer Primer
• S60 Smartphone Quality Assurance
• Symbian OS Explained
• Developing Software for Symbian OS
• How Smartphones Work
• Developing Series 60 Applications

Besides that great books, I am using a lot of cool articles and tutorials from Forum Nokia, Sony Ericsson Developer World and Symbian. Anyway, I think it is time to buy some new books :)

I will prepare my new list and I will be glad if someone can advise me if my new list really inclues good books. Please friends!

Global mobile phone growth slows

A market update, it seems Sony Ericsson has boosted its deployments and profits, let's see how Nokia is going to tackle that from this last report.

Global mobile phone growth slows

Samsung, Nokia partner on mobile TV

How interesting! Even mobile phone competitors are partnering to foster mobile TV.

Samsung, Nokia partner on mobile TV

SavaJe (and the Jasper S20) still breathing?

Great news, it seems that Sun Microsystems is going to acquire SavaJe and its CDC technology, including a nice implementation of JSR-209 - Advanced Graphics and User Interface Optional Package for the J2ME Platform.

Sun plans to purchase CDC device maker SavaJe

Sun acquires SavaJe intellectual property

Java Everywhere 2 - Sun Microsystems

What a cool video!

You can see some Nokia devices showing JME applications besides all other Java related stuff. Java technology offers a so complete choice that you can run it anywhere indeed.

Java Everywhere - Java Technology in Action

Tiny files set for a big future

Interesting article by BBC's Click Online staff, it talks about tiny file formats that are great advancements. Talks about DivX's approach, encoding and decoding and other interesting subjects.

Tiny files set for a big future

More about Nokia RDA Service

Daniel has written a very informative article about RDA, very nice! You can check it here.

S60 Smartphone Quality Assurance - now on my desk!

Great, S60 Smartphone Quality Assurance is now on my desk at last!!!

I received one copy of her book as a gift from the Forum Nokia Champion program.

I've just skimmed through the book and it's simply amazing, it has a lot of useful information I've never seen anywhere before and, believe me, I have a lot of mobile related books.

Prior to that all, I had listened the Voice of S60 interview with Saila and got to know that she was a senior manager at Nokia. Afterwards I had the opportunity to know Saila in person during the Forum Nokia Tech Days Sao Paolo as Srinkanth has introduced us (me and Luis) to her during the event. She is very polite and even friendly person and now that I got to know her profile and even knowledge (by checking the book table of contents) I am impressed.

One thing that's really interesting and cool about the book and Saila is that, although she's a manager, She is a very technical person with amazing technical skills, I am very, very impressed by her book's content. It seems that being a manager at Nokia also means having excellent technical skills and not just business related ones, very cool indeed.

I am starting to read the book now and I will post a review soon so stay tuned ;)

Nokia Siemens Networks starts its operations

Now it's official, the new company is now operating and announces vision of 5 billion people connected by 2015!

Check their brand new web site - Nokia Siemens Networks

Deepfish browser - early stages

The cool thing about technology is that competition may be the fiercest in the market. Take Nokia for example, it's the leader for me and it will be for a long time as it also receives some cool new ideas from its competitors like the hyped-still-to-the-market iPhone and now this cool Deepfish browser from Microsoft.

But please forgive me, the S60 OSS browser (a.ka. Nokia Web Browser and also S60WebKit) is the browser for the decade in my opinion (I doubt a better browser by 2010), what's your opinion???

Anyway, check some also cool stuff below.

More Fudge from Microsoft Live.com [perhaps playing catch up]

"As a technology preview, Deepfish is early in its development cycle
(still a few releases from beta quality). As a result some features are
not implemented or are only partially implemented. Currently, the
technology preview does not support ActiveX controls, AJAX, cookies,
Javascript, and HTTP POST." - meaning it does bugger all

http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/exclusive-video-new-mobile-web-browser--deep
fish/

http://labs.live.com/Deepfish/