Re: Stop whininig / be friendly
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Christoph Pulster openm...@pulster.de Sean, the remaining OM community is HERE and listening your point of view. You do not use this chance, thats a pity. Pulster I'm a person that prefers to let our work speak for itself – and then of course do my best to give it a serious push ;) We (OM) have done zero work that directly overlaps with the original goals of this community since the phone project ended. Personally, I felt uncomfortable pushing a point of view without contributing (or at least working on something of) value to you all. If there's something specific yourself, or anyone else is interested in, I'm glad to response. Openmoko was no fail. You incarnated the idea of a free phone. After Apple/Androids sucked all our datas and brains, you will be in the history books of freedom. I appreciate the kind words. But do wish we could have been sucking their brains out by now. Technology is cyclic. We'll get our shot again. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
server update
Dear Community (Here comes an overdue update...) Harald, with help from Roh and Gismo, has been updating / consolidating our server infrastructure and will soon migrate to modern hardware. I'm working on transferring the openmoko.org trademark and domain ownership to a recognized non-profit entity in the Free Software community. This is an important step that we've wanted to do for some time. More details will follow. In the meantime, we're actively looking for a volunteer with strong sysadmin skills to continue to maintain the infrastructure after these changes. The basic setup will consist of debian systems with apache, lighttpd, mediawiki, trac, svn, git, exim, mailman, cyrus-imapd, openvz, vsftpd and munin. If anyone is interested, please contact myself and Harald off-list. Finally, I want to give a personal thanks to Roh and Gismo for all their work keeping our infrastructure alive. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Stop whininig / be friendly
Pulster You and I both know we did what we could behind the scenes to help you. Patents are an awful mess that really hurt startups. Especially in capital intensive businesses like ours was. If you want to come at me, do it like the gentleman I knew you to be. You have my phone and email. I'm not going anywhere. Sean On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Christoph Pulster openm...@pulster.de wrote: Hi Harald, thanks for your advices, which are intelligent ones, really. You are right, bitterness is what I feel. Why ? Openmoko forget to buy MP3-patent rights. The german customs seized my 500pcs-pallett order from China. I had to sign contract with patent holders, which is valid since 2017. So 5 years more I am a f.. slave thanks to Openmoko. I did not receive any help from Sean. Besides this personal story (some risk is part of the game to resell goods online, so no further whining), I always miss the openess in the communication of Sean. Please remember the hardware bugs (GPS, buzzing, bass), we resellers had to handle all the customer complaints, take back the units, repair on own costs. No instructions from manufactorer side. Next non-communication concerned future of Freerunner, future of Openmoko Inc., new products etc. - nothing was communicated from Sean to community. Instead we got a born-dead baby called Wikireader and some third products, some strange video-portal, I forget the name and the idea behind since many month. Third, where is the damn support for GTA04 ? I asked 1000times for case moulds or inventory to buy from closing Openmoko laboraties, nothing in reply. Forget all mistakes in the past if just the future is supported. But nothing happend. Yes, you are right, these views back with bitterness does not help. But on the other side I was never a friend of communities which act like a relious sect, where saying uncomfortable things gets banned. (in the high times of Openmoko it was sect style). I personally learned my lesson: get your hands away from amateur style driven companys. Openmoko has been one of it. Sean always did understand himself as a artist, not a businessman. We need such creative persons. But please pay some salary to a professional sales-guy doing the homework desparetely needed to survive as company. FIC put a big bag full of money before the doors of Openmoko. Financially it was no magic to create a product out of it. Any start-up company creating something from scratch is a miracle compared to this. What I realised on reseller side, is that money was spend quite easy. Openmoko through around with free debug boards, pouches and headsets etc. Call it generousity, I call it waste of cash reflow. Not to get rich, but to have money to develop further products. Coming to an end with my rant, 50% may be my personal bitterness, but 50% are in some way true. The fail of Openmoko is the proove. Christoph ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: server update
On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 10:30 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: community. This is an important step that we've wanted to do for some time. More details will follow. I hope there will be some way that *we* (the community) can influence/decide about our faith, i.e. by choosing or voting for the new entity finally owning the trademark. What I would not like to see is that it is going to be some entity I have never heard of and therefore have neither trust in nor an idea where they will move us to. Dr Nikolaus Thanks for your feedback. It will be a recognized non-profit entity in the Free Software world. Our main concern is the long term commitment of the non-profit. We are pursuing a number of options in parallel. But I won't name any organizations publicly until we get commitments. That would put unfair pressure / expectations on both sides. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Shiftd
On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 6:31 PM, Patryk Benderz patryk.bend...@esp.pl wrote: [cut] shiftd.com - A web service to bookmark, share, and discover videos worth watching. seriously?...I do not want to dispirit you guys, but I will not use it. No worries at all Patryk! We wanted early feedback. The Openmoko community has been here since day one. Even though I was aware many would be against shiftd's current form, I wanted to share it with you guys first. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [openmoko-announce] Shiftd
Hi Kevin On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 12:45 AM, Kevin Cole dc.l...@gmail.com wrote: A suggestion for you (that may already be part of your plans), given the FOSS angle: Integrate Shifd as much as possible with the Universal Subtitles project: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/ Very cool. I wasn't aware of this project. Subtitles are super important. Thanks for sharing! Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Shiftd
Hi Ben On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Ben Thompson ben.thomp...@yandex.ru wrote: Here are my ratings out of 10 for Openmoko products :- GTA01 - 5 GTA02 - 10 Wikireader - 0 Shiftd - 0 What does anyone else think? Hehe... I think you rate GTA02 far far too high, and WikiReader far too low. But obviously I'm biased :) As for shiftd, just give it time. This one is going to be good. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Shiftd
Dear Community! Today I get to do one of the things I love most about my job; announce our next product. This time, it's very different from what we've built in the past. No circuit boards were printed. Steel tooling wasn't cut. Mass production didn't dent our view of reality. No. This time, ones and zeros were all it took to assembly Openmoko's fourth product: shiftd.com - A web service to bookmark, share, and discover videos worth watching. Like all our previous products, Shiftd started off by scratching a personal itch. We were fascinated, yet totally overwhelmed by the shear volume of videos on the web. We desperately wanted a way to speed up the process of discovering what's worth watching. Existing tools left us deeply unsatisfied. So we set out to build our own. Currently, we're focused on Shiftd's core interaction model: bookmarking, sharing, and recommending videos. We have a working prototype. We're excited about using it ourselves, but we know it's far from perfect. Like the Neo 1973 many years ago, I want to share our perspective with you at the earliest possible stage. Longterm, our goal is to bring Shiftd to many different types of devices and systems. At this point, technically, we have built only a website, supporting a few videos sites, using Flash not HTML5 video (yet). We have rough ideas for future improvements, including which interfaces to open, but no concrete steps have been taken. We are at the beginning - the time at which we know the least about the project. Purposefully, we have made the fewest binding decisions possible, while still maintaining our original vision. Your feedback is critical for us to get this product right. We want Shiftd's heart to beat from the living process that emerges from the journey we take together. Your stories, your real reactions, will intimately grow Shiftd into something great. Sign up today at http://shiftd.com. Start shifting. Tell us what you like and what you don't like. Personally, I'm really looking forward to receiving your recommendations (@mosko) and sharing some of my own favorites with you. Sincerely, Sean Moss-Pultz ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [openmoko-announce] Neo RoadRunner
On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 2:26 AM, Patryk Benderz patryk.bend...@esp.pl wrote: Dnia 2011-04-01, pią o godzinie 22:58 +0400, Sean Moss-Pultz pisze: This email was sent via Anonymous email service for free. YOU CAN REMOVE THIS TEXT MESSAGE BY BEING A PAID MEMBER FOR $19/year. Message ID= 60854 Guys, take a look at the top of this mail... spoofed headers? Besides AFAIR Sean never used Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 as a MUA on this ML. Looks like someone tried to look like Sean. I say this is a April Fools' Day joke. Nevertheless, the RoadRunner name is very good :) I've been meaning to comment on this for a few days now... props to whomever did this. Fooled a lot of people – even some within our own company! FWIW, we actually toyed with building an Openstreetmap device after our Dash project. That was about 3 years ago. Roadrunner would have been a good name :) Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
[openmoko-announce] Neo RoadRunner
This email was sent via Anonymous email service for free. YOU CAN REMOVE THIS TEXT MESSAGE BY BEING A PAID MEMBER FOR $19/year. Message ID= 60854 Dear Community! Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the birth of our new product -- Neo RoadRunner. The world's first MeeGo powered GPS road navigation in the palm of your hand. Accessible immediately, anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet connection. No strings attached. With Neo RoadRunner you'll be prepared for those unexpected moments when curiosity strikes. And once you have it, you'll realize how often you get lost on road during the day. Neo RoadRunner takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to an even greater realm. Neo RoadRunner is so amazingly simple. There really is no closed part. We built our software stack on top of MeeGo distribution and we use openstreetmap.org project as a source for our navigation data. You turn it on and instantly become discovered on the map at any place you are. It's perfect for all purposes. From the Aha! moment when we held our first prototypes, to the last few months as we worked around the clock to polish every last detail, this product was a joy to make and even more fun to experience. We are head-over-heels in love with Neo RoadRunner. Never have I found so much fun in the little moments of curiosity life offers us. Try one and I'm sure you'll agree that we've delivered the essence of GPS navigation in an addictively simple form factor. Sales start today at http://openmoko.com. Enjoy. Tell your friends. And let us know what you think! Sincerely Sean Moss-Pultz ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko / Medion Wikireader?
Hi Patrick On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 2:10 AM, Patrick Beck pb...@yourse.de wrote: Am Samstag, den 19.03.2011, 20:40 +0800 schrieb Sean Moss-Pultz: Hi Patrick What would you like to hear in an official statement? We are very focused on making WikiReader a retail success. We sent a newsletter out in January talking about our progress: http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b982f5bdf55759b5b47661379id=17f3fdc0f8 3 times a year (quarterly) we update WikiReader's content. Usually with new languages and added Wikis (beyond just Wikipedia). i have not seen such a newsletter so it was a mistake by me. But i have not found it on http://thewikireader.com/a/blog/ We also announce this type of stuff on twitter (@wikireader) if you don't want to subscribe to the newsletter. Believe it or not, WikiReader is expensive to build. The quality is extremely high quality. We specifically designed it to last for a long time on very simple AAA batteries. This required special components that aren't commonly used in electronics these days. I know its not so easy and cheap, but you have hard competitors on the smartphone market. I own a Wikireader so i like the idea :) My father is very happy about it. His only problem is the display, because it has no background light (i know the battery). We hope to improve the screen one day. I feel your father's pain. I don't know if the problems are solved in a new version (i have to look for a update). My last problems was. - Table of contents would be very nice - the overview block from the wikipedia (where population, president, etc. are listed. For example in a article about a country) - kinetic scrolling is a bit messy to see where you are on a black/white display ;) We tried to simplify the layouts of Wikipedia a bit for device since many of the overviews are 3-4 pages of scrolling on our little screen. I don't think we'll get to those features soon. Although they are on our list. Are you programmer yourself? Our code on http://github.com/wikireader. So last but not least. My question about a official statement. How looks the future? I hope i can buy the third Openmoko device after Freerunner and Wikireader :) Thanks for your kind words. We'd love to make a lot more devices for you all. But our resources are tight these days. We are working on a third device. But it's only in the early prototype stages. WikiReader is going to occupy the majority of our time for a while. We really want to make it a retail success. Take care. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko / Medion Wikireader?
Hi Patrick On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Patrick Beck pb...@yourse.de wrote: when Openmoko Inc. still exists i hope we get a official statement from them, for the future of Openmoko Products. When i look at the Wikireader i have not seen any updates since months. What would you like to hear in an official statement? We are very focused on making WikiReader a retail success. We sent a newsletter out in January talking about our progress: http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b982f5bdf55759b5b47661379id=17f3fdc0f8 3 times a year (quarterly) we update WikiReader's content. Usually with new languages and added Wikis (beyond just Wikipedia). This past winter, Wikimedia's servers had serious problems and they could not produce their XML dumps that we use. These are back up again now... we're working on our Spring release. It will be out soon. It's not easy to sell original Wikireader for 109 Euro against 79.95 Euro for the Medion Wikireader. We (Om) sell the same 8GB version that Pulster sells for USD $99 on our website. It ships from the USA, so if you add in the shipping costs and VAT, you'll see that Pulster's price is very fair for Europe. Medion sells a 4GB version. Same with Pandigital in the USA. They can afford to sell it for a lower margin because of the volume they move. Believe it or not, WikiReader is expensive to build. The quality is extremely high quality. We specifically designed it to last for a long time on very simple AAA batteries. This required special components that aren't commonly used in electronics these days. Let us know if there is anything you'd like clarified. I'll do my best to answer any questions you (or others) might have. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko / Medion Wikireader?
On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Jeff jcolb...@netins.net wrote: I knew the mediaon and pandigital were the compressed and shortened versions of the Wikireader. The big one can use larger SD cards, so you can carry around more information. Mine has the full english wikipedia, wiktionary, and wikiquotes on an 8gb microsd. If you use a 16 gb card, you can add even more info, like Gutenberg. However, I don't think the smaller capacity wikireaders are capable of addressing the 8gb and larger cards. Jeff Besides the memory cards they ship with, they're identical. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [WikiReader] what's up with Wikitravel?
Doug Yes it would require the new base file. Please let us know what you think! -Sean -Original Message- From: Doug Jones dj...@frombob.to Sender: community-boun...@lists.openmoko.org Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:21:04 To: Openmoko communitycommunity@lists.openmoko.org Reply-To: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: [WikiReader] what's up with Wikitravel? I just added Wikitravel to my WikiReader. But it doesn't appear on the menu. Does it require a newer base file? Perhaps this one? http://wrmlbeta.s3.amazonaws.com/base-20110106.7z?torrent ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko on Wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli gnu...@no-log.org wrote: On Thu, 2010-10-28 at 10:27 +0200, Eric Ehlers wrote: Hello, I added a new section (2.5) to the Openmoko page on wikipedia in an attempt to reflect the latest status of the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko I also think that the history is a bit short, but I don't know enough to complete it. For instance, I think it was the first commercial free phone. but I don't know when exactly the gta01 and gta02 were commercialized. I also wonder if it's the first commercial phone(or not) that permitted the installation of native applications(I wonder if the app store for the iphone came before or after the openmoko) It would be nice to have more info, because else it would be forgetten... HI Denis We publicly announced the Neo 1973 on November 7th, 2006 at the Open Source in Mobile conference. We expected to ship before the end of the year, but experienced serious delays getting it into production. The first units were shipped to developers in February of 2007. With our online sales starting in July 2007. This was a limited run and we sold out in a few days. Wikipedia says that Apple announced their iPhone on January 9, 2007. And starting selling on June 29, 2007. Here's an article written shortly after our announcement: http://gizmodo.com/229243/openmoko-smartphone-did-they-have-a-time-machine-or-what Hope that helps. And thanks for documenting this! Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Wikireader development - Ideas and improvements
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Christoph Pulster openm...@pulster.de wrote: Openmoko has not stopped the development of the Wikireader Sean, can you confirm this ? Hi Christoph We're still super active developing WikiReader. You can view our latest commits here: http://github.com/wikireader Over the past few months we've been working on many new language variants. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, all have working virtual keypads now. We also have a download tool under development for Windows and OS X for people who want to use an easy interface to update their WikiReader. This will be pushed to github with a formal release later this month. Overall we're quite happy with our progress on the technical side as well as the sales side. But we definitely would love to see more community involvement. I'm going to reply in detail to Patrick's email shortly. I just got back in the office. It's been a busy last few weeks for us. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Wikireader development - Ideas and improvements
Hi Patrick On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 10:01 PM, Patrick Beck pb...@yourse.de wrote: i own a Wikireader since a month now and i am happy with the base functionality, but i have a few ideas and improvements and i am looking for other users they owns a wikireader (and develeops for it). Openmoko has not stopped the development of the Wikireader, but i think it can be useful to have a nice community around the project. Till now i have only found the following ressources: http://thewikireader.com/ http://dev.thewikireader.com/ http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader and see not a list or any other communication - i think the community list is not so wrong :) Yes currently these are the only places... if something is missing let me know. And I see what we can do. ==Improvements:== - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland - There is a small block on the right with information (population, language, capital, etc.) I think that a very useful imformation - how can we add them to the Wikireader? Most of these are templates and within these templates there's HTML tables. Currently we remove all tables since we haven't found an elegant solution to displaying tables on our screen (it's only 240 pixels wide). You can look at: http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader/blob/master/host-tools/offline-renderer/ArticleRenderer.py And see where we parse out tables. If you have some ideas how to handle this better, we'd love to hear. - Table of Contents would be helpful to get a overview about the content of the whole article On our todo list... but it's still a while away. We're really just trying to get the base language support really solid. - searching in a article could be very usefull Agreed! - The scrolling it a bit poor, because you can't read anything on the screen when you scroll - on the community list was a small patch discussed: http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-December/058462.html That patch works no more, but from the descriptions i find it very useful. A new version from maleadt was published in September: http://github.com/maleadt/wikireader/downloads It's unstable and not as inuitive as the first path but it is a start for a nice usability on the wikireader. ==Problems:== - A other problem is that tables and other special layouts are not interpreted from the parser. See for example: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Kfz-Kennzeichen_in_Deutschland On the Wikireader you get only a list from 0-9 and A-Z without any license plates. Yes. (see above explanation) So how can we fix the problems and get new features in? I am only a python programmer but i hope i can help. This Thread should be a starting point to discuss new features and collect bugs - i think that should help Openmoko, too. Just about everything is done in Python that has to do with parsing. So you should be fine. If you are interested in developing, get our codes from github, let us know when you have something good, and we'd love to pull it back into future releases. Feel free to email us if you have any questions! Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader strangeness
Joachim Glad to hear you're getting good use out of WikiReader. Sorry to hear you're having hw problems. Drop us an email to supp...@thewikireader.com with your order number and we'll take care of you. --Original Message-- From: Joachim Pedersen Sender: community-boun...@lists.openmoko.org To: List for Openmoko community discussion ReplyTo: List for Openmoko community discussion Subject: WikiReader strangeness Sent: Sep 28, 2010 01:52 I've had my WR for about 9 months or so, its seen quite a lot of use and love, impressed many and been across the globe with me. A couple of weeks ago it just stopped starting up when the power button was pressed. When the power button is pressed a one or two pixel line flashes on the screen, and nothing happens. I've tried re-seating the microSD card, and replacing the batteries, which had no effect on the problem. I was running a recent RC build for the last couple of months. Any ideas on what might be going on? Can someone point me to pin-out spec for the debug connector? Is it 3.3v? Is it possible to buy/find/have a serial cable that fits the debug connector/pads? Thanks ahead for any info/links! -Joachim -- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: QtMoko Virtual Memory
Sure. Let me dig them up again... -Sean -Original Message- From: Nashvin Gangaram nashv...@gmail.com Sender: community-boun...@lists.openmoko.org Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 10:50:56 To: Openmoko_Communitycommunity@lists.openmoko.org Reply-To: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: QtMoko Virtual Memory ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader] Project Gutenberg (again)
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:57 PM, Tom Bachmann e_mc...@web.de wrote: Sure. We'll add it to our todo list. Please keep us posted as to your progress. This is super exciting work you're doing! Well, there is not all that much more to say. I have been fixing minor glitches during the last days. I completely converted gutenberg-de yesterday and it is working fine in the simulator. I'm currently converting all of the german and english ebooks of project gutenberg (about 25000 ebooks, this will yield about 3.5GB of .dat files). Will probably take all day and longer on my dual-core laptop. Awesome! When I return to Germany on Sunday (I study in the UK) I will finally order a wikireader to test this on real hardware. Thanks a lot. We really appreciate the support. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader] Project Gutenberg (again)
Hi Tom On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Tom Bachmann e_mc...@web.de wrote: 1) Is there a deep reason why boldface fonts are not implemented? I figure they are not really relevant for wikis, but would be nice for some of the books. Unless there is something that complicates the matter I'm not seeing, I think I will add them (should be straightforward to mimic the behaviour of italic fonts?). They are implemented. We just didn't include them to save space. (Font sets are super huge when you include all the unicode characters!) If you look at the function handle_data within http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader/blob/master/host-tools/offline-renderer/ArticleRenderer.py you'll see what I mean. Hm. I thought I had convinced myself that the real problem was that only two bits are used to encode the font id, and they are already used up (default, italic, title, subtitle, and supplements [large files with all characters I suppose] for default, title, subtitle). So adding boldface fonts to the wiki-app *does* seem to involve some non-trivial work. (I guess the advantage of splitting the fonts like this is that the small subset can be kept in memory all the time? The size of the fontfiles themselves is on the order of megabites so shouldn't matter, should it?) This has nothing to do with the data structures. We cache the fonts into the SDRAM to speed up the entire system. Without this, WikiReader is too painfully slow (reading from the SD card caps out at around 125kb/s.) Currently we use 32MB of SDRAM. This means we can hold a few font styles but we need to move to smaller size SDRAM for future productions for cost reasons. So we have to be super careful with how we handle fonts. It's quite a complex problem for us. Especially as we add more and more language support. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader] Project Gutenberg (again)
On Tuesday, June 8, 2010, Tom Bachmann e_mc...@web.de wrote: This has nothing to do with the data structures. We cache the fonts into the SDRAM to speed up the entire system. Without this, WikiReader is too painfully slow (reading from the SD card caps out at around 125kb/s.) Currently we use 32MB of SDRAM. This means we can hold a few font styles but we need to move to smaller size SDRAM for future productions for cost reasons. So we have to be super careful with how we handle fonts. It's quite a complex problem for us. Especially as we add more and more language support. I see. That's the kind of deep problem I'd rather leave to you experts. I'll just wait and see if you cook something up. Till then I can live without boldface. Sure. We'll add it to our todo list. Please keep us posted as to your progress. This is super exciting work you're doing! Sean -- -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader] Project Gutenberg (again)
Hi Tom
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Tom Bachmann e_mc...@web.de wrote:
Dear all,
after taking a rather longish break, I'm back working on my project
gutenberg integration code.
Excellent!
[snip]
Technical Questions:
1) Is there a deep reason why boldface fonts are not implemented? I
figure they are not really relevant for wikis, but would be nice for
some of the books. Unless there is something that complicates the matter
I'm not seeing, I think I will add them (should be straightforward to
mimic the behaviour of italic fonts?).
They are implemented. We just didn't include them to save space. (Font
sets are super huge when you include all the unicode characters!)
If you look at the function handle_data within
http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader/blob/master/host-tools/offline-renderer/ArticleRenderer.py
you'll see what I mean.
2) Could you please add the characters U+2039 and U+203A ('SINGLE
LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK' and right-pointing version) to the
font? They are used quite often in some books and the box just looks
ugly. Again I would do this myself but there seem to be a number of
intermediate stages in font generation that I don't really understand.
Sure we can do this. No problem! The font is getting more and more
complex since we actually hand make many of the characters now.
3) Is it possible that the english language image on
dev.thewikireader.org is corrupted? When I try to extract it with 7z x
enpedia.7z I get a cryptic Error: E_FAIL message. (I'm running
standard 7z of debian testing, version 9.04 beta.)
Very possible. I'm out of town now, but I'll check with the engineers
when I return later this week.
Bugs in wiki-app:
I believe that in the course of writing and testing my extensions, I
have fixed some minor bugs in the core wiki-app code. My changes are
very small and isolated, so the maintainers of the main repository may
wish to look at these files only.
Great. I'll ask our lead engineer (Chris) to check out your stuff.
Sean
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Re: [WikiReader] Announcing wrdk
Michael Excellent work. We all thank for you such a meaningful contribution! -Sean On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 1:11 AM, Michael Hope michael.h...@seabright.co.nz wrote: Hi there. I'm happy to announce wrdk, a development kit for the WikiReader. wrdk is a pre-built toolchain, libraries, set of examples, and simple serial loader that makes developing applications for the Openmoko WikiReader a little bit easier. Included is fairly high level access to most of the hardware including the file system, LCD, buttons, and touch screen. The development cycle is pretty easy: write your app, build it, copy it over to a SD card, and pick the icon off a menu to run it. The serial loader, along with a modified WikiReader and custom cable, speeds this up by letting you reset the device and load a new program straight from your desktop machine. Binaries are available for Linux and Windows. See http://wrdk.seabright.co.nz/ for more. I'm tempted to offer a pre-modified WikiReader and download cable to help those who aren't electronically inclined. Please contact me if you'd be interested. -- Michael ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: git.openmoko.org / GTA02 kernel sources?
Hi Dr. Nikolaus On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@goldelico.com wrote: That also raises more general questions: * who (person, company) is responsible for git.openmoko.org? * even more general: who is responsible for openmoko.org? * if nobody, how can we protect that it suddenly completely disappears because some room manager unplugs the power cord or nobody pays the annual fee for the domain registration? We still support this infrastructure and pay Gismo a monthly salary to maintain things for us. He's doing great work, but do let us know if there is anything specific you'd like us to improve. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
distribution
Hi Community! With much delay on my part, we've finally got around to properly handling FreeRunner distribution: http://www.openmoko.com/freerunner.html Anyone that is not on that list, and purchased FreeRunners for distribution within the last six months, should email sa...@openmoko.com. We want you on our list. Finally, I would like to send a personal thanks to Pulster and Tuxbrain for their comments and concerns. And Kosa and David (leviathan) for the generous offers to help. Happy New Year all! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [WikiReader] where to send patches?
On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Robin Humble robin.humble...@anu.edu.aurobin.humble%2...@anu.edu.au wrote: Hi, I've been playing with rebuilding wikireader enwiki images with fedora12 x86_64 on a test cluster of ours over the holidays. seems to work fine. I have some small fixes for 64bit issues with hash building, fedora paths, php warnings from a different (newer?) php5 version, and some nasty hacks to get around php Fatal errors on a few wiki articles. is this list the right place to send wikireader patches? Hi Robin We really appreciate the help. Just email c...@thewikireader.com or post something on Github. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Distributor list
David (and others) Thanks a lot for sharing your concerns about this decision with me. I had no idea it would be taken as anything but a good thing moving forward. I'm in the States now for an urgent business meeting so I will not have much time to think about / organize this until the weekend, when I return to Taiwan. I will be in touch with you all directly and let's work something out that meets both of our needs. I'm sure we can do this. -Sean On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 2:32 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: Really disappointing for us to , that Sean has decided to not maintain an official distributors list, This drain a little the interest on making business and be so participative on making the marketing stuff Openmoko Inc has decided not to do. I really believe in the project of a freephone, I really believe in of open hardware but I'm starting to not believe in Openmoko Inc. And Sean please not argue than FreeRunner responsibilities has been transfered to community because hardware are still sold by Openmoko Inc. Regards from a very sad distributor David Reyes Samblas Martinez http://www.tuxbrain.com Open ultraportable embedded solutions Openmoko, Openpandora, Arduino Hey, watch out!!! There's a linux in your pocket!!! 2009/11/30 Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@computer.org: Am 30.11.2009 um 08:14 schrieb Christoph Pulster: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributors Being one of your resellers, I appreciate your effords. Also being one of the resellers, I admit that I am not at all happy with how this list is treated. What I really expect is that the manufacturer who has a network of distributors takes care of listing them properly. And not through an anonymous community. Unfortunately Sean declined to continue responsibility. So they simply linked to the wiki page. And only after insisting to at least inform the community, he wrote this request to find a volunteer. Translated into bold words it means: We, Openmoko, have no interest in organizing anything that helps that our products are being provided to interested parties. And the community will solve our problems. The list of distributors badly needs an update. Not on the wiki, but in real life. I think it is confusing for the customer to see so many shops listed, which are obviously not seem to be active anymore. English shop Truebox and German Trisoft to mention just two (both still have a christmas 2008 offer online...). I think you just want less competition being visible - raising your own visibility :) We have an open market and everyone can display his own offer as good as he likes. And, (especially for the Freerunner) I believe in educated customers who can compare themselves what the best and most up-to-date offer is. And they can IMHO also convert and compare currencies. Besides, a lot of resellers quit selling Openmoko products, because they are unhappy how it worked out in the past. Swedish Openmoko.se shop and Spanish Blitz shop to mention just two. It is the lack of sales organization of Openmoko which makes it difficult for distributors to continue to work with them. Nikolaus http://www.handheld-linux.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: the Distributor List
Hi David I really appreciate your offer to help. Sorry for the delayed reply. I had something urgent that came up and I had to fly again. In the meantime a backlash from this decision happened on the lists -- so I want to talk with a few more of the distributors and rethink how to do this moving forward. Let me get back to you early next week. About this and your other questions... -Sean On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 3:29 PM, David Lanzendörfer david.lanzendoer...@o2s.ch wrote: Hi Sean I would be very glad to help you looking, that everything goes right. And would additionaly like to ask for some guidlines to start selling such devices as company (www.o2s.ch) too. And by the way: Good work, coming up with Freerunner, its the must powerfull tool I ever had. It even survived going swimming with me in Amazonia, last fall! (Little boat accident) I couldnt think of another device like this, I'm loving it. Again: Good work! Best regards David [aka. leviathan] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [WikiReader] SpareParts ?
Thomas Please email supp...@thewikireader.com for these kind of requests. I'm sure we'll take care of you. -Sean On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Thomas HOCEDEZ thomas.hoce...@free.frwrote: Hello, Unfortunately, my touchscreeen don't seemed to working anymore. (I opened my FR to put backlight, what is impossible to do). Does the specs show what part is the screen ? Is it possible to find one somewhere or do I have to use my WR with random only ? Thanks by advance to all information. kindly Regards AstHrO ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
the Distributor List
Hi Community We're working to make this page: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributors The official list of distributors of the FreeRunner. It's obviously very important for all of our customers to clearly understand who is selling what and at what price. I would like to ask for a volunteer to help support this page and let me personally know if anything needs changing or clarifying. Any takers? I would really appreciate the help! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Unable to place a WikiReader review on Amazon
On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 5:37 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: 2009/11/19 Christoph Pulster openm...@pulster.de: In parallel universe, I'm sure there's a system better than Amazon's. Its called distribution/reseller network :) Sean I must admit you should have count on us a little more in the launch of the Wikireader, I believe we have demostrate we are faithful to the spirit of the project David, Christoph Please understand that it's not a faith / trust issue what-so-ever. Let me explain a bit more... With our current resources we could only make an initial version that worked well with English. So naturally we chose to focus on the US market for the launch. In this market, it's just about impossible to sell (well) without being on Amazon. Amazon *is* e-commerse to the average American. (They currently have over 150M accounts. Ignoring this is the epitome of shooting yourself in the foot.) Europe is super important to us. As is the rest of the world. But we want to make sure WikiReader is 100% usable, right out of the box. Which means we need to support more languages (both from the technical side and from the customer service side). This is all high on our priority list. But it's going to take us some time to get there. We'll definitely let you know when we're close. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Wikireader]Full spanish wikipedia successfully packed but...
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:28 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: I have achive to run the full proccess sucsessfully, all articles are there but... (why has allways to be a but...:() I can't use search with more than three letters, when I write down the forth letter, it allways print a No entries found. I can search the words presing 3 letters, press the search button again to make the keyboard disappear and scrolling but this is far than optimal :P Any clues where the problem can be? Hi David You need to generate a hash file (pedia.hsh). Look at hash-gen. It's run from the Make file when you run combine. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Unable to place a WikiReader review on Amazon
Hi Joshua On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com wrote: All reviewers must have a password-protected Amazon.com account used for at least one purchase from Amazon.com. Ah ok. So they're forcing you to buy something direct from their store after all. This is discouraging. Finally got a reply from them this morning: Thank you for writing back to us. We understand your concern in this regard, as please be informed that we have checked the details and we are aware of the details in this regard. The potential customer should have a buyer account and he should have at least one single item purchase on amazon for the last six months. Only these potential customers can have option to leave customer reviews. We appreciate your understanding and apology for any misunderstanding that we have may have contributed to you in this regard. So that does now confirm what you said. In parallel universe, I'm sure there's a system better than Amazon's. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Unable to place a WikiReader review on Amazon
Joshua On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: jcolb...@netins.net writes: You should be able to post a review on Amazon. I bought mine directly from the Wikireader site, as you did, and had no problem posting a review. You may need to log in to Amazon before you try to post. I think I have to actually buy /something/ *from Amazon* before they'll let me post any reviews--I don't necessarily have to buy the product that I'm reviewing from them, but I have to buy *something* from them. You must have previously bought something from them. My Amazon account was only even created as a side-effect of the `Amazon Payments' processing of the order placed through thewikireader.com, so I don't meet that criteria: I've never bought /anything/ *from Amazon*. It seems like a sort-of weird policy, but I guess I've probably seen weirder. Maybe there's some legitimate logic behind it, somewhere. I emailed Amazon directly last night. Here's what they said: Please be informed that anyone registered as an Amazon.com customer is entitled to write a product review. It doesn't matter whether they bought the product from our website or not. So it should work fine. I think you have to login to Amazon.com with your customer account. And you can write a review. Is this what you tried? It looks like the WikiReader has just been removed from their product listing (except that it's still in some of the `bestsellers' lists, depending on how you navigate there...), otherwise I'd just buy another one [*from Amazon*] (hey--the holidays are coming! ;)). Yes, our product is missing from their search. You can view / buy WikiReader here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002N5521W But forget about searching. That's totally broken. Seriously we're pulling our hair out over this one. Amazon might be nice to customers, but to suppliers it's the worse experience I have *ever* seen. I'm on the phone with them more than my girlfriend. Problem after problem after problem. There system is a total nightmare. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Unable to place a WikiReader review on Amazon
Joshua On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com writes: On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: jcolb...@netins.net writes: You should be able to post a review on Amazon. I bought mine directly from the Wikireader site, as you did, and had no problem posting a review. You may need to log in to Amazon before you try to post. I think I have to actually buy /something/ *from Amazon* before they'll let me post any reviews--I don't necessarily have to buy the product that I'm reviewing from them, but I have to buy *something* from them. You must have previously bought something from them. My Amazon account was only even created as a side-effect of the `Amazon Payments' processing of the order placed through thewikireader.com, so I don't meet that criteria: I've never bought /anything/ *from Amazon*. [...] I emailed Amazon directly last night. Here's what they said: Please be informed that anyone registered as an Amazon.com customer is entitled to write a product review. It doesn't matter whether they bought the product from our website or not. So it should work fine. I think that Amazon is having communications difficulties: Wouldn't be the first time... I think you have to login to Amazon.com with your customer account. And you can write a review. Is this what you tried? It is. After logging in, it tells me: To write a customer review: you must have used this account to complete a purchase* of an item from Amazon.com. Please wait 24 hours after your first purchase before writing a review. If you have another account: and you have already used it to make a purchase, you can sign into that account to write a review. Other options: Go back to the item you were just viewing Visit Your Profile * A purchase requirement is used to maintain review quality. After a series of phone-calls and e-mails with Amazon support staff from various departments (`Amazon.com' support and `Amazon Payments' support are 2 different departments; and I ultimately ended up at `Amazon Community' support, which is the department that handles issues related to product-reviews and other `community'-related things), I finally got an e-mail that read: All reviewers must have a password-protected Amazon.com account used for at least one purchase from Amazon.com. Ah ok. So they're forcing you to buy something direct from their store after all. This is discouraging. You'll find helpful information in the Fine Print listed on the review submission form. Also, please take a look at our Review Guidelines for information about acceptable review content: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14279631 But it did take a while to get that out of them. They really *were* friendly and intent on helping at every step of they way, it just appears that they... have some communications problems. I did get to talk to real, live people *immediately*--I didn't have to deal with touch-tone menus or voice-recognition robots; so, there's that..., and I do have to give them some points for that :) Oh yes. They are always very helpful. Just full of internal contradictions. It looks like the WikiReader has just been removed from their product listing (except that it's still in some of the `bestsellers' lists, depending on how you navigate there...), otherwise I'd just buy another one [*from Amazon*] (hey--the holidays are coming! ;)). Yes, our product is missing from their search. You can view / buy WikiReader here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002N5521W Yep--that's the URL that I ended up giving (reading) to the phone support person during the third round of problem-resolution, because she just couldn't find it otherwise. Not even looking for `the best-selling electronic office dictionary' ;), because she started in `electronics' and then moved to `bestsellers' rather than starting in `bestsellers' and moving through `electronics'. Yes. This is another battle we're in with Amazon now. But forget about searching. That's totally broken. Seriously we're pulling our hair out over this one. Amazon might be nice to customers, but to suppliers it's the worse experience I have *ever* seen. I'm on the phone with them more than my girlfriend. Yeesh. Well, here's hoping that you're back in the listing soon. Anyway, I guess I'll just buy something from Amazon (like another WikiReader) when Amazon's product-listing is un-broken again, then I'll be able to post a review. Hehe... thanks. Sorry to have to put you through all this. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader - first impressions
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Torfinn Ingolfsen tin...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.comwrote: Are you running the latest kernel? (The way to tell is if you have kinetic scrolling, yes == latest kernel) I am running whatever version the device was delivered with. It doesn't look like scrolling is kinetic. Great. Then you can be even more impressed when you upgrade :) http://cloud.github.com/downloads/wikireader/wikireader/kernel-2009-10-30.zip You can hold down the backspace key. It will delete the word extremely fast. We're working on a few minor UI changes for the next release. Clear will be more obvious I really hope you will implement a clear button - one button press is faster than holding down the backspace key, IMHO. We on the same page... We didn't want to add another button. We might use left to right swipes in a later release. Not sure yet... Swipes might work. It doesn't have to be a physical button - how about using a corner of the screen for that purpose? Not really sure it would work - if I am right handed, I will use the thumb of my right hand to scroll on the right side of the screen, and a button on the lower left corner of the screen wouldn't interfere. However, if a left handed person used the device, he or she might use the left side of the screen to scroll. Hmm, this idea needs more thinking. Good idea. We'll try this out. Annoyances: - it is impossible (for me at least) to take out the microSD card without using a tool (pliers or something). Why do I want to take it out? To actually show people the small size of a Wikipedia database. :-) Push it in and it will pop out (beware it will *really* pop sometimes) Not on mine. I have tried - it never pos out. I also tried shakking the device - no, the card doesn't want to come out. My workaround is a handle made of tape - see my other post. Without that, I need something that can grab the cardon the sides - my fingers / nails doesn't fit in there (ok, I can do it, but it takes almost a minute, and a lot of cursing :-) ). You might laugh but I think you have the break it in a bit. Mine was firm the first 10 pushes or so. Now it's pop outs like crazy. - the buttons on the on screen keyboard is a bit small for my fingers (it is easy to press the character left or right of the one I want). I don't know how to solve this yet. Software. If you've used an iPhone, the keypad is 70% of WikiReader's size. And typing is a lot better. So just bear with us. We're working on this big time. Cool. I never have used an iPhone - I have a FreeRunner (and a 1973). FWIW, I had this idea about the keyboard: if nothing else works, you could always split the keyboard in a left and a right half, and only show one half at a time (with a button to switch to the other half). Not ideal, but then the buttons could be almost twice as wide. I think we can get the keypad great. It's just going to take another release. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader - first impressions
Hi Torfinn Really appreciate your feedback. My comments are inline: On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 5:48 AM, Torfinn Ingolfsen tin...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, After a few days with the WikiReader, here are my first impressions: The obvious things: - good size: this device is small enough to drag along (ok, it won't fit in my trouser pockets), but has a big enough screen to read on comfortably - use in places: I knew about the missing backlight. I can read the WikiReader while commuting (most tram's have good lighting), but on the other hand it is difficult in a cosy cafe, because the lighting is not s good there. - scrolling: this works great, even better than I thought. One friend asked: how do I get to the next page, but was happy with scrolling after I told him to use that instead. Are you running the latest kernel? (The way to tell is if you have kinetic scrolling, yes == latest kernel) http://cloud.github.com/downloads/wikireader/wikireader/kernel-2009-10-30.zip Scrolling is really really good there. - history: it's there when I turn on the device - and I like that. - the search button removes the on screen keyboard so I can scroll on the search screen. Yes! I like that. That's another fun random like way of searching. The questions: - search screen: where is the delete word and start over button? (this was the first question I got from two friends trying the device) You can hold down the backspace key. It will delete the word extremely fast. We're working on a few minor UI changes for the next release. Clear will be more obvious. - why isn't there a back button? Sure, I can use the history button and select from the list (and that works quite well), but a back button would save one keypress We didn't want to add another button. We might use left to right swipes in a later release. Not sure yet... Annoyances: - it is impossible (for me at least) to take out the microSD card without using a tool (pliers or something). Why do I want to take it out? To actually show people the small size of a Wikipedia database. :-) Push it in and it will pop out (beware it will *really* pop sometimes) - the buttons on the on screen keyboard is a bit small for my fingers (it is easy to press the character left or right of the one I want). I don't know how to solve this yet. Software. If you've used an iPhone, the keypad is 70% of WikiReader's size. And typing is a lot better. So just bear with us. We're working on this big time. - sometimes, the history screen is unresponsible, I have to press the other two buttons a couple of times before I can select anything on the history screen Working on this, too... small annoyances: - the moment it takes to display an article (after selecting it, either from the search screen or from a link) is just long enough that the device feels a bit slow sometimes. Same as my last comment :) Some things I haven't figured out yet: - how do I get another Wikipedia (for example the Norwegian one) onto a MicroSD card? - how do I convert an e-book and put it onto a microSD card for the device? Like David said, we encourage you to check out github.com/wikireader for now. All in all - I really like this device. Great. We love to hear this! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [WikiReader] unable to run emulator
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Suco sucotro...@gmail.com wrote: Trying to run it again, I've noted that when I execute sh 00run.sh this line is showed: make: *** There is no rule to build the target `farm0'. Stop. Yes you will need to write your own file. If you look at what is being executed in 00run.sh then it should be fairly obvious. Let us know if you get stuff. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
-Sean On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 6:50 PM, john jptmo...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/10/30 Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com: On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:29 AM, john jptmo...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/10/29 Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com: On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Michal Brzozowski ruso...@poczta.fm wrote: 2009/10/29 Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/ref=pd_ts_pg_4?ie=UTF8pg=4 Just to put this into perspective: Amazon Kindle got 7111 customer review while WikiReader 13. You'd need to compare for how long each one is being sold. That and it does help to have a front page listing ;-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community So, bagged myself one of these bad boys today and I am equally excited as when I first got my hands on a 1973. Really looking forward to educating myself while I ride the Tube! Keep up the good work! Thanks John. Please let us know what you think when it arrives! I received it already I meant to say. Very impressed! I am going to see if I can setup some offline mobile learning experiments at a couple of Uni's here in London. Awesome. This is something we'd love to see! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:50 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez
da...@tuxbrain.com wrote:
Hi I'm trying to generate the file for a spainsh wikipedia on the WR ,
after compiling succsesfuly the source on the git and solve some
annoyings with utf8 encoding on phyton error was somthing like this:
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in
position: ordinal not in range(128)
this was solved changing the default encode ascii to utf8 int the
/usr/lib/python2.6/site.py file
after this I was hable to execute ok the instruction:
make DESTDIR=image WORKDIR=work
XML_FILES=xml-file-samples/eswiki-latest-pages-articles.xml index
parse render combine
Every thing seem fine for a couple(about 6-7h) of hours parsing the
70 articles in spanish but then ... the horror
Count: 38
Traceback (most recent call last):
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 224, in module
main()
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 172, in main
process_article_text(title.encode('utf-8'), f.read(length), newf)
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 218, in process_article_text
newf.write(text + '\n')
IOError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
make[1]: *** [parse] Error 1
make[1]: se sale del directorio
`/OE/Proyectos/tuxbrain/productos/wikireader/wikireader/host-tools/offline-renderer'
make: *** [parse] Error 2
OK that's fixed now. Chris already checked in the code. Our build
worked fine. We need to do a few more tweaks and then we can post a
(super) early test image. Give us until early this coming week.
-Sean
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Re: [wikireader]Developer Kernel-2009.10-27 doesn't boot
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:28 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: the tweetered kernel with kinetic movement and increased touchscreen sensibility http://cloud.github.com/downloads/wikireader/wikireader/kernel-2009-10-27.zip I have unziped it and copy to the sd card replacing the(backuped :P) original kernel and the device doesn't boot (at least in 10 minutes after seeing the Wikireader splash screen i decided is not booting) David Try taking the SD card out and wiggling the socket a bit and putting it back in. Sometimes the contacts don't work perfectly. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:22 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: Are you uploading this changes to git? can I take a look? Yes. The latest commit fixes it. Have a look here: http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:29 PM, Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:22 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: Are you uploading this changes to git? can I take a look? Btw is there any plan to implement images rendering? Math (images) are on our roadmap. Hopefully before the end of this year. The screen is only 1bit. So anything else would look kinda funny. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:46 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: just an think I realized , all faulty articles the title starts with the ~ simbol David No that's not a problem. That character gets removed in a later build stage. We had to add that because of a integer conversion issue with SQLite. It was automatically converting articles like 1984 into integers (not strings) and storing them in the database. SQLite, BTW, claims this is a feature. Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on ArticleParsing.py
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:00 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez
da...@tuxbrain.com wrote:
Man, you forget a , in line 49 on
host-tools/offline-renderer/ArticleParser.py
(re.compile(r'amp;([a-zA-Z]{2,8});', re.IGNORECASE), r'\1;'),---Here!
# change % so php: wr_parser does not convert them
(re.compile(r'%', re.IGNORECASE), r'%25')
Stange. We must not have pushed the right changes. Sorry about that!
-Sean
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Re: [WikiReader] file system questions (was: [wikireader]Suggestions for next steps on software)
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 3:46 AM, Doug Jones dj...@frombob.to wrote: [snip] I like this approach, just remind that as far I see the code and by comments of the devs, the kernel implements the bare just enough to read files, so I think directories are not implemented at all that's why all is on root directory so at least basic hierarchical filesystem has to be implemented before we can do this solution. But directories will easy the organization of pictures too Good point. So two important questions to be answered, before we get any further into this: (1) Has OpenMoko made the policy decision that filenames will be limited to 8.3? We're using FAT. (2) How complicated will it be to implement subdirectory support? Not a problem. We're going to do something like this when we support more languages. Note that only one subdirectory level is really needed to implement what has already been suggested. The current implementation contains 81 files, totaling 4.2GB for the English version. Nearly all of that is in the big wiki data files (pedia*). The other files, the ones you get when you make install, comprise 49 files and only 18MB, and most of that is fonts (which are often different for different languages). Correct. We could adopt a brain-swap approach: After bootup, the user selects one wiki and then the app switches to the selected subdirectory and considers that to be the root until the next cold boot. All 81 files for that particular wiki and language would be in that subdirectory, including the big wiki data files and the fonts and the remaining files (45 files, only 381KB, and this includes ALL of the executables!) While the single app is running, it would not have to access (or even know about) anything outside its current directory, so no filesystem calls relating to directory navigation would be needed within that particular kernel.elf. Only the initial wiki selection app (we would have to write one) would have to understand subdirectories, and only to one level deep. Yeah that should work. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:23 AM, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra r...@1407.org wrote: On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 09:08:00PM +, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172594/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_3_last Wow, just wow! It's an interesting device, not for me, but quite interesting. What I never expected is such a success. Quite a comparison to the Freerunner's success :) Congratulations, guys! Rui Grilo, a portuguese politician on a major role in IT policy on the last goverment (which was reelected), found it really interesting: http://twitter.com/rgrilo/status/4829977172 Translation: Really interesting, RT @RuiSeabra wikipedia on your hands, offline and more ecological Wow that kicks so much ass! Please keep letting us know how the spanish community sees our WikiReader. I used to know spanish, but it seems my head is only big enough to hold two languages. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Marco Trevisan m...@3v1n0.net wrote: Michal Brzozowski wrote: 2009/10/28 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra r...@1407.org http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172594/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_3_last Wow, just wow! It's an interesting device, not for me, but quite interesting. What I never expected is such a success. I hope Openmoko gets a lot of money now and they start building a proper smartphone :-) Me too :P I figure a lot of people in the list agrees :P I really hope the wikireader project will help also the smartphone department :P Oh you bet! You can help us the most by buying one and spreading the word. If you're not interested, get one for your moms. Mine loves hers. We have some seriously fun ideas for mobile phones. I do hope we get lucky with WikiReader and Openmoko can grow again so we can continue what we started. I need all your help. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
Hi Pieter First off, thanks for the kind words! On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Pieter Colpaert freep...@gmail.com wrote: Alright! Good one Sean co! Even people I've never talked about openmoko to about, have heard the news. Any reactions from openmoko (Sean or anyone else?) on the success? We're feeling so good it's hard to explain. The Associated Press writeup was huge for us. And the Amazon sales numbers... well, those are hard to believe. Personally I'm feeling refresh again (we've had a difficult last 12 months). Probably taking the morning off to surf helped, too :) I hope openmoko does not see this as a victory, but as a new start for a healthy company and a door for new (open/free) opportunities. We have so many ideas that build on the work we started with the phones. So the fact that WikiReader is looking good so far is great news. But like you said, it's only a start. We need to bring these open / access ideals to more and more people. Please help us if you have time. We'd love to see more language support for the WikiReader. Or just spread the word when you can. Building consumer products is extremely expensive. We need to sell a lot to keep our independence. And that's so important for everything that we stands for and want to become. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
Joshua You made everyone in the Taipei office so happy with this post. This is exactly the type of experiences we had in mind when creating WikiReader. Please do post on Amazon if you have a bit of extra time: http://bit.ly/3spvKq It really does help us a lot! -Sean On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:35 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote: Thomas Otterbein th.otterb...@gmx.net writes: On Wednesday 28 October 2009 22:08:00 Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172594/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_ 3_last Wow, just wow! It's an interesting device, not for me, but quite interesting. What I never expected is such a success. Quite a comparison to the Freerunner's success :) Congratulations, guys! Rui Hmm, a lot of devices made by Palm, some of them already stone old, are the Bestsellers at Amazon? Where is their own Kindle? The Kindle is listed as a best-seller, but in a different subcategory of `electronics'. Actually, it occupies multiple spots in the top-10 listing in the *overall* `electronics' category, while WikiReader is #4 in a much more restricted category. Not to downplay whatever success the WikiReader is seeing, though--I got one, myself, and I'm very impressed by and happy with it; a few of my technically-minded friends have remarked critically, merely on a conceptual basis, but those who have actually seen it (especially the `normal people') have responded very positively. It's really not evident just how profound the device is until you find yourslef amongst friends who are trying to remember the details of something of which you've never even heard, and then suddenly `you're the expert' in the group. My first experience with this: a couple of friends were trying to make sense of their memories of `trying to read' Nikolai Gogol's book, `Dead Souls'..., and there it was in my WikiReader--suddenly I was an expert on the book (the big question was `what was the point of the protagonist's scheme to buy already-dead serfs who counted as taxable property for him'; the answer was `he was going to retire by *mortgaging* them'). My wife and I received a `this is what the mercaptan additive in Natural gas smells like' scratch-and-sniff in the mail from the local gas-supply company, the other day, and I was able to instantly start a conversation with my wife, in our kitchen, about the history behind these odour-additives (and this history turns out to be quite an amazing story, actually). We're having amazing experiences like this semi-regularly, thanks to this device. People do say `$100 seems a little expensive', but then they concede that maybe it /isn't/ so expensive when reminded that just an 8-GB micro-SD card by itself retails for as much as $50 (and I note that more simplistic devices than the WikiReader, on that Amazon list--like the Scrabble-dictionary--also sell for $50+...). After actually having the profoundly-wowing `instant expert' experience a few times, it becomes easy to accept that the device as being worth $100, even though it's terribly difficult to `just explain it' to someone who has the perspective of `well, *I* already have a $500 device with a $100-per-*month* subscription and a favourable location that alows *me* to be connected to the Internet all the time, anything that doesn't provide wireless real-time updates and *news* with updated charts and graphs has all the appeal of the Pet Rock'. I guess I should post this on Amazon's review-page for the device Regarding the Amazon best-seller list per se: I'm not sure that I'm entirely clear on what exactly Amazon's `bestseller' rating means-- is the `current ranking' just based on the rate of sales per hour, averaged over the last 1 hour? Do they explain it, somewhere? -- Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Michal Brzozowski ruso...@poczta.fm wrote: 2009/10/29 Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/ref=pd_ts_pg_4?ie=UTF8pg=4 Just to put this into perspective: Amazon Kindle got 7111 customer review while WikiReader 13. You'd need to compare for how long each one is being sold. That and it does help to have a front page listing ;-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
David
We're working on exactly the same thing now :-)
I'll ask Chris to email the list once we get past it. I think the
problem is with the mixtures of different encodings (latin-1 and
UTF-8) in the Spanish Wikipedia and the way our code is handling this.
For some reason Python's print (at times) wants to default to ascii,
even after we explicitly tell it to use UTF-8.
-Sean
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:50 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez
da...@tuxbrain.com wrote:
Hi I'm trying to generate the file for a spainsh wikipedia on the WR ,
after compiling succsesfuly the source on the git and solve some
annoyings with utf8 encoding on phyton error was somthing like this:
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in
position: ordinal not in range(128)
this was solved changing the default encode ascii to utf8 int the
/usr/lib/python2.6/site.py file
after this I was hable to execute ok the instruction:
make DESTDIR=image WORKDIR=work
XML_FILES=xml-file-samples/eswiki-latest-pages-articles.xml index
parse render combine
Every thing seem fine for a couple(about 6-7h) of hours parsing the
70 articles in spanish but then ... the horror
Count: 38
Traceback (most recent call last):
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 224, in module
main()
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 172, in main
process_article_text(title.encode('utf-8'), f.read(length), newf)
File ./ArticleParser.py, line 218, in process_article_text
newf.write(text + '\n')
IOError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
make[1]: *** [parse] Error 1
make[1]: se sale del directorio
`/OE/Proyectos/tuxbrain/productos/wikireader/wikireader/host-tools/offline-renderer'
make: *** [parse] Error 2
I have relaunched the process again with the (few)hope that was a
temporary fault but If any one has a clue will be helpfull.
BTW.- I documenting all this proccess to make a step by step howto on
how to put the wikipedia in other languages on the wikireader.
David Reyes Samblas Martinez
http://www.tuxbrain.com
Open ultraportable embedded solutions
Openmoko, Openpandora, Arduino
Hey, watch out!!! There's a linux in your pocket!!!
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Re: Congratulation, Wikireader! 7th in Amazon TOP 100
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:29 AM, john jptmo...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/10/29 Sean Moss-Pultz s...@openmoko.com: On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:03 PM, Michal Brzozowski ruso...@poczta.fm wrote: 2009/10/29 Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/ref=pd_ts_pg_4?ie=UTF8pg=4 Just to put this into perspective: Amazon Kindle got 7111 customer review while WikiReader 13. You'd need to compare for how long each one is being sold. That and it does help to have a front page listing ;-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community So, bagged myself one of these bad boys today and I am equally excited as when I first got my hands on a 1973. Really looking forward to educating myself while I ride the Tube! Keep up the good work! Thanks John. Please let us know what you think when it arrives! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:54 AM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: Great! :) good to see you are working on this!, please count on me for any testing to be done, I will try to make a look on the code myself to kill the bug but no time and nor expertise so no promises :P We'll get it working. Just give us a bit of time. And it would be super helpful if you could help test / QA. Thanks a lot for the offer! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [wikireader]Error on parsing the spanish wikipedia
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Nelson Castillo arhu...@freaks-unidos.net wrote: On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:54 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinez da...@tuxbrain.com wrote: Great! :) good to see you are working on this!, please count on me for any testing to be done, I will try to make a look on the code myself to kill the bug but no time and nor expertise so no promises :P I haven't seen the code but if you don't feel like fixing it now you can add a try/catch on the block that is processing each page so that you have a wiki to play with while the error is fixed. Yeah we're trying exactly that Nelson. It's just a long process to render all this stuff. We actually have 9 quad-core systems running in parallel now. Each with at least six GB of ram :-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [Wikireader] Any news on Wikireader ?
Doug Wow. You really know your stuff! Glad to hear you appreciate our baby. We're quite proud of how it came out. -Sean On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Doug Jones dj...@frombob.to wrote: -= Apertum =- wrote: Hello, The (very interesting, IMHO) Wikireader product has been launched about 2 weeks ago, but still i don't see any information about hardware and software (IE we don't know if there is a Linux kernel in it, or not), and/or how it will be hackable by the community. It's there any news somewhere on the net, or when you at OpenMoko plan to discover these (important) informations? Thank you so much for your attention :-) Look for the thread labeled [reader] on this list I have one, and have been spending some time looking at the code and available docs. It does not use a Linux kernel. It is an embedded device containing only minimal amounts of software, just enough to be a WikiReader. The WikiReader program itself is the kernel. AFAICT the code on the device is entirely written in C and Forth, and is 100% Free Software. Unlike the Freerunner and every other cellphone on this planet, it does not contain any chunks of proprietary code (it doesn't need to worry about what the cell providers or the FCC thinks). I don't think RMS would have any complaints about carrying one of these around. This device is perfect for Free Software purists and for people who, for whatever reason, don't carry Internet access in their pockets. (As the global collapse deepens, I expect more and more people will be unable to justify the monthly cost of carrying around Internet access.) The wiki is small now but gradually growing: http://wiki.github.com/wikireader/wikireader Much of the documentation is stashed away in the source tree: http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader The device fits in my shirt pocket (barely) and has a daylight-readable monochrome LCD display with no backlight. It's a touchscreen; you scroll it up and down with a gesture, and follow links with a tap. The on/off button is on the top edge. It uses two AAA batteries, which should last a very long time as the device is extremely miserly. You can use rechargeable (1.2 V) batteries if you like. Under the display are three buttons: Search, History, and Random. The History button displays a list of the most recently displayed pages. The other buttons are self-explanatory. The database contains a text-only snapshot of the entire English-language Wikipedia, over three million articles. You can search on any word in the text. The touchscreen keyboard is a bit small for my fat fingers, but I can manage (it's capacitive, and won't work with a stylus). It has no connectivity, other than a serial port I haven't tried yet, and SneakerNet (you take out the micro SD card and walk over to another computer to update its contents). This lack of connectivity keeps the internals simple and the cost down. The card and the serial port are in the battery compartment. If you hold the first button down while you turn the device on, it displays a list of Forth programs you can run. Just tap on the name. A lot of these are diagnostics, but there is also a simple calculator and a drawing program. If you know Forth, you can probably write your own program and put it on the card, I imagine. If you hold the second button down while turning on, it runs the calculator. If you hold the third button down while turning on, it starts up the serial console (19200 8N1). The drawing program shows that the device could be used for pictures, but don't expect any Wikipedia image content -- there isn't room on the card. However, it might be practical to put in a lot of the diagrams that can be compactly stored as SVG files. Hopefully somebody will add that functionality in, as well as equation support. The microSD card that comes with it is an 8GB model. I don't know if larger ones will work. I hope so. The card has 3.8GB of free space on it, so there is plenty of room for more content. I have been looking into the possibility of adding custom content (the multi-wiki concept). As I see it, there are two paths for code development: New code to run on the device, and user-friendly cross-platform code to run on the user's desktop machine or laptop and which is used to simplify and manage the task of updating the contents of the SD card. New code to run on the device would come from Forth programmers who can write new Forth apps, and embedded developers who can write C code for tiny machines that don't have operating systems. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [reader] Wikireader received
Hi Doug On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Doug Jones dj...@frombob.to wrote: I ordered it a few hours after Sean's announcement. It arrived a few minutes ago. It works. Awesome! Please share your thoughts after you used it for a bit. I do hope you like it as much as we do! However, I was disappointed that it contained no entry for Wikireader. Hopefully you can help add to the existing one. Then it will be in our next update :-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Marco Trevisan m...@3v1n0.net wrote: Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: Sean, let me be the first one to congratulate you. I think I know what an undertaking this project has been for you, so I'm very glad you made it. I wish you great success with this product! All the best, I do agree on everything. Good luck with this, I hope it will help the mobile-department too. Thanks guys. Me, too! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [WikiReader] source uploaded to github
Thanks Chris! All, I just wanted to let you know that Chris Hall is our software lead for this project. So please feel free to ask any technical questions. And enjoy our new codes. I can't wait to see what's the first new language to appear on the WikiReader. You guys are really going to love this thing. -Sean On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Christopher Hall h...@openmoko.com wrote: Hello Everyone, The source code to WikiReader has been uploaded to github, it can be downloaded using: git clone git://github.com/wikireader/wikireader.git Please note that the gcc cross compiler does not work if compiled on a 64 bit Linux, read doc/Using-schroot.text if you want to try compiling. For 32 bit look at the same file to see which packages to install. -- Best regards. Christopher Hall hswATopenmoko.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Wikireader community
Hi Risto I'll take a stab at these questions... thanks for voicing your concerns: On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 9:21 PM, Risto H. Kurppa ri...@kurppa.fi wrote: Hi! Now, after Wikireader's been released, I'd like to hear Openmoko to share their thoughts about the community aspects of Wikireader. Are you planning to encourage the creation of a devel/user community around Wikireader? Yes we already have. See http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-October/056548.html from Chris Hall. If yes, then What are the tech specs? We don't even know the dimensions of the device. The details of the processor and more are in the code. We're working to put more documentation on the site soon. Please keep in mind we're a much smaller team now. And our primary focus was to bring to a product to market that would work out of the box. WikiReader is very hackable. But it also had very different design considerations than the FreeRunner (ie WikiReader has no OS). Who's the person at OM responsible for communicating with the community? All of us really. If you need help / more information, please feel free to ask. Specific technical questions Chris is most suited for answering. Where to discuss Wikireader? Up to you guys. If you want to keep using this list - I'm fine with that. If you want to create another list, please let us know. Gismo can get this setup ASAP. What's the process to gain access to main repository? Just go to github.com/wikireader Where to report bugs? github.com/wikireader Where to submit patches? github.com/wikireader Where will the documentation be available/written to? github.com/wikireader What kind of contribution would you like to see from the community? Like I've said in past email to this list, I don't think it's possible to talk about a community meeting the expectations of an individual or company. I only wanted to inspire people, not demand results from them (unless they're on my payroll ;-). So I hope the community contributes their point of view to this product. Take it in the direction you all like. Whether it's adding another language, or another content source altogether, I would be excited about seeing anything. What are your expectations of us (the company)? What will you do to enable the community to do what you want it to do? Keep producing products that use free software. And bring them to regular people to help (in small ways) enrich their daily lives. 'It'll all come later' just won't work this time.. 'We really don't have plans yet' works better :) If you seriously plan to benefit from the community, I think you should keep the buzz up and start working WITH the community. http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/ http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/01/building-community-around-your-foss.html If no, then I wish you all the best. I'll take your criticism as constructive. Thanks for letting me know your thoughts. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Risto H. Kurppa ri...@kurppa.fi wrote: http://code.google.com/p/wikipediardware/ tells us: The project's goal is to provide a bunch of software: * a set of bootloaders which load a small kernel image from SD card and execute it. * wiki-lib, a library which contains all the application's logic * gui-lib, a very thin layer to provide glyph rendering and font file parsing * some simulators (Qt/Cocoa/ncurses) which emulate the hardware to make development easy * the 'kernel' code which is only a small wrapper around the hardware and uses wiki-lib and gui-lib * host based tools to generate the content from Wikipedia sources (indexing, font file generation, ...) Especially I'm interested in the first one - the kernel image is loaded from SD - to me it sound's like a hackable device. That's not the same project guys. We'll post everything later this week. I'll make an announcement. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer mic...@vanille-media.de wrote: Sean, let me be the first one to congratulate you. I think I know what an undertaking this project has been for you, so I'm very glad you made it. I wish you great success with this product! Mickey Thanks so much for the kind words! We're super excited about this one. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Risto H. Kurppa ri...@kurppa.fi wrote: Congrats, interesting device! 1) What CPU you use? 2) Does it support multiple language versinos of Wikipedia? 3) What's the format the data is stored in? 4) Is the OS on the uSD card? 5) Open source - how do we hack it? No USB connector - can the software be altered? Please give us another few days. We're working on the developer stuff now. It will be fun to hack. Don't worry. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WikiReader
On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 8:37 PM, Werner Almesberger wer...@openmoko.org wrote: Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the birth of our third product -- WikiReader. Yeah, it has hatched ! Congratulations to you and the rest of the team, and I hope that this cool little device will be a smashing success ! We hope so, too :-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
WikiReader
Dear Community! Today, with the greatest of pleasure, I am ready to share with you the birth of our third product -- WikiReader. Three simple buttons put three million Wikipedia articles in the palm of your hand. Accessible immediately, anytime, anywhere without requiring an Internet connection. No strings attached. With WikiReader you'll be prepared for those unexpected moments when curiosity strikes. And once you have it, you'll realize how often you ask yourself questions during the day. WikiReader takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to an even greater realm. WikiReader is so amazingly simple. There really is no interface. You turn it on and instantly become immersed in the rich world of reading specific topics or the serendipitous pleasure of discovering something by chance. It's perfect for all ages. From the Aha! moment when we held our first prototypes, to the last few months as we worked around the clock to polish every last detail, this product was a joy to make and even more fun to experience. We are head-over-heels in love with WikiReader. Never have I found so much fun in the little moments of curiosity life offers us. Try one and I'm sure you'll agree that we've delivered the essence of reading Wikipedia in an addictively simple form factor. Sales start today at http://thewikireader.com. Enjoy. Tell your friends. And let us know what you think! Sincerely Sean Moss-Pultz ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Hello world. Is the Neo Freerunner dead?
Hi Enrique Welcome. We're still around. See my announce post last month. -sean --Original Message-- From: li...@kitepilot.com Sender: community-boun...@lists.openmoko.org To: community@lists.openmoko.org ReplyTo: List for Openmoko community discussion Sent: Jul 7, 2009 20:28 Subject: Hello world. Is the Neo Freerunner dead? Yep... Hello there... Apologies if I am beating the dead horse. No pun intended... :) I've been drooling over the Freerunner for years now, specifically to have the capability to plug a REAL keyboard to it and SSH into my network. Now it seems that Openmoko.com folded (or is about)...:( My flow-gram of questions goes more or less as follows: If Freerunner dead then do I have an alternative else if Freerunner usable then case OS: Openmoko: Good? ;; Android: Good? ;; default: What? ;; esac else do I have an alternative fi fi I'm so bummed that Openmoko seems to be crumbling, or is it my doom's day wild imagination? My Treo 650 died and I am ready for a Neo Freerunner, but is it really there? I can tinker freely and willingly with the phone, but I need to place/receive calls ans SSH into my network. Thanks! Enrique A. Troconis ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Anyone know a store that sells FreeRunner accs in the US
Hi Laszlo On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Laszlo KREKACS laszlo.krekacs.l...@gmail.com wrote: If somebody wants to start a Wiki page and vote on accessories that you all want to buy, I was always wondering, why openmoko dont ship an adapter like this[1], instead of the big (hard to carry) cable. Yeah I have one of those. I really liked the design, but they don't seem to fit in many of the new netbooks that are so popular these days. So we decided to make something more flexible. As for the existing design, we spent a ton of money to make the adapters...they had a huge minimum order quantity. Mainly because of a patent issues with the design. So we won't be able to custom make anything anytime soon. But if you know of an existing one you like, please add it the wiki page and we'll keep track of demand and try to source them once it reaches around 100 units. [snip] ps: I would also like to hear any news about your new company Sean. Just how things are going, are stumped somewhere, etc, etc. Well Openmoko is still Openmoko. Nothing fundamentally new here yet. The changes to our company have been more in size and scope, than anything else. Our vision of making great open devices is still the same. We're a much smaller team now. All hyper-focused moving towards our next product. We're very optimistic about the future. To transform an idea into a business takes a lot time and luck. 2009 is year three for our company. This is really the make-or-break year for a startup. At least it works that way in my past experiences. We've been through a lot of turbulence these past six months...personally it was extremely hard on me. I can't help but feel that we're close to getting lucky. Probably your interested in hearing more about Project B. Please give me a few more months to talk about that. We're in the middle of some sensitive negotiations. So we can't share project details publicly yet - at least without jeopardizing important future relationships for us. Exclusivity and non-disclosure agreements are realities of the business world. I hope you all can understand our secrecy at times around product development. Rest assured, the results will be open for everyone. If there's anything specific you're interested in, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to share what I can. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Happy Birthday Freerunner
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Rafael Campos meth...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 3:35 PM, David Reyes Samblas Martinezda...@tuxbrain.com wrote: I would love to have you there Sean :) Me too :) 2009/7/6 Jose Luis Perez Diez perezd...@gmail.com: El Saturday, 4 de July de 2009 16:49:07 Sean Moss-Pultz va escriure: I always forget to say it, but I'm so impressed every time I see you all organize one of these buzz fix parties and user meetings. When things slow down a bit more for me in Taipei, I'll drop by and check one out. The Debconf9 buzz fix party has been scheduled on Saturday the 25th of july. https://penta.debconf.org/dc9_schedule/events/376.en.html David (et all) The end of July is a super busy time for us here in Taipei. So I won't be able to travel much until mid-late August and then a lot in September. Anything going on then? -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Happy Birthday Freerunner
On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 3:12 AM, rakshat hooja raks...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Happy Birthday Freerunner dude. Your journey has just begun. Rakshat (By my calculations 4th of July was the official launch of the Freerunner by OM) Your calculations are right on Rakshat. It's amazing how fast time goes... Thanks, all of you, for helping us raise him :-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Happy Birthday Freerunner
On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 5:54 PM, swap38 swa...@openmoko-fr.org wrote: Sean Moss-Pultz a écrit : On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 3:12 AM, rakshat hooja raks...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Happy Birthday Freerunner dude. Your journey has just begun. Rakshat (By my calculations 4th of July was the official launch of the Freerunner by OM) Your calculations are right on Rakshat. It's amazing how fast time goes... Thanks, all of you, for helping us raise him :-) -Sean One year ago : Openmoko Declares Independence for the Mobile Phone: Neo FreeRunner to Hit the Market July 4 http://www.openmoko.com/press/Openmoko_20080702.pdf Thanks to you, Sean :-) PS : we will make a little user meeting in France : http://openmoko-fr.org/blog/index.php?post/2009/06/29/Anniversaire-(et-buzz-fix-) I always forget to say it, but I'm so impressed every time I see you all organize one of these buzz fix parties and user meetings. When things slow down a bit more for me in Taipei, I'll drop by and check one out. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Anyone know a store that sells FreeRunner accs in the US
On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 3:06 AM, Adam Jimersonvend...@gmail.com wrote: I am looking for where I can buy accessories for my FreeRunner here in the US, TuxBrain has a couple that I am interested in, the leather case and the invisible shield, but they seem to be european based and would rather not pay any kind of fees that would go with it if they do ship to the US. I bought my FreeRunner for SDG but they don't offer much accessories, anyone know where else to look? If somebody wants to start a Wiki page and vote on accessories that you all want to buy, I'll ask somebody from Taipei to help source them. We could easily ship them to Fremont California (or to our EU distributors) if we had an idea of what you're looking for. BTW, we would need to source quantities of around 100 each for it to make (business) sense for the vendors. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
FreeRunner A6 Sale
Dear Community To make way for A7, we're blowing out our remaining A6 stock at the following rates: - $250 each, for 1 unit orders - $220 each, for 3-pack orders (w/ 1 free DBoard) - $200 each, for 5-pack orders (w/ 2 free DBoards) - $180 each, for 10-pack orders (w/ 5 free DBoards) Please visit www.openmoko.com for more information. Note: A6 is great for development but *does not* have the buzz fix applied. So if you're looking for A7's please check with our distributors in your area. Thanks again for all your support! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Battery ID chip - help needed
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 4:10 AM, Risto H. Kurppari...@kurppa.fi wrote: On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Christoph Pulsteropenm...@pulster.de wrote: Openmoko, please can you release relevant infos or chips, so we can built high-power batteries ? +1 This has all been released before. See the FreeRunner HW wikipage (or the comments in this thread). As for making bigger batteries, this was the largest size we could make and still pass CE. Believe me, we would have gone bigger if we could. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Freerunner's Future
Harald Welte-3 wrote: Thanks for your update, Sean! It's more than welcome to see Openmoko Inc. is still very much in support of the Freerunner/GTA02 and will provide the community with support in areas like the hosting infrastructure as well as the legal side (trademarks). I'm happy to see this transition and willing to help wherever I can. Thanks a lot Harald. I heard you're back in Taiwan now. So let's talk in person later this week. I just returned this afternoon. -Sean -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Freerunner%27s-Future-tp3012885p3043206.html Sent from the Openmoko Community mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Freerunner's Future
Jeremy I really appreciate your email. Your words cheered us all up at the office. -Sean Jeremy McNaughton wrote: Layoffs are always sad, and never an easy decision to make. To those who are leaving the company, thanks for the great work. I wish the best for your future endeavours and hope that you are able to remain in the community in some way. I know I haven't really contributed much to the project. I'm not much of a programmer and only have time to poke around on the phone every other weekend or so. Still, I've read almost every thread on the mailing list and have learned a great deal. I do have a fair bit of experience doing media relations for local grassroots organizations and non-profits. My experience isn't with software or technology, it's with anti-poverty activism and social service work. Nonetheless, I have some feedback based on some non-tech community organizing to share. Handing development of the Freerunner over to the community is a big deal. There is a lot of opportunity here to get good press for both Openmoko Inc. and the community. The way I see it, giving the phone to the community is every bit as radical as launching an open source phone was in the first place. The Openmoko community is now coordinating development of an updated Freerunner (using Free software), there are multiple distros, lots of apps, multiple phone gui apps. Not only that, but the mailing lists are far from stagnant, and outside of openmoko.org, other parts of the broader Openmoko community have their own mailing lists, wikis and tracs. The key point here is that Openmoko succeeded in building a community around its product. This is no easy task. Companies and organizations with more resources behind them have tried this and not succeeded nearly as well as Openmoko has. For this the company should be commended. There's definitely a newsworthy story here as well. Naysayers might look at Openmoko handing responsibility for the Freerunner to the community as a death knell for the project, or proof that an open source phone can't work. Instead, it seems the Freerunner is transitioning from a phone that was designed in house and then open sourced, to a phone for which the hardware itself is designed by an open source community. That's huge! There's a big difference between how the Freerunner was developed and how the gta02-core is being developed, and that means that once again Openmoko is breaking new ground. It may be a little early to bring this message to the media. It probably makes sense to let the community have a chance to formalize a bit, develop some structure. A Openmoko Foundation maybe? Anyways, once the dust settles maybe Openmoko could make a big announcement about how the thriving community is in the process of taking over development of the phone. It could be a chance for Openmoko to get some good press for being innovative and altruistic. It could also be a huge boon for the community, as it raises awareness about the work being done and reaches out to potential new members. Not to mention reminding people of all the incredible work that has been done with these phones so far. Openmoko is a success story. Despite all the frustrations and delays, a new community that develops open source phone technology has been created. In the FLOSS podcast interview a few weeks ago (I think) Sean spoke about how the Openmoko has reduced a lot of barriers to phone development, potentially allowing the kind of garage workshop innovations that led companies like Hewlett Packard or Apple. Facilitating the community and that kind of development just lowered one more barrier. Well, that's my 2 cents. Jeremy McNaughton On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Harald Welte lafo...@gnumonks.org wrote: Thanks for your update, Sean! It's more than welcome to see Openmoko Inc. is still very much in support of the Freerunner/GTA02 and will provide the community with support in areas like the hosting infrastructure as well as the legal side (trademarks). I'm happy to see this transition and willing to help wherever I can. Regards and thank you once again, Harald -- - Harald Welte lafo...@gnumonks.org http://laforge.gnumonks.org/ Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option. (ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Freerunner%27s-Future-tp3012885p3043221.html
Freerunner's Future
Dear Community, As some of you have heard, we had a layoff at Openmoko on Monday, May 25th. First of all let me second the comments made here congratulating the Openmoko team on all that was accomplished. And let me add that everything accomplished was only possible because of the amazing efforts of the community. Bringing the Neo products to market, first the 1973 and then the Freerunner, has been the most exceptional experience of our lives. I can undeniably say that the most important thing we have learned over these years is that the power of people bound by ideals, rather than contracts, cannot be underestimated. These phones are your success. From simple things like group sales to complex undertakings like developing and maintaining entire distributions, you made this happen. You always came through for us. As CEO, I have to determine the best path forward for our phone business. And after long discussions with my key people and Board, we've decided that the best path foreword is to turn the future of the Freerunner over to the community. We've always said that the talent and creativity of those outside the company is superior to that inside the company. We have stuck to these principles. We've have opened up more than any other phone, from any other company, in the history of this industry. Every time we chose openness over internal control, we have been rewarded. Former Openmoko employees have already started redesigning the Freerunner hardware (gta02-core) using only Free Software tools. Werner Almesberger, working with many others, has made great progress. Recently, we have released more information to accelerate their efforts. In the coming weeks, all the design information will be handed over to the community along with all of openmoko.org (Wiki, GIT, Trac, Planet, ...). Openmoko Inc. then will act as the sponsor of this effort. We will continue to fund all necessary server infrastructure and support, in areas where corporate help is needed, future open phone development. (Parts of this process will require legal work - so I request your patience.) I am extremely excited about the idea of an entirely community-built open phone. Especially since, when the next design is complete, it will have the benefits of everything uncovered since the Freerunner shipped last July. It will be buzz free, glamo free, and free of the recamping bug (#1024) - which I am happy to announce has been solved this past week. We promise to support these efforts with additional resources such as components to build prototypes of the new design. We will help to empower you to build the open phone of our future. After all this, there is one last thing that Openmoko the company can do: we can enable the community to use the Openmoko brand and trademark for these efforts. For us, the Openmoko brand is synonymous with the people who built the products: Harald, Mickey, Werner, Raster, all of my coworkers in our Taiwan office, Sureda, Tuxbrain, Bearstech, and countless others. I personally want to give an extra special thanks to Steve Mosher who has taught me so much about marketing, writing, and well...life. Without his guidance, this all would have only been an idea in my notebook. I have asked Steve to lead an effort, over the next few weeks, to gather input from the community on how best to implement this transition. (He will follow up shortly on the community mailing list.) As always we can expect some negative comments, that comes with the territory. But we believe a community that owns everything of importance, with regard to the Freerunner, will focus efforts and energies on the future - not the past. Sales of the current FreeRunner (A7), will continue as before. We have plenty more in stock. Now that the phone is freed, and its future entrusted to the hands of the community, Openmoko Inc. will start another effort on an altogether different type of device. We've sized our company to go do that task. Please wish us the very best of luck! More details will follow in the coming months... Sincerely, Sean Moss-Pultz ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: New Life in Openmoko Phones
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Werner Almesberger wer...@openmoko.org wrote: Q3) What is role of OpenMoko organization now? Sell remaining GTA02s? As far as I know, Openmoko is selling GTA02s and, besides that, concentrating on the project B. Openmoko is friendly towards the gta02-core project, and several people at Openmoko are trying to help us within their means. For sure. When you guys get ready for the first build, I'll find a way to help. I'm open to donating some parts and time. This is a great project! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: High Resolution freerunner photos
Mickael Labrousse wrote: Hi, Where can I found some HiRes photos of the freerunner ? I've already download the press photos. Mickael Let me know if this works for you: http://www.openmoko.com/press-press-material.html Good luck! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Questions about the usability of GTA02
On 2/1/09 Johny Tenfinger wrote: Moko developers not use freerunner in daily use, they use blackberry I'm not OM developer (hmm, ok, developing is my hobby), but I'm using FreeRunner in daily use... hehe...managers not developers. (Most! of) Our developers use FreeRunners and a second phone. They hate blackberries. :-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: I took the plunge
On 1/31/09 Stroller wrote: On 31 Jan 2009, at 07:30, Steve 'dillo Okay wrote: I picked up a Neo Freerunner dev board today from the good folks over @ PariSOMA here in SF today. It was a little disappointing that the dev board came in a recyclable paperboard box instead of the hardsided case. Do they just not ship those anymore ? No. Openmoko decided that the case didn't add value in a way that was unique to Openmoko or central to their core competencies. What it pretty much came down to was the price (most importantly payment terms) and shipping were extremely high. Combined with the fact that we added the NOR chip. Made us decided to create only one product this time around. Thanks a lot for buying a FreeRunner, BTW! -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Is Israel a Democracy? -- The problem with intellectually insecure whites -- Should Christians Support Israeli Terrorism in Gaza?
Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: Just for the records. I didn't write that. Me neither. Sorry about this nonsense everyone. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Pimlico on the Freerunner ?
On 1/20/09 Robin Paulson wrote: 2009/1/20 The Digital Pioneer digitalpion...@gmail.com: Looks useful. I've been needing a nice calendar app. If someone could package these, that would be great. I would, but I can't use the toolchain. :( join the club i find it very frustrating that i and others have lots of software ideas, that can be coded/re-packaged, but we're hamstrung by what should be a fundamental piece of software that openmoko does everything in their power to support more developers = more software = more phones sold openmoko, any chance of working on this? We have no plans to work on a calendar in 2009. That's a tricky application with lots of details. We want to deliver the basics first. Resources, in 2009, are focused completely on delivering a stable daily phone. I don't want to change this until we meet our goal. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Questions and Answers
On 1/4/09 Minh Ha Duong wrote: Le dimanche 04 janvier 2009, Sean Moss-Pultz a écrit : Now we're again struggling with closed firmwares (both the Calypso and the Atheros module). I would love to just make our own WiFi chip, but Openmoko doesn't have the volume to return our investment in such a technology endeavor. Hello Sean, I always wondered why you were not reusing XO's wifi chip subsystem (Marvell 88W8388) ? OLPC has already mesh networking and I guess good integration in the kernel. Too expensive, proprietary, complicated ? Too big :/ OLPC uses the 8388 chipset. We needed to use the 8686 or the newer (bluetooth+wifi) 8688 variant. Those are built for mobile phones. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Questions and Answers
On 1/3/09 Lee Grime wrote: I come from a hardware background, chip design mainly, but analogue (note the spelling :-) ) and DSP(MSc) are still strong points. Done chip design for 15 years. Now I do not have a great deal of time at the moment, what with a 3 week old baby and stuff!, but if we can get a few other like minded people together, I am sure we can produce our own open source SoC. And if the credit crunch kicks in properly, even more time. I have heard all about the problems with the crappy Glamo chip. Why not have a small CPLD as a co-processor, into which we load a 'codec' for whatever we are doing at the time, say mp3 decoding, or some video codec. We can get cheap and low power enough CPLD's or FPGA's these days to perform this job. Lets make this thing really open. Could even do the GSM part open source. No more problems with NDA's etc. If you can get to 100K units our own ASIC should become viable. Lee Congratulations on your new kid! About a year ago we were in contact with a Taiwanese University / Government project to build a DSP for mobile devices. We got the point where they would make everything open, but in the end we decided not to move forward since the resources required to turn it into a product were just too great. Now we're again struggling with closed firmwares (both the Calypso and the Atheros module). I would love to just make our own WiFi chip, but Openmoko doesn't have the volume to return our investment in such a technology endeavor. Hopefully this doesn't persuade you not to try. Maybe you could pull it off and we could use your chip in a later product :-) Happy New Year. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Questions and Answers
Hi Marco On 1/3/09 Marco Trevisan (Treviño) wrote: We asked Raster to integrate this keypad into Om 2008 and extend it to make it more hacker friendly (i.e., usable from places like the terminal). After two months of more or less silence he showed us his own version, written from scratch. The design was a work in progress. And the dictionary was far inferior to what Qtopia had already. An internal battle started that lasted until one month before Om 2008 was set to be released when our product manager, Will Lai, couldn't take it anymore. He asked another engineer to just get the Qtopia keypad working. Ok, I understand this. But, why have you asked Raster to improve a thing (like qtopia-x11) that should have been only a kind of placeholder? Wasn't it considered in a such way at that time? For the same reason we used Qtopia in the first place: We needed to balance the long term goals of the project with the short term necessity of making enough money to stay in business. This is always a difficult tradeoff to make. Happy New Year. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Questions and Answers
JW wrote: Sean Kudos to you for your openness about the status of Openmoko Inc and the future roadmap, the numbers so far and future ambitions.Also for your hints about some of the hard decisions and pain along the way. :-) Its no small achievement to take this start up to the stage where it can look forward to improving existing software stacks based on solid FSO middleware and future product releases given these tough economic times and all in the community will be pleased to hear that this can be the case. Yes. We're all very excited about FSO. I think it will allow us to really differentiate. Having been part of product dev previously I am very forgiving of the hw and sw bumps in the road that are inevitable - keep up the good work! I will buy another Openmoko phone as soon as the next one is released. Thanks for all your support! -Sean PS: Citysense is very cool! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Questions and Answers
/ auditory feedback will let people know that a new spot was discovered. Communication is done on the free (WiFi) network with only one exception: When a Neo cannot find a free network to connect to, it will dial into the non-free (GSM) network for only the time required to download the nearest free WiFi spot locations. Using GPS, the Neo is then able to navigate to that position and communicate for free. Communication is simply a layer on top of the free network. It can be auditory, visual, or textual. Free your Phone was our marketing focus up to that point. But we realized this was not enough. Even when the phone is completely opened, it's still not free. There's another force keeping it's potential locked up. This is the carrier's network. They limit what can be plugged in and what the plugged in devices can do. So we thought we needed to Free the Network. To make a long story short, execution got in the way of ideas (something a bit too familiar in Openmoko). Parts of the project went into Locations. But the full idea of constructing a parallel, free communication network never materialized. Maybe people had similar ideas (I was reading about kismet on our list a while back) but I think we were in the best position to make it happen from a product standpoint. One day we'll come back to these goals, but not until we ship a robust, well-designed phone. Until then, we'll stay focused on getting Back to the basics. If a serious community effort would be established around these goals, there's a very good chance Openmoko would design a phone specifically for this purpose. I still believe this device could become the icon of openness. Q8. On the other hand, Tim and others would like to know the most interesting or fun thing you have seen the Freerunner used for ? Guillermo Sureda-Burgos' work (and essay) on open industrial design ranks high on my list. So do Numpty Physics and Duke Nukem. But I think the most surprising thing (as in we didn't see it coming) was the explosion of new distributions: FDOM, SHR, even Debian. Being able to swap out entire software stacks with the change of an SD card gives a whole new meaning to the word customization. Q9. And where do you think could any person do the most for the project right now? Think of if that person would be ideal and have all the skills needed. And then, which skills are in most need right now and in the future? There are so many ways people can contribute that it's hard for me to single out a specific task or accomplishment. Development, testing, bug fixing, organizational, and documentation tasks are all important. Perhaps the best way to figure something out in this regard is for people to post their qualifications and interests to the community list and we all can provide direction based on that. Q10. To conclude, can we have a video of you in Openmoko T-shirt and geek-cap, having a phone chat with star hackers, using Neo FreeRunners at both ends, telling each other your favorite FreerRunner joke? Please? I'm in San Francisco now, without a video camera. So this one will have to wait until I return to Taiwan. When we're done filming, I'll post to the community list. Hopefully you all got this far. I know this email is long. It was quite an experience for me to write so much. (Minh you did an amazing job compiling these questions!) We've come a long way together. I'm really looking forward to 2009. We have great opportunities all over the place. So what matters is that we continue to be hopeful for the future. And, together, we take the bold steps needed to get there. Happy New Year! Sincerely, Sean Moss-Pultz ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Announce list for 3G
On 12/31/08 Ben wrote: Any chance of getting an announce list for 3G, or a guarantee that it will be mentioned on the announce list when it is confirmed? You bet we'll mention it. But please don't hold your breath. We're a long way away from a serious 3G design. Openmoko cannot afford the licensing royalties needed to implement a reference design. And modules (global ones), at this point, are just too big. Happy holidays. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Selected questions to Sean
Dear Minh Please give me about a week to reply to these questions. I'm going to be traveling a lot starting tonight so things will be very hectic for a while. I appreciate all your work to collect / organize such great topics. -Sean Minh Ha Duong wrote: Dear Sean, I received a great number of responses, most containing 3-10 questions. So I cheated a bit, and in this selection of 10 points most are actually multiple questions. Q1. The end of the year is a time to look back on the year achievements. So where does Openmoko stands now from a business point of view ? Could you comment on sustainability, on sales numbers, on geographic markets and customer categories ? Q2. The god of January has two faces, one looking back and one looking forward, so... Juergen, Eric in Japan and practically everybody else want to know when will the GTA03 phone be released, if it will have 3G/3.5G, a camera and the kitchen sink. Can you tell us anything yet ? Where do you want Openmoko to be in December 2009 ? Q3. The mandatory dogfood question was submitted by Yorik Moko: Do you use the FreeRunner as your daily phone, which distro and what is your favorite application ? Q4. Todd would like to know exactly what are your feelings about Android and its impact on the OpenMoko OS. Q5. Kosa and Marco wondered if you could say us something about the management that doesn't seem to be loved by great hackers like Harald and Carsten. For example, what is your analysis of the controversies that led Om2008 to ship with Qtopia's predictive keyboard. Q6. There are many Openmoko communities in languages other than English now. Swap38 asks how can they best contribute back to the project, and if there are plans to organize the diversity around a common model, as OpenOffice.org did for example. What is the status of the internationalization and localization effort ? Q7. Let's be reflexive, kind of we have to talk about our relationship, dear. Tilman, supported by Michelle, wonders to which extend the community has met your expectations. More precisely, could you name an area where it did not, perhaps like an application that you would have expected be written already ? Q8. On the other hand, Tim and others would like to know the most interesting or fun thing you have seen the Freerunner used for ? Q9. And where do you think could any person do the most for the project right now? Think of if that person would be ideal and have all the skills needed. And then, which skills are in most need right now and in the future? Q10. To conclude, can we have a video of you in Openmoko T-shirt and geek-cap, having a phone chat with star hackers, using Neo FreeRunners at both ends, telling each other your favourite Freerunner joke ? Please ? Thanks everybody for taking the time to ask these questions, and thanks if advance for your replies, Minh -- Attached: All the questions received. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Stage of GTA03 development?
On 12/23/08 AVee wrote: Regardless, there may well be a Reverse Osborne Effect as well, I bought a Freerunner, but right now I probably wouldn't buy one again, but wait for the GTA03. If there was a definitive statement telling me that would take at least an other year to get done I might just buy a GTA02. GTA03 is at least 3 years away. Do you want to buy three GTA02s now? ;-) -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: No more optimization team
On 12/16/08 Jeremy McNaughton wrote: Openmoko you have this community of users who are still enthusiastic about your product. Do yourself a favour and learn how to keep us interested by opening the lines of communication. [snip] Jeremy Your post was very long with many points. Most specifically about engineering and development. We try to talk as opening as possible about engineering work. I can assure you of that. Have you subscribed to the kernel list? The development list? Most of the talk on this list (community) is about things outside of those topics. If there are specific quesetions or problems you have, please just ask questions. Let's get practical together. Most of us at Openmoko, Inc. read these lists. Your comments helps us improve. We're constantly growing and looking to find areas where are very limited internal resources can produce maximum results. Comparing us to Ubuntu is great. I love this challenge. Please keep in mind we're building a company, hardware, a softwarwe distribution, and trying to sell enough Neos to stay in business. That's a lot of moving parts. Adjusting your expectations of what we can do in a short amount of time is helpful. We need your support as much as anyone else's to keep things moving in the right direction. Thanks again for your comments. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Ask Sean Moss-Pultz about community matters
Minh Can I send this out through our announce list and ask people to email questions to you directly? This would probably mean a lot more mail. But I think it would also increase the diversity of questions by a lot. Is this ok with you? -Sean Minh Ha Duong wrote: Dear friends, Sean kindly agreed to be interviewed for the next edition of the Community Update newsletter. I invite every subscriber of this list to post the question or questions that s-he cares about most. No gloves. The general topic is Openmoko, the community, past-present-future, but yours truly will select with undue care the 3-5 most interesting / provocative / popular / relevant / funny / whatever and forward them to Sean next Monday. You may send your questions in this mailing list thread or privately to me. Minh PS: Everybody knows that Sean Moss-Pultz is Openmoko CEO, but you may also be interested to find that many of his past interviews are available here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Openmoko:Current_events http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Press_Coverage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Global Domination 0.9
rakshat hooja wrote: Is ir possible to have a T-Shirt with the Open CAD poster design. That would be cool. Here you go: http://www.cafepress.com/openmoko_inc.337325440 I put a few more colors up there, too. Let me know if you like this. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Global Domination 0.9
On 12/6/08 Pander wrote: Nice! By the way, you could use transparency for background when printing on a black t-shirt. Yeah I don't have the EPS file for the component placements. I'll try to dig it up when I'm at work next week. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Global Domination 0.9
On 12/7/08 arne anka wrote: i'd like to see placement as poster! questions: - measures are in inches etc only -- what about more widely used and understood units? - currencies do not include euro are this limitations of caffepress or by openmoko? Unfortunately these are limitations of CafePress. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: 2008.9 Basic questions
On 9/21/08 Tom Yates wrote: On Sat, 20 Sep 2008, Hire wrote: Instead I find it very usable and better stability. The only thing that I find totally useless is the OM-Locations... we need a very usable gps sotfware like navit ( with complete maps as navteq o telealtas and a routes engine ) so why don't port it onto Openmoko and use it instead of Om-Locations? i don't think it offers a routing engine, but have you tried tangoGPS? it does everything else you want, given the excellent hooks to openstreetmap.org. i am told that others are working on general-purpose routing engines using PSM data, but i can't find confirmation. anyway, having a map's the main thing for me. All The point of Locations is not to become a routing engine. It's reverse routing if you will. I'm in a place I want to remember, so I tag that location. And share it friends. Or friends want to share a location with me. So they send me a tag that appears on my map. That's it. Very very simple. You can read more about it here: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Om_2008.8_Locations Hope that helps clarify things. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Om2008.8 and FSO
On 8/31/08 enaut wrote: Richy schrieb: From: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FSO This distribution will be merged with the 2008.8 distribution (or its successor) when the system is stable enough. For more information see http://www.freesmartphone.org and http://trac.freesmartphone.org . I think one of the moko team mentioned that they will not be merged... No this is totally not the case. In fact, FSO isn't even a distribution. Let me quote Mickey: In practice, this means once the framework has reached a certain extent (see http://trac.freesmartphone.org for our tasks, issues, and milestones), we can expect it to be seen in all kinds of products, likely including further releases of the ASU. It's the framework / middleware project that will provide the foundation for future Om releases (probably the first will be 2009). FSO is also, BTW, designed to be generic enough to be used for more than just Om. But make no mistake, future versions of Om will use this framework. We've invested lots of time and money into it. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: numptyphysics ipk
Michael Shiloh wrote: Someone please wikify? This is an awesome demo. Michael I'm at a bit of a loss here after seeing so many of these type of comments from you lately. Isn't organizing the community's work your job? Or do you see your role differently than I do? -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko on Design
On 7/30/08 Daniel Benoy wrote: Also, would the openmoko design team be willing to consider a toggle in the configuration menu between manual and automatic? What we want is for people to add their own configuration options to menus in the form of packages installable from the Installer. This is why we remove functionality. So we can focus on how to make sure our products are extensible. Simplify and Open. -Sean ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
