onfocus

Anyone out there know of a simple, easy-to-use WAP emulator that works with Yahoo! Mobile? I'm trying to get some screenshots for Yahoo! Hacks, and I've tried a bunch of different emulators. The Yospace Emulator has been the easiest to use, but it doesn't seem to support Yahoo!'s cookies—I can't log in. I've registered and installed about five different Nokia developer kits, and still can't figure out how to fire up their emulator. My own phone, the Sony Ericsson s710 has a fantastic browser, but I can't find an emulator for it—and the T610 emulator errors out when connecting to Yahoo!

Ideally it'd be nice to find an emulator that would also be able to receive SMS messages as well, but I'd be thrilled with a simple WAP emulator that works. If you have any ideas, please send them my way. Thanks!

Update: I may have to resort to actual photos of my s710:



Update 2: A big thanks to AJ for recommending the Openwave Simulator! I can log in at Yahoo! with this emulator, and I think it'll work well for screenshots.

There's a new pup running around our house...





Her name is Phoebe, and she's an Aussie mix. She's getting along with Luna really well, but the cat is officially ready to move out.

Mike Doughty is on tour, and he's posting some great tour photos on his blog, Mike's Blog. Each night he has everyone in the audience hold up their glowing cell phones as he snaps a pic. Check out the pictures on My Hectic Week in Rock. Cell phones are the new lighter. He'll be in Portland this Wednesday.

I've been doing quite a bit of Perl scripting for Yahoo! Hacks, and I can safely say it's my scripting language of choice now. A big reason for this is the abundance of pre-existing modules available. Why reinvent the wheel if someone else has been there before? I also develop most of the scripts on a Windows machine running ActivePerl. It works well, but the modules available via the ActiveState Perl Package Manager leave something to be desired. Many of the modules I want to use are only available via CPAN, which means I have to compile the modules for Windows myself.

Compiling Perl modules isn't normally a big deal. In fact, on my Mac it's a snap. I simply downloaded the Mac Developer Tools and started make-ing stuff all day long. I assume the same is true for Linux. Windows is another story.

Compiling modules would probably be easy if I was a C++ developer, and had a copy of Visual Studio Something-or-other with its own compiler. But I'm a thrifty scripter, and I just want some Perl modules to work. So I had to go through a series of steps, and put all of the pieces into place to be able to compile modules. I thought I'd write it up here in case anyone else out there is pulling their hair out like I was.

How to compile Perl modules on Windows without a Visual Studio:

• Get nmake. (direct link to file.) This is your compiler.
• Sometimes you'll need a file called Windows.h. Install the Windows SDK.
• Sometimes you'll need a file called msvcrt.lib or msvcr70.lib. Install the .NET framework SDK.
• For everything else you need install the Visual C++ Toolkit.
• At this point, you will have installation fatigue. Take a break.
• Inside the VC++ Toolkit is an important file called vcvars32.bat that adds some key directories to your system PATH variable. Edit this file so that the lib and bin directories of each of the kits you just installed will be added to PATH when you run this batch file.

With these behemoth kits in place, you should be set to start compiling Perl packages. Once in a while you may need the odd odbc32.lib—it's included with the SQL Server developer tools. Don't have it? Start installing. ;) And when you're done, don't forget to add its directory to your PATH.

Run vcvars32.bat before you start compiling a module to get your paths in order, and then run nmake like you would make:

nmake test
nmake install

I was almost in tears when things were compiling correctly. :) I have to let you know that I'm not a Perl expert, and compiling modules like this may wreak havoc with your system. But it's working fine for me.

Welcome, Fiona! Congratulations Matt & Kay!