Symbian Training

this last week I had my first contact with the Symbian OS, the most used operating system for 3G mobile phones. I was in Campina Grande for a basics course of Symbian.

at first it seems very confusing and difficult to develop applications for the Symbian OS, the learning curve is high, but for those who have a solid c++ background it is easier to understand the variations of different patterns that are embedded in this operating system focusing on a restricted memory and processing platforms.

the main differences to normal c++ programming are handling exceptions with trap/leave (you have tu use a cleanup stack) and descpritors, the mechanism for using strings, (this is what I found most complicated at first glance, you have too much options to do basically simple operations: handle strings).

but even the descriptors have good points:
- you can treat text and binaries in the same structure (no needs for strxxx and memxxx functions);
- the descriptors have the maximum size and length inside the structure, so strings are not terminated with '\0' anymore. this is more secure as it prevents buffer overflows.

besides that, the application framework is based on the MVC (model-viewer-controller) architecture and for this reason it creates 5 .cpp files for a simple hello world example :P

my personal comment is that developing for the Symbian OS is not that much difficult or different from standard c++ after a little of sought, but it is not simple either for application developers that are beginning and don't have much experience with c/c++. Even though if you are interested in developing applications for mobile, it is worth to take an in-depth look in Symbian, which is the market leader in a robust embedded environment for diverse applications where people are not used to crashes and blue screens.


below are some very good references for symbian, including a whole blog only for descriptors:
www.symbian.com
my-symbian.com
www.descriptors.blogspot.com
www.newlc.com

Aniversário Daniel Coelho

Oi, aqui vão algumas fotos da festa de Daniel Coelho no último sábado.

aqui a foto do aniverariante, não sei se eu já tinha bebido demais...
mas não consegui enquadrar a família reunida (daniel é o q aparece pela metade na esquerda)

fazia tempo q o pessoal não se reunia, mas parecia q era uma festa do colégio cbv e q nada tinha mudado e acho q não mudou mesmo.

DVB-H in Brazil

Since November 1st 2005 the INdT´s
DVB-H Lab is operational transmitting live tv over the air!!!
This is the first transmission of this new mobile digital TV standard in latin america.
It is really cool to see the mobile TV in action in what is going to be the future "cell phone" devices, if we can still call these gadgets a cell-phone...
look at this just released multimedia phone from Nokia, the N92 is the first phone to have an integrated DVB-H receiver for the mobile tv + wi-fi + bluetooth + IR + USB2.0 + memory slot for 2GB + 2MPixel Camera.

these 2 pictures are from this new device, in the left one is watching the Brazilian soccer team playing (no, unfortunately this is not in my hands :) and the other picture (right) is the same phone unfolded.

the future is near

Hall is back!

Hall is the short for Hallyson. He just arrived yesterday from a 1,5 week trip to Finland, where he had the opportunity to participate in a DVB-H course by Nokia.

He brought us some nice toys direct from Finland!

Alex happy with the new 7710

The phone in the picture, that Alex is holding, is the Nokia 7710. Now we have 2 of them (the picture was taken by the other 7710)! This phone has a dvb-h receiver on the backcover and is a full featured mobile tv.

soon we will be deploying our mobile tv lab and the 7710 will receive the content live, I can't wait anymore. This will be the first mobile tv lab in Brazil and probably in South America, there are few pilots and test beds of this new technology around the world.

Now we are very excited to start playing with our new toys in action!

Kart

here is one late post about our last Kart race! It was really amazing, in the begining I was a little afraid, but that feeling changed fast and suddenly I was trying to do my best, but it was a little bit late :) I finished in the 6th place out of 8. Luckunko was the big winner!

now we are organizing the INdT World Kart Championship, with 12 races and a big prize (we just don´t know what)



INdT pilots (from left to right): Alexsandro, Master Luckunko, Leo, Andre, Coxinha, Cidorvan, Edu e Osvaldo

INdT

INdT is the Nokia Institute of Technology a non profit research organization sponsored by Nokia. This is the place were I am currently working and I am very proud and happy of being part of this team!

We are the Open Source Mobile Technology Center, located in Recife, northeast of Brazil, and I am part of the Digital TV Group.

Beside that I am finishing my Masters Degree in Computer Science in the Center of Informatics (CIn) of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). My research is about Middleware for Mobile TV and Pervasive Systems.

Until I finish my thesis I will not have much social life and will have to spent my weekends in front of my computer...hopefully it will not last forever :)

Imagine Cup 2005

I have created a blog specially for my last trip! It was my first time in Japan, 1 month ago, where I participated in a programming contest, the Imagine Cup World Finals 2005. The brazilian team, which I was part of, in the Software Design Category conquered the 4th place! An amazing experience, for meeting so many different people in a completely different culture.

If you are curious, take a look in the link below...
www.thespoke.net/MyBlog/sobral/MyBlog.aspx

Hello World!

Hi,

so finally I have a blog, and what?!?!
my little sister, 9 years old, would know better about
what to write here now

anyway I will give it a try!
let's talk about bits, notes and fun :)

just passing by to welcome everybody!

hope you enjoy, cheers