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Remote 60 for Symbian Series 60 devices

Remote S60 is a great tool if you, like me, write applications for Symbian devices or show demos of mobile portals. There are special stands that uses a video camera to record and show what happens on the device but they cost more, and it is yet another gadget to drag around. Remote S60 on the other hand, costs $25 and does not require any additional hardware. It uses Bluetooth, IrDA, TCP/IP or the data cable to remote control the phone and display what is on the phone screen on the PC.

The following screen shot was taken from my phone with the demo version:

You can even control the phone using the keyboard on the PC which makes demos faster and easier. It also lets you you take screen shots and record the action to an AVI movie.

Thanks for the tip Alessandro.

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An honest politician in the Italian parliament???

What, is it possible???
Honest politicians don't exist by definition, especially Italian ones, but Di Pietro seems to be an exception. There has been a lot of discussions this year regarding the new budget plan and it has caught the attention of everybody. Nobody noticed that the communist majority government managed to sneak in a new law where they eliminate financial crimes committed by the Court of Auditors. Apart from Di Pietro that is, which made it pretty clear that the law must be removed or he leaves the majority government (which practically makes it a vote of confidence):

(AGI) - Rome, Dec. 15 - “... we are not here to have our leg pulled by those who use legal means for immoral ends“. Di Pietro's anger is against "the sly action of something within the majority, and maybe also of the government, which inserted a measure within the amendments that is disastrous for the credibility of the Unione coalition, regarding the elimination of financial crimes committed by the Court of Auditors." 

I rarely post about Italian current affairs or politics as I don't have the right to vote (even though I have lived here for more than a decade) but this really caught my attention. Finally a politician who is not interested in rubbing the backs of other politicians (or keeping his position in government if he continues like this :-)

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Create MSDN like documentation with Microsoft Sandcastle

Documentation is usually the weak point of most software development projects. Maintaining separate documentation from the code just does not work. Microsoft has released a Community Technology Preview of Sandcastle which is used internally in Microsoft to build the .NET framework documentation. Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments.

Other Sandcastle resources:

• Help forum


• Wiki


• Blogs

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An Open future for iTunes and the iPod

Thanks to DVD Jon we can look forward to iTunes compatible music players from other companies than Apple, and using other music stores like Napster with the iPod. From the article on Yahoo:

"He imitated Apple's system; he didn't remove any copyright protections," said Monique Farantzos, whose DoubleTwist Ventures plans to license the code to businesses. "He made a system that behaves in a similar way."

Jon Lech Johansen has essentially created software that in a way tricks iTunes into thinking a competing device with the DoubleTwist code is an iPod, said Farantzos who predicted it could be available to consumers as soon as the beginning of 2007.

"What this means in practice is that competing (download) stores would be able to make their encrypted content compatible with the iPod, she said. "Hardware devices that have this code embedded could play iTunes content."

...

She also declined to go into specifics about how the hacker known as DVD Jon -- who now works at DoubleTwist -- cracked Apple's code. But Farantzos sees no legal complication arising from the technology she said does not remove any copyright protection.

More importantly, Apple would also find it difficult to update its software to block DoubleTwist as the company did when RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) offered songs for download that worked with iPods, she added.

"We followed a different strategy than RealNetworks. We don't believe it is practical for Apple to block this."

Way to go Jon!

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A richer Internet Archive

The Internet Archive contains more than two petabytes (growing at a rate of 20 terabytes a month) of contents ranging from, movies, texts, audio and now also software.

After winning the latest lawsuits there are several exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is great news for all of us, not only the internet archive:

• you can copy old computer games (if the original machine, format or technology is obsolete)


• users of mobile phones can circumvent the technology which makes the phone only work with one network.


• you can copy "dongle protected" software when the dongle has been damaged and a replacement is no longer available.


• educational establishments can "break" digital rights management (DRM) technology for audiovisual works to be used by media studies or film classes


• you can bypass DRM on CDs in order to test and fix DRM technology which might damage your computer

The Register has the details of the lawsuits.

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Java is finally free

Sun has released Java to the open source community under the GPL version 2 license.

The following components of the JDK has been open sourced so far, more elements of the JDK are on the way:

• javac, the Java programming language compiler


• Java HotSpot Virtual Machine


• JavaHelp 2.0 extensible help system

Sun is also establishing the OpenJDK Community:

The OpenJDK Community is where developers will gather to collaborate on the open-source JDK code base and related projects. The OpenJDK project in which the open-source code base will ÒliveÓ is part of this community. Through the OpenJDK project, developers will be able to directly influence the future of the JDK implementation, participate with their peers in an open community and help take Java technology where it hasn't been before. Sun is evolving the existing JDK Community, where developers have been working on the source code over the past two years, into a site where Sun and non-Sun developers alike can collaborate together on the implementation.

More information at the Java OpenSource FAQ

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XML Notepad 2007

Microsoft has released XML Notepad 2007. The design of the previous version, XML Notepad 2006, is explained in detail on MSDN.

Handy features include:

• Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.


• Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.


• Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.


• Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML Notepad and from the file system.


• Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.


• In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.


• Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.


• Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.


• Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.


• Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.


• Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.


• Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.


• Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.


• Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.


• Built-in XML Diff tool.

The source code should be on CodePlex but I have not been able to find it yet...