April 14, 2008: Deadline to submit applications for judging
May 5, 2008: Announcement of the 50 first round winners, who will be eligible for the final round
June 30, 2008: Deadline for the 50 winners of the first round to submit for the final round
July 21, 2008: Announcement of the grand prize winner and runner-up.
GE cordless phones (non-cellular) become the first phones to come with a dedicated Google button. The button is for Google's excellent free 411 service (1-800-GOOG-411). The phones will be available in April 2008.In Android, there is no Swing or AWT, so you have to familiarize yourself with the new GUI APIs (hierarchically nested Views) that are part of Android. That’s not so bad… since they have lots of pre-built widgets, and they provide lots of data binding support for diverse data models. Having said that, the biggest difference in building an Android app, from one that runs on a desktop/server/laptop Java VM is that the Android app runs in a managed container. The SystemManager is responsible for taking the app through various discretely defined lifecycle states, which allows for apps to be interrupted by network coverage issues, or incoming phone calls, or just being turned off, as examples. An Android app that has a UI is called an Activity. Activities run in their own Linux process, and they have one default thread (Swing-like-EDT), that can not be hogged for more than 5 seconds, otherwise, the SystemManager will shut the app down. This requires users to know how to create background tasks, which is not easy. Also, the UI metaphor in Android is one of building “screens”, rather than building apps which have nested panels and complex layouts and centralized state management. This is a very common approach to taken when building UIs/apps for mobile devices. The idea is to split up an application into many discrete loosely coupled pieces… some that are bound to the screen (Activity), and others that are “headless” (Services). Additionally, there are lots of container managed persistence and data exchange mechanisms that are available. However, given that these pieces can be swapped out with different pieces, and that any screen can be paused or activated at any time makes life more tricky for the app developer. All of this raises the barrier to entry so to speak. And I’m not even going into the optimization techniques that you have to adopt to write code that runs fast.
You can even let everyone know where you shot a video by attaching a "geo-tag," which includes the GPS coordinates for the location where you shot the video.
You can also personalize your YouTube experience on the Helio Ocean by customizing your video feeds like My Subscriptions, My Favorites, My Playlists, My Videos and Received Videos. Of course, you can always view traditional YouTube categories like Most Viewed, Most Recent, Top Rated and Recently Featured.
Today, I'm happy to tell you that we've just released this new iPhone interface for Picasa. After you go to Picasa on your iPhone and log in, you can quickly see all your albums that you've uploaded to Picasa Web. If you click on any of the albums, you can get a full view of your picture with comments from your friends. Or you can click on Slideshow, sit back and watch the pictures scroll. You can also search for photos in your album or through community photos. Finally, with one of my favorite features, you can view your friends' albums through favorites.
What are you waiting for? If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch go to http://picasaweb.google.com and check it out.
Is that something you have the intention of doing? Using current hardware platforms to run Android?
No.
So it's still going to be about the vertically integrated approach going forward? Not just about throwing any operating system on any piece of hardware.
Right. But, of course, we have a lot of the latest leading-edge wireless technology, so some of our software can definitely leverage that. But products need to be very specific. Today, people really interface with and are really passionate about [our] products, so they need to feel something really unique about them.
Dianne and Jason share a background at both Be and PalmSource, and talk about how that experience has been applied to Android. Other topics covered include:
- Some history behind the project
The high level architecture of Android. For example, how Linux processes handle the VM and manage security (the VM doesn't handle it)- Details on the Dalvik VM and how it is optimized for small devices
- The architecture: From Intents to Views to Permissions and more
- How XML is slow, but the tools convert the XML to a nicer format for you
- The tooling and steps for building an application on Android
- How so many objects have a URL, and how the environment is like a mini-SOA (Services across processes instead of across the network)
- Thoughts on how you program for small devices, and things to watch out for if you move from the desktop
- The control, or lack of control that you have over the application lifecycle
- "Everything you do drains the battery"
- The thread story: they exist, you don't have to deal with them if you don't want to, and the UI
- Using XMPP for messaging
For Google, more than wireless is at stake. Google can read the writing on the wall for wireline, even if dumbass regulators in DC can't. Given enough time, the cable/DSL duopoly will gradually morph away from the existing open internet model to become more and more like wireless is today: you buy a basic contract for the core service and everything else costs extra. The provider bundles everything, controls the nature of outside attachments, applications, etc., etc., always taking its chunk off the top and driving up the price to everyone else. But if Google is successful in transforming the wireless world, it will also stop the transformation of the wireline world. By contrast, if Google can't stop the transformation of the wireless world, it is probably screwed on the wireline side as well..
Our guiding principles were "fast" and "fluid." We think we've achieved both, thanks to some AJAX magic made possible by the iPhone's Safari browser. To try it out, just go to www.google.com on your iPhone.
Monday, December 3, is the deadline for prospective bidders to apply with the FCC to participate in the auction. Though the auction itself won't start until January 24, 2008, Monday also marks the starting point for the FCC's anti-collusion rules, which prevent participants in the auction from discussing their bidding strategy with each other.
These rules are designed to keep the auction process fair, by keeping bidders from cooperating in anticompetitive ways so as to drive the auction prices in artificial directions. While these rules primarily affect private communications among prospective bidders, the FCC historically has included all forms of public communications in its interpretation of these rules.
All of this means that, as much as we would like to offer a step-by-step account of what's happening in the auction, the FCC's rules prevent us from doing so until the auction ends early next year.
The payoff for Google from building out its mapping service is to get people to conduct searches from their cellphones. This is a nice feature. Push a button on the map software, type “Starbucks” and it will display a map of the closest source of a latte fix, based on the cell tower or GPS data. The catch, is that this query, with your location, is entered in Google’s log files along with your phone’s unique ID.
Will Google always know where I am if I use My Location (beta)?
No, Google does not know who you are when you use Google Maps for mobile. All handsets are anonymous. When you use our product, we do not collect personal information like your username or phone number, so we do not know who owns or is using the handset. Therefore, when we identify approximate location [as part of the My Location feature], all we can determine is the approximate location of the handset. This location information is also only in our system when a user has opted-in to the My Location (beta) service. If the My Location (beta) feature is disabled, we will not continue to send radio information back to Google servers to determine your handset's approximate location while you use Google Maps for mobile.
