A while ago I started reading Russell Beatties Weblog so, obviously mobile applications caught my interest.

According to his post here 800 million mobiles were sold this year alone, (500 million with camera) – compare these values to 800 million internet PCs (absolute value)!

So it’s pretty much obvious where the next big thing of information technology is: Mobiles!

A lot of products and services got published lately, here a list of interesting and cool applications and services. The list is pretty much Nokia – especially Series 60 – biased since I own a Nokia 6680

Apps:

• Geominder is one of the most innovative applications I found! It reminds you at a specific location instead at a specific time! Cool idea – it doesn’t even need GPS.
• Nokia Sensor it’s a nice demo for Bluetooth applications. While reading their intro I thought of a small Webserver with my personal homepage available via Bluetooth – nice idea!
• KHTML (Safari) Browser for Series 60 3rd ed. mobiles I’m pretty jealous of the 3rd edition of the Series 60 mobiles (mine is a 2nd ed.), but the browser is so cool – you have to watch the demo.
• Nokias Mobile Search is a simple meta search engine.
• There is even a Python implementation available!
• Romeo is a plugable OS X Application. It allows controlling your Mac via a compatible Bluetooth enabled phone – you can also define actions if you come into Bluetooth availability or leave it (eg start playing your favorite music).
• Virgin Radio free for your 3G phone! I wish data would not be that expensive (1,5 Euro per Megabyte – crazy!) now with the ability to use bluetooth as internet connection it’s a semi mobile radio :-).
• You don’t like these Java games? Me too, so go out and grab a GameBoy emulator :-) (somewhere is a free version of this emulator, but I couldn’t find it – only it’s source ).
• Now something completely useless (or is it?): a real HTTP Server for your mobile! Incredible!

Here is a larger list of free mobile apps.

Services:

• Google Search for mobile devices.
• Google Maps is nice, but due to the lack of maps for Vienna pretty useless :-(
• Bloglines/AskJeeves has a mobile version of their online RSS reader.
• Technorati is also available as a mobile version.

Mobile Series60

—
The future is so obviously in mobiles, why the hell are so many startups still screwing around on the desktop? Morons. —Russell Beattie

After several hours of fooling around with my Nokia 6680 and some tools I’ve finally succeeded! I’m able to use my home Internet connection on my phone via Bluetooth! Now I’m able to load my phone with tons of software, data and experiment with other nice applications like Google Maps without paying 1.5 Euro per Megabyte!

Here a short step-by-step guide:

1. Setup a Serial Port on your Mac:
   1. Open Bluetooth in your System Preferences
   2. Make sure your mobile is paired with your Mac (it should appear in the Devices pane)
   3. Go to the Sharing pane. Here you should have a Bluetooth-PDA-Sync click on it and enable Require pairing for security and make shure that your Port Type is set to RS-232. If you don’t have this port simply click on Add Serial Port Service and configure it as described above.
   4. It should look like this:
   5. Now run the share script (at the end of this article) to associate a pppd and share your connection
2. Download xans Version of GnuBox
3. Install it on your mobile.
   1. Create a new Access Point named Bt on your mobile.
   2. Set it up according to xans howto
   3. Set your mobiles IP to 192.168.1.131 (or the IP you chose for it in the above script).
   4. Setup the DNS IPs of your provider.
4. Start the gnubox application
   1. Ignore any error messages at the start
   2. Choose Options->Install->create records
   3. Choose Options->Install->copy settings from GPRS
   4. Choose Options->2box Bluetooth->Serial port
   5. Choose Options->Debug->Bring up IF
   6. That’s it! If you have any troubles, please refer to xans troubleshooting guide
   7. I’ve used Opera to test the installation. You have to configure it exactly like here .

It’s likely that some of this steps aren’t necessary, but it’s working for me.

Share

Here the script to share your serial port with your AirPort. You may want to adapt the script according to your setup

• IP Address (be sure to change it on both ends, mobile and Mac),
• Serial Port name,
• interface to share (for example the en1 interface is your AirPort and the en0 your Ethernet)

   
 sudo /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync 115200 \
   noauth local passive proxyarp \ 
   asyncmap 0 silent persist :192.168.1.131
 sudo /usr/sbin/sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
 sudo /usr/sbin/natd -same_ports -use_sockets -log -deny_incoming -interface en1
 sudo /sbin/ipfw add divert natd ip from any to any via en1
   

Unshare

To unshare your port use this script:

   
 sudo /sbin/ipfw -f flush
 sudo killall natd
 sudo /usr/sbin/sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=0
 sudo killall pppd
   

or simply restart your computer.

Further info

If you still have troubles try these ressources in order: xans howto xans troubleshooting guide support forum

There’s also guide for Macs and Nokia 6600 mobiles available.

A very handy tool for debugging is the Bluetooth PacketLogger, available if you’ve XCode installed (take a look at /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Bluetooth).

Bluetooth Hack Series60 Nokia