Day: May 21, 2010

**Google Android **

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See keynote video [part 1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89xc_1Vv69k):

– An alternative to iPhone and its single device, single carrier model, single source of applications model. Some stats: 100,000+ new activations per day; 2nd in US smart phone sales but first in US web an app usage; 1 billion miles navigated with turn-by-turn navigation app; 5x increase in google search on smart phones; 50,000 apps available; Did I lock myself into the wrong phone on the wrong network when I bought my iPhone last year?
– Android 2.2: speed – JIT compiler for Dalvic Vitual Machine.

See keynote video [part 2](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBQFXRW5ZiE):

– Enterprise features: MS Exchange friendly; device management API.
– Application data backup API; cloud-to-device messaging API.
– A feature that makes an android phone connected to 3G into a WiFi hotspot(!) for other devices.

– Improved browser performance.
– For the future: extending ideas pioneered with the HTML5 geo-location feature a future version of android will be able to use the accelerometer to provide tilt in the browser …

– … access the camera from within the browser; record sound from within the browser (for voice activated Google search); speech recognition and speech activated phone features; voice activated translation!!
– Support for flash in the browser!

**Android Market Place**

– Search can be filtered for apps to make them easier to find. Apps can be put on an SD card. Applications can all be updated at the same time; Automatic updating is coming.

– Bug reporting from apps back to the market place.
– In the future you’ll be able to use a desktop browser to select an app, it’s downloaded over the internet. It works with music too. It will work from your desktop music library as well; allowing you to stream your music to your device (providing the desktop is turned on presumably).

– Do I really want ads on my phone? I see a glimpse of the white cat here!

**New hardware**

– You needed to be there!

**HTML5**

– Wave is now open to everyone … still not sure what it is yet though. Is it the collaboration tool that I’ve been waiting for?
– Google Wave will be part of Google Apps.
– Novell and SAP will have Wave compatible services built in to their new enterprise collaboration tools.

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*Background*: Google I/O is primary a developer’s conference. To understand the following you need to know that Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a front-end development framework that takes user interface code written in Java and compiles it into HTML/CSS and JavaScript that can be deployed on the browser. It was used to develop most of the Google web apps you’ll be familiar with like Gmail and Reader. Spring is an enterprise computing framework for Java and Roo is a development tool with philosophical similarities to Ruby on Rails. VMware, a company that specialises in virtualization software, acquired Spring last august.

The announcements and demos made at the end of the opening keynote will mean little to my reader, but it’s great for the old Java enterprise programming teacher that still lurks within my soul to get an outing occasionally.

So here are the geek announcements:

– Google has partnered with VMware to create a cloud computing platform based on the Spring framework (for the back end) and the Google Web Toolkit (for the front end).
– Geek heaven: GWT + Spring Roo (created by Google and VMware/Spring engineers collaborating over Google Wave) to make scaffolding a data driven web app ruby-on-rails(ish) easy.
– End-to-end latency tracing from the browser to the server … even when deployed on Google App Engine.
– New data widgets for GWT.
– GWT widget libraries are mobile ready: means that if your cloud-deployed application works on your laptop. It’ll work on your iPad and smart phone (tip: don’t rely on WiFi when demonstrating mobile Apps at a tech. conference).
– Open deployment (provided it’s a Java container).
– App Engine for Business with domain console, pro support, formal SLA, SSL and SQL databases [note: Google App Engine has up until now used a Google-specific data storage system called Big Table rather than the industry standard SQL] and new pricing scheme.

Google is betting the company on the open-web, in particular HTML5. If its vision comes true, HTML, CSS and JavaScript will be the application development environment of the future. And the courses I’ve been teaching for the last 10 years are about to become mainstream. I’m excited!