I’ve been experimenting with the beta of Nokia Chat for the past few days; it’s an interesting application, with lots of promise, and is pleasantly open, in that it’s built on the XMPP protocol. This is the same protocol used by Jabber and Google Talk, and so Nokia Chat interoperates nicely with those services (you cannot, however, use an existing Jabber or Google Talk account with Nokia Chat — you’re forced to create a new “@ovi.com” account).
The tag-line for Nokia Chat is “more than just messaging” and its ability to share location, using the built-in GPS in modern Nokia devices, is the feature that is used to differentiate it from other instant messaging apps.
How this actually works isn’t immediately obvious unless you happen to be using the application to chat to other Nokia Chat users, as the location sharing features aren’t even on the menu when you’re chatting with users on other networks. Here, for example, is what my Nokia Chat menu looks like when I’m chatting with Mark, who’s using Jabber.org:
Compare this to a chat with another Nokia Chat user; there’s now a “Send” menu option, with two sub-options, “Voice message” and “My location.”
Now in this case the user I’m chatting with is actually a xmpphp script that’s signed into another Nokia Chat account. Because of this I was able to watch the actual XML being sent back and forth; what I found was that if this script advertised its presence like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <presence> <status>Experimenting</status> </presence>
then Nokia Chat didn’t show the special “Send” menu. However if I modified the script to advertise that I was a client with some additional capabilities:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <presence> <c xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/caps" node="http://chat.ovi.com/caps" ver="1.0" ext="mobi loc-1 vim-1"/> <priority>1</priority> <status>Experimenting</status> </presence>
then Nokia Chat took me to be capable of receiving location (loc-1) and voice message (vim-1) presence updates and acted accordingly, displaying the “Send” menu as above.
So what actually gets sent when I select “Send \| My location” to a contact from within Nokia Chat? Simply more XML, it turns out, using the geoloc XMPP extension:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <message from="#######" to="="#######" "> <body> This message contains a location. </body> <geoloc xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/geoloc" xml:lang="en"> <lat>46.235998566402</lat> <lon>-63.129852545897 </lon> </geoloc> <x xmlns="jabber:x:oob"> <url>(mapquest url here)</url> </x> </message>
(The message also contains a link to a Mapquest.com URL which I’ve removed in the XML above for brevity).
On the receiving side, when someone sends you a location in Nokia Chat, the message looks like this:
When you select the “Open” link, the Nokia Maps application starts up and zooms to the given location.
Because this is all done using XML, using published protocols, the door is open to build all sorts of interesting applications that hook into Nokia Chat. Sending location information, for example, to a XMPP-speaking bot, would provide a built-in mechanism for sending location updates to a web application.
Stay tuned for more experimenting.
I got my fresh-off-the-press copy of the new book A Good Summer this afternoon from my friend Ann.
The book features the photographs of Island photographer Anna Karpinski accompanied by text from 16 Island writers. I’m honoured to be one of the 16: I wrote a paragraph about my brother Steve’s official reprimand for not attending the Gold Cup and Saucer Parade one summer.
The design of the book, by Mathew MacKay, is wonderful: he’s come up with a design that would have worked well in 1966, looked dated in the interim, but suddenly feels exactly right for this moment.
The book is being formally launched on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in an event — open to the public, meaning you — being held at The whY. There will be readings, signings and refreshments.
You can buy the book online from Nimbus or ask your local bookseller to order ISBN 9781894838320.
First, it’s cotton boll, not cotton ball. And the boll weevil feeds on same. Also, a weevil is not a rat-sized gopher-like mammal but rather a small beetle.
Second, if you’re Cornish you’re from Cornwall. I’d never made that connection before.
Oh, and there’s a Margate in England too (we have our very own Margate here on PEI). The things you can learn from Relocation, Relocation.
Ask Eygló is a regular column on the Iceland Review site that invites readers to submit questions about Iceland that are “neither rude, thick, nor difficult to answer.”
Here’s the construction site at the University of PEI for the new Canada Games track and field facility:
Here’s the attempt to mitigate the effects of having a giant pile of red dirt flowing into the tiny creek that’s right beside the construction site:
Here’s how well it worked, taken yesterday morning after a small amount of rain fell on Charlottetown:
A few years ago, basking in the afterglow of the first Zap Your PRAM conference, the lads from upstairs and I were having lunch and pondering what to do for a follow-up act. Someone — it might have been me, but I can’t recall — suggested that we launch an “Artist in Residence” program here at 84 Fitzroy Street. In the way that pompous ideas are often greeted around our lunch table — we’re not programmers, we’re artists! — this one was warmly received, and we set off in search of our first candidates.
Our first candidates fell through — the lure of Hollywood — and the idea sort of collapsed around them.
Until last summer when I suggested to my Swanish friends Olle and Luisa that they be the first candidates. The idea percolated in their heads for a year, and this year they accepted the appointment, and on September 30, 2008 they’ll begin their 3-week residency here.
I’ll leave it to Olle and Luisa to flesh out their own artistry — suffice to say they probably won’t be painting still life portraits of Beaconsfield. They’ve just lauched Hello PEI as the blog of their project, and if nothing else this promises to be a goldmine of “seeing the Island through strangers’ eyes” flow.
If you’d like to sign on as a co-conspirator or sponsor, or otherwise be involved, please let if be known.
Noting for the record that .mobi, which is in theory the domain for “the mobile web,” is not numeric-keypad-typing friendly (the m and the o are both on the 6 key, which means you must pause between keying them in). On a similar note, Nokia’s ovi brand name is mobile-friendly — 666-888-444 will type it for you. Of course “mtg” (key “684”) would be even friendlier, but it’s not as strong a brand name…
The Dryden Municipal Telephone System is “a full-service public utility telephone company owned by the City of Dryden.” It suggests here that they are also poised to become third GSM carrier in Canada, albeit, presumably, for a limited area (Dryden is a “city” of 9,000 people in north-western Ontario).
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, listen to audio I’ve posted, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way).
I have been writing here since May 1999: you can explore the 25+ years of blog posts in the archive.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or a podcast RSS feed that just contains audio posts. You can also receive a daily digests of posts by email.