emun.eee

My Fiancee + London, UK + Bath, UK + Pisa, Italy + Rome, Italy + Paris, France + Fiat 500 + The Eurostar + American Airlines + Ryanair = an awesome 10 day vacation.  Pictures coming soon.

Over the past year and some change, I have been working on a mobile application, Speeed Reader.  After many, many betas, entrance into two huge application marketplaces, bug fixes, and interactions with you, the user community I was able to learn a lot.

Speeed Reader was (a) born out of my need for a native Google Reader application, (b) born out of my need to do something innovative with my degree (was not getting, for the most part, this opportunity at the job I held during Speeed Reader’s inception), and (c) create and learn about the technologies of the mobile space (processing, data interaction, memory management).

What I Learned

Sorry if this appear to be randomly thrown together, I am typing them as I think of them:

• Technologies: .NET Compact Framework, C++, memory management, XML parsing, HTTP protocols and connection handling, process THREADING, performance tuning, serialization, user interface design, encryption, mobile database management, error/exception handling, registry processing, software licensing and more than I cannot think of right now.  The reason why threading is in bold is that was the most important technology that put the Speeed in Speeed Reader
• Managing a beta test team (thanks guys! your input was invaluable to Speeed Reader and me)
• Communicating with third party vendors (Mirabyte, Microsoft, Handango, PocketGear)
• Running a small software development shop
• Communicating with the user community
• Software testing on many many types of device and emulators.  Ensuring the software is stable enough for mainstream release.

Speeed Reader is the first of many software titles I am going to release under eeenno|mobile|software.  I am looking very much forward to bringing great simple to use applications to all types of platforms: Windows, Linux (downloading Ubuntu 10.04 now), Android 2.X, Windows Phone 7, and maybe WebOS (HP/Palm).

Here it is, Speeed Reader v1.15.  This release fixes one bug:

• Some feeds with weird characters in the URL may not be marked as read correctly.

Download: http://emuneee.com/eeenno/SpeeedReader/download/SpeeedReader_115.CAB

I have also posted all the source code for Speeed Reader v1.15 as a Google Open Source Project.  The only thing I am not able to post is the license key for the user interface controls (the DLL is posted, but is in trial mode since the license key is missing).  The controls are proprietary technology.

Project: http://code.google.com/p/speeedreader/

I ran into some issues building Speeed Reader v1.30.  I will build that and post it this weekend when I have some more time to debug.

Finally, license key for Speeed Reader: 858Bf079Jj

The Paraplegics is a collab album from MC King Mez and producer Commisioner Gordon that drops on June 1st.  The homie Sameer did his thing with the album art and photograhy.

Read More

I saw this over at HowardChui.com.  I’m definitely digging this more than the HTC Incredible.  I hope AT&T releases this soon.

Read More

Thursday, I will be releasing Speeed Reader v1.15 on this site.  At this time I will also be releasing the source code for the project as well.  This next version will fix some bugs that are somewhat well-known.  Stay tuned.

In my perfect world, all software would be open-source and freely available.  With that said in the coming weeks the following is going to occur:

• All versions of Speeed Reader will become free again
• I will open source 95% of the Speeed Reader codebase.  The other 5% is proprietary technology (user interface controls) and I don’t have the rights to that.
• I will build and release a beta Speeed Reader v1.20.  This was the version I’ve been working on up until lately, but alas, I underestimated the time that would be needed to complete v1.2.  Instead of just holding on to it, I will be releasing it to the public.  It contains some substantial UI and caching changes.  With that said, it’s probably buggy…so use at your own discretion.  Iwill release the codebase to this as well.

The reason I am doing this is I am transitioning to other types of personal mobile software projects on the Android software platform and don’t have the time needed to continue active feature development for Speeed Reader.  Also, I interface with the Google Reader API (which is technically private).  Developers who want some code samples on  how to interact with the Google Reader API will get a chance once they download and browse my source code.

I have to get my open source licenses sorted out, but its coming soon.

Here is my ranking of currently available Android phones

1. HTC Droid Incredible (Verizon)
2. Google Nexus One (ATT, T-Mobile)
3. Motorola Droid (Verizon)
4. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
5. HTC Legend

Here is my ranking of future (available in next 4 months) Android devices

1. HTC EVO 4G – 1GHz Snapdragon/512MB RAM/8MP Cam/720p video recording/WiMax radio
2. Samsung Galaxy S – 1GHz custom Samsung ARM processor/512MB RAM/5MP Cam/4″ Super AMOLED Screen
3. Motorola Shadow (codename?) – 1GHZ Snapdragon/512MB RAM/8MP Cam/720P video recoding/HDMI/QWERTY/4.3″ screen

Personally, I’d get a Nexus One if I could get one for for $199/$299…not $570.  I’m trying to hold out until the Samsung Galaxy S (if it lands on AT&T)….that for the Dell Lightning looks fantastic, even though its a Windows Phone 7 device.

Check back in June for June’s rankings!