vertical challenge

In past posts, I’ve ranted about resistive vs capacitive screens for typing. Apple’s phone and tablet are great, but as a quad with poor hand function, most will prefer to use a finger nail to type. On my Nokia 5800 this works well and the new firmware has better smooth scrolling (inertia in the flicking though contact list for example).

Some technology that came from eye tracking has seen new use on tablets and phones. See full review of Swype at arstechnica.com. I think this is going to solve many disability related text input problems. Voice dictation is king, but to manage most applications, we need a pointer. A quadriplegic needs to keep a finger on the screen and not lift it. Hunt a peck is too problematic and nearly impossible if moving, say on the bus.

Now, my next phone/tablet won’t be an Apple — as much as I do love there products. Android is gaining ground, and as long as they don’t get the same fragmentation that J2ME had, well.. I’m betting an open development platform will eventually win out. slowly eating away at RIM, Nokia, J2ME too. As a developer, you are forced to choose what platform to build your app for. This why companies like PhoneGapare getting lots of attention. New frameworks for doing HTML5 and Java Script continue to improve and touch/gesture commands as well.

So, the future is bright for better input devices for quadriplegics.

It’s now 2010… So, where’s my jet pack?

Disability research integration is not happening. Not like it needs too. I’ve seen the problem from several points of view now and feel justified in a little rant. Scientists generally hate mixing with business, but this is the reality. The business of keeping a lab open and publishing regularly is difficult and in direct conflict with the new buzz words: “Community Driven, practical solutions” which are ignored when the main funding sources want cures worthy of the cover of Time Magazine.

I raised money and ran for Rick Hansen back in the 80’s. The talk back then was “one day soon, they’ll be able to fix spinal cords.” My injury was in 1994 and I still hear “five, ten years guys, stay healthy because the cure is coming.” Showing the above video to a friend got this response…”but on side note they did seem genuine, and nice people (for whatever that means or is worth)”. The reason solutions take so long is simple: follow the money. Sad but true.

The SCI community requests are simple. Blader, bowel, and sex. Motor control almost always comes after these basic human functions. We want to feel normal again. There are lots of web forums where SCI communities can share information and personal experiences, but rarely will there be a real doc or even a PhD in there to bring the newly published info to the group.

What to do when community needs are ignored because the research funding goes to the “glamorous science?” Tough spot. My point is that we are getting slowed down for the wrong reasons. We should be much further along by the year 2010, but political pressure needs to be applied to science and educational organizations. The scientific community is well known to have a horrendous record for conflicts of interests so despite good intentions talk will continue to be just talk. So screw the jet pack, I’d just like to feel normal on date nights again, which if anyone cared to look it up was far above walking when you ask people living with SCI.

So, what we are really looking for is publications this from DHRN

I never thought I’d say it, but Windows 7 is good, great even! I got my hands on a Beta copy and installed it.. and it all worked. Yes, everything worked first time with no snags. Admittedly I had low expectations thinking of past installs and driver nightmares, but not one dialog box asking for a CD to be inserted. All my hardware was detected and a drivers were pulled down from the web. My headache using ATI’s configuration tool to control my monitor and projector setup was resolved and actually simplified. After digging around (I’ll admit I dislike things being moved around on me GUI wise), I realized Microsoft got it right and I did not need to find a given setting in control panel. I just had to type a few charters onto the search bar (very much like spotlight) and the results took me were I needed.

Never has there been so much attention from Microsoft to the details for disability users. The “ease of access” configuration is really good for my fellow one finger, one hand users! Sticky keys and a track ball in the early years were pretty brutal. Try keeping up with the class in the computer lab. Even with all the input tricks, and I know them all, it is still slow going and coding speed (time) is money. There are new features to control the mouse that made my wrist very happy. It is easy to control the focus, cursor and text input all with the mouse alone. This is key for those with even less function than me. Two thumbs up here, a nice surprise.

I never even considered Vista and stayed with XP and its 3gig of RAM limitation. I saw my friends suffer with Vista and waited for Windows 7. This version not only manages 32 and 64 bit code, but added what was missing in XP (leaving 3rd parties doing these applications). Basically all the stuff built in to all Mac’s and found free in Linux communities for years:

• Backup Utilities
• Screen Sharing
• Network Monitoring tools
• Bluetooth Stack Service

Stability wise, I’ve been running Win7 on two totally different computers for few weeks now and not one crash, nope.. just a few application hangs and the OS dealt with them fine. One touch I really was surprise to see was in the audio controls. Now you can scale the max volume for each app, something I’m sure we all find really useful. Youtube plays too loud, VLC to quiet and there is a volume slider in three different locations — now you get a handle on this in one place.

OK enough gushing, it’s getting embarrassing. Don’t get me wrong, I cut my teeth on PC’s and C++ and Java. What made me change over to Mac was really just video editing and the OSX back end. After short time with Apple products I was won over because things just worked and I never had to tinker much. Apple computers also come in a pretty box that don’t make a sound — something you’d actually want to have in your living room!

Now the question is… If Microsoft is can install on any type of hardware and run like OSX… then why will people keep forking over the extra cash for a Mac? More bang for your buck on PC’s, always has been, always will.. making for an interesting time in the OS business. The new smart phones and Zune running Windows Mobile just might be stable enough to win back the developers dealing with Apple’s iron grasp on iPhone/iPod Touch. I’ve personally decided not to go with the $100 iPhone just because of the restrictions on connecting to it’s USB and BlueTooth.

Now things that broke…

All my file shares broke… I was not pleased. Windows has new ways of detecting other PC’s and doing password file shares.. but I think goes out of its way NOT to see the iMac. Note that iTunes shared music over all platforms without a glitch, so seems like a finger in the eye from Microsoft! So, all you can do is connect from the Mac to the shared windows folders (windows will not find your Mac). But you need to use static IP’s and connect Samba manually as seen below. (more in file sharing issues) I don’t really mind the static IP’s, but lame to not support Samba properly.

must connect manually so best to use fixed IP addresses

… and more on snow leopard on engadget

Ok, more on java on mobile devices. There has been some long delays using java on S60 when really, this shouldn’t be difficult to port code from mac to cell phone if it is all pure java? Read my “Batman Phone Review” to see the first round of driver issues with this phone.

After finally getting the Flashing Cable (CA-101) to work the firmware upgrade on the phone only took a few minutes. This with the latest version of the OVI suite (v1.1.3) the bluetooth synchronization worked much better and the cable was not needed, but the Nokia Launcher did cause crashes on several occasions were my software was using the bluetooth (WIDCOM) stack at the same time. That I can live with, but the cable driver now shows up as two devices in the PC Device Manager and yes, that causes the flashing cable issues!

Notice that on the development side of things that the S60 Emulator is slow to launch and I’ve not been able to use it from Eclipse! Only thing you can do is to build your JAR files and then open them with the Nokia S60 Emulator.

The crazy, maddening thing here is that the Nokia Firmware is sooo hit and miss as to what java calls will work, and which ones will return errors or just have when running on the phone, even though the exact same code runs fine on the emulators. See Below for the errors launching S60 Emulator from Eclipse:

So, in terms of any code advice for the nokia phones? I have had much better time with S60 Python Libraries. The ability to basically telnet into the phone and run commands from OSX has been dreamy and what initially made the phone attractive — FAST DEVELOPMENT. Looking at JavaFX and NetBeans.. more of the same, but very nice tools to mash together a MIDlet.. but good luck if you get stuck. Long story short.. I’m praying for better Dev tools from Nokia or Sun., but the promise of “write once, run anywhere” turned out to be one of those great ideas that never happened.. Maybe Python is the answer? (Or Maybe choose higher end phones like Apple or Google for your fast tracked app you want to sell online.)

You can test this on your phone by installing the MIDlet test Tools I’ve posted on my Google Code Site Please try these simple apps on your emulators and devices and see what works and what error codes you get. I’ll write about Bluetooth issues like service advertising and discovery next week.