No big news if you look at the dates of my last posts - I have changed industry and gave up maintaining this blog. Thanks for coming along, reading my thoughts and supporting me!
Friday, October 23, 2015
Friday, May 7, 2010
Recent News about Mobile OSGi
It’s been a while since I wrote about Mobile OSGi (mainly because I was working on Mobile OSGi), so I hope I haven’t lost any followers. Thank YOU for bearing with me!
In this post I want to put forward a few recent news about Mobile OSGi.
Free Off-the-shelf Mobile OSGi Runtimes and Tools
If you’re a developer and interested in getting your hands on Mobile OSGi, take a look at the free offerings from ProSyst. In the last month my team and I have worked hard to create this product portfolio and we’re proud on what we have achieved. What you can download:
- Mobile OSGi for Android
- Mobile OSGi for Windows Mobile
- Mobile OSGi for Nokia S60
- Mobile OSGi SDK (Eclipse based)
Apart from the plain OSGi layer, these stacks come with a host of added value services (e.g. Support for W3C Mobile Web Widgets; Remote Management; Tooling Support; etc.). Every package comes with documentation (find box on the right) so it’s easy to get into it. The Win Mobile and Nokia S60 stacks contain an embedded CDC Java VM, so installation is really as easy as it can get. If you have questions or face issues, use this forum to get feedback.
We also put the stack on external download sites. These are:
- Android Market (for the Android version)
- Handango.com (for the Windows Mobile version)
I am pretty amazed by the number of downloads we get on the Android Market (1500+ in a few weeks only). Who are all these OSGi enthusiasts out there? Please get back to me!!
OSGi on Android
The uptake of Android is accelerating and so I am getting asked frequently how OSGi and Android compare and what’s the value of putting OSGi onto Android. Here’s a slide deck on this matter:
Feedback very welcome, as always!
VisionMobile Mobile Mega Trends 2010: OSGi considered value add for OEMs and MNOs
Andreas Constantinou from VisionMobile once again has done an impressive job in analyzing and describing mega trends of the mobile industry. His annual Mega Trend decks are must-reads for all mobilists – a beautiful piece of visionary thinking.
Starting from page 47 Andreas analysis monetization opportunities for OEMs and MNOs. He distinguishes 10 value areas (Services; Service delivery; Service distribution; Device design; UI design; Core apps; Operating system; HW Platform; Chipset IP and Manufacturing) and identifies those ones where OEMs and MNOs used to or will capture value from –services playing a significant role.
OSGi is considered a value enabler for “Service delivery”, a key instrument for MNOs to implement their smart pipe strategies (which centers around capturing value from services rather than plans only) and for OEMS to leverage their unique position in service distribution.
Not surprisingly, I couldn’t agree more …. ;-) OSGi is the only sophisticated, standardized, embedded and cross-platform service delivery framework on the market.
Mobile OSGi Mass Market Device(s)
Well, those of you following this blog will already know that Sprint has stopped the Sprint Titan project which had OSGi at its core. David Beers has commented on Sprint's move in his post Drove my Chevy to the levee... and Has Sprint caved to Google on its open Java platform?. Really not much to add to this.
Anyway, I do not want to put my fingers into the wound of those that were involved. I just want to mention that 5 mass market devices were developed incl. OSGi, 2 Win Mobile, 2 Android, 1 Brew. The latter is the Samsung Instinct HD device, still on the market. More about its Java capabilities you find in a post of Darryl Mocek. Sad they didn’t continue…
That’s all for now. Please share your feedback!
- Jo
In this post I want to put forward a few recent news about Mobile OSGi.
Free Off-the-shelf Mobile OSGi Runtimes and Tools
If you’re a developer and interested in getting your hands on Mobile OSGi, take a look at the free offerings from ProSyst. In the last month my team and I have worked hard to create this product portfolio and we’re proud on what we have achieved. What you can download:
- Mobile OSGi for Android
- Mobile OSGi for Windows Mobile
- Mobile OSGi for Nokia S60
- Mobile OSGi SDK (Eclipse based)
Apart from the plain OSGi layer, these stacks come with a host of added value services (e.g. Support for W3C Mobile Web Widgets; Remote Management; Tooling Support; etc.). Every package comes with documentation (find box on the right) so it’s easy to get into it. The Win Mobile and Nokia S60 stacks contain an embedded CDC Java VM, so installation is really as easy as it can get. If you have questions or face issues, use this forum to get feedback.
We also put the stack on external download sites. These are:
- Android Market (for the Android version)
- Handango.com (for the Windows Mobile version)
I am pretty amazed by the number of downloads we get on the Android Market (1500+ in a few weeks only). Who are all these OSGi enthusiasts out there? Please get back to me!!
OSGi on Android
The uptake of Android is accelerating and so I am getting asked frequently how OSGi and Android compare and what’s the value of putting OSGi onto Android. Here’s a slide deck on this matter:
Feedback very welcome, as always!
VisionMobile Mobile Mega Trends 2010: OSGi considered value add for OEMs and MNOs
Andreas Constantinou from VisionMobile once again has done an impressive job in analyzing and describing mega trends of the mobile industry. His annual Mega Trend decks are must-reads for all mobilists – a beautiful piece of visionary thinking.
Starting from page 47 Andreas analysis monetization opportunities for OEMs and MNOs. He distinguishes 10 value areas (Services; Service delivery; Service distribution; Device design; UI design; Core apps; Operating system; HW Platform; Chipset IP and Manufacturing) and identifies those ones where OEMs and MNOs used to or will capture value from –services playing a significant role.
OSGi is considered a value enabler for “Service delivery”, a key instrument for MNOs to implement their smart pipe strategies (which centers around capturing value from services rather than plans only) and for OEMS to leverage their unique position in service distribution.
Not surprisingly, I couldn’t agree more …. ;-) OSGi is the only sophisticated, standardized, embedded and cross-platform service delivery framework on the market.
Mobile OSGi Mass Market Device(s)
Well, those of you following this blog will already know that Sprint has stopped the Sprint Titan project which had OSGi at its core. David Beers has commented on Sprint's move in his post Drove my Chevy to the levee... and Has Sprint caved to Google on its open Java platform?. Really not much to add to this.
Anyway, I do not want to put my fingers into the wound of those that were involved. I just want to mention that 5 mass market devices were developed incl. OSGi, 2 Win Mobile, 2 Android, 1 Brew. The latter is the Samsung Instinct HD device, still on the market. More about its Java capabilities you find in a post of Darryl Mocek. Sad they didn’t continue…
That’s all for now. Please share your feedback!
- Jo
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
MediaServer for Android
Thanks to all of you who have been waiting patiently for our MediaServer. I am proud to announce that we just published it on the Android Market. Just take your phone, open the Market app and seach for MediaServer.
Here's a little video about it:
Extract from the app documentation: MediaServer is a DLNA Media Server for devices featuring the Android platform. Using MediaServer, pictures & videos taken with your phone as well as audio files can be played back on your home media appliances like TVs, picture frames, Sony PlayStation 3, etc. Without the need to plug any cables nor to configure any network settings, your home media devices will discover your Android phone automatically once the device is on WiFi and the MediaServer is turned on.
So, take your pictures and videos while you're on the go and play it back on your TV when you come home!
Tech insights: The app embeds Mobile OSGi as an internal architecture. This helped us a lot as we could reuse OSGi's UPnP and http services. It also uses Config Admin and Log Service. While OSGi payed off, implementing multicast protocol features on Android were a pain as we had to work around the lack multicast packet reception support (most vendors don't compile the Android Linux kernel without that feature...). Anyway, it works well, try it out!
-Jo
Here's a little video about it:
Extract from the app documentation: MediaServer is a DLNA Media Server for devices featuring the Android platform. Using MediaServer, pictures & videos taken with your phone as well as audio files can be played back on your home media appliances like TVs, picture frames, Sony PlayStation 3, etc. Without the need to plug any cables nor to configure any network settings, your home media devices will discover your Android phone automatically once the device is on WiFi and the MediaServer is turned on.
So, take your pictures and videos while you're on the go and play it back on your TV when you come home!
Tech insights: The app embeds Mobile OSGi as an internal architecture. This helped us a lot as we could reuse OSGi's UPnP and http services. It also uses Config Admin and Log Service. While OSGi payed off, implementing multicast protocol features on Android were a pain as we had to work around the lack multicast packet reception support (most vendors don't compile the Android Linux kernel without that feature...). Anyway, it works well, try it out!
-Jo
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Innovation Beyond Mobile Apps
Yesterday I had the pleasure to speak at the droidcon in Berlin. It was a remarkable conference, a lot of interesting people & talks, well organized, lots of fun. As the event name suggests, it was all about Android.
Guess what I was talking about? ;-) Here's the abstract of my story:
Android is a platform the developer community can create innovative mobile applications for. However, much of the community's creativity and power remains untapped. Why? There are barriers for developers to contribute to the platform. First, the Android project is solely and rigidly controlled by Google. Second, the Android application & distribution model is designed to have 3rd parties create apps, not APIs or middleware. This presentations discusses these limitations and presents the concept of OSGi, an Open Services & Middleware Platform as an enabler for 3rd party platform innovation.
Find the presentation here:
Let the community do more than just Apps!
As usual, comments are welcome!View more presentations from j.ritter.
- Jo
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
DLNA Media Server for Smart Phones
Most of my recent blogs are focusing on what you could do with Mobile OSGi. Today I deliver a real practical example for OSGi - in my opinion a pretty exciting case. My colleague Gábor Pécsy has written a first prototype of a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) Media Server that runs on OSGi on various mobile platforms such as Android and Windows Mobile.
For those who are less familiar with DLNA, let me give you a short intro. DLNA is an industry alliance that developed a number of specifications purposed to standardize the interplay of media devices. There are several types of media devices defined such as Digital Media Server, Digital Media Player, Digital Media Controller, etc. As you can imagine, a Media Server is a network instances that serves media content like pictures, videos or music. Likewise, Media Players are devices capable of playing back media content served from Media Servers. The nice thing about DLNA is that devices automatically find each other in the network without the user to be bothered with configuration issues, setting IP addresses, etc. It's a true hot plugging architecture (which is because DLNA is build over UPnP). If you have a Media Player, like a Sony Playstation 3, a Microsoft Xbox, DLNA enabled TV sets, etc. and put a media server to the network, the players will find the server without further doing.
What we did is implementing parts of the DLNA Digital Media Server specification that runs on mobile phones. The use case is that you generate content while you're on the go (i.e. taking pictures or videos) and play that content back on your bigger home screens like the TV or picture frame. Watch this video to get a live demo on how the Sony Playstation and a picture frame plays back your pictures from your phone:
The current version of the Media Server is entirely headless, that's why you don't see any UI on the phone. Future versions of this app will contain a UI on which you can set the server name, your content sharing policies, etc.
Let's zoom into technology. An interesting aspect about this solution is portability. The media server is implemented in Java and on OSGi, thus it is portable over all handsets that support OSGi. Moreover, it leverages the UPnP Service defined in the OSGi Compendium Specification giving it a clean a lean design. Here's a little diagram about the internals of the server:
The Media Server is both network and device agnostic and thus easily portable. It pulls media content though the Media Manager Service. This service we created to abstract media access. The Media Manager Implementation is platform specific. In case of Windows Mobile or Brew the MM Implementation fetches Media Content from the local file system. The target folders are configurable through the OSGi Configuration Admin API which makes this implementation portable. I.e. on Brew the target folders are different and all it takes to port the implementation is to reconfigure the folder strings. On Android another implementation is required that pulls media content through the respective Android APIs. Support for media content types can be plugged into the Media Server by means of meta-data plugins.
A key enabler for this solution is UPnP. The Media Server registers itself as a UPnP device and Service with the OSGi UPnP Service. The UPnP stack then broadcasts the availability of the media server into the Wifi network. Other UPnP enabled devices will pick up the broadcast messages and learn about the presence of the Media Server, it's physical network address and where to find the respective services. As demoed in the video, the Playstation contains this functionality, find the media server and is capable of playing back the picture content it offers.
The implementation is functional already but we will keep working on it. It'll get an end user UI and support for additional content types. Moreover, the UPnP implementation needs enhancements for better handling network drops (in the interest of battery savings smart phones tend to switch off their Wifi modules whenever they think it makes sense...). It should be ready by the time Sprint launches the first OSGi handsets...
For those who are less familiar with DLNA, let me give you a short intro. DLNA is an industry alliance that developed a number of specifications purposed to standardize the interplay of media devices. There are several types of media devices defined such as Digital Media Server, Digital Media Player, Digital Media Controller, etc. As you can imagine, a Media Server is a network instances that serves media content like pictures, videos or music. Likewise, Media Players are devices capable of playing back media content served from Media Servers. The nice thing about DLNA is that devices automatically find each other in the network without the user to be bothered with configuration issues, setting IP addresses, etc. It's a true hot plugging architecture (which is because DLNA is build over UPnP). If you have a Media Player, like a Sony Playstation 3, a Microsoft Xbox, DLNA enabled TV sets, etc. and put a media server to the network, the players will find the server without further doing.
What we did is implementing parts of the DLNA Digital Media Server specification that runs on mobile phones. The use case is that you generate content while you're on the go (i.e. taking pictures or videos) and play that content back on your bigger home screens like the TV or picture frame. Watch this video to get a live demo on how the Sony Playstation and a picture frame plays back your pictures from your phone:
The current version of the Media Server is entirely headless, that's why you don't see any UI on the phone. Future versions of this app will contain a UI on which you can set the server name, your content sharing policies, etc.
Let's zoom into technology. An interesting aspect about this solution is portability. The media server is implemented in Java and on OSGi, thus it is portable over all handsets that support OSGi. Moreover, it leverages the UPnP Service defined in the OSGi Compendium Specification giving it a clean a lean design. Here's a little diagram about the internals of the server:
The Media Server is both network and device agnostic and thus easily portable. It pulls media content though the Media Manager Service. This service we created to abstract media access. The Media Manager Implementation is platform specific. In case of Windows Mobile or Brew the MM Implementation fetches Media Content from the local file system. The target folders are configurable through the OSGi Configuration Admin API which makes this implementation portable. I.e. on Brew the target folders are different and all it takes to port the implementation is to reconfigure the folder strings. On Android another implementation is required that pulls media content through the respective Android APIs. Support for media content types can be plugged into the Media Server by means of meta-data plugins.
A key enabler for this solution is UPnP. The Media Server registers itself as a UPnP device and Service with the OSGi UPnP Service. The UPnP stack then broadcasts the availability of the media server into the Wifi network. Other UPnP enabled devices will pick up the broadcast messages and learn about the presence of the Media Server, it's physical network address and where to find the respective services. As demoed in the video, the Playstation contains this functionality, find the media server and is capable of playing back the picture content it offers.
The implementation is functional already but we will keep working on it. It'll get an end user UI and support for additional content types. Moreover, the UPnP implementation needs enhancements for better handling network drops (in the interest of battery savings smart phones tend to switch off their Wifi modules whenever they think it makes sense...). It should be ready by the time Sprint launches the first OSGi handsets...
Thursday, July 9, 2009
'Opera Unite' released for Android, Win Mobile, Nokia S60 and Brew!
A few weeks ago Opera announced its latest innovation: Opera Unite, a small web server sitting in the browser enabling true peer-to-peer transfer of content and social networking. A preview version of an Opera desktop browser is available for download, a mobile version is said to be in the works (at Opera).
What most people may not know: The feature that Opera Unite delivers is available on mobile handsets already, namely on Android (here it rather works with Webkit), Win Mobile, Nokia S60 (Webkit again) and a Brew based handset. In fact, it was already demonstrated on JavaOne four weeks ago. How come?
What Opera calls Unite and intends to port to mobile tomorrow is functionally contained in what Sprint (wireless carrier in the US) calls Titan (which essentially is Mobile OSGi plus web browser integration), shipping with a number of handsets this year. What each respective technology does:
Despite these similarities, OSGi takes the concept one step further and offers additional capabilities:
Anyway, despite these differences I am extremely excited about Opera Unite. Alike Sprint and OSGi, Opera has stood up for a new approach of architecting the internet: Turning dump clients into intelligent servers. It is not about yet another social networking platform, it is about expanding the very core fabric of the web and the way social communication works today. It took a popular brand like Opera to finally get a public conversation going about this new architecture. I sincerely thank Opera for having created this level of awareness in public. Sprint & Co. haven’t managed to create even just a fraction of the buzz we have seen in the last few weeks, initiated by Opera's announcement.
Lawrence Eng from Opera says in his blog "I hope you’ll join me in imagining a more personal and social computing experience that actually begins to deliver on the old (but not forgotten) promise of the Internet bringing people together in meaningful ways." I certainly will! Will you?
Opera, why don’t we team up and explore what comes out if we combined Unite and Mobile OSGi?
- Jo
What most people may not know: The feature that Opera Unite delivers is available on mobile handsets already, namely on Android (here it rather works with Webkit), Win Mobile, Nokia S60 (Webkit again) and a Brew based handset. In fact, it was already demonstrated on JavaOne four weeks ago. How come?
What Opera calls Unite and intends to port to mobile tomorrow is functionally contained in what Sprint (wireless carrier in the US) calls Titan (which essentially is Mobile OSGi plus web browser integration), shipping with a number of handsets this year. What each respective technology does:
- it turns your device into a full web server (we call it the The Server in your Pocket)
- it lets you share your content peer-to-peer with your friends
- the local user interface runs in the browser
- new services & capabilities can be injected (taking effect on both the server and the browser based UI)
- on broadband networks it discovers peers via some internet lookup service (for instance, the demo on JavaOne used Twitter for that purpose). Certainly, Opera is ahead of the game in this regard as they provide an operational central DNS service operational
- on local networks it can discover peers through UPnP
Despite these similarities, OSGi takes the concept one step further and offers additional capabilities:
- it is browser agnostic. In fact, on Android and S60 the Webkit browser is used, whereas on WinMobile and a Brew based handset we use Opera Mobile (without Unite support)
- the server feature runs in the background and is available even when the browser is down
- new services (i.e. a new p2p messaging service) are written in Java and are deployable (push or pull) at any time (even once the device is already shipped). This opens the door to leveraging an incredible amount of existing code, knowhow and developer resources. Moreover, pure Opera Unite services run in the browser sandbox and cannot leverage platform capabilities that Opera does not provide JavaScript APIs for. In mobile this is crucial as file access (essentially the only platform access API currently available in Unite) isn’t all you want to use. There is location, messaging, PIM, etc. … In OSGi, you’re not bound to the APIs of your sandbox, you can bring you own APIs! Not to speak of the many APIs you get out of the box
- OSGi is a recognized industry standard, it is not a proprietary technology. It has an open governance model, a reliable spec and a huge developer community behind it
Anyway, despite these differences I am extremely excited about Opera Unite. Alike Sprint and OSGi, Opera has stood up for a new approach of architecting the internet: Turning dump clients into intelligent servers. It is not about yet another social networking platform, it is about expanding the very core fabric of the web and the way social communication works today. It took a popular brand like Opera to finally get a public conversation going about this new architecture. I sincerely thank Opera for having created this level of awareness in public. Sprint & Co. haven’t managed to create even just a fraction of the buzz we have seen in the last few weeks, initiated by Opera's announcement.
Lawrence Eng from Opera says in his blog "I hope you’ll join me in imagining a more personal and social computing experience that actually begins to deliver on the old (but not forgotten) promise of the Internet bringing people together in meaningful ways." I certainly will! Will you?
Opera, why don’t we team up and explore what comes out if we combined Unite and Mobile OSGi?
- Jo
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Update on OSGi for Android
In Nov 2007 folks from Luminis managed to port OSGi onto Android, or more precisely, onto what was called Android back then. Meanwhile most framework providers have gone ahead and ported their implementations to Android as well. However, as I argue in an earlier post, refer to Mobile OSGi on Android, I see little value in just porting OSGi. The value comes from integrating OSGi with Android. OSGi must be understood as a complementary platform, not a competing technology and that approach requires a good level of integration between the two.
Pursuing the goal to create a value adding OSGi based stack for Android, ProSyst recently releases the first version of the stack. It works on all Android 1.5 (Cupcake) compliant devices. Here's is the list of supported features from the Release Notes:
This is pretty much as much as you can get from it right now. Features coming in future releases are:
The stack is available for side-load as well as pre-load (for OEMs who decide to pre-integrate it on their devices). In fact, the Lock&Wipe and Android Package push deployment featuers require the stack to be signed by the OEM.
I hope this solution as well as the work of other OSGi community members (i.e. EZDroid) will help drive adoption of OSGi on Android.
Jo
Pursuing the goal to create a value adding OSGi based stack for Android, ProSyst recently releases the first version of the stack. It works on all Android 1.5 (Cupcake) compliant devices. Here's is the list of supported features from the Release Notes:
- Compliant to specifications OSGi Core 4.1 and OSGi Mobile 4.0 (JSR232)
- Java Security enabled and integration between OSGi and Android security policy frameworks
- Support for w3c & Opera based Web Widgets
- Web widgets run in WebKit browser-based viewer
- Installation and security verification of Widgets executed through OSGi
- Server in Your Pocket & RMA (Richt MobileNet Application)
- Local web server functionality, pretty much the same thing as Opera Unite (will blog about that one soon)
- Automated translation of OSGi services into local JSON based web services (provides Web Widgets access to platform capabilities like Messaging, Location, etc. You can also write your own OSGi services in Java and provide access to that functionality to your web widgets)
- JavaScript Convinience Library for finding, binding and using OSGi services within the browser
- Integration of Android Intents with OSGi Event Admin (bi-directional exchange of events/intends)
- Access to OSGi Services through Android IDL (enables Android developers to leverage OSGi services)
- Access to Android APIs from within OSGi
- OSGi runtime lifecycle management: User can select different OSGi runtime modes (Always On, Always Off, On if OSGi content installed)
- Content Management User Interface
- Listing OSGi content packages
- Installing content from SDCard
- Unistallation of content
- Installation of OSGi Content through WebKit Browser
- Full mobile device management support
- OMA-DM 1.2 based remote management interface
- All OSGi defined Management Objects: Configuration, Application, Logging, Monitoring, Policy
- Sotware Component Management Object (SCOMO): Remote management of Android APK packages, OSGi Bundles, OSGi Deployment Packages, Widgets (push-install, update, uninstall)
This is pretty much as much as you can get from it right now. Features coming in future releases are:
- Support for Bundle App Model (so that you can write bundles that use the native Android UI APIs. To do this properly an integration with the OSGi Application Admin is required)
- Connectivity between OSGi runtime in Android with Eclipse IDE based OSGi Development Tools
- Extend the OMA-DM device management tree by the Lock&Wipe Management Object (LAWMO), which enables enterprises to remotely wipe lost or stolen phones.
- Enabler OSGi Service APIs & JavaScript for accessing phone featuers like Camera, PIM, Messaging, etc.
The stack is available for side-load as well as pre-load (for OEMs who decide to pre-integrate it on their devices). In fact, the Lock&Wipe and Android Package push deployment featuers require the stack to be signed by the OEM.
I hope this solution as well as the work of other OSGi community members (i.e. EZDroid) will help drive adoption of OSGi on Android.
Jo
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