The Spatial Miscellany

Another rainy weekend proved a good excuse to sit down and put some theory into practice…

The theory goes…take a GPS enabled mobile phone; some beta software from Nokia; a handful of HTML, Javascript and PHP goodness; and you have all the components for a dynamic tracking web service and mapping website?

Well, the theory works! I’ve put a demonstration together at the following link:

Mobile Phone Tracking with a Nokia N95 Demonstration

Given all the current hype regarding some telecomunications technology; I’m puzzled by the apparent lack of interest in the mobile web server. Sure, there are a few pieces to still fall into place, but if the mobile web server’s graduation from Nokia research labs, results in widespread deployment, it must have a profound impact on the web?

A few weeks ago, I set about upgrading the firmware on my phone, I guess firmware on a mobile phone is comparable to an operating system on a personal computer. The mobile phone manufacturer, in this case nokia, sporadically releases new versions of firmware for each of its phones. When nokia gives its phone to a network provider for distribution (in this case vodafone), they also provide a stable version of the firmware. I assume at this point the network provider can work with the firmware to ensure it’s bug free and works on their network - generally this means disabling features the phone manufacture has provided, but the network operators are reluctant to support, for example, voip internet telephoney.

I purchased my N95 at a subsidized price from vodafone; when I received my N95 it was loaded with firmware version 11. You can find out which version firmware is loaded on your phone by punching in the following key combo: *#0000# . Nokia have recently released a new version of their firmware for the N95 that enables assisted-gps, firmware version 12. Keen to upgrade I contacted Nokia, first by dialing 191 and subsequently popping into their local store to ask for a firmware upgrade - but no joy. I don’t think the network provider has any real interest in updating firmware, as each firmware release requires comprehensive testing by the network provider to make sure it’s as stable as the previous version. The vodafone representative suggested I visit a local nokia service centre, which I did. However, it turns out that nokia have supposedly banned their service centres from touching the N95 as ‘it’s complicated’, any ‘fixes’ have top be undertaken back at nokia, which means a lengthy wait. Arrgh what do I do? Do-It-Yourself (DIY) - worst case scenario I end up with a £150 paperweight?

First I download the nokia mobile phone ’software updater’ software. Before you can install any software using the software updater, you have to supply your mobile phone product code, the phone updater software uses the product code to determine which version of software can be installed on your phone. An unbranded N95 supplied by nokia has a different product code to my subsidized vodafone N95. If I enter my vodafone product code, the software updater informs me that I already have the most recent firmware installed - version 11? If I enter the unbranded N95 product code, it informs me a newer version is available? When you wire your phone up to the ‘updater’ software, if your phone has a vodafone product code, it recognizes this and prevents you downloading version 12 .

There is a little gem of an application named the Nemesis Service Suite (NSS). Now I’m not sure exactly how this software works, or what exactly it does, but it was very useful. It’s handy software as it lets you change your Nokia mobile phone product code. So I back up my phone to memory card, change my vodafone product code to the nokia product code (0536062) (more product codes) and proceed to update my firmware. The nokia software updater now lets me download and install firmware version 12 (thinking I’m an unbranded phone). Now I have the new assisted GPS capabilities…but all is not well, my phone is now unresponsive, hangs and to be honest is pretty close to being a paperweight. So hoping to fix this I restore my memory from the memory card, but this just makes things worse, much worse. I restart my phone only for it to crash halfway through start up and suggest I contact my provider? Arrgh? It really is a £150 paperweight.

Surfing the web and I find a key combo that will format the phone, I hold the pencil key, plus *, plus 3, while booting; it performs some sort of reset, erasing everything on the phone memory, but the memory card is untouched. I then use NSS to switch my product code back to my vodafone product code and all works well…really well. I’ve been using it for best part of a month now and its working fine. I remain cautious as to what happens when vodafone try to upgrade my firmware, but that’s for another day.

So if you take this approach…

• Make sure all your contacts are stored on a memory card and not the phone.
• NSS will allow you to change product codes and ‘trick’ the Nokia software updater into installing the latest firmware.
• If you back your phone up to the memory card before the update, don’t restore unless prepared to reformat, and risk ruin.
• To avoid buggy behaviour, after the update, swap the phone back to it’s original product code.
• Your warranty is probably rendered null and void.
• Cross your fingers.

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I finally found some time to have a tinker with the Nokia Series 60 SDK, and build a hello world location application for my Nokia N95. Applications for the Series60 platform can be developed in several languages, as a developer you are spoilt for choice.

Having vague recollections of working with Java whilst undertaking my undergrad dissertation at Lancaster way back when, I plumbed for Java and promptly downloaded the Eclipse IDE. Next up, I installed Carbide.j, a suite of mobile development tools from Nokia. It was at this point I encountered my first frustration; it turns out the Carbide tools from Nokia don’t support the latest version of Eclipse, a school boy error of failing to read the doc. A quick uninstall, download, and install later, I’m back on track with an older version of Eclipse (3.1.2).

Nokia have provided a whole host of up-to-date documentation for building LBS applications for the series60 platform, so I downloaded their TouristRoute Java Midlet example and their location API developers guide. The location API is pretty concise, with a handful of important classes:


LocationProvider: represents the source of the location information (in this case the integrated GPS)

LocationListener: receives events associated with a particular LocationProvider.

Coordinates: represents coordinates as latitude-longitude altitude values.

Location: represents the standard set of location information (time-stamped coordinates, speed, accuracy, course, etc.)

Landmark: represents a known location with a name.

LandmarkStore: has some methods for persistent landmark store management (store, delete, and retrieve landmarks).


The sample built fine, generating a Java Archive (JAR) file and Java Application Descriptor (JAD) file. The JAR file is a package of the classes and resources, the JAD file a description of the Midlet. Right clicking on the JAR file (the midlet executable), the Eclipse context menu gives you two deployment options:


1) Deploy by Bluetooth
2) Deploy to Web Server


Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t have Bluetooth, so I went with option two and uploaded the files to my server (they can be downloaded here). I uploaded both files, the JAR and the JAD, I’m not sure if both are required or not? I added corresponding mime types to the .htaccess file on the server (this instructs the server how to handle requests for jar and jad files) and browsed to the jar file with my mobile phone browser. A couple of keypad clicks later, the application had been downloaded and installed on my phone.

Lots of useful documentation and active discussion forums made getting started building mobile app’s a breeze. However, it looks like my experiences may already be somewhat outdated, it appears Nokia have recently abandoned the Carbide.j developer kit in favour of newer tools provided by Eclipse.

I have had the phone for a couple of months now and am very impressed. Nice design, great camera, and a half decent GPS, but it’s the open development platform that sets this phone apart from the crowd, allowing everybody and anybody to develop a whole host of useful (and not so useful) applications. So far I’ve already acquired SportsTracker, which allows me to save my mountain bike routes as KML, some handy software that uploads my photos to my Flickr account, and the ubiquitous Google Maps which syncs nicely with the GPS.

It’s been a busy week in British politics with the Blair-Brown handover at number 10, and a few security breeches thrown in for good measure; but look carefully, and in amongst the hullabaloo you’ll find a geospatial debate on the floor of the commons…

Do we need a European Global Navigation Satellite System?

TheyWorkForYou have done a great job of harvesting the Hansard and have made a readable transcript of the debate available online, you can check it out here. Obviously it’s good to see this stuff being discussed, but despite the somewhat informed discussion, members of parliament appear to tow the party line regardless; one lot are pro-European and therefore emphatically pro-Galileo, the other shower of bastards vehemently anti-European, and therefore equally anti-Galileo.

Galileo seems to have hit the rocks after the funding model for the project showed its true colours. In some sort of magic third way PPP\PFI buy-now, pay later scheme - so in vogue at the moment - it was initially envisaged that the private sector would contribute to somewhere near a third of the costs for such a system. For me, there are two chief reasons why I believe expecting a contribution from the private sector to fund this thing is pie in the sky…

First up, the Americans have developed GPS and provide free access for all, so rather crudely speaking, the argument goes “why sell Pepsi, when you can have coke for free?” - GPS is here, it works well, and it’s free.

Ok, so some say Galileo will be better, and I’m sure this is possible; but still, do we really expect business to pay for this upfront? To my mind this is the stuff of fantasy, business works for today and so often heavily discounts the future; for example, consider the following two statements:

“Today Google has joined forces with Salesforce.com to sell content based advertising”

“Google has invested $1billion in Galileo, the European Sat Nav system. On the back of this investment, it’s estimated that sales in location based advertising will quadruple, at some point after 2014 when Galileo will go live.”

Which statement will move the share price? The first! And it’s for this reason that it’s naive to expect the private sector to stump up money to fund Galileo, since any returns won’t materialise for a long, long time.

The debate is well worth a read; and now I’m going to try something new…a poll. For sure, it’s a little naff, but anyhow…if you’re one of my regular three readers…go on, vote

So if we accept that the private sector won’t invest cash up front…