SCALE 6x 2008 Review and OpenMoko

If I had to sum up SCALE 2008 in one word, I’d have to say “underwhelmed.” I was disappointed in the sessions offered this year, and found that instead of trying to coordinate with colleagues to cover multiple sessions in the same time slot that I only really wanted to attend a single session on Saturday and Sunday each (of 16 possible each day). The session I attended today on MySQL Clustering was okay, but honestly wasn’t anything new from what I’d already read on MySQL’s own site. The only difference was the presenter, Solomon Chang, who was a co-author of a book on MySQL 5.1 Clustering Certification. Turns out Solomon was hired at PriceGrabber shortly after I left working there full-time, and did some database work there. He admitted early in his presentation that he accessed a development database server at PriceGrabber recently to, I guess, get some ideas for his talk this afternoon, and joked about how a previous manager of his from PG had to borrow bus fare from him at the show.

The highlight of “SCALE 6x” for me though was getting to meet Michael Shiloh of OpenMoko. Looking back through my blog, I can’t believe I haven’t blogged more about owning a Neo 1973 GAT01v4 since last fall, the world’s first fully open-source phone (hardware and software). Their latest phrase is “if you can’t open it, you don’t own it” … OpenMoko creates the hardware through FIC (the motherboard people), and also develops the underlying software stack (OS, drivers and firmware). Their marketing lingo from OpenMoko.org (the dot-org site is their community based site with wiki and mailing lists etc) says that OpenMoko is creating the “world’s first integrated open source mobile communications platform.” Then name comes from OPEN (source) MObile COmmunication, with the ‘C’ changed to a ‘K’ perhaps so the ‘co’ wouldn’t be pronounced ‘so’ by those who have never heard of the company.

In a nutshell, the OpenMoko software running on the device is essentially an embedded Linux environment. You should have seen the eyes light up on my fellow Linux geeks when pulling up a shell prompt on the phone. Well, okay, the younger geeks had their eyes light up — the ‘mature’ geeks in the crowd immediately squinted at the on-screen keyboard wondering how on earth they were going to type on a software keyboard where the letters were about 1/32″ big.

When I arrived at SCALE on Saturday, Michael’s booth was one of the first I saw, and quickly introduced myself. We had a handful of Emails back and forth about the GSM modem firmware upgrade and why my T-Mobile pre-paid SIM card would not work, and I had also contacted Michael shortly before SCALE to volunteer to help him out at the booth. After some debugging with Michael during quieter times at the booth, we determined there was something wrong with the T-Mobile SIM card. Michael uses a T-Mobile phone, so we put my SIM card in and it said it had a 0 balance on the card. Michael got a little swamped with answering questions, so I stuck around and shared my own experiences with passers-by and was able to relay information in true F.A.Q. style:

- When can I buy one? (openmoko.org, whenever it’s released — in Michael’s own words “we’re horrible at predicting when we’ll be releasing something”, but you don’t need the phone to start developing)
- How much is it? ($450-ish)
- Does it have Wifi? (the GTA02 model will, yes, 802.11 b/g)
- Can I do VoIP with it? (why not, port your favorite VoIP software using the cross compiler available at openmoko.org)
- What’s the battery life? (“Uh, Michael, you want to take this one?”)
- (while searching the edges of the phone) Where’s the stylus? (you want a stylus on the phone, make your own case, that’s open source now too!)
- Does it support (insert your favorite Linux app here)? (check the OpenMoko project tree)

Having been caught up in answering questions, I had missed the only session I had wanted to attend on Saturday. One overly-excited geek who attended that “mobile Linux” session from Motorola, in his words (not mine) Motorola told the crowd that a pure Linux environment did not exist yet on a phone. This same excited fellow geek wouldn’t believe the Neo ran Linux until I opened a shell prompt and ran “uname -a” and showed him “2.6.22.5-moko11″ … he immediately asked where he could buy one. I *almost* had a guy named Marc offer to straight up trade his Nokia N810 for my Neo. During the afternoon I also got to meet a guy named Matthew (sorry, I forget his last name) who is also on the community list. We all paired up and answered questions for people at the booth sometimes 3 deep crowding around wondering what an “open source” phone was all about.

I called T-Mobile this morning, had them fix the SIM card (they had never activated the minutes on the card), but my Neo still wouldn’t register with T-Mobile over the 25-mile trek down Imperial Hwy and down the full length of the 105 Freeway getting back to SCALE. I dropped the phone off with Michael, attended the MySQL talk, and came back to the booth about 4:30pm to find Michael packing up. After trying the SIM again in Michael’s own T-Mobile phone to see if it was still a SIM card issue, and being able to receive a call on his phone with my SIM, we put the SIM back into my Neo which *immediately* registered on the T-Mobile network, and I was able to both make and receive calls on the Neo with full audio !!! I’ve posted a question to the OpenMoko community list regarding the pre-paid SIM issue we tracked down by inserting the pre-paid SIM into an actual phone sold by the carrier (AT&T or T-Mobile) before it would work in the Neo, since my Neo wouldn’t register on the network for over 6 hours, yet immediately (within 10 seconds) once we successfully used the SIM card in the carrier’s phone.

The SCALE organizers had common interest group meetings after the show officially closed at 6pm, called “Birds of a Feather” and about 10 people including Michael and myself sat around a table discussing the features of the phone, and about 8 others wandered in and out. We talked about the wants and needs of people there who were just hearing about it for the first time, and passing around three GTA01′s including my own. Again, there were people there who are part of the OpenMoko community mailing lists and Michael shared his thoughts on the 500MHz CPU running at 400MHz, battery life, the GTA02 features, and so on.

Not that I was surprised by this, but Michael is a fountain of knowledge. He’s definitely passionate about the project and product, and it definitely showed when talking to people at the booth and the after-show meeting. It was great to meet him and help out as best I could. Next stop with the Neo is the Orange County Linux Users Group (OCLUG) who had a member at the “Birds of a Feather” session, who I told I’d attend a meeting of theirs at UC Fullerton in March to show off the Neo and a development environment, provided we’re not moving that weekend. Might have to wait until April.