Opera Mobile 9.5 Beta

Opera have just released a Beta of their long-awaited Opera Mobile browser, version 9.5.

Welcome

Belated greetings to this blog!

For those of you wondering what this is all about, it's intended simply as a way of sharing links to articles, news, reviews, software, thoughts, musings etc concerning mobile and handheld computing. Contributors all belong to the Oxford Uni Computing Services Mobile Special Interest Group and are free to post descriptions as short or as long as they like. (with or without smileys :-)

You can expect posts on an eclectic mix of items covering hardware, operating systems, applications, tweaks etc.

iPhone 3G Unleashed, Unlocked

Version 2 of the iPhone's firmware, supporting the new 3G, Activesync and App Store, has already been hacked to support multiple operators.

Ubiquitous Computing Project at Oxford

Shaping an International Grand Challenge Community for Ubiquitous Computing is an 18 month project involving a number of universities in which "we aim to lay the foundation required to understand, design and realize future large scale Ubiquitous Computing arrangements that will be embedded in the world we inhabit and shape the ways in which we all live." Oxford's involvement is under the direction of Prof. Marta Kwiatkowska.

Artificial Intelligence Used To Optimise Mobile Applications

" IBM (NYSE: IBM) is announcing a collaboration with European Union partners at the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Summit to develop new software that will improve performance and drastically cut down time-to-market of mobile web applications. Specifically, partners of the Milepost project -- (MachIne Learning for Embedded PrOgramS opTimization)-- are developing advanced artificial intelligence technology that automatically learns how to best optimize newly developed programs for embedded processors in mobile devices. "

Mobile Eats Credit Card

"Whipping out your mobile phone to pay for a sandwich at lunchtime could soon become a reality. The global trade body for the mobile industry and a European monetary organisation have signed a pact to speed up the deployment of handset payment services in Europe.

...

In Japan, mobile-phone based payments are already thriving. So much so that Japanese carrier KDDI and the Bank of Tokyo recently jointly created a bank specifically designed to create accounts for anyone using cashless-enabled mobile phones."

OpenMoko Actually Releases a Phone

Open source mobile phone project Open Moko has finally released some hardware.

Daily firmware builds here.

Project repository here.

iPhone Keyboard 'Misogynistic'

Michelle Quinn of the LA Times blogs on the bitter choice between long fingernails and the iPhone.

Bruce Perens Discusses Open Source on Mobiles

"A future of locked-down embedded devices wouldn't leave much room for Free Software to run, especially software other than applications, like the Linux kernel. Thus, the provisions in GPL3 that require a path to change the software in hardware are important. But how does one do DRM, SIM locking, and protect critical copyrighted property in that context?.."

Symbian to go 100% Open Source

Nokia have bought all the shares in Symbian that they didn't already own and will now begin releasing the whole OS under the Eclipse Public License.

O2 PAYG iPhones 'to be £299'

Has a web site glitch revealed how much the Pay As You Go iPhone 3G will cost?

iPhone 3G Guided Tour

Take a tour around the new iPhone

The Register Checks Out Sproutcore

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/02/inside_sproutcore/