Anyone seen this HTTP header? I get it on a mobile web application when a browser on Orange UK’s network hits my site. It’s interesting if it’s some kind of unique ID. Googling for it returns absolutely no results, which is kind of scary! The value is a base64 encoded string of 16 bytes of binary, so it’s not giving much away. On the same requests I see other proprietary headers from the Nokia WAP Gateway software (version 4.0 in this case). I need to do more testing to see if a) it varies between different handsets/SIMs and b) it’s consistent for a given handset/SIM.

EDIT: Seems like the ID changes between hits from the same phone. Perhaps it’s more like a session identifier than a unique device/SIM/user ID.

Also (wait around for ages, then two come along, etc), I’ve written a little HTML to Textile converter in Python. I’ve been using Textile more and more because of it’s brevity and because it removes all ability to do much more than write text. You don’t need the full power of HTML layout for writing blog posts.

Get it here: html2textile: HTML to Textile converter.

Or: browse the source in colour.

Wow, two months since I’ve posted. And I was doing so well. Oh well, I hope the del.icio.us feed has kept you interested :-). FeedBurner reports that my RSS traffic hasn’t fallen off particularly, but then people rarely unsubscribe from blogs because of low traffic. High traffic on the other hand, who has the time?!

Not me at least, I have a Full Time Job.

After five years as a freelance developer, punctuated with a period of Cohacking and Moblogging, I have become an employee of another start-up, MobMart. We’re building a mobile-powered auction site. Watch out eBay. And I actually mean that!

MobMart is going to shake things up a bit. First of all selling stuff is much easier and quicker. Snap a picture of your item with your phone, send it to 07738 00 88 88 (UK only — sorry) with the word mobmart. We’ll send you a link to a short form, fill it in on your phone and your stuff will be for sale before you know it. Listing stuff is initially free, sending stuff costs your normal MMS rate, we will be much cheaper than eBay when we do start charging. Try it now, you could be one of the first to sell something.

MobMart is Django-based, and now we’ve got the core functionality going, I’m looking forward to using this excellent software to start doing some exciting things. I think eBay is resting on it’s laurels software-wise and that there are lots of great ideas that can be brought into the mix. An example of something we do have already, you can make video adverts for your stuff.

I will still be working on Moblog, we have some big plans there too.