Archive for February 14th, 2005

Nokia 6680, 6681, and 6682: Covering the Bases

Published by Matt Croydon February 14th, 2005 in Mobile. 7 Comments

Nice. I don’t think that these are supposed to be live yet, but Symbian has links to details on the Nokia 6680 and Nokia 6681. The 6680 has it all: Tri-band, WCDMA, EDGE, etc. The 6681 is a gem. It’s pretty much a 6680 with UMTS stripped out. This is big news for us in the relative mobile backwater called The United States of America.

Nokia have definitely played their cards right. They have a bleedng-edge Series 60 device that can debut almost simultaneously around the world. The Euros can get their true 3G handset while at the same time we can get the same tech in our hands using EDGE. This is A Good Thing, since we don’t have to wait for the technology to trickle down or wait for lethargic carriers to update their infrastructure before a phone is deemed approrpiate for our market.

Nokia is also able to please the entire US market by releasing the 6681 and 6682. The 6681 will be good for T-Mobile (tho they lack EDGE so will probably not pick it up) that use the 900 frequency. Cingular will (hopefully) eat up the 6882 which runs on 850. Both units are tri-band so they’ll also do 1800 and 1900.

Here’s the timeline:

  • Nokia 6680: March 2005
  • Nokia 6681: April 2005
  • Nokia 6682: Q2 2005

Now that’s a way to launch a phone! It looks like the US version will be a bit behind the others, but should be much less behind than usual. Go Nokia!

More information:

Update: The 6680 is small, but the 6681/6682 is even smaller, as in the smallest Series 60 device to date.

3GSM Roundup

Published by Matt Croydon February 14th, 2005 in Mobile. 1 Comment

Just Browsing: Books that Caught my Eye

Published by Matt Croydon February 14th, 2005 in Web Services, Java, Linux, *BSD and Python. 7 Comments

As a break from classwork last night my wife and I headed to the local Borders to do a little book browsing. I didn’t pick anything up, but several titles caught my eye. Here are the books that I would have picked up if money were no issue and there were a few extra hours in each day:

  • Novell Certified Linux Engineer (Novell CLE) Study Guide: I almost went for a cert with the previous SUSE cert system. I also remembered that I’m a Java Certifieid Programmer and would do more Java certs if I had the time. I really wish that there were a J2ME cert book out there that I could study in my downtime.
  • Secure Architectures with OpenBSD: This looked like a meaty book with lots of information on hardening the already paranoid OpenBSD as well as ways to use it without making stupid mistakes.
  • Managing Security with Snort and IDS: There aren’t enough yellow O’Reilly books. Snort has intrigued me for some time and I’d love to read up on it someday.
  • Advanced Unix Programming: I’ve never been a really low-level guy, but I’ve had a newfound respect for plumbing since I’ve been shoving 0’s and 1’s around this semester. This looks like a great reference for low-ish level programming in a Unix (or Unix-like) environment.
  • Knoppix Hacks: I swear, if you leave two Hacks books alone for 20 minutes they’ll mate and have offspring. There really are a lot of things you can do with Knoppix.
  • Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications : A Programmer’s Guide: This one was showcased a little bit and gets down to the nitty gritty of stuff that you need to do in order to know your stuff. I’m always amazed at how much you need to know about whatever subject you’re coding for.
  • XML Hacks: What did I tell you? There’s another. A bunch of tricks with XML from cool but useless to wow.
  • Python Programming Patterns: I don’t think I’ve seen enterprise-grade patterns using Python before. This looks like a good book for those looking for an excuse to use Python in the workplace.
  • Moleskine by Kikkerland: Some great small notebooks and stuff. They could be great for jotting down notes before they can make their way to my wiki.

It was great to get out and graze at the bookstore a bit. It has been awhile since I’ve done so. Of course I have a similar number of tech books already on the shelf that I haven’t had a chance to read, but I always want more.

What books have you looked at lately? I was bummed not to find Mono: A Developer’s Notebook on the shelf, but considering that there were several there last time, I think that’s a good sign.