Pocket Book

If, like me, you're interested in Series 60 phones and UI design, you'll find Programming for the Series 60 Platform and Symbian OS an entertaining read - especially the sections detailing interaction design and testing using paper mock-ups of the phone interface.

Reminds me of the Palm people spending a couple of months carrying a wooden block in their shirt pocket, and, of course, Tog's take on user-oriented testing.

A supposed Iraqi blog is making the rounds (if he has a live Net connection working, it just might be true). Odd, though, that he was able to dig up an enormous satellite pic of Baghdad.

One of the things I'm starting to hate about XSLT coding (and XML-oriented programming in general) is the insane amount of packages you have to deploy on any platform for either developing or actually delivering any sort of service. I've been up the Java/Cocoon creek (and I'm sure to keep at it), but like any sensible developer, I'm looking at alternatives. The PHP/Sablotron combo seems agile enough for simple things, and the Windows alternatives are readily available (but obscured by what I can only describe the Jargonizer school of thought, with confusing terminology and - otherwise excellent and overwhelmingly extensive - documentation that only gets in the way).

But I've yet to find anything that can be deployed with a footprint smaller than 20 megabytes altogether. And that's by a long shot.