Isn’t it funny to see everybody name checking Android? About a year ago, when I told tech savvy friends I was developing for Android, I got blank stares and the usual “why not the iPhone?”. Six months ago, the same friends became vaguely aware that there were other smartphones besides the iPhone and the BlackBerry. Now, those same friends are bragging about their new HTC Desire!
The amount of books for Google Android has surged dramatically over the last few months and quite a few more are announced for the Fall. It’s exciting times. Or not. One such book – admittedly still only released as a “rough cuts” on Safari Online – seems to be an iPhone book regurgitated for Google Android. By that, I meant that there are glaring mistakes, including talking about the approval process taking several weeks! Clearly, the author hasn’t even bothered to check with an Android developer, or he would have found out there is no approval process.
So jump on the Android bandwagon if you must but please, do your homework first, no one likes reading stuff that was clearly written for another market! (The irony is that the book I refer to is about marketing your apps – talk about sending the wrong message to your market!).
Ubuntu Stack Exchange is a place where Ubuntu users & developers can ask questions (and answer them!) and it’s currently in Beta, with public access (ie everybody can use it even though it’s in Beta). If you use Ubuntu or want to develop for Ubuntu, check it out at http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/
It works in a similar fashion to Stack Overflow (a very useful site for programmers!), being part of the Stack Exchange network of free & community driven Q&A websites. I have to say I really like the way Stack Overflow operates, with its more active members having the same rights as the moderators, and I’m glad to see more and more Q&A sites following the same format.
If you are the type of programmer who learns by reading code and hacking it, head over to HTML5 Studio, a new area on Google’s HTML5 website with sample code provided for Geolocation, Columns, Drag & Drop features and many more.
I quote from the site
Peek around, look under the covers at the source, and feel free to reuse the code in your own applications and sites.
Last night, Oracle published a press release announcing their legal action against Google (though Google still hadn’t received the actual notice this morning apparently). The legal action is about patents relating to Java (as Oracle now owns Sun) and the crux of the matter seems to be that Android is competing with Java in the mobile phone market and Oracle isn’t happy.
You can find out more details at Oracle sues Google over Android and Java.
Are you surprised? I’m not. As sad as it is, it’s obvious that Oracle is trying to maximise their income from Java and they could make big money going after Google (Google certainly has the funds to pay them a lot of damages). Or they could lose a lot of money as Google also has the funds to hire top lawyers. We shall see what happens…
I’m both excited and slightly sad by Google’s announcement today. They’ve announced an app that will allow users to tell their phone what they want it to do, such as say “call” to make a phone call etc. It’s easy to understand why this is exciting.
So why am I slightly sad? Well, a few weeks ago, I had an idea for an app called “TellAndroid”, which was pretty much based around the same concept. I didn’t quite know how to go on about it so I put it on the back-burner. I’m sad because I didn’t get a chance to actually try and implement it. But overall, I’m happy that I had identified what Google thought of as the next step for Android, and of course, I’m excited because as a user, it’s a dream come true!
By the way, I’m kidding about the title of the post, I’m sure many, many programmers have had the same idea as this seems like the next obvious step in mobile technology 