mobalean

We ♥ web applications!

At mobalean we love to build innovative web services for Japan and the world. Our experience will help transform your ideas into successful online services.

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Mobalean is lead by Henri Servomaa, the original founder and mobile developer. At Mobalean we strive to develop services which are loved by our clients and users. By working in an agile manner, quickly adapting to changing requirements, we can deliver quickly and often.

Henri Servomaa

Henri

Hailing from Finland, Henri has a long history with computers and the internet. With a background in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, he has worked in Japan as Software Developer and System Admin since 2001. In 2005, he joined a company to develop mobile sites for the Japanese market and has been involved in mobile ever since.

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Email
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Twitter
Facebook
Facebook
Linkedin
Linkedin
github
github

Contractors

Cleve

Cleve Lendon is a Canadian engineer who has been contracting for Mobalean. He came to Tokyo in 1994, and has lived here ever since. He has broad experience as a software developer, which includes development of mainframe software, Internet applications and mobile apps (Android and iOS). He is especially skilled at writing Java applications (vd. Simredo 4, Grafikilo 15). When not programming, Cleve enjoys improv acting and studying languages, such as Latin and Esperanto.

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Mobalean Alumni

Paul McMahon and Michael Reinsch were co-founders of Mobalean. They have moved to Doorkeeper KK, a company they established in 2013. Both are now actively developing the doorkeeper platform.

Web Development

Our strength is crafting web services for both Japanese and international markets. We bring our technical and cultural experience to help you adapt your ideas into successful products.

We develop with Ruby on Rails and use the best agile practices and tools, such as test driven development and continuous integration to achieve quality.

Japanese Mobile Consulting

We are the leading provider of technical expertise about the Japanese mobile web. Mobalean started when the smartphones were just appearing on the market. Our Keitai Web Technology Guide is a quick starting point for learning about the initial challenges of Japanese mobile development. Although the technology stacks have changed since the proliferation of iOS and Android, some of the idiosyncrasies remain. Most notably, the Japanese market is still very much dominated by the big three carriers: DoCoMo, au and Softbank. Developers can find more technical details in our Keitai-Dev Wiki.


Please contact us with your specific requirements.

Others

Originally developed here, Doorkeeper can now be found at doorkeeper inc.

Some of our clients

  • Reaktor Japan KK.

    Reaktor Japan, KK..

    http://www.reaktor.co.jp/
  • Ubiquitous Business Technology, Inc.

    Ubiquitous Business Technology, Inc.

    http://www.ubit.com/
  • PayPal Pte. Ltd.

    PayPal Pte. Ltd.

    http://www.paypal.com/
  • Robert Bosch Co., Ltd.

    Robert Bosch Co., Ltd.

    http://www.bosch.com/
  • GILT GROUPE K.K.

    GILT GROUPE K.K.

    http://www.gilt.jp/
  • Cerego Japan Inc.

    Cerego Japan Inc.

    http://www.cerego.com/
  • GMAP KK

    GMAP KK

    http://gmap.jp/
  • Mobikyo K.K.

    Mobikyo K.K.

    http://mobikyo.jp/
  • Native Creative Services

    Native Creative Services

    http://www.gonative.jp/
  • InnoviData GmbH

    InnoviData GmbH

    http://www.innovidata.de/
  • Sairis Group, KK

    Sairis Group, KK

    http://www.sairis.com/
  • Gerd Leonhard, MediaFuturist.com

    Gerd Leonhard, MediaFuturist.com

    http://www.mediafuturist.com/
  • Script Interactive

    Script Interactive

    http://www.script-interactive.com/

Send us a message

    

Send us an email

Email address: info@mobalean.com

Call us

If you prefer to call us, feel free to do so under +81 (0)70-6251-7245
For users of Skype, please call mobalean

mobalean releases Japanese WURFL patch, ruby libraries

  

Posted by Paul McMahon on 2009-06-10

mobalean is a strong believer in open source.  Collaboration and sharing are at the core of our philosophy.  So we are proud to announce three contributions to the developer community: a WURFL patch file containing about 700 Japanese handsets, a ruby script for parsing the Japanese carrier data and converting it to the WURFL patch file format, and a major update to the ruby WURFL api.

The WURFL is an XML file containing mobile device information such as supported markup types, screen dimensions, and flash lite support.  While the WURFL has a lot of devices in it, including some Japanese ones, the data for them is both poor in quality, and incomplete.  To remedy this, mobalean has created a WURFL patch containing data on all handsets available from the major Japanese carriers (docomo, au, and SoftBank). 

This patch contains data on approximately 700 handsets and has the carrier values for the WURFL capabilities resolution_height, resolution_width, max_image_width, colors, brand_name, model_name, flash_lite_version, xhtml_table_support, and preferred_markup.  While the base WURFL contains additional capabilities for some Japanese handsets, the values of these capabilities are often wrong.  Rather than trying to validate the data in the base WURFL, this patch takes a blank slate approach, and ignores the devices in the base WURFL (with the exception of fallbacks).  All the data in this patch comes from the carrier's official data, and as such is believed to be correct.

mobalean releases this patch to the community in the hope that other members of the community can help improve it.  As with the base WURFL, you are free to use this patch in any manner you so choose.  Our only request is that if you improve the data within, that you also contribute back this data.  Additionally, we hope this patch can eventually be merged back into the core WURFL so that all WURFL users may benefit from it.

To generate this patch, we scraped the carriers' data using a ruby script.  The script transforms the data into an intermediary result, and from that result into a WURFL patch file.  In addition to the WURFL patch file, we have also released our parsing script.  By open sourcing this script, we believe others in the Japanese mobile community, even those who are not using the WURFL, can benefit.  Additionally, we hope that modifications to the WURFL patch be made via this script instead of directly to the patch.  This way, we believe we can more easily keep the patch up to date with new handsets.

In the process of generating the patch, we wanted a way to test the resultant patch file.  We did not want to parse the XML directly, as that would not take in to account the fallback structure.  So we turned to the ruby WURFL API, but found that it did not work out of the box.  As no one else was currently maintaining this API, we decided to take over it.  In doing so, we've turned it into a ruby gem, and have released version 1.1.0 of it.  We hope that this new, easier to install version will encourage further WURFL development within the ruby community.

mobalean hopes these contributions will be useful to other developers.  If you have any questions about these projects, or anything else, don't hesitate to contact us.

  



Archive

2021-01-12   Upgrading Rails, 3.2 to 5.2
2016-12-05   Upgrading Ruby, 1.8 to 2.3
2016-02-16   Do you have entropy?
2015-11-09   Asset Pipeline for Clojure
2015-10-29   New logo for mobalean and other announcements
2013-03-03   Keeping your database in sync with your current branch
2013-02-24   Running Rails tests on a CI server
2013-01-31   Text Files as a CMS
2012-10-05   Truncating Text With CSS
2012-09-28   Mobalean becomes a Heroku partner
2012-05-08   Cleaning up your CSS with selectors
2012-03-15   請求書.jpのスタンドファーム社への譲渡について
2012-01-13   The Joy of Gems: Cooking up Rails Plugins
2011-09-08   Dynamic Methods vs. Method Missing
2011-09-02   Guessing a String's Encoding Under Ruby 1.9
2011-08-02   PDF generation and Heroku
2011-07-20   A Step Towards Internationalizing the Japanese Ruby Community
2011-07-14   Rubyを使っての英語学習
2011-06-29   Using the Asset Pipeline under Rails 3.1
2010-12-03   Updating a real world application to Rails 3
2010-11-19   Seamless Rails integration with jQuery Tools Dateinput
2010-11-12   Kara-mail for Japanese mobile sites
2010-10-14   Challenges faced creating a mobile site in Japan
2010-09-02   Announcing Tokyo Rubyist Meetup
2010-08-20   Keitai Web Technology Guide
2010-08-16   delayed_job (and other daemons) in a production environment
2010-07-04   Announcing Doorkeeper: Easy Event Ticketing and Check-in
2010-04-09   Enabling url parameter based sessions in Ruby on Rails
2010-02-15   Mobalean and Keitai-dev Wiki merge
2010-02-05   mobalean WURFL patch merged into core WURFL
2010-01-27   IMJ Mobile Releases Free Collection of Mobile Surveys
2009-12-04   KEITAIALL: Specs on all Japanese Mobiles
2009-11-19   Betrend releases report on mobile access in Japan
2009-11-16   XHTML support and Japanese Carriers
2009-06-10   mobalean releases Japanese WURFL patch, ruby libraries
2009-05-22   docomo to support JavaScript, external CSS, cookies, and more
2009-05-15   New docomo handsets to support cookies and send referrers?
2009-03-16   Japanese Mobile Support for Cake PHP
2009-03-05   mobalean to present at next Tokyo 2.0
2009-03-02   emobile wireless Internet access with Linux
2009-02-28   Hacking Ruby's default arguments
2009-02-25   docomo to launch SNS
2009-02-10   Ninjava Presentation
2009-02-10   Six weeks in
2009-02-06   Automatic Deployment via git
2009-02-01   Hosting git repositories
2009-01-30   mobalean Blog Live

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  • Upgrading Rails, 3.2 to 5.2
  • Upgrading Ruby, 1.8 to 2.3
  • Do you have entropy?
  • Asset Pipeline for Clojure
  • New logo for mobalean and other announcements

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