Siafu – An Open-Source Context Simulator

Hi fellow geeks,

Today I’m writing to present you a very interesting project from a friend of mine working at NEC Europe Network Labs (Heidelberg, Germany), which is called Siafu.

According to the website…

“Siafu is a versatile, large-scale Context Simulator written in Java. Download it, create or modify a scenario and fire it up. Your simulated world includes models for agents, places and the context therein. By tweaking these models, you influence the scenario, and can collect the context data for any of your agents.

(…)

Siafu can generate its own context and at the same time incorporate the one you obtain from your sensors. The information can then be visualized with a user interface, or you can generate datasets for machine learning. By plugging an application to it, you can test and demonstrate the effects of context changes on it.”

The project page itself is cute, simple and rich in useful information. So if you’re interested in this type of tool go grab it and have fun!

I won’t extend on this subject because my only target was to publicize the thing. As me, probably some of you will find this tool very appealing for some tasks at your job or just for academic purposes but either way it’s a very interesting piece of work.

Grats go to Miquel 🙂

Once the project is open-source you are encouraged to download, modify and distribute it.

Mobile – let the frameworks war begin..

Fellow geeks,

Intel has just unleashed a new project called Moblin, Mobile Linux Internet Project. Basically it targets the same primary objective as Nokia’s Maemo, to become the standard framework for mobile devices software development completely open-sourced and powered by Linux kernel but, in this case with a more mature view.

Curiously several components will extend existing ones in the Maemo side like Hildon, the UI framework. Others are named too but aren’t yet assured like GStreamer (multimedia), Helix (multimedia), Telepathy (messaging framework) and Mozilla (Web, I believe that they’re talking about Minimo).

One of the most interesting Moblin projects is Moblin Image Creator. It is thought to simplify developers life by providinga GUI that allows..:

”

• creating a platform specific build environment, or “project”
• creating a platform-specific target file-system
• providing user selectable “feature sets” (or fsets) to install bundles of packages that provide some high-level functionality

”

Read more about it on the project page and start reading the documentation 😉

<teaser /> Check the screenshot:

Related links:

Intel – Mobile Internet Devices (MID)

Canonical – Ubuntu for MIDs

Nokia – Internet Tablets

Missing chairs? Steve Ballmer’s fault!

I guess the man is throwing so many chairs in the air that now they’re missing..

OOXML vs ODF the war is still ongoing (in Portugal)..

Fellow geeks,

Even that this post is mostly directed at Portuguese people I must write it in English so that you, my foreign friend can understand what is happening [in Portugal] about OOXML vs ODF.

Last week a technical committee failed OOXML as an ISO standard in the US [see Rui Seabra’s post]. Curiously, Microsoft had some partners in that same committee but I guess they weren’t enough.

Recently a Portuguese group was established to serve the same purpose, to determine whether OOXML shall become an ISO standard or not and not surprisingly Microsoft did their homework and got not only the president seat but also half-a-dozen partners “inside” of it.

If you thought this was funny check this out! Apparently this bunch-of-impartial-tech-companies has rejected a proposal from Sun Microsystems (Portugal) to become an active part, arguing that “there are no empty chairs in the room used for the meetings”. H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S!!

I guess Sun Microsystem should spend a room with a couple more chairs, don’t you agree?

Some time ago I asked you to sign a petition against OOXML becoming a standard in Portugal. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

N800 – New firmware released

Hi fellow geeks,

Nokia and Maemo did it again now with version 4.2007.26-8. Major items are:

• Skype support;
• Adobe Flash plugin 9;
• 8Gb SDHC card support (once that it has two slots we can now have up to 16Gb);
• More battery autonomy (achieved by optimizing wireless usage and some application cpu ticking);
• A new version of Maemo is out too, 3.2.

Download the firmware and read more about Maemo latest release. Happy hacking 🙂

Transformers

Yesterday I watched Transformers, the movie, and I must say WOW.

I was born in the 80’s so I am obviously a great fan of the series as I am fan of a lot of comic books which lately have become real in the big screen. Some succeeded, others do not, but Transformers did for me!

Let me explain you a bit of the history, based on the movie facts which are not 100% representative of the comic books..

First there was a planet, Cybertron. In this planet resides a great power sealed inside a cube shaped form, simply called The Cube. There were also two robot races: one that desired to acquire that power (Decepticons, battle bots led by Megatron) and the other that sworn to protect it from the wrong hands (Autobots, repair bots headed by Optimus Prime). A war began..
During their millions year old battle, somehow The Cube reached our planet, Earth. The robots came after it. It’s “their battle, our world”!

Now imagine the coolest freaking gigantic robots you will ever see fighting in the middle of a city, transforming themselves countless times between humanoid form and machinery like a BlackHawk helicopter, a F-22 fight aircraft or a beautiful Camaro 2007.. Neat, hun?!

As a tech geek I tend to be very very picky about it but the quality of sci-fi movies and besides the over-hyped UI’s and crazy-keyboard-typing scenes from some NSA so-called hackers this movie is full of reality. The quality of the special effects is simply awesome!! The fluid robot movements, the transformations speed and complexity, the human-behaviour presented in the bots just made my day. Also the movie is rich in comedy shots for the public amusement making it a pleasant piece of entertainment.

Did I mention that one of the main characters, a female human called Mickaela is hot as hell? No? Check this out..

Now, my favourite character (after Mickaela of course!!!)..

All in all it’s worth the money. I recommend everyone to check it, twice!! 😀

From now on everyone loves me!

Which Programming Language are You?

Anyone interested? Now this is a LOL!