Google IO – Day 2 Keynote

Google IO second day was about the web and thus to Chrome and Chrome HTML5 OS.

Web GL: It brings graphics and animations in the browser display and accelerates all hardware. Impressive demos showcased: Thousands rendered sprites, 3d landscapes and even editors to create 3D content on the Web.
Best part of this technology - Angry Birds now on web for free in Chrome Webstore. http://bit.ly/meXXVB Have fun, but don’t play in office!
Speech to text on the Web: Using only a single attribute, it is possible for speech to text in web applications. We shall soon see many text boxes on the Internet with Speech logo. It’s a big step towards web accessibility!

Payment API for Chrome Webstore: The new payment method for the webstore will be easier for users and developers. Easy shopping with "one click" in the webapp. For developers, it is only a single line of code (Java Script) and this payment method is also possible in webapps in-app Purchases. Developers have to share 5% of their sales to Google.

Chromebook: Chrome OS with perfect combination of Google's Cloud OS was the big new. Samsung and Acer will be launching Chromebook based on chrome OS having unbelievable boot up in 8 seconds, costing $499. Its impressive to see how many activities which were done with a native client will soon be available on the Web. Working the same way and can still be made available offline. Google has open API for Web application development with the opportunity to be so well integrated into the system.

Google IO this year was not about any new innovative products like Wave or Buzz, but many new features and enhancements of existing products. Let wait to watch where Android and Chrome OS fit well in.

How the year 2010 had been for Android

Jan:
-Year started off with the release of Android SDK 2.1
-Google launched its first phone Nexus One on 2.1 running Flash 10.1
-Motorola Backflip with Yahoo as a default search page, LG GT450 Android Phones got launched
-20,000 units of Nexus1 were sold out in the opening week

Feb:
-With the introduction of live wallpapers in Éclair version, users started enjoying richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on their home screen.
-There were many edge cases in the service lifecycle that made it very easy to accidentally leave a service running; new APIs in 2.0 make this much easier to deal with.
-Android SDK introduced a new UI for end users to monitor and manage the running services on their device.

Mar
-With the help of Voice-enabled keyboard feature in 2.1, one could dictate message instead of typing it.
-Android NDK r3 version released
-Google Labs released Gesture Search App for android

April
-Google started working on Android Tablet
-Google confirmed Android 2.1 downgrades Image Quality 2.0
-Android twitter app from google was made available in the app store, this app brought in an evolving Android UI design patterns.

May
-Google Developers day – Google IO was hosted and it got an awesome response and support, for the first time the keynotes were live streamed.
-Android 2.2 (Froyo) was introduced with features: Cloud to Device Messaging, Dalvik JIT etc
-Through the new app market feature, users could report bug and developers were able to receive crash and freeze reports from their users.
-Google Latitude API were made public

June:
-Android 2.2 SDK and NDK R4 both were available for download
-An application which violations Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy or any malicious application that poses a threat, google developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices.
-Logitech brought Android iPhone apps for Google TV
-This was beyond imagination, but it came true: iPhone 3G was running Android 2.2
-French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers started enjoying using Google Voice Search

July
-As android 2.2 supports application installation on SD card, this gave users room for many more apps, and benefits to apps from games categorie.
-Swype came to Android virtual keyboard
-Android Market welcomed Korea
-Google announced the release simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications. At run time, application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.

Aug:
-It was interesting to see new players like Spice Mobility, Dell, Micromax launching Android devices
-Samsung Galaxy S got launched, which till today is sold like hot cake.
-Google Android overtook Windows Mobile

Sep:
-Android 2.2 started to see wide adoption
-2007 when Google announced Android, Andy Rubin said “We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android.” But at this stage was growing beyond phones to new kinds of devices.
-Samsung Galaxy Tab was announced and it was said to be a wake-up call for Android developers. It was scary for the developers as they had never seen a screen like this on an Android device before.
-Launched Voice-Action in the new Google Voice Search for Android — an awesome new way to search faster.
-Developers from 20 more countries were now able to sell paid apps on Android Market.
18 additional countries were now able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

Oct:
-There was lot of buzz happening around about Google TV and Galaxy Tab
-Android was quickly moving to hardware that are increasingly different from the smartphone devices, having lack of features like GPS, accelerometers, and video cameras
-Google announced the mobile editing capabilities for Google docs on android and iPad
-Adobe AIR 2.5 cross platform runtime environment for android released

Nov
-Showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This provided users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them.
-U.S Military people favored Android and they all owned an Android phone
-Google Map 4.6 with new features in its Location Based Services was released for android

Dec
-Google with partnership of Samsung launched Nexus S with 2.3 android sdk with support for NFC
-Google Map 5.0 was released which was faster, supported offline & -iIn 3D look
-Android Market Client Update; more payment options in android market
-Skyfire the popular mobile browser released 3.0.1 for Android
-Google launched a new eBook store to read digital books optimized for android devices running 2.1
-Andy confirms google activating 300,000 Android devices per day

Conclude:
When google launched the Nexus One, they thought this would be the flagship mobile device for their new Android operating system. The Nexus One served as the blueprint for Android devices, which exploded across most major mobile carriers. With their open approach and flexibility in what carriers and manufacturers can do with the OS, Android’s numbers grew. Android began to surpass the iPhone

As android became more popular, there was talk of fragmentation of the apps ecosystem and the operating system itself. With frequent updates from Google, but carriers dragging their feet on sending updates to their customers, the problem seemed serious for developers and Android fans. Fragmentation may soon become less of an issue as more handsets are updated to the latest Android OS, but still its wait and watch.

If you need a phone or a tablet with an advanced OS but are turned off by Apple’s “closed” nature of premium pricing, Android is the device for you.

Android at Google I/O 2010

The Android intensity at Google I/O 2010 was definitely palpable. The Android presence included all of Day 2?s keynote along with a full session track, office hours, an Android device display of over 50 phones, and (many people?s favorite) the Developer Sandbox.

Vic Gundotra kicked off the Day 2 keynote with over 20 demos of the new features from Android release 2.2, internally called ?Froyo? (see this summary on the Android Developers? Blog). The second half of the keynote was devoted to Google TV. For more details on that announcement, you can read The Google TV Story.

During the conference, there were ten in-depth sessions dedicated to Android, two fireside chats (including one with OEMs), and one session that combined discussion of Android and iPhone issues. The sessions were:

• A beginner?s guide to Android, by Reto Meier - This one featured an amazingly packed, wall-to-wall, no-standing-room-left crowd, and once it became apparent that the crowd was already quite Android-savvy, the session turned into a Best and Worst Practices talk.

• Writing real-time games for Android, redux, by Chris Pruett - A crash course in Android game development: everything you need to know to get started writing 2D and 3D games, as well as tips, tricks, and benchmarks to help your code reach optimal performance. The crowd in this session?s room showed that games are one of the hottest Android application areas.

• The world of ListView, by Romain Guy and Adam Powell - It might seem a bit odd to dedicate an entire session to one UI widget, but Android?s ListView is large, reasonably complex, and very widely used. Romain and Adam had to work hard to fit their material into just one talk.

• Casting a wide net: how to target all Android devices, by Justin Mattson - This session covered an increasingly important subject now that there are over 60 Android devices, with significant variations in their size, shape, and capabilities.

• Developing Android REST client applications, by Virgil Dobjanschi - Virgil discussed the meat and potatoes of fitting Android clients into an increasingly-RESTful Web ecosystem. No user-interface flash here, but totally essential back-end plumbing guidance.

• A JIT Compiler for Android's Dalvik VM, by Ben Cheng and Bill Buzbee - JIT stands for ?Just In Time?, and it?s a technique for making compute-heavy Android programs run faster; maybe as much as four times faster. Definitely behind-the-scenes stuff, but a subject nearly everyone cares about.

• Writing zippy Android apps, by Brad Fitzpatrick - Making your code run fast requires combining good design with a large grab-bag of hard-won best practices. For any serious Android developer: this is a must-see session, so I hope you make use of the session video and slides!

• Advanced Android audio techniques, by Dave Sparks - Integrating audio into your apps involves a lot of choices and trade-offs at a bunch of levels. Furthermore, there are new media framework APIs in Android 2.2. Lots of good, detailed drill-down in this session.

• Building push applications for Android, by Debajit Ghosh - What was called ?push? while it was being built is now called Cloud To Device Messaging (C2DM), and it?s very nicely integrated into the SDK; we anticipate that a lot of developers will want to use this.

• Android UI design patterns, by Chris Nesladek et al. - The Android User Experience team shared their insights on how to design great Android apps.

There were also two Fireside chats. One with a panel of Android handset manufacturers, and another with a stage full of leading engineers from the Android team. The panelists took questions from the people in the room and from over the Web via Google Moderator and Google Wave.

On Thursday afternoon, a gaggle of Android engineers held office hours; the area was absolutely jam-packed with developers full of questions about everything from low-level hardware interfaces to telephony chips up through the finer points of Live Wallpapers. Everyone had fun and went home tired.

On both days of the conference, there was a large (bright green, of course) display case full of Android devices, surrounded by the app developers and handset manufacturers participating in the Developer Sandbox. This area was crowded from the start of I/O until the security folks eventually chased out the stragglers after closing. Hereis quick video of a slow walk past the big display case.

Videos and slides for each session are linked from the titles above, and you can find all the Android session videos from Google I/O 2010 in this YouTube playlist.

The Android team had an amazing time meeting the developer community at this year?s I/O, and we hope you?ll stay up-to-date on Android news by following us on the Android Developers Blog!

By Android Developer Relations