Handful of Nothing

Well, we are having some hard times there in Brazil. The guys are working pretty hard to minimize the sad tearing effect that is happening in the N800. So sad, so sad to see such a fast hardware which such a annoying problem for all SDL developers.

If I could decided over this, I wouldn’t launch Canola until the Vsync issue is solved, but we need to at least provide a way of those early users to test our application in their brand new devices. You could take a look at least in this change list (Barbieri’s blog) that shows how we’ve been busy =)

So, let’s how what we can do for next week (that’s not a promise)

Or better… a crazy user, trying to really make the powerbook sweat a little. I think actually I’m making the little thing hot to warm my hands here in Finland.

But now serious : how to test and QA softwares that can be “simple” but have such a different universe of users, sometimes I complain a lot about Firefox, but I really stress it not only using 100+ tabs in each window, but also opening lots of web 2.0 applications in those tabs, what makes the burden of keep things cool a heavy one.

I really like stability, I think over I like it more than usability… of course for me stability is one of the main points of usability, but I’ve seen a lot of products out there that doesn;t comply to that.

Ok ok enough..it’s 1 am, I’m working since 8am, awake since 7am !!!!! I really need to go to bed. bye.

Symbian has just announced it’s new APIs. Nothing new if they weren’t POSIX ones!. Now developers have more flexibility to play on the mobile os that is available in hundrends of million devices around the globe.

Hey linux developers, what about libc, libm, libpthread and libdl? Sounds like fun? I can believe you are a lot happier with that than with

New Features? Not really. Most of things shown there are already present in products like the N95, and in a feature comparison side-by-side the N95 wins with 3G and GPS capabilities.

The real new thing in the new IPhone is the Multi point touch screen, what leads me to believe that is going to be the first mass product to have it. Also, if the screen can really keep itself clean after usage it would be great. So apple again did some really good things in the product design and the UI design, really showing the other manufactures that beautiful and usable not only usable UI does matter and does attract new users to your products.

Also, I’m pretty happy to see Apple pushing up the bar to the Touchscreen, and showing that there’s a way to make a complete device without a stylus. Stylus sux. (that’s why we did Canola) and now I’m even more happy to see that things that I defended in the last couple of years were not craziness.

Now it’s time to wait and see the ” no accidental clicks” and the ” works like magic” things that for mere are more related with the underling touchscreen technology that apple patented last year (I linked here somewhere)

Oh my f*** god. Just one thing : All touchscreen, no Stylus UI DO WORK. =)

So, it looks that some people already got some n800 to play (I’m so envy of them) and we are on our path to make Canola runs great on this new and exciting device. Speed doesn’t seem to be the problem, and the problem are not … problems. Actually looks like Nokia guys did an REALLY amazing job on the platform and now a lot of things under the hood are different but for better, like the upnp API it’s working smoothly now and looks that it deals better with a lot of devices it didn’t in the previous version. So we are just adjusting our code to it and you can expect a version for it pretty soon!

So I’m now here in Las Vegas, waiting for the tomorrow sessions and trying to get used to the smoke smell on the hotel room.

Yesterday we decided to walk. So we walked the whole strip, from the luxor to the Stratosphere. I wish I had a cab. But after that walk we decided to try those 3 things in the top of the tower.


IMG_0209.JPG, originally uploaded by MarceloEduardo.
Just before going to the “Big Shoot” ride at the top. Crazy ride that one, recommended. The city looks just to fake, but there from the top is just amazing. worth the 20 bucks.

Tomorrow let’s see what happens on CES, I already have some great sessions to follow and great people to meet.

BR