My friend Ray and I were talking about the growing mobile development market the other day, which got me looking into mobile development again, but this time for fully featured (and connected) phones.

For sure the biggest player at this point is the iPhone, which has even surpassed sales of the once popular and much cheaper Razor.  Now if I only had a Mac Book Pro and an iPhone...  At least 2grand to get started developing.  Then there's the fact that I would have to learn Objective-C along with Apple's proprietary runtime library. 

I did learn a little Objective-C last night "From C++ to Objective-C", which compares C++ and Objective-C syntax, and then installed the Objective-C  NeXTStep libraries and compiler for gcc. 

What a pain, the Objective-C syntax is so foreign to me, but there's a lot of features I do like about the language, especially compared to C++.  The shortened header declarations, single inheritance, interfaces (protocols), reflection, garbage collection, and message based calling.  There's definitely a lot of dynamic runtime flexibility here for something that is a superset of C.

On the other hand I've been looking at Android development... which looks to be so much easier, at least for me.  You can develop on Windows or Linux using Java and Eclipse.  Wait, I've already done this!  I've already created a J2ME app for my Razor and my Palm.  The barrier for entry, at least from my point of view is much lower.

Now, does that mean iPhone development is worse?  No, its probably more lucrative, especially at this point.  The one remaining question I have, is Android or iPhone development in demand in the Seattle market where I live?

For Christmas my wife got me a new Zune 8GB, which I'm really enjoying so far.  I think Microsoft has done a really good job putting the newer Zune's together.  Not only is the UI pleasant, but the thing light weight and easy to use, which is in sharp contrast to the older hard drive based devices.  Originally my wife got me a 16GB SanDisk Sansa View, which would constantly freeze up, even after a firmware Flash.  I just wanted something that works, so I got a Zune.

Now that I can listen to podcasts on the commute to and from work, I've done a little bit of searching and thought I would try out the following podcasts:

• DotNetRocks
• Hanselminutes
• Polymorphic Podcast
• FLOSS Weekly
• Agile Toolkit Podcast

I got these from these Ayende and Jeffrey Palermo's blog posts and comments.

As a side note I stumbled upon what Ayende Rahein means: Freedom Dawn.

I'm not sure hardware currently supports this, but it would be really cool if there was a web browser GPS control, header - or something to that effect.  Basically the idea is to be able to perform a search through your web browser that uses your GPS location as one of the search parameters.  This would be incredibally useful for handheld internet devices.  My navi in my truck already does this when I need to find a gas station, bank, or restaurant nearby.  Handheld browsers should be able to do the same without the user needing to manually input a GPS coordinate.  Think realestate listings.  You're driving down a nice neighborhood and you want to search for all listed houses within 3 miles, with GPS coords this would be a snap.  What if you are standing inside a store?  You could go directly to the store's web site just because you are physically standing inside it.  I think people would really dig this - I know I would.  What about location aware internet advertising?  This is just the tip of the iceberg, especially once everyone has a phone that also acts as an internet connectivity device.

To turn on the touch screen feature of an emulator, go into C:\WTK25\wtklib\devices\[device]\ and open up the [device].properties file.  Set: touch_screen=true.

I'm in the middle of researching platforms to put together a speaking assitance program for my daughter who can only vocalize a handful of words.  It must be programmable (C++, C#, or Java), have a touch screen, and have audio capabilities.

Possible platforms:

1. Nintendo DS
2. Windows Mobile w/NET compact framework
3. Java ME (formerly J2ME)

Currently I'm leaning towards Java ME since I now work with Java at work and that seems to have the greatest market penetration.  It looks like the Palm Z22 may work, it seems to have a J2ME implementation and is cheap ($99).

Mentions IBM's J2ME for the Z22 http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/technology-and-science/palm-tx-and-palm-z22-handhelds.asp\

Palm Z22 specs: http://www.palm.com/us/products/handhelds/z22/specs.epl

Intro to J2ME with a Palm device: http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/31092

Java ME home: http://java.sun.com/javame/index.jsp

Looks like I'll need this installed on the Palm device: IBM WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment for Palm OS Garnet (WEME) provides a MIDP2.0/CLDC 1.1 compliant run-time: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/wireless/weme/