With the new WebClip feature, you can put Web pages on the iPhone / iPod Touch home screens. Instead of using favicons and morphing them in some way, you need to create a 57×57 PNG icon which gets automatically rounded and glassy, as mentioned on the http://apple.com/apple-touch-icon.png, and a set of “special” people seem to have built in icons.
Perst has certified an object oriented embedded database for Android. SQLite is already on the device, so why would you want to use something else?
Why use Perst in software for Android? Because Perst helps developers create small-footprint embedded Java applications that are fast, reliable, and cost-effective to develop and maintain. Perst can do this because it is:
Object-oriented. Perst stores data directly in Java objects, eliminating the translation required for storage in relational and object-relational databases. This boosts run-time performance.
Compact. Perst’s core consists of only five thousand lines of code. The small footprint imposes minimal demands on system resources.
Fast. In McObject’s TestIndex benchmark, Perst displays one of its strongest features: its significant performance advantage over Android database alternatives.
Reliable. Perst supports transactions with the ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable) properties, and requires no end-user administration.
Rich in development tools. The Perst API is flexible and easy-to-use. The breadth of Perst’s specialized collection classes is unparalleled. These include a classic B-Tree implementation; R-tree indexes for spatial data representation; database containers optimized for memory-only access, and much more.
McObject also provides TestIndex, an Android-ready database benchmark application that measures performance using both Perst on Android, as well as Android’s bundled SQLite database system. You can download TestIndex with complete source code, no registration required.
SiFR, a provider of GPS-powered location platforms, announced that
It will rapidly implement key end-to-end location-awareness features needed to enable mobile devices powered by the Android(TM) platform to provide an optimal location awareness experience for consumers.
SiRF is actively working on the Android platform to include some of the more innovative features of Secure User Plane Location (SUPL), a standards-based protocol that allows a mobile handset client to communicate with a SUPL Location Platform (SLP), including transport layer security (TLS) for location privacy and multiple session capabilities to provide the most compelling user experience. SiRF is also implementing support for Android-based assisted GPS (A-GPS) handsets, including mobile station based (MSB) and mobile station assisted (MSA) positioning methods to facilitate the Android platform passing Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and 3GPP conformance testing for third-party certification.
Location is huge, and it appears that 2008 is going to be a break out year for location-aware services and applications.
We also heard about a prototype for Android using the HTC Qtek 9090.
The New York Times has a piece (login required): Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic.
It starts off talking about the title itself:
On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone.
The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.
But, then you get to the important piece from a developer perspective:
“Consumers are going to demand Internet browsers” as good as Apple’s, said Vic Gundotra, a Google vice president who oversees mobile products.
Mr. Gundotra said Web browsers as capable as the iPhone’s could also prove a boon for developers of mobile software, who have long struggled to adapt their programs to different types of phones. As it does on the PC, he said, the browser could provide a more homogeneous “layer” for programmers.
“The reason no one considered this seriously is that the Web layer on mobile devices was terrible,” he said. Google has taken advantage of the capabilities of the iPhone browser to create a product, internally called Grand Prix, that it says provides easy access to many of the company’s services, including search, Gmail, Reader and Picasa.
Google, which developed the first version of Grand Prix in six weeks, is introducing a new version on Monday, just six weeks after the first one. That is a speed of development not previously possible on mobile phones, he said.
2008. The year that developers swarm onto mobile phones through the Web floodgates.
Winstron, a Chinese company, is showing their Android phone at CES:
The GW4 is reportedly currently using Linux right now, but should be running Android within a few months.
More info at ZapNat.
WinMo 7 is getting leaked and it is doing the obvious: taking a page from the iPhone:
WinMo 7 appears to support a gesture interface that will let mobile consumers flick their fingers to slide through images and applications, zoom in and zoom out, and even shake the cell phone to do things like shuffle music. (Note that these features are from a purported internal Microsoft document from last summer and may not actually find their way into Windows Mobile 7, but we are hoping that they do).
Not everything in WinMo 7 is copied from the iPhone. The shaking bit is new, and when the screen is locked, you will be able to doodle on your cell phone screen. But there is no denying that Microsoft is taking its cues from Apple on the user interface of its mobile operating system. Will history repeat itself with Microsoft running away with the prize here, or will Apple strike back by licensing its mobile operating system to other cell phone manufacturers?
As more phones come out with similar features (e.g. gestures) I hope that common APIs come along so we don’t have to rewrite our applications for everyone.
Michael Mace has written about the war between Nokia and Apple, and how “When two elephants fight, the loser is the jungle.”
The winner is hopefully going to be us, the developers. When platforms fight, they tend to get more desperate and do things to spite the competition. They will all crave developers.
The Apple-Nokia war finally got underway on August 29, when Nokia announced an array of new music-capable phones and an online music store. The two companies had been eyeing one-another like wrestlers outside the ring for more than a year. Apple entered the mobile phone market, but only in the US, where Nokia is a non-factor. Nokia openly declared that it’s a computing company (link), but its non-phone products so far have been different flavors of lame.
But the August 29 announcements put Nokia and Apple on a path to direct confrontation. I haven’t seen a lot written online about the importance of this conflict. I think that’s probably because many of the people who follow Apple’s business closely are based in the US and have trouble taking Nokia seriously because it’s a secondary player here. Meanwhile, Nokia’s most ardent followers are in Europe, and look at Nokia’s actions in light of its regional conflicts with SonyEricsson and the European mobile operators.
But when you stand back and look at what’s happening in the industry worldwide, it’s clear that Apple and Nokia both want very badly to be the dominant mobile computing company for young adults. That makes a huge, relentless conflict between them inevitable. They’re like two armies trying to take the same hill. One’s coming from the west, the other from the east, so there’s not a lot of fighting at the moment. But as soon as they reach the hill, there’s going to be an explosion.
Michael goes into great depth on:
Only a brief mention of Microsoft, and no mention of Android.
