Posts Tagged ‘Android’

Location-based services like Whrrl on iPhone to usher in Internet of people, places, and things

by Daniel Langendorf

May 27th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile | Comments4 Comments

kocb logoGet ready for the Internet of people, places, and things. Thanks to the iPhone and Android, it’s just around the corner — no pun intended.

BusinessWeek reports that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm behind the iPhone funding program iFund, have chosen two companies as its top picks to date — Whrrl from Pelago and Home Security 2.0 from iControl Networks.

Kleiner Perkins, a big fan of location-based services, has extended an offer to one other startup and are “seriously considering” 10 others, whatever that means.

whrrlWhrrl combines the mapping capabilities of the iPhone with the ability to find information on your friends, where you’ve been, where anybody has been — in essence, connecting people, places, and things. Whrrl currently works on the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve.

iControl’s application isn’t as sexy as Whrrl — it is home automation after all — but it gives users the ability to communicate to the places and things important in their lives, namely their homes or businesses and what’s in them like door locks, air conditioners, lights, and so on.

Add these programs to the applications being developed as part of the Android Developers Challenge (Bread Crumbz, LifeAware, Beetaun) and you can see a locations, locations, locations trend forming. In Wired lingo, it would be:

  • plain old voice communications: “expired”
  • mobile Internet surfing: “tired”
  • using mobile devices to interact with people, places, and things: “wired”

“There’s going to be a ‘what’s going on around me right now’ button,” Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy told BusinessWeek. “You’re always one button away from that immediate context.”

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Google prepping more iPhone-native apps

by Steve O'Hear

May 19th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments4 Comments

Google prepping more iPhone-native appsWith Apple set to roll out the next major software update for the iPhone, and with it official support for third-party applications, it will come as no surprise that Google is busy prepping some new wares. “We expect to have applications at Day One”, Google’s vice president of engineering, Vic Gundotra, tells Macworld.

Even before the publicly available Software Development Kit (SDK) announced in March, Google had partnered with Apple to produce two of the iPhone’s flagship applications: Google Maps and a native YouTube client.

So what can we expect next from Google? While Gundotra didn’t give many clues, he did say that the company is eager to take advantage of native access to Apple’s device.

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It's like Christmas in July: Google announces winners of Android Developers Challenge

by Daniel Langendorf

May 13th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

androidscannerSeeing the results of the Google Android Developer Challenge today was like being told what you’re getting for Christmas … in July. Worse yet, what’s under the tree is mostly socks and underwear.

Google announced the 50 round-one winners in the worldwide search for the best Android-developed applications. For using Google’s open-source mobile operating system, each winner will receive $25,000 to further fund their apps.

Also see: Android Developer Challenge I Winners Announced: Our Picks (ReadWriteWeb)

For a list of the winners, you can go to several places on the Web:

It’s not that the winners are unworthy and their applications unimaginative and useless. Quite to the contrary. These point to the future of mobile applications.

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Google says it has received 1,788 entries for Android challenge; not everybody is happy

by Daniel Langendorf

April 18th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

android dudeIt’s great that developers for Google’s mobile operating system Android have “risen to the challenge,” as a Google-ite said on the Android Developers Blog late Thursday. Google has received nearly 1,800 submissions from 70 countries for its Android Developer Challenge.

But at least one developer we know has ditched Android for the time being because his investors are demanding results, and so far he cannot deliver an Android solution in tandem with actual working hardware.

Peter Wojtowicz, the mastermind behind the Wi-Fi Army mobile game, announced early this year that his team would be developing the revolutionary game in Android, which generated a lot of interest from gaming, mobile, and Android blogs around the world.

Because Wi-Fi Army is cutting edge, combining a cell phone’s camera with Wi-Fi, bluetooth, location-based service, a back-end server architecture, and a slew of other complexities, investors interested in supporting his team have demanded proof-of-concept results that Wojtowicz cannot deliver with actual working Gphones. Adding to the frustration, Wojtowicz is often delayed when one Android SDK release isn’t compatible with an older one, forcing the team to lose time backtracking.

Time is something Wojtowicz doesn’t have as he — and others — are racing to get their next-generation games to market as quickly as possible. For the time being, Wojtowicz’s team is developing Wi-Fi Army simultaneously in Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Symbian; he expects to start work on the iPhone when Apple releases the SDK in June.

“It would be a lot easier with the (Google-powered) phone in hand,” Wojtowicz said.

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Nokia, start your photocopiers (iPhone-envy)

by Steve O'Hear

April 8th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Nokia\'s iPhone responseWhen Apple first unveiled the latest iteration of its Mac OSX operating system, codenamed ‘Leopard’, the marketing slogan read: “Redmond, start your photocopiers“. The suggestion being that Microsoft would, shortly thereafter, attempt to replicate all of Apple’s innovations. In 2008, the same charge might also apply to any number of cellphone makers as they scramble to respond to the iconic iPhone. This week it was Nokia’s turn, reports InfoWorld.

During a presentation at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, California, Nokia’s Tom Libretto showed a slide that portrayed a new device similar in looks to Apple’s iPhone, codenamed “Tube”. Featuring a touchscreen and graphic-heavy interface, Libretto said the “Tube” will support Java – a feature lacking on the iPhone – and will also be capable of uploading photos to the Web. Other details such as additional features or a launch date weren’t revealed.

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