by  adactio 

There are a few tools that will make this work a lot easier:

Google Chrome

Chrome does have some nice dedicated plug-ins to help with this task

• Ripple Mobile Environment Emulator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/geelfhphabnejjhdalkjhgipohgpdnoc)
• appMobi HTML5 XDK (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onmkoldigcfmebcinpmineoadckalllb)

Firefox

I am not aware of any plug-ins like Chrome, but as a hack I have found it useful to employ a user-agent switching plugin to trick the browser

User Agent Switcher (http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/) works well for this.

1. Download the User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox
2. Restart Firefox for the add-on change to take place.
3. To start a new browsing session using an emulated browser, go to Tools > User Agent Switcher and select the appropriate mobile web browser you want to emulate
4. To switch back to normal browsing, just select the default option from the above menu.

If you need more specific UA Strings check here: http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html

For more serious work there are obviously dedicated emulators from the major Mobile OS vendors (but they need to be installed and configured for each platform):

• Android (http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html)
• iOS (http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/)
• WinPhone (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13890)
• Nokia (http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/Web/)
• Opera (http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mini/)
• WebOS (http://developer.palm.com/)

PS: Nothing substitutes final QA testing on actual devices …

That’s why I checked out the BESPIN project as soon as I heard of it. The prospect of being able to edit your files from anywhere is very appealing to me since I spend a lot of time away from the desk and on devices that not always have good text editor (let alone all the files necessary). The thought of being able to edit files from a netbook while on the run is coming to mind straight away.

So far (even though this is a 0.1 ‘techo-preview’) I really like what you see. Not something that the average word processor crowd would find appealing or easy to use, but for somebody that is familiar with (specially *NIX) text editors it is easy to pick up and I can definitely see lots of potential there.

Bespin Dashboard

Editor Interface

There are some important features still missing to make it truly useful in practical conditions, but I am sure they will be addressed in future revisions and it should be fairly easy to host your own since it’s basically Javascript & HTML5 and an Open Source project.

Great work by these guys:

Keep it coming ! Soon …

Of course there is similar technology available for the applications that require this link between the physical world (presence) and the mobile internet. One example is RFID together with Near Field Communications (NFC). However apart from the additional expense for RFID labels, no other technology has anywhere close the number of handsets that are capable of using this technology without some add-on to the mobile phone. Currently there are only very few handsets that will support this technology. Possible use in m-Payment projects might speed up the process of handset manufacturers including this in their handsets, but that will be some way off. 2D codes are here and now.

Looks like I will dig out some of the pilot projects out of my (virtual) drawers and see if we can get some interest in them. The project that will most likely be the first is a m-Learning implementation using 2D codes together with the Moodle Learning Managment System which is our preferred LMS.

Let’s see if Australia is also ready to move on this technology ….