Droidcon London 2010 – Day One 28th Oct 2010

It was the first day, with unplanned, unprepared barcamp-style presentations! It had a nice range and quantity of low level programming tips and higher level business tips in such a short space of time. Here are just a few higher level insights, observations and thoughts…

Sony Ericsson’s gave few tricks on Android UI: Advising developers not to do long running tasks in the UI thread, to use Handler & Service classes for longer lasting processes and to use Toasts to show quick popup status.

Location Services by Cloudmade: They will support Android later this year with a Maps SDK, based on OpenStreetMaps. Map data comes as you need it and is stored locally on device. Location-based advertising is related to a network that finds highest value ads from other networks.

No one in the audience was able to say they were making money from LBS.

GPS on Android is still seen as a battery hungry.

Another Interesting thing was to know that Motorola went to use Skyhook instead of Google location API on Android, the way they would get data for their customers WiFi location. Google forced them to switch back to Google location and Skyhook now suing Google.

RESTProvider: Carl from Novoda spoke on how it makes a RESTful API available as a Content Provider. He also demonstrated Unit testing of android classes without emulator.

App Analytics from Capptain: Demonstrated combining in-app analytics with CRM. SDK is available in Android and iOS. It has new analytics capabilities like how long users are spending in each

screen of your app, real-time analytics — can monitor where people are in your app right now, crash logs with device, firmware, etc details.

Git on android: A guy from who works at the guardian walked through all the problems he came across when trying to use git on android and how using open source goodness he could simplify a lot of trouble by simply extending pre-written code and even create work arounds for troublesome bugs.

Meta Market Model: Mark Murphey talk tied in very nicely with problems regarding using alternative markets. He created a brain storming session on the market problems and what can we do as a community to help improve this. Some of the good problems highlighted were: Comment spam, Not enough screenshots, Analytics, Refund policy too leaniant, Downloads don’t work.

Market is a closed club, OEM’s who don’t agree to the rule book don’t have access. And simply creating a app store for each carrier/OEM etc. isn’t a viable solution which

Mark summarised with a brilliant quote: “those who complain about fragmentation you ain’t seen nothing yet”.

So he came up with an idea about having a single open feed of android applications that all the market applications can hook into. So this would work as some sort of extended atom/rss feed (just add namespace) with open access which could benefit from the standards introduced and the maturity of the software already written. This sounds like a great idea but will obviously need a large amount of momentum to succeed. Mark said that instead of us complaining at Google to fix the market we should fix the market problems ourselves.

Day ended with a nice Tip from Tech hub:

“Devs arn’t always design focused, should assume users are complete idiots and don’t understand anything.”

Teleca Stand: Teleca got lots of android developers coming to our stand and wanting to know as to what Teleca into. The following demos just didn’t fail to amaze them: TI Dual Display, Android ported on Freescale Imax 53 board, MeeGo phone, AIM app totally based on Open Source.

Back with London’s million pounds worth learning

* Life is too short; so why spent it judging people, just accept them the way they are.

* The other way to worship God is by touching human’s heart with your kind words & do good if you can.

* Value time; not only of your but of others too.

* World is full of lovely people’s; meet how many you can. They all come with rich culture & learning’s of life, its worth sharing thoughts. Gets you a different perception towards life.

* Learn to forgive people; heart is a small place so why fill it with hate.

* Stay beautiful; take time to note down the compliments you receive. Whenever you feel low, revisit your diary, it pumps your heart with strength to go ahead and win the world

* Greet people a wonderful day and just smile around, what u give always come around you.

* Nothing is perfect; so why strive to be one or look for it.

* You never represent only yourself; you represent your family, company & country you belong to. So think twice before you say or do something. You have an opportunity to tell the world what Indians are.

* Respect an individual; not for what job he does or how much he earns. But respect him as he is a human and for his beautiful soul where God resides.

* It’s worthy to do small sacrifices for the people who live for you. Sacrifice is another word for love.

* You are proud of the rich Tradition and culture with which you are brought up with, but let them not block you from living life fully.

* Don’t be scared of looking beautiful, rocking the dance floor, asking questions, sounding intelligent and challenging the best, you never know you might be missing a million pounds worth opportunity which might just change your life forever.

Archive: My Media Coverage

Interview in DNA's main edition on Face Yoga.
and my say on it....










After organizing India's biggest tweetup in Pune...
Pune Mirror on Tweetup Meet 09






Indian Express Interview: "What is twitter and Why do I Tweet"



My blog post on Bloggers Meet 08 in Times of India




Pune Blog Camp 09, Interview coverage at Times of India.
Why do I blog :)

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

FAQ on Android

What is Android ?
Software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and application framework. In-short everything that goes into making a Mobile.

Why are you passionate about Android?
I always loved working with anything that's related to Java. I stopped working for Palm just because I wasn't comfortable with C++. Still remember my textpad application on Palm.
When I heard of Android being an open source mobile platform, I couldn't stop dreaming of developing the same app on an Android mobile device.
Android is a deadly combination of = Java + Google + Mobile Platform + Open Source

How do I start up with android?
Start off with the Google Online documentation on Android.
Also the Android official blogs and the video tutorials are extremely useful. May be my presentation on Android Anatomy might help ;)
Do watch this Video.

What all software's I need to get started ?
JDK 5 or 6
Eclipse 3.4 or 3.5
Android SDK (any) from 1.5 to 2.2
ADT (Android Development tools)

What’s the future of android?
The future of Android is going to be defined beyond Mobile phones. It is going to be in Set top boxes, microwaves, washing machines, etc. We already have Google TV on android.
Since Android is supported by Google, it’s a thing of the future.
Even Gartner predicts Android to grab No 2 spot by 2012 in the mobile platform.

Which android handset should I buy?
As of now, you can buy a Nexus One (Simply Worth it).

Can U make money out of android?
You can make money out of Android by publishing your applications in Android Market. Shortcut would be to takeup freelancing assignments or get hooked to a big packaged MNC job on android.

Darker side of android?
The darker side would be Fragmentation of the application.
The Android Developer will have the pain to port his application onto different platforms.

Market requirements for android developers?
Skills: Java, C, C++

Book on android:
Professional.Android.2.Application.Development by Reto Meier

Android Training institutes in India?
None are good. Depend on self learning and online tutorial

What’s that 1 thing that makes android rule the mobile space as compared to other mobile platforms?
You can build your own mobile phone from Android source code

Which language do I need to learn to work on android?
If u know any of there languages you are good enough to get started.
- Java
- C
- C++
- Interpreted language like :Python, Lua, Ruby, JS

Being a student if I wish to do my academic project on android, how should I start?
You can start by going to code.google.com and search for Android projects. There are many start-ups who provide internship.

How to install android and non android application on the real device ?
http://www.blogsdna.com/1939/how-to-install-non-market-apk-apps-on-google-android-g1-phone.htm

Good Android Blog’s to follow ?
http://awalkingcity.com/blog/category/android/
http://www.codemobiles.com

What is Love ?

Whenever I meet her I used to ask her “What’s Love ?”

She said, let me tell u my story, and may be that should answer your question.

BTW who is “she” ?

She is the true heroine of the coming story, most beautiful women I ever met, mother of 16 yrs old son, an IT professional. She hardly talks to ppl, used to silently observer me. We first became friends & now I call her “Dee”.

She was the only daughter of a rich farmer from a small village, where girl’s are married off at the age of 16. So was she too married to a farmer of the same village with lot of dowry. Before this, she had got a marriage proposal from an AP University BE gold medalist who fell in love with her when he first saw her 7^th Standard photograph. As he was from a different cast her dad rejected the proposal. After her marriage, this lover of hers went insane and lost control of his life. He didn’t took up his Singapore job and was boycotted by his family.

After her marriage she forgot what happiness means, she was treated as a salve and was asked to give up her studies. 2 yrs passed & she gave birth to a knowledgeable son. When she visited her home town, this lover of hers came to see her. He just said “How are you ? I will always want to see you happy.” That’s it and he left.

Her eyes filled with tears, one eye with the pain of loosing him and another eye with the happiness of finding a true lover.

Worst was on her way, her husband & in-laws got transfer property paper forcefully signed from her & had plans to kill her. It was 3 pm, she ran on the road to save her life. Reached her parents home where she had left her son & collected pieces of her broken heart to start a new beginning. Completed her graduation, took up computer classes & started her career in a MNC. This period was a struggle for her, but was possible due to her parents support.

Today she is in her early 30s, beautiful as ever, taking care of her 3 children [Mom, dad & her son].Has never seen what happiness is like, takes all pressure, pain & sorrow just to see her children happy. I dedicate the mother’s day to this lady.

Wherever she is, she is always looking out for her mad lover “Ramchandraju”. She is still looking for him & wishes to see him at-least once. That’s true love, as she believes wherever he would be he would be praying & wishing for her good.

I found my answer for the question, which I used to always ponder about.

“What is love ?“

It’s the space that we give him in our heart & worship him. Pray for his goodness & wishing him to be happy wherever he is. It’s not about talk, touch or meets but its about feeling him from within. It is pure & divine. You are ready to die 100 times, just to live a movement together. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.