Optimizing Software Development: "In these days of general hardware and network abundance, ease of maintenance and development speed are often the critical concerns in the development process. This makes sense when you consider the cost of hardware against the cost of developers"

Russell posted an article recently about Innaworks and their mBooster product.

I'd come across these guys a few months back, via Jon Beverley (of Scan fame, these days kiwi-ing himself). We do a lot of J2ME work - it's more than half of everything we do at the moment - so we were interested in evaluating a copy of it, something Jon and Stephen Cheng of Innaworks were very helpful with.

Our first impressions were that the product had to be lying or broken: it seemed too good to be true. We put a few JAR files from recent projects through it and saved between 10 and 15k on each one (over and above what we get from obfuscating and optimising with our existing tools).

It's a very strong product - certainly way better than open source tools like Proguard, which we have a lot of experience with. Of course, as a commercial product it needs to persuade someone to buy it, so there needs to be a strong business case for investing in it. The guys at Innaworks have a number of justifications for the product, some of which I feel are stronger than others: certainly if you need to squeeze your MIDlets as small as possible (particularly if you need to get them onto a handset which has restrictions on MIDlet size), then I recommend you look at this product. Stephen's point in the comments on Russell's post re clarity of code is a good one too: using a product like this lets you produce MIDlets which are more easily maintained.

And keep an eye on Innaworks too: these guys are clearly wizards and have some other interesting stuff in the pipeline.

More nepotism... if you're in Brighton and fancy an evening basking in musical delights this Friday, check out Circulus (and the amazing support act preceding them, cough Victoria Hume cough)

If you like Victoria's work, then check out her sometime collaborator Chris Letcher. Chris has been rotating on my ipod, painful though that sounds, for the last week or so and his music is hauntingly fantastic. "Bad Shepherd" and "Swallows Tail" are particular favourites but there's a huge pile of other noises he's made there, brought to you by the letters M and P and the number 3...

Helen links to The Rise of the Women Gamer: "There are some top tips there about why designing games (casual or otherwise) for women is important due to their loyalty and longer shelf-life. Hence, more attention should be paid to creating and providing mobile games for women."

Oh and I read the Subtle Knife. And I'm suddenly glad I left it this long to read it, because if I didn't have the third volume in the trilogy instantly accessible I'd have bitten off my own leg. Pullman: keep writing, you horribly talented bastard.