Kuneri bloggy

I recently felt the need of changing my VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta, because it kept on locking my Mac. I found VirtualBox, which is recently acquired by Sun, offered for free and has a recent release 1.6. I read some nice reviews, and although it lacks some features, looks like it’s quite fast and reliable (will review it when I get to use it more).

First thing I needed to do with VirtualBox, after setting up a Windows was to share files between my Mac (Leopard) and Windows (XP). VirtualBox does not offer drag and drop for now, but hopefully will do soon. To share files between 2 computers:

1. Install Guest Additions

Go to “Devices->Install Guest Additions”. After selecting this, open “My Computer”, and you will see there is Guest Additions installer mounted. Just double click and install. After installing, do not forget to reboot (that’s important).

2. Create a shared folder

Go to “Devices->Shared Folders”. Press “Add” (+ sign on right side). Browse for your shared folder on your mac. Pick up a good name and note it down (we will use the name later on). I suppose you selected a folder to share and named it “shared”.

3. Create a batch file

On Windows XP, shared folders are browsable. Easiest way to mount shared folders is to create a batch file, instead of writing a command each time you login. To do that, right click on Desktop, select “New->Text file”. Rename your text file to “Mount.bat” (or something else you wish). After renaming, right click on it and select “Edit” and paste the code below (with necessary modification, depending on your shared folder name. I assume it’s “shared” in our case)

net use x: \\vboxsvr\shared

Beware of the space in between “x:” and “\\” otherwise you will get;

System error 67 has occured

Which in my opinion a common mistake. Save the file and you are done. Just double click on “Mount.bat” on your desktop and you will see X: drive will appear with your shared folder on My Computer.

Enjoy :)

Michael Halbherr, from Nokia, says Nokia is planning to include positioning support to all their phone models and satellite positioning (GPS) to every second phone.

Nokia estimates it will happen before 2010-2012. Now Nokia has five GPS supported phones and four more are already published. Estimation of sold GPS-units this year are 35 million. Amazing numbers.

Nokia will also improve their map services Ovi, to toughen the competition against Google. Service will work seamlessly between mobile and desktop browser. Desktop will function as routing planner on top of the map and user can follow created route with mobile application.

(original (c) Reuters).

This is for developers: GPS (Location) capability will not require certificate signing in S60 devices v. 3.2 and above. It will be user granted option, which is good for development sake.

If you like Inkscape (an open source alternative to Adobe Illustrator) and have a Mac with Leopard; you will figure that it after installation it will not work. It will say that font caching might take time, but never start. It’s because of a simple bug, with a simple solution. Just open a terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type this, followed by an enter;

mkdir ~/.fontconfig

After that it should start normally.

And a note: Latest snapshot doesn’t seem to work. Just grab the latest stable package.

Pasi has another post testing KuneriLite Accelerometer plugin. Although it doesn’t work on Flash Lite 3.0 phones (see my post), it should work very well on Flash Lite 2.x and accelerometer enabled devices (i.e N91, N82 etc..).

Usually, when new version of a software is released, we cheer, considering things will get better and easier. As we were expecting things would be easier for developers, we cheered up for Flash Lite 3.0’s features, however that couldn’t be more than wrong and it turned out to be a big pain for us. Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be any short term solution, and no one guarantees there will be one in mid or long term. I would like to write my reasons why I think so, and warn Adobe, Nokia and developers for a potential threat, which will not be long to come.

Security Sandbox Pain (or Security Painbox)

Flash Lite 3.0 came with Flash 8 engine, and together with Security Sandbox ‘feature’. This might make sense for browser plugin, but doesn’t make any sense for standalone player. Nick has a really nice post about this issue, which is almost 1 year old, can give an idea about the past and future of the problem.

Ok, what’s wrong with ‘Security Sandbox’? Isn’t security something good? Well, security is good when it’s used in convenience. If you use security for a case where doesn’t make any sense or bring an added value, you end up making life difficult for developers and users. Problem about this new Security Sandbox is; you either can have a local connection (i.e loading local files), or can a network connection (i.e connect to internet). This ‘feature’ not only brought an unnecessary pain to us (developers), but also broke backwards compatibility. How? Simple: If you have a Flash Lite 1.x or 2.x movie using local and network connections at the same time, it simply won’t work on Flash Lite 3.0 (which means new phones like N95). Wasn’t the biggest problem on mobile world fragmentation?

Problems not only end with those on ‘Security Sandbox’ feature. It’s not possible to do localhost calls, which disables any connection from Flash Lite to outer world. Why is this something bad? Well, there are many 3rd party projects extending Flash Lite via localhost (the only way left to us, because 3rd party application launch is limited by Nokia), such as KuneriLite, Flyer and Janus. These projects help Flash Lite to expand beyond its capabilities and enable people to create richer applications, which can compete with native S60 applications in look and performance.

Luckily, there is a ‘best of worst’ trick that solves those problems. There is a magic folder in ‘C:\data\others\trusted’ (that’s another pain, I will come to that shortly), which disables ‘Security Sandbox’ and enables applications to communicate both with local and network, as well as localhost. Why is this a ‘best of worst’? Simply because whatever you put into this directory is visible under ‘Gallery’ which brings a very bad user experience and many security concenrs within.

This issue will be even more cronic, if Adobe or Nokia doesn’t make any move; because ‘trusted’ folder will not be available anymore for S60 3.2 devices. Which will kill all developer efforts and backwards compatibility forever. We are not sure if Adobe or Nokia will solve this problem, but crossing our fingers hoping someone sees our S.O.S fire.

Trusted Folder Pain

I mentioned Security Sandbox problem and a ‘best of worst’ solution to that above. Now see another pain closely related to this subject.

S60 devices have ‘Phone Memory’ (PM) and ‘Memory Card’ (MC). Users are given the option to install their applications to PM or MC. As you know, to solve Securiy Sandbox problem, we need to install Flash Lite applications to those ‘Trusted’ folders that exist both on PM and MC. So what is the problem? With a clever(!) move, ‘Trusted’ folder is located at different paths on PM and MC. It’s at C:\Data\Others\Trusted\ on PM and E:\Others\Trusted\ on MC. Yeah, but what is the problem? Well simply, it’s not possible to install applications (SIS packages) to different folders on PM and MC, and this breaks Symbian Signed criterias. So, Flash Lite 3.0 applications either will work on PM, or MC. And in that way, you can not get your appliction Symbian Signed.

There is no solution we could find for that yet. If we can not; it will not be possible for anyone to Symbian Sign their Flash Lite applications on Flash Lite 3.0 phones (from my current understanding).

XML Socket Pain

Well, Security Sandbox is not the only problem. There is a serious bug on Flash Lite 3.0 with XML sockets. Simply put, it’s not possible to receive data via XML socket shorter than 1+ seconds, which kills if you need to stream data.

Most clear example for that is using KuneriLite Accelerometer plugin with Flash Lite. Naturally, to use axis values, you need to get those values at least 4-5 times per second; so that you can reflect it to your application. But because of this bug, you can get data only 1 time or less per second, which makes it impossible to use.

See the this Forum Nokia thread for more information on that subject. And as far as we see, there is no solution offered yet.

Conclusion

I tried to state my reasons, why Flash Lite 3.0 is a potential show-stopper for developers, users, enablers and many more on S60 devices. Nokia keeps on spreading this problem via Firmware updates and pushing Flash Lite 3.0 player to earlier phones (i.e Nokia N95 Classic), supporting and triggering fragmentation. With the introduction of S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 devices, these problems will be impossible to solve and Flash Lite player will get fragmented at least for couple of years, which will delay market entrance that is already delayed for long time and still immature. What I would like to see is some action from Adobe and Nokia, leaning on this subject and listening to us to avoid a big potential problem awaiting all Flash Lite users and developers in short term.

Please leave me your comments if you have any.

cheers,

Ugur.-

I just found a simple diagram I prepared for a common question: Can I develop my own plugins for KuneriLite?

Answer is “No” at the moment, but there is a simple way to use KuneriLite System plugin and communicate your application with your Flash Lite movie using KuneriLite. Check the diagram below.

If you just migrated to Mac from your lovely Windows, most probably you will want to copy some of your files to your brand new mac (MacBook, iMac, mini or whatever), using your hard drive as an external USB disk. If your Windows drive is formatted with NTFS, soon you will figure out that, all those files you copied from your Windows will be locked on your Mac, and you will not be able to move, delete or alter those files or directories. If you search google with “mac unlock folder”, you will see many questions about that. So, how to solve it?

- Open a terminal window

- Go to the locked folder path. For instance if the locked folder is called “Locked” on the drive called “Drive” type this;

cd /Volumes/Drive/

Or just right click (or ctrl+click) to the file, “Get Info”, see “Where” in “General” and go to that path.

- Now unlock it;

sudo chflags -R nouchg Locked

You might be asked to provide your password, please enter your administrator password when it’s asked.

Now you can erase, move, or do whatever you want with those files after you unlocked the folder.

Ok, that’s not an application, or a new cool Web 2.0 initiative. Flori is the sweet, cute and innocent character of Vivek, which I missed when he first released. But definitely worth to see!

You can also download and use it on you mobile as a screensaver or wallpaper; just purchase it for a small fee here.

As a nice move, Vivek offers licensing of this character. Just get in touch with him.

I just met Deezer (may be it was popular already, I don’t know), but it’s awesome! I just type the music, album or artist name, start listening right away. Also created an account, and adding songs I like to my playlist. No more MP3 downloads :)

It doesn’t work on iPhone thought, due it uses Flash.

Now Listening: Pink Floyd - Shine on Crazy Diamond.

Photograph is from Murat Suyur, one of my favorite photographers.

Sony Ericsson Developer World released new version of Themes Creator. What is special about this new version is that it supports bundling Flash Lite SWF files for standby screen content (screensaver/wallpaper) into the actual theme file. Previously it was not possible to bundle SWF inside a Sony Ericsson theme file.

Note that only devices supporting themes vs. 4.7 can use SWF bundled in the theme file. This includes SE C702, C902, W760, W980 (all Flash Lite 2.0 devices). For other devices you must distribute the SWF content seperately from the theme.

via Hayden