I’m a big fan of wikis and MediaWiki is my flavour. It’s a rock solid platform and has never let me down. I’ve picked up lots of best practices, patterns, tips & tricks and little hacks over the past few years and I’ll be sharing them with you over the next few months on this blog. There’s no better place to start things rolling than with a list of my favourite extensions. Extensions are what bring the MediaWiki to life and really allow you to take control of your Wiki content:

1. Semantic MediaWiki has to come top of this list. To me it is the killer-extension on MediaWiki today. By assigning meta data to your pages you can really slice and dice your content. You can put your content modelling hat on and generate dynamic content, generating pages from contact lists of your team to glossaries to page tagging. It ensures that you only need to enter content once, allows you create different views of the system and really get to grips your content. All that you’d expect from a Semantic web. To top it off the Semantic Media Wiki team have slowly but surely reached the v1 of the extension over the past year or so, maintaining a high level of quality at all times.
2. Next up is InputBox. Very simple, but elegant extension that allows you to create a new page from a template. If you need to create many pages of the same form, such as system requirements, then create a template from which you can spin off all the pages. Great for encouraging a standard page structure and makes it a lot easier for new comers to the wiki to follow a prescribed work-flow.
3. Next 4 are some core function libraries that you’ll benefit from on a day-to-day basis as you create ever more sophisticated templates. StringFunctions gives you string replace and substring functions among others.
4. ParserFunctions gives you such functions as if, ifeq and switch.
5. VariableExtensions allows you access previously set variables, allowing you to do counters or interact between templates.
6. I know I shouldn’t, but DynamicFunctions does give you that extra control of URL parameters. Dirty and hacky at times, but it has allowed me to go that extra distance at time, when it’s the last resort.
7. You should always reference your sources. To help you manage your references and collect them all up nicely up at the bottom of the page try Cite.
8. Gadgets looks really promising by allowing a little customisation / go-faster stripes on your wiki. A gadget is essentially a JavaScript and/or CSS which is applied to your page. Sysop users can install new gadgets using the standard wiki interface and then any user can choose (via a preferences edit) which gadgets they want to. There’s many out there and the list seems to be growing all the time. I said this is promising, because although I found a few interesting such as the pop-up preview on hover over links or WY(sort of)SIWYG, I couldn’t find any that really assisted on a day-to-day basis and, more importantly, enough to recommend to users of the wikis I manage. I suspect this’ll change soon as I discover new and improved gadgets.
9. Eye-candy is good - especially when it makes things more usable. This is what SyntaxHighlight does. It brings those code blocks to life with some decent colouring, making them oh-so-much clearer. And what a fantastic list of supported languages.
10. I leave Semantic Forms to last to end on a high, no means because I value it any less that of the ones above. Semantic Forms allows you to create forms for your data entry. With this in place users don’t even need to write any more wiki text to create pages - in fact you can enforce that they don’t so you really have control over how specific page types get managed. It integrates so well with the Semantic Media Wiki it surprises you. For example it can autocomplete text fields with a slick JavaScript module that lists best fit data as you type. This extension essentially wraps up a lot of the extensions mentioned above to improve the UI and protect the normal user from the sometimes cryptic wiki language.

One thing that always amazes me is the quality of both the MediaWiki core and the extensions provided by the community. It’s always a pleasure to come to either install a MediaWiki system, install extensions or upgrade the stack. It all just works and when I slip up (as I occasionally do) - it invariably tells me what I’ve done and what I need to do.

I’ll continue with this MediaWiki series in a few weeks time. Please let me know if there’s any particular areas you’d like me to cover or perhaps any use cases or samples you’d like me to run through.

According to the BBC, gaming on the mobile platform is about to take off.
Being from the ZX Spectrum generation, I have been constantly amazed at the way the processing power has increased to allow sophisticated games to run on smaller and smaller devices. In the early days I remember trying (not all that successfully it has to be admitted) to program various games on the Spectrum platform.

Moving from coding in BASIC to machine language made a massive improvement to performance, but you could feel you were stretching the kit to its limits for relatively basic games.

I remember going to arcades and marvelling at the graphics and power of dedicated games machines, it seemed almost impossible to imagine being able to play games of that quality at home.

Now, of course, you can play the old arcade games in a browser window on pretty much any standard PC. There seems no difference between arcade machines now and games platforms like the PS3.

Putting the games onto a mobile platform seems to limit you to the equivalent of Spectrum games against the arcade machines again. Try playing Call of Duty 2 on the Sony Ericsson K800i - you are moving stick men around a 2D landscape with limited sound and graphics. Whilst even the ability to do this on what is, essentially, a low powered computer is impressive, todays games will require a large increase in power.

Screensize is another obvious limitation - I’ve attempted Lemmings on the K800i as well, but it is not well suited for small screens and small keyboards - a lot of the game revolves around timing and getting the cursor over the minute lemming at the right time and pressing the right key is definitely an art. The new generation of larger screen devices will no doubt help in this area (Lemmings would be good with the touchscreen devices!)

The phone does open up one avenue not available to most PC gamers though; and this is Wii style motion sensitivity. The phone is ideally suited to this form of control (although you may get some odd looks whilst playing the games).

So, it’s still early days for mobile games, but unlike when I was programming on my Spectrum, I have no doubt we will soon have PlayStation quality games to play on the train home. It may make commuting almost enjoyable.

After my major disappointment with the F700, not wanting to be phoneless, I had to choose a different handset quickly. I had originally compiled a shortlist of the iPhone, F700, Nokia N95 (8GB), Sony Ericsson K850i and the Nokia N82.

A colleague of mine was seriously happy with his Nokia E61i but after a trouser test it created a bit too much packet sag for me. I could just buy tighter fitting trousers but thought a different phone choice would be the best way forward.

I’ve been a fan of Sony Ericsson’s for a while, had a K750i for a couple of years and loved it. It even filled in ok when my digital camera broke when on holiday in Italy. So I was leaning towards the K850i but it just wasn’t feature rich enough to compete against the smart phones that are about these days. As a rule I’m not a big Mac exponent, I appreciate the benefits and ethos of the Mac approach but don’t join in the arguments that erupt around Microsoft & Apple. However, I still think the UI on the iPhone is brilliant. The only thing that stopped me getting one is the camera (it’s no better than the K750) and lack of 3G. Oh, and the price! O2 are bringing it in line with normality but that just highlights the initial rip off.

So, that left the Nokia’s, N95 or N82. These babies are packed with goodies. How to choose, the N95 causes some minor trouser problems and who really needs a double slider, also lacks a Xenon flash. I also noticed it has one external speaker, the N82 has 2, stereo, does that really matter? No, but makes you feel good.

So I have an N82. The best bits are:

• 5 megapixel feature packed camera with Xenon flash. Yes it does make a difference.
  
• GPS with maps – it is usable and has assisted GPS. Uses the radio network to help it find satellites quicker and it works indoors! It helped me navigate round Swindon (and to leave nice and quick)
• It has the nice feature of auto rotating the display depending on the phones orientation
• Symbian Series 60 OS is good, it’s trying to be like Mac OS X
• Email support is fine, reading attachments is fine
• Web browser is fine (HTML) and fast.
• WLAN – I didn’t think this was really necessary but once you’ve had it there’s no going back
• Auto voice dialling. No need to record voice tags, it works it out itself. Matches 9 out of 10 times.
• It even has a bar code reader
• There is a lot I’ve not explored yet but I continue to be impressed as use it more and more

What’s not so great:

• Keys are really small, it you’ve got big sausage fingers that may be a problem
• The key markings are really faint and with the shiny body reflecting lots of light are often invisible
• The UI navigation isn’t quite as good as the Sony Ericsson (or obviously the iPhone). Takes a few more key presses to do what you want to do.
• PC synchronisation. If you use Outlook you’ll be fine. If you don’t it’s aggravation. I use Thunderbird. I can export to LDIF and into Outlook express and sync. but this is rubbish. Mainly because only phone numbers go across, no addresses and other contact info. It is possible to play with csv’s but it’s a painful, error prone process and certainly not suitable ongoing. Also synching from phone back to Thunderbird isn’t going to happen. I’m going to experiment with some other approaches to try and iron this out.

I also have a suspicion it’s killing off my Bluetooth headsets. Had two so far that have worked for three weeks then will not stay connected. Spooky.

Conclusion – overall this is a great device, there is a lot packed into a good trouser sized package. I’m seriously chuffed.

I discovered widsets early last year and found it a really enjoyable interface to access my favourite news feeds. It’s been out of beta since last November and has since been polished up well. What impressed me most yesterday was the ease in which I could create a new widget for this bemoko blog and get it published. I had 20 subscribers to the widget within the hour. Many thanks to those early adopters (and of course the Widset developers for making it so easy).

An alternative approach is the Wordpress mobile plugin provided by Andy Moore. As with all Wordpress plugins the installation is easy beyond belief. 5 minutes and our blog was optimised for the mobile. Andy does a stunning job in the mobilisation - all in one php and a great light weight device detection. Do take a look at the PHP code that does it all (wordpress-mobile.php) for a little inspiration.

So how would I access mobile feeds? I’m not too sure whether I prefer the Widset approach or delivering direct to a standard mobile browser. They both have their strengths. The Widset UI is smooth, looks impressive and is responsive, but it does require the user to download and launch another app. The browser route is more lightweight, accessible to more users without an installation and gives extra flexibility to the service provider - you’re not confined by the Widset box. I’ll try both for the next few months and let you know what works for me both as user and a service provider.

Well this is pretty exciting news for those of us who are enthused by the device variety out there and the opportunity that gives us to create real personally optimised mobile experiences. .mobi have released their DeviceAtlas mobile device database for all and sundry to use. Go on - register for free and have a quick browse around.

Even though the device navigation could do with a little bit of tidy up, it’s a nice clean web AJAXy UI and very promising for what will come beyond v1. I really like that it’s recording the source of the information and highlighting when their is a conflict between two sources. Take a look at the iPhone entry to see some conflicts between what WURFL thinks it is and what .mobi device team think it is. I spotted a few other points, e.g. the SE T610, where conflicts between the UA Prof and WURFL were identified - as we know the UA Prof value isn’t always to be trusted. This’ll really help with quality control and give you a level of confidence of accuracy. It does beg in my mind the relationship between WURFL and .mobi on this, as Luca Passani announced a month or so ago that the WURFL DB web-based interface was released and took great pride in inviting knowledgeable sources to join in with the maintenance of the WURFL DB. If anyone can comment on the .mobi / WURFL relationship then please do.

It also ties in well with Volantis heading towards open source, with the Volantis Database letting the “Users of the Community edition have open access to a key subset of data”. I can’t comment on which device database is the most accurate or most complete, but I’d guess that .mobi will have picked up quite a bit of momentum at this point. I’ll have to wait until I get some real hands on experience of DeviceAtlas to make a further judgement.

APIs look nice an simple. Take your pick of language - Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby or Python. Device DB provided using JSON. Licensing model seems reasonably well priced - $299/server/year (daily updates), $149/server/year (weekly updates), $99/server/year (monthly updates) and god bless ‘em developer license is free.

The devil will be in the detail - but I look forward to get my hands into it.

The mobile web is about personalisation and personality. It’s about what the user wants to do now.

It’s why we should encourage use, if it’s what the user wants to do. If 2007 and 2008 is the year of blind mobile transcoding the internet to the masses, with tools available from the likes of Novarra then so be it. Transcoders may be using dubious practices to deliver their solution and it clearly falls short of the opportunity that is available to us, but it’s up to us to provide the compelling experience that attracts the user. There’s still hurdles we need to cross before we get a rich contextual and true Mobile 2.0 experience; hurdles that we are rapidly crossing. We need to improve connectivity - fixed-rate data charges along with reliability and bandwidth. We need to provide competitive alternative pipes - to steer away from walled gardens, preferential network traffic, carrier ad insertion and pipes that force transcoding on us. We need to tackle trust, security and privacy head on. How do we deal with tracking location, targeting adverts or interacting with personal contacts on the phone without violating the protection that the user expects? We need to be transparent about what it’s going to cost to the user, to be clear as to what they are going to get and let them do what they want to do.

W3C stress that the One Web goal must be made in the mobile context and make “as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users”. Let’s be careful about the interpretation of term reasonable and not confuse it with that of technical capability. It probably isn’t reasonable to expect a user to enter their credit card details on the typical phone of this age, even though you could technically make such a payment. A user might be more susceptible to a free bottle of wine with a meal in a local restaurant if they’re hungry and passing by than if they’re sitting comfortably on their sofa at home. On the move an electrical engineer might only want to locate a specific component’s availability in a nearby warehouse, but will be more than happy to browse through latest offerings when back in the office.

It’s the difference between browsing on the PC and finding on the mobile. The typical user hasn’t got the inclination nor the luxury of the tools to browse around what’s available. The mobile user wants to find something, whether that be the time of the next train, the nearest club or a game to idle away the time. It’s also the shift in power of the content creator and content consumer with the rise of UGC and with how consumers can find alternatives.

We need to enable businesses and communities to allow their members to communicate, share and to find information that they need to make it easier to their job. Those same businesses and communities need to interact with the user in an appropriate manner and what better way than through the device that is more likely to be on the person.

User interfaces are improving so rapidly. It was only 6 years ago that I saw my first mobile phone with a colour screen. We’re now using multi-touch screen rich colour displays with the iPhone. There’ll always be constraints of the mobile device and a range of device characteristics, that we’ll have to deal with - let that that variety live long. Some might like a bit of bling and others might be happy their trusted and battered T610.

Think about the me - the context, the UI, the latest fashion. Think about what the user wants to do. Think about the enablers that will help us provide the service and think about the constraints that keep us focused - the small screen or AJAX killing battery life - and be ready to enable the user at the point of inspiration.

A great session on Mobile Operating Systems at MoMo last Monday that touched on many different approaches from open source to propriety and from installable apps to browser services.

David Wood from Symbian kicked off with questions on the future of mobile operating systems that sparked many more questions. Is the the user better off installing local apps or browsing web sites? Will mobile devices be sufficiently different to make OSs, and in particular mobile OSs, sufficiently different? What do we mean by a Smartphone? Will Smartphone-like features be moving into even the lowest end of devices? Symbian have shown an impressive climb in sales from 1 million phones in 2002 to 20 million in Q32007 with 165 million phones to date. 70% of Smarthphones sold are now Symbian.

Mark Burks from M:Metrics continued with some mobile market stats which showed the incredible variation in usage between the different geographies:

• 18% of mobile users in Italy are Smartphone users
• 9% of mobile users in the UK are Smartphone users
• 69% of Smartphone users in the UK are male
• 67% of Smartphone users in the UK receive their Smartphone for free
• 9% of Smartphone users in Italy receive their Smartphone for free
• 8% of Smartphone users in the UK are on unlimited data plans
• 8% of Smartphone users in the UK are on unlimited data plans
• 48% of Smartphone users in the US are on unlimited data plans

Next up was David Pollington from Vodafone who came from the browser angle with a “Web Runtime for hosting mobile apps and services”. He introduced MobileScript, developed by VF Group R&D, which extends JavaScript to access device properties and invoke other services - such as make calls and send SMS. More is detailed in his paper on Web Runtimes –evolving beyond the browser which goes into more details in the security concerns that naturally arise.

Karsten Homann from Trolltech finished off the session. Trolltech are soon to be acquired by Nokia to enhance Nokia’s cross-platform ability with Trolltech’s Qt platform. It was nice to see a collection of non-smartphone devices to add some flavour and think about some specialised mobile contexts - with devices that allow NASCAR dads to follow the race from the comfort of their caravan and hand held network analyzers.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Gigaom’s blogs to see how things pan out at MWC and which OSs come out of the week in Barcelona strong.

All the slides from the MoMo evening are available on the MoMo London site.

Mobile OS Links:

• Android
• LiMo
• Palm
• RIM
• Symbian
• Trolltech
• Windows Mobile

One of my hobbies for last few weeks has been hacking around with an Asus WL-700gE. It’s a fun little NAS / wireless router with a 160Gig hard drive. I flashed it with OpenWrt Kamikaze 7.09 and use it is for general data storage. Thanks go out to the wl700g.homelinux.net which helped me through all this. I’ve got my macs backing up to it with rsync, I run Subversion for my personal doc storage and I off-line some backups from a remote server that I have running. I’ll get our photos syncing next. The disk is a little noisy, but at least it can be configured to spin down when nothing is accessing it.

The whole process of installing Kamikaze made me think much about development for mobile devices. It definitely makes you aware of your footprint and focus you on what you really need - you’ve got a lot less room to move around in and getting Linux in under 64Mb is pretty neat. It makes you realise how big Apache is and send you in search for other lightweight HTTP server alternatives such as lighttpd. I am, however, a little jealous of a mate who’s moved up to a Mac Mini for essentially the same purpose, but a lot shinier - given that I’ve already blown my IT spend for the next few months I’ll just have to wait.

Volantis have followed in the footsteps of Google’s Android Developer Challenge, and thrown down the gauntlet with a $2000 prize for the best mobile site using the Volantis Mobility Server.

It’s a sad day for Pandora who can no longer provide their internet services to listeners located outside of the US. James Cridland, from the BBC, calculates that royalties which have to paid to the PPL and the MCS/PRS alliance are “2.434p per listener, per hour” when on average commercial radio makes 2.57p per listener per hour. Not too much of a margin for Pandora to make it worth their while. Michael Walsh, author of the Digital Rights Manifesto, points us to a blog from Jupiter Research who were not too surprised, as they had been saying for some time that these ad-supported services “will need to have more competitive licenses if they are to have long term economic viability”. It’s well worth a full read of the blog and comments. Interesting that it occurs at roughly the same time that Last.fm are allowing you to listen to full tracks and album for free.

It’s not a surprise that so many people jumped onto Hotspot Shield or one of the other readily available proxies to continue accessing Pandora - see Frantic Industries and Tech Crunch. I discovered Hotspot Shield when I was out in Dubai a few weeks a go and found that skype out was blocked from my hotel. Etisalat had a history of blocking Skype back in 2005. In my case it possibly was the Hotel that was blocking me since SkypeOut worked nicely at a nearby cafe, although Hotspot Shield allowed me to call home from the hotel using SkypeOut.