RoadBuddy demo release

OK, this isn't an actual alpha - we're a way off that - but here is a 
demonstration release of RoadBuddy, the mobile interface for EB-lite. It now 
supports as much functionality as the old WAP interface (only, obviously, a 
lot more nicely), but is still missing a couple of crucial things before 
alpha time:

* Bandwidth optimisation
	This is by far and away the most imporant concern. As, with GPRS, one pays 
per kilobyte sent, it is vital that I do some cutting-down of the GUIcomms 
protocol to make RoadBuddy more cost-efficient. Although RoadBuddy is already 
more efficient than EB-WAP bandwidth-wise, downloading my (huge) contact list 
is currently about a 30kb transfer - I aim to take it down to at most 10. The 
reduction in overhead on message traffic won't be quite as dramatic, but 
still sizeable. Not that using it in its current state is impossible or 
anything - just inefficient.

* Local account management
	Sign on, sign off, change status - you know the drill.

Another big downer is that due to some particularly brain-dead and arbitrary 
heap-size limits on the Palm Java runtime, RoadBuddy has some trouble running 
on Palm OS. I've included a .PRC file (application for the Palm, requires the 
Java runtime), but it definitely won't work with large contact lists, and 
might not even work with small ones any more. Brave people could still try it 
out...

Tarballs and (for once) binaries at 
http://www.everybuddy.com/eb-lite/download.php

The wireless toolkit you'll want if you want to edit or test this code is 
available from http://wireless.java.sun.com/ for all platforms supported by 
Java (of course).


By the way, I've been sort of toying with the idea of hosting cores on the 
www.everybuddy.com server - people could register (pay a nominal amount 
towards server costs?), and have their core run on a publically-accessible 
server. I'm trying to thing up possible ways for the ordinary user, who 
doesn't have a co-lo box of his or her own, to use EB from anywhere (given 
that that's the whole point of EB-lite and all), particularly the mobile user 
interfaces. What do you think?

Meredydd
-- 

Everybuddy project maintainer
http://www.everybuddy.com/

MSN:     [email protected]
AIM:     blip109
Yahoo:   modula7