impl.emented» Android

Google in the Limelight with Chrome and Android [Best of August '08 #3-4]

Jonas Bolinder — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:30:53 +0000

This week's compilation of interesting posts actually covers the past two weeks, due to lack of blogging time for me last week. Unfortunately, this might happen more times this fall, which seems to be busy for me, with near full-time of consulting. However, you may always check out my Google Reader Shared Items, which contain a few more items not making it to my weekly list. The shared items also appear on my FriendFeed account.

The greatest news this week (and perhaps this year) is of course Google's launch of the browser Chrome. The news broke while I was finishing the list below, and it puts some of the items in a different perspective, particularly the one about the launch of IE8 beta 2 below.
Tags: Chrome
Last month, I wrote about some troubles for Google's Android mobile platform. These problems seem now to be history, with the release of a new 0.9 version of the SDK, which is expected to be quite similar to the 1.0 version running on the first phones. Google is now also improving on the communication side, with the release of a developer roadmap, which promises a 1.0 SDK release and retail phones by Q4 this year. Actually, there are already rumors floating about an Android phone by HTC, the "Dream", slated for November 10th.
Tags: Android
Marshall Kirkpatrick writes about feed.informer, formerly known as Feed Digest, a web service for mashing, filtering and publishing RSS feeds. As mentioned by Marshall, the site has some faults. For example, I found that the link to the Docs & FAQs page is broken. Another provider of similar services is Yahoo Pipes. For self hosting, the PHP RSS library SimplePie provides detailed functionality for parsing feeds, though there seems to be no built-in functionality for keyword filtering. SimplePie on this page compare themselves to a few competing libraries.
Tags: feeds, RSS
From the JavaScript/Firefox department there were reports on progress in improving the JavaScript execution speed in Firefox, leveraging a technique known as tracing optimization, hence the project code name Tracemonkey. Ars explains the basic idea behind tracing:

The tracing mechanism records the path of execution at runtime and generates compiled code that can be used next time that a particular path is reached. This makes it possible to flatten out loops and nested method calls into a linear stream of instructions that is more conducive to conventional optimization techniques.

The goal is to achieve execution speed comparable to native code, taking JavaScript performance into "the next tier", and "redefining the boundaries of client-side performance." Wonder how this improvement compares to Google Chrome's new V8 JavaScript Engine?
Tags: Firefox, JavaScript
Internet Explorer 8 is getting closer to official, with a Beta 2 release just being announced. It's a massive makeover according to Ed Bott, with improvements in usability, privacy, standards compliance and new features like Accelerators, which are kind of smart shortcuts that perform a task, e.g. search, on selected text, and Web Slices, which provide a kind of subscription to a part of a web page that updates frequently. It's up to the developer to slice-enable particular web pages, by adding appropriate markup. The standards compliance is of course exciting, and it will eventually make the life easier for developers. Though it will take several years, with about one third of web surfers still using IE6.
Tags: IE8
BackType is a new comment aggregation service, liked a lot by Michael Arrington. Comments are automatically collected around the web, and can be searched for based on people or subject. You claim your comments by creating a profile and indicating which url you use when commenting. This is my profile. I think it's a nice idea, with an open approach. Blogs can keep their comment system of choice, and still being included. No need for JavaScript solutions à la Disqus (my profile), for example.
Tags: comments
Fred Wilson suggests that social sites start using the concept of neighbors, which are automatically discovered people with similar interests like you, instead of relying on so-called friends or followers and the habit of befriending or follow people. Seems like a practical idea to me, not having to manually look for friends, but have them automatically suggested.
Tags: social networks
Marshall Kirkpatrick explains the concept of embargoes in blogging and why it generally is a better idea than exclusives. An embargo works as an agreement between bloggers and a company not to write about a new product or service until a specific time. This has several advantages, such as a broader and deeper coverage from multiple perspectives.
Tags: blogging, PR

Microsoft Plummets on Search - Android in Trouble [Best of July '08 #3]

Jonas Bolinder — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:48:39 +0000

This week featured some troubling news for Microsoft and Google (July 14-20 2008):

Recent data from Hitwise shows that Microsoft has lost almost 50 percent of its market share in search from June 2007 to June 2008. In the U.S. the drop is from 9.8 % market share to 5.5 %. In the U.K. the drop is from 5.7 % to 3.7 %, and in Australia a dramatic fall from 14.7 % to 6.7 %. Google is the great winner, while Yahoo shows a minor drop and Ask a minor gain. Ask is now almost as big as Microsoft on search in the U.S. As it seems, to remain a major player in the search field, Microsoft desperately needs to get hold of Yahoo's search service.
Tags: Microsoft, search
Google's supposedly open mobile platform Android, loses in credibility among developers, as it was revealed this week that a few select top contestants of the Android Developer Challenge were given access, under the counter, to an updated version of the SDK. Additionally, the code was provided under a non-disclosure clause, rhyming poorly with the promise of open, though technically Google has done nothing wrong.
There seems to be a lack of communication from the part of Google. As suggested by AndroidGuys, more frequent updates to the official Android blog would certainly calm down some hard feelings among developers. It will be interesting to see in the coming year what impact Android will make on the mobile phone market, which currently is overwhelmed, in terms of buzz at least, by the new iPhone.
Tags: Android
Gnip, the notification proxy service, finally hooks up to the XMPP firehose of Twitter. Does this mark the beginning of the end of the troubles of Twitter?
Tags: Gnip, Twitter
OStatic points to an "executive summary of Open Source", a white paper challenging 10 Open Source Myths. Some examples of myths covered: "Open source is free", "Open source equals open standards", "Open source is not for mission-critical functions", "Open source is for non-conformists" and "Open source software is lower quality".
Tags: open source
5 tips on using Twitter to improve your online-reputation. Some examples: "Start conversations with notable peers", "Share valuable industry news" and "Monitor your Twitter reputation".
Tags: online reputation, Twitter
IPv6, the next generation internet protocol, about to replace the current IPv4 in a couple of years, might pose a security risk, writes the Wired. The problem is that it is enabled by default in many operating systems, and lots of applications may not yet be up-to-date to handle the new protocol. Affected operating systems include Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Windows XP is however safe, i.e. IPv6 is not enabled by default. You can test here which IP protocols are supported by your computer.
Tags: IPv6, security

February Highlights II: Cloud Computing, Social Gaming and the Social Cloud

Jonas Bolinder — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:19:02 +0000

Here are the past week's most interesting posts:

Reaching for the Sky Through The Compute Clouds – Alex Iskold
Alex makes a brief comparison of cloud computing vs. LAMP, and lists a few scalability issues with the LAMP approach. He does not mention any potential problems with cloud computing other than occasional outages.
Tags: LAMP, cloud computing
Tom Coates: Web of Data – Richard MacManus
Tom Coates gives a presentation at Webstock and talks about a "web of data", which is where "data sources and services are the center of the Web, rather than pages." Examples are Twitter and Flickr. He recommends opening up your data, the main reason is a "network effect", new services can build on the data.
Tags: open data
Game On: Zynga and SGN Battle For Social Gaming Developers – Erick Schonfeld
Social gaming networks are growing. The benefit for a developer to join a network is increased visibility of their application. The Social Gaming Network, SGN, provides an API for their gaming hub, where developers can add their games and leverage the "gaming graph".
Tags: social gaming, online games
Crude Android Prototypes Unveiled – Daniel Langendorf
Pictures of early prototypes of Android mobile phones, mostly circuit boards, displays and solder.
Tags: Android
Study: 6% of People Online Contribute 50% of Display Ad Clicks – Marshall Kirkpatrick
Further, they have a low income and are "more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites."
Tags: advertising
The Social Cloud – Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks has a video up of an interesting presentation he gave at the recent Geneva LIFT conference. A few quotes from the presentation:

The Social Graph API puts this cloud around finding me and finding my public friends on the web. That means we can assume that that is there and it is abstracted that stuff away, which means we can assume that these public connections that we have already asserted and made on the web, can be discovered and can be reused in other places.

... OpenSocial, that puts a cloud around social networking sites, and the details of friends, the details of people, the details of the actions they do and data you store.

So by the concept of a cloud, he means that something just works, and we, as developers or users, do not have to think about the details of the implementation or how it works. From a developer's point of view, OpenSocial enables the concept of a Social Cloud.
Tags: Social Cloud, OpenSocial, Social Graph