A linux-based handheld aimed at the developing world has finally been released. In India at least the Simputer should provide mobile networked computers to the masses.

Housekeeping edition

Nice brief primer on telematics and in car computers - has a couple nice illustrations including a telematics block diagram and a supply chain block diagram.

In my continuing quest for the ideal p2p NAT/firewall traversal stack, I ran across this useful presentation a while ago from Dan Kaminski of http://www.doxpara.com/.

This is a nice synopsis of major P2P applications and their networking, in the form of a "how to block these apps". Gives some insight on P2P and firewalls.

Here is the powerpoint presentation I gave on carbot and in-car computing @ O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference. I'll put the video of the presentation up soon.

In which I try out JLint, FindBugs, Checkstyle & PMD. Gentlemen, place your bets.

Some parts of Java are in the doldrums. Open Sourcing can only deliver the benefits of 10,000 eyes when feedback and enhancements can be merged back into the code base fast. javax.swing.text.html would be a good component to slough off to a small, reactive Open Source team.

I've finally switched from C++ to Python and wxPython for GUI application development and writing code hasn't been this much fun since I discovered perl.

I've been trying to figure out what I want to do my PhD in. As an engineer and inventor, I kept looking around for projects that would be interesting AND useful, to do the research on - I'd like to produce a thing people can use at the end of my Doctorate, not just some inscrutable collection of data added to the obscure corpus of scientific knowledge. I've been thinking about Artificial Intelligence.