Gadgets for Training

I will be talking on the use of hand-held devices, including smart phones and Apple iPads for of e-learning at the 2010 AITD Conference at the ATP in Sydney 22 April 2010. Suggestions on what to talk about and examples would be welcome. There is a free exhibition with e-learning products both days of the conference: 21 to 22 April 2010. If you are registering for the conference there is a 20% discount for using the code TW20.

Gadgets and more!
Tom Worthington, (aka the Net Traveller) demonstrates some cool gadgets, courseware and software being used in Learning & Development.

Black screens save power on some smart phones

The Google Nexus One and Samsung SGH-i8000 Omnia II smart phones have Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) screens. Web pages and apps using white text on a black background should save power on these devices.

The Blackle website, launched in 2007, claimed to reduce power consumption by reversing the usual Google search screen, providing a black background. The amount of power saved was not large, as most LCD screens have one back light which is on at the same brightness (and using the same power) regardless if most of the screen is black or white.

AMOLED screens have thousands of individual LED lights. For black, all lights are off. So using a black background should save power. This is significant for a battery powered device such as a smartphone.

The black background could be achieved for web pages and for applications written for the phones.

Currently AMOLED displays are prohibitively expensive for large computer and TV displays. But some larger LCD screens have multiple LED back lights which will save some power with a black background. For this to work there have to be large areas of black, as even one non-black pixel requires the back light for that area of the screen to be turned on.

Google Nexus One Phone

Google have announced the Nexus One, a touch screen smart phone with the Google Android operating system. The significance of this is that the phone is sold by Google directly, not by an existing phone maker, as with previous Android phones. The phone is made by HTC and does not differ greatly from previous HTC branded Android phones. The phone will be sole unbundled and on plans. The phone is not currently available in Australia.

Power and battery

Removable 1400 mAH battery
Charges at 480mA from USB, at 980mA from supplied charger

Talk time
Up to 10 hours on 2G
Up to 7 hours on 3G

Standby time
Up to 290 hours on 2G Up to 250 hours on 3G

Internet use
Up to 5 hours on 3G
Up to 6.5 hours on Wi-Fi

Video playback
Up to 7 hours

Audio playback
Up to 20 hours

Processor
Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz

Operating system
Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 (Eclair)

Capacity
512MB Flash
512MB RAM
4GB Micro SD Card (Expandable to 32 GB)

Location
Assisted global positioning system (AGPS) receiver
Cell tower and Wi-Fi positioning
Digital compass
Accelerometer

Size and weight
Height 119mm
Width 59.8mm
Depth 11.5mm
Weight 130 grams w/battery 100g w/o battery

Display
3.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen WVGA AMOLED touchscreen
800 x 480 pixels
100,000:1 typical contrast ratio
1ms typical response rate

Camera & Flash
5 megapixels
Autofocus from 6cm to infinity
2X digital zoom
LED flash
User can include location of photos from phone’s AGPS receiver
Video captured at 720x480 pixels at 20 frames per second or higher, depending on lighting conditions

Cellular & Wireless
UMTS Band 1/4/8 (2100/AWS/900)
HSDPA 7.2Mbps
HSUPA 2Mbps
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
A2DP stereo Bluetooth

Buttons, connectors and controls

1. Front / Top: Power
2. 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
3. Charging and notification indicator
4. Illuminated capacitive soft keys: Back, Home, Menu, and Search
5. Tri-color clickable trackbal
6. Back / Bottom: Camera
7. Camera flash
8. Speaker
9. Dock pin connectors
10. Micro USB port
11. Microphone
12. Left side: Volume Control

Additional features

• Haptic feedback
• Teflon™ coated back
• Second microphone for active noise cancellation
• SIM card slot
• Micro SD slot
• Proximity sensor
• Light sensor

Graphics, video and audio

Audio decoders
AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+) Mono/Stereo standard bit rates up to 160 kbps and sampling rates from 8 to 48kHz, AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz, AMR-WB 9 rates from 6.60 kbit/s to 23.85 kbit/s sampled @ 16kHz., MP3 Mono/Stereo 8-320Kbps constant (CBR) or variable bit-rate (VBR), MIDI SMF (Type 0 and 1), DLS Version 1 and 2, XMF/Mobile XMF, RTTTL/RTX, OTA, iMelody, Ogg Vorbis, WAVE (8-bit and 16-bit PCM)

Image
JPEG (encode and decode), GIF, PNG, BMP
Video
H.263 (encode and decode) MPEG-4 SP (encode and decode) H.264 AVC (decode)
Audio encoders
AMR-NB 4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz

Language support

Display
English (U.S), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, Japanese, Russian,

Keyboard
English (U.S), French (France), German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil).

From: Nexus One Phone - Feature overview & Technical specifications, Google, 2009

Android and Moodle for m-learning

The School of Industrial Management (Escuela de Organización Industrial EOI) in Madrid is issuing students with 3G Android mobile phones and using the Moodle learning management system (English translation and Spanish original). This looks a good combination. I found that my Moodle course notes for a Green ICT Course worked fine on a Google Android. This was because I made use of the Moodle "Book" module, for
the course content. This produces plain web pages, which render well on the small screen of smart phones. Of course if you used very large and complex PDF, Powerpoint, Microsoft Word or other formats, it would not look so good.

There could even be some problems with ordinary HTML (I am trying to convince one of my fellow course designers not to use very large complex tables in course notes. These tables are hard to read at the best of times, but make accessibility and mobile access very difficult.

While I didn't try it, podcasts should also work well. Obviously typing a 2,000 word essay on a smartphone would not be a good idea, but participation in forums should be feasible. Some changes to the Moodle user interface would be useful, as it does use HTML Table statements for some layout, which does not adapt well to a small screen.

I was handed the Android at Google's Sydney office, when giving a talk on my Green ICT e-learning course and only had it to try for a few minutes, so this was not an exhaustive test. Also it was running a beta version of the operating system.

Building location aware websites

Paul Hagon from the National Library of Australia will talk on "Where am I? Building location aware websites" at the July Canberra WSG meeting, 24 July 2009 at the NLA in Canberra.

Mobile devices with inbuilt GPS, such as the iPhone, are leading to the development of location aware applications. This trend isn't just limited to the mobile arena. Advances are being made to bring this technology to desktop and laptop browsers. Services exist to allow you to share your location to a variety of applications. How can we incorporate this technology into our websites and what are the technical and social implications of doing so? ...

From July Canberra WSG meeting, Web Standards Group, 2009

Google Android on netbooks

According to PC World ("Report: HP May Offer Android in Netbooks Over Windows" by Agam Shah, IDG News Service, 31 March 2009), HP may be planning to provide Google's "Android" operating system on netbooks. This is not as radical as it sounds, as Android is just Google's version of Linux. Other versions of Linux are already offered on netbooks and some of these come with Google software and services. However, it is significant in that Google is a well known brand. This would give customers the confidence to buy a computer which does not have Microsoft Windows installed.

In practical terms Android would be most useful for low end netbooks with small screens and desktop Internet appliances designed for casual web browsing. Android was designed for smart phones and so has a simple "big button" interface. The line between smart phones and Internet appliances may well blur in the process. It should be possible to dock the new generation of smart phones and use them with an external screen and keyboard as a desktop computer replacement. Android could also be installed in TV sets to provide casual web browsing at low cost.

Google Android Phones for Australian MPs

Yesterday Senator Lundy talked about her experience trying a Blackberry smartphone as part of a trial for members of the Australian Parliament. She commented that this worked better than earlier phones issued but still had limitations. I suggested they look at the new Google Android phones, such as the HTC Magic . Vodafone will be initially selling it in Europe (not yet available in Australia, but I asked HTC for a test unit).

The Senator mentioned that with a workable smartphone she has much less need to turn on her laptop. One possibility is to run the same Android software on the laptop and the phone. Apart from the convenience of the user being able to use the same interface and applications, it would allow for very low power, low cost netbook and nettop computers to be used (under $300).

Dell Latitude On is a Smartphone in your PC

In "Digital Domain 30 Seconds to Boot Up?" (NY Times, 1 November 2008), Randall Stross writes: "... what I want is a machine that’s ready in about a second, just like my smartphone". But what the readers may not realize is the Dell Latitude On feature mentioned is essentially that: the same type of low power processor as used in a smartphone, installed inside the laptop.

What will be interesting is how many people find they can get along day-to-day with the low power mode. If ASUS "Eee Box" desktop is as market leading as their Netbook was, then low power, low cost desktops may become mainstream. But even smaller and cheaper computers are feasible.

If you, they can replace their expensive desktop computer with a $99 unit, which just has the same sort of processor and memory as a smart phone, in a cigarette packet size case . Such computers have been sold for years as "Thin Clients" but have been hampered by the perception they are not real computers. With "cloud computing" becoming fashionable, these may soon replace most computers .

Android desktop PC

Assuming the Google sponsored Android software platform becomes popular, it might be feasable to use this for low cost netbook and netPCs. Android is based on the Linux kernel and has a language for developing applications. It is intended for smart phones, such as the T-Mobile_G1. It should therefore run very well on a small notebook or desktop compters. These would be much like a thin client computer and could in theory run other opertating systems and applications. But thin clients and small computers have not sold well, being seen as cut down limited function computers. If instead they are see as high performance versions of smart phones, they may be more popular. If the netPC included a VoIP interface for an analog telephone, it coulod replace the desktop computer in most offices.

Emergency management on a smart phone

Ajay Kumar, a Sahana Summer of Code 2008 Student, is working on a project to get Sahana on a smart phone. Sahana is an open source emergency management system. He is going to try to get it working on an Open Moko open source phone (no Google Android ones will be available in time to try). I am sure he would welcome advice and assistance from the open source community. More on these issues in the Humanitarian ICT Mailing list.

I am also in a process of acquiring the phones for the development
purpose and have contacted FOSS supportive companies in India. Any
support in that area is also appreciable.

But since the project is something new, I will be basing my
development so has to have something that "just works" and then
iterating it over time.

My primary reasons of choosing the Openmoko phone is:
1. FOSS - matches with the Sahana ideology.
2. Larger & active developer community - it has its own benefit in
terms of contributions to maintain the project in future.

For your reference, my academic project duration is:
1. Mid term - End of Research & Analysis Phase: October 27 2008.
2. Final deadline & Presentation: Mid April 2009.

My proposal @ college has been approved last week and I am working
ahead on this project.

Smartphone as desktop PC replacement?

The i-mate Ultimate 6150 smartphone has XGA (1024 x 768 pixels) video output and a USB port. So, in theory, you could plug an ordinary LCD desktop screen and keyboard in to provide a desktop computer replacement. The smartphone would not be as powerful as a regular computer, but might be adequate for web browsing and online applications. One thing which was not clear to me from the specifications, was exactly what video connector was provided and what you could plug into the USB socket on the phone. Could you plug a USB hub and plug a keyboard and mouse into that?

The phone has a XScale PXA 270 520MHz Processor. This is similar to that used in some thin client computers. If you did not want a phone, or portability, a thin client computer would be cheaper.

Mobile web compatibility test suite released

The W3C have released their mobileOK Basic 1.0 Tests as a Candidate Recommendation (that is a draft standard). These are tests intended to see how compatible web pages are with mobile phones and other hand held gadgets. The aim is "Making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device". As well as the test specification document, W3C have provided some very useful software implementing some of the tests. A press release has background on the project.

I have tried out the tests and found them very useful, even where the web pages were not specifically targeting mobile devices. My only quibble is that perhaps the W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group should run the tests on their own web pages. ;-)

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices checker

W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group have a set of tests for what makes a mobile web page: "mobileOK Basic". Some of this have been implemented in the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices checker. This goes a bit further than a syntax checker, and for example tells you if your web page is too big for the average phone, but not as far as accessibility tests.

Just for fun I ran the tests on the W3C Mobile Group's own web page:

Results of checking W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group

This page failed on 5 tests

1. The page is not valid with regard to the XHTML Basic 1.1 DTD.
   This test is related to the following Best Practices: VALID_MARKUP (techniques)
2. The markup of the page is bigger (19138 bytes) than the upper limit of Default Delivery Context.
   This test is related to the following Best Practices: PAGE_SIZE_USABLE (techniques) PAGE_SIZE_LIMIT (techniques)
3. The added sizes of the markup and of the external resources embedded in the page are bigger (27608 bytes) than the upper limit of Default Delivery Context.
   This test is related to the following Best Practices: PAGE_SIZE_USABLE (techniques) PAGE_SIZE_LIMIT (techniques)
4. The image at line 23 column 12 has no width set in the markup.

   …

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: IMAGES_SPECIFY_SIZE (techniques) GRAPHICS_FOR_SPACING (techniques) IMAGES_RESIZING (techniques)
5. The image at line 23 column 12 has no height set in the markup.

   …

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: IMAGES_SPECIFY_SIZE (techniques) GRAPHICS_FOR_SPACING (techniques) IMAGES_RESIZING (techniques)

The page passed 11 tests

1. The page provides caching information and does cache validation.
2. No links are set to open in a separate window.
3. The page doesn't use objects nor scripts.
4. The page doesn't use tables.
5. The page doesn't use image maps.
6. The page doesn't use auto-refresh nor redirects.
7. None of the length attributes use absolute values.
8. The page has no item with a width set to more than the allowed size.
9. All the images have an alt attribute set; make sure it describes well the content of the image.
10. The page uses a logical order of headings.
11. The page has a title set to "W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group"; check it is well descriptive of the content

This page raised 11 warnings

1. The page has text/html as a media type; that media type is not recommended for the Default Delivery Context.
   This test is related to the following Best Practices: CONTENT_FORMAT_SUPPORT (techniques) CONTENT_FORMAT_PREFERRED (techniques)
2. The link to http://ready.mobi at line 45 column 0 targets a resource whose media type None is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …http://ready…

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
3. The link to http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/2007/mobileok-ref/ at line 51 column 42 targets a resource whose media type None is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …k to date in CVS at 

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
4. The link to mailto:public-bpwg-comments@w3.org at line 112 column 134 targets a resource with a scheme mailto not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …e send a message to 

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
5. The link to mailto:daniel.Appelquist@vodafone.com at line 143 column 32 targets a resource with a scheme mailto not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …ng Group Chairs are 

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
6. The link to mailto:jrabin@mtld.mobi at line 143 column 107 targets a resource with a scheme mailto not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …Appelquist and Jo Rab…

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
7. The link to mailto:mike@w3.org at line 144 column 17 targets a resource with a scheme mailto not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …Staff Contact is Michael(tm)…

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
8. The link to http://www.w3.org/blog/BPWG?tempskin=_rdf at line 190 column 5 targets a resource whose media type application/xml is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
9. The link to http://www.w3.org/blog/BPWG?tempskin=_rdf&disp=comments at line 191 column 5 targets a resource whose media type application/xml is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

   …

   This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
10. The link to http://www.w3.org/blog/BPWG?tempskin=_atom at line 195 column 5 targets a resource whose media type application/atom+xml is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

    …

    This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)
11. The link to http://www.w3.org/blog/BPWG?tempskin=_atom&disp=comments at line 196 column 5 targets a resource whose media type application/atom+xml is not supported by Default Delivery Context; the text of the link should make that clear.

    …

    This test is related to the following Best Practices: LINK_TARGET_FORMAT (techniques)

The following information can help assess the conformance of the page to the Best Practices

1. The page uses style sheets; check that it can be used in a device where style sheets aren't available.
2. The markup contains 10 percent of unneeded whitespaces summing up to 918 extraneous characters.

Non-Applicable

The following information shows which Best Practices were not applicable to the said page. ...

iPhone for emergency management

The iPhoneWebDev is providing a discussion forum for developing applications for the iPhone. A simple way to provide an applciation is by adapting a web interface. So I asked the forum if the Sahana disaster management system works on it. So far I have had two replies. The first reply indicated that it worked reasonably well. The second indicated some problems:

* Sidebar too narrow: This could be fixed if the iPhone accepts the CSS media type of "handheld". We can then automatically replace the sidebar with a menu the full width of the screen, when an iPhone, or other smart phone is used. I have asked the community to test this using my old Sahana prototype on the iPhone. On a desktop PC the menu should appear as a bullet list on the right of the screen. On a handheld device it should appear as a numbered list at the top, taking up the full width of the screen.

* Incident / language too small: The text for the form on the top right of the page for setting the language and selecting the incident needs to be made larger.

* Wrong tab: Using "next" (equivalent to the TAB key on a PC) caused the pointer to jump from "Incident" at the top of the screen down to "login", skipping the menu. As per the web accessibility guidelines the logical tab order should be used. This can be changed using the tabindex attribute. But generally the natural order of left to right, top to bottom (for English readers) should be used.

Web development for the iPhone

The iPhoneWebDev is providing a discussion forum for developing applications for the iPhone. They refer to portable Web 2.0 applications. I have asked the forum if someone with a phone can try the Sahana disaster management system. The iPhone has a bigger screen than many other smartphones so may be useful for use by emergency workers (assuming it is robust enough).

Also Tom Yager has suggested using email to get around the lack of an accessible file storage on the iPhone. You email the data to the phone as an attachment and then the appropriate application can access it. Of course if you used something like the Open Moko Neo1973 Smartphone you would have the Linux file system available.

There was also an iPhone Developer Camp recently in the USA. But I would not want to become locked into developing applications just for the iPhone. I have provided some general tips on how to adapt web applications for smartphones, including the iPhone. The idea here is to avoid having to build web applications just for the phones and instead make pages for desktop screens compatible.

In several years of teaching web design I have seen many proposals for hand held web businesses come and go. So far few outside Japan and some other Asian countries, have
managed to make money from mobile data.

iPhone Smartphone problem for Olympics

On the second day of the China East Asia New Media Conference in Brisbane one of the speakers on a panel before me mentioned the Apple iPhone as an innovative product. Departing from my prepared talk, I pointed out that the Open Moko Neo1973 Smartphone may be more significant. The Neo may be seen as a poor man's iPhone, when in some ways it is more capable.

However, given iPhones are getting attention and may well be the first hand held web device most people see, I thought it was worth preparing a short item on how web pages can be adapted to the iPhone.

If such phones become common by 2008, the organizers of the 2008 Olympics could have a problem. The TV rights have been sold by the IOC. But if thousands of people use video phones to transmit coverage of the events, it would be possible to mashup a reasonable Olympic coverage from them. This would likely be illegal and something the TV companies which have paid billions of dollars for would not be happy about, but which BOCOG could do little about.

Even if this is not feasible for 2008, it is certain for the London 2010 Olympics. This is something the researchers from Westminster University, and other institutions researching for the 2012 Olympic Games in London should look into.

As an example of the type of technology which might be used,Microsoft's Photosynth Technology Preview shows how thousands of photos can be automatically combined to create a high resolution three dimensional image:

Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

With Photosynth you can:

* Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
* Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
* See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
* Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
* Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.

From: Introducing Photosynth, Microsoft Live Labs, 2006

Open Source Smartphone

There has been a lot of press coverage of the Apple iPhone smartphone. I was going to set an assignment this semester for my web design students to do web pages for a mobile phone. But the iPhone is a very closed proprietary system and an alternative open source device may be available, the FIC Neo1973 Smartphone.

One of the world's largest computer and consumer electronics manufacturers will ship a completely open, Linux-based, GPS-equipped, quad-band GSM/GPRS phone direct, worldwide, for $350 or less, in Q1, 2007. First International Computing's (FIC's) "Neo1973" or FIC-GTA001, is the first phone based on the open-source "OpenMoKo" platform.
From: Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone due soon, Nov. 07, 2006

As a mobile web device there isn't really much to distinguish the iPhone from other smart phones and the same techniques can be used for designing web pages for mobile devices. Apart from the smart phone I thought it might be worth looking at two other device developments: the Microsoft Ford Sync which is an in-car computer and the Nintendo Wii games console, which now has a web browser.

The Neo1973 is a GSM phone (2.5G) and would at first glance seem a bit old fashioned compared to high speed 3g phones. But I am yet to see a useful 3G use for a phone. The Neo1973 does have GPS making location based applications possible. So, for example, I might get the students to do an electronic guide to Beijing to help people to find their way around during the 2008 Olympics. I was invited to give a presentation to the Beijing Olympic Committee about their web design in 2003. After the conference I bicycled around Beijing city seeing the sights and could have done with an electronic travel guide .

The tourist could first look at the information on their PC or games console (such as a Nintendo Wii ) then in a car using the dash board screen and finally on foot (or bicycle) with the smart phone. Rather than produce four new electronic travel guides for the PC, game, car and phone, the one adaptable web system could be used. Rather than creating new information for the system it could be a mash-up of available web data. This could information from people in the city.