Darren Waters from BBC’s dot.life technology blog interviews Google’s Andy Rubin and gets a hands-on demonstration of Android. Here’s what he had to say.

I had the chance this week to meet Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms.

He’s the man behind Android, the open source operating system that is at the heart of the Open Handset Alliance.

He was kind enough to give me a demo of Android running on a handset and the video is here. I’ve written up my interview with him and you can read it on the BBC News website.

The software stack, I was told, was Alpha, so not even Beta; but what I was shown gave a good indication that Android should be taken seriously by competitors like Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Google says they are driving the Android initiative because they want to see internet-style development on mobile platforms in the way that the openness of the web has given rise to Facebook and the Web 2.0 movement which should be able to migrate to the mobile phone.

Of course, coming in at the ground level of Android will give Google plenty of opportunity to tailor its own applications.

No-one company dominates the mobile web as yet - perhaps this is Google’s chance.

Google has committed to being a multi-operating system company and they will continue to produce services for all phones on all platforms.

It will be interesting to see how the firm differentiates the same services across different platforms - just how much better will they be on Android as opposed to Windows Mobile or Symbian?

[via BBC News dot.life]

Looks like Opera is going to make Google the default search engine for their Opera Mobile and Mini Browser. Here’s what Google has to say about it.

If you’re one of the millions of people with an Opera Mobile or Opera Mini browser on your phone, you may be pleased to know that Google will soon be the default search engine on the browser start page. We’re certainly excited about it — it will now be even easier for Opera’s new and current mobile users to get the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it.

For more details about our new collaboration with Opera, please check out their press release. To learn more about Opera or to download one of their mobile browsers, head here. As always, you can read more about Google mobile products on our website.

[via Official Google Mobile Blog]

I came across a very interesting Android project called OpenIntents.  The developers wish to make implementation of different applications possible and work seamlessly much like Google’s already-made intents on Android.

With “Intents”, the Android platform offers an excellent basis to connect applications and to swap components on the fly. Google has defined a handful of intents (e.g. to call a person, to select a person from the contact list, to start a web browser, to be notified when the battery has changed, … for a complete list see available intents and intent class) but any program is free to define their additional intents and content-providers. One can easily imagine that programs developed independently (as is the case during the Android contest) are not very likely to work together well on newly defined intents and interfaces.

This project’s goal is to collect ideas for tasks that are very likely to be needed in more than one project (and may have been already programmed independently by different programmers), to define together a reasonable and extensible set of intents and interfaces, and to provide a basic, but stable and efficient, implementation that can be used by other Android applications, especially by other participants of the Android Developer Challenge. OpenIntents as a project itself will also participate in this challenge. We will provide small sample programs that demonstrate the usage and ability of OpenIntents.

Since we will focus our aim on those intents that are frequently required, it is very likely that Google will provide their own standard intents at some later time (for example for calendar functionality, …). When this happens, we will provide transparent interfaces that will directly call the Google implementation and your existing program can make immediate use of new Google functionality without change. Also, since your program is designed to support intents from the start, it will be easy to adapt it to directly support Google standard intents once they become available. It may even be that Google will adopt some of the intents developed at “OpenIntents“. In any case, if your application uses OpenIntents, it will gain value by enhanced interoperability with other applications that support OpenIntents, resulting in an overall better user experience.

OpenIntents will be published under “Apache License 2″, the same license under which Android is released. This will provide commercial and non-commercial third-party developers the same options and possibilities as Android itself.

[via code.google.com]

CHANDLER, Ariz. — Jerry Knoblach wants to bring wireless service to millions of rural Americans. His plan: Beam it down from balloons hovering at the edge of space.This isn’t just hot air. His company, Space Data Corp., already launches 10 balloons a day across the Southern U.S., providing specialized telecom services to truckers and oil companies. His balloons soar 20 miles into the stratosphere, each carrying a shoebox-size payload of electronics that acts like a mini cellphone “tower” covering thousands of square miles below.

His idea has caught the eye of Google Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. The Internet giant — which is now pushing into wireless services — has considered contracting with Space Data or even buying the firm, according to one person.

Video after the jump…

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Google launched a new new app for Nokia Smartphones. Here are the details:

At Google we like things that are fast: fast search, fast email, fast everything. In fact, we’re so in love with speed that we don’t even like the time it usually takes to launch a browser, head to Google and perform a search on our favourite Nokia smartphones. So, we decided to do something to speed it up.

From today, if you have an N-series or an E-series Nokia phone you can download a small search shortcut directly to your phone’s homescreen. Once that shortcut is in place, you’ll be able to bring up a Google search box (without opening your browser), type in a query and get straight to the results.

For those who are counting, that means fewer clicks and less time waiting for pages to load. Judging from our research, there is as much as a 40 percent reduction in the average time to complete an initial search. You can see just how much faster it is in this video:

So, don’t take our word for it — head to mobile.google.com on your Nokia device now, download the Google search shortcut and give it a try.

[via Official Google Mobile Blog]

According to man-about-town, Robert X. Cringely, Samsung is readying not one, but two separate Android-based phones, one of which is due in September, with another model following around Christmas. If you believe what you read (and what his tipster says), these phones will not be labeled Samsung, rather they will be released as Google-branded gPhones. The model released in the Fall will be a “higher-end” model which apparently looks “somewhat like a Blackberry Pearl” but with a screen that flips and “a keyboard for texting” (though to be honest, that description makes little sense, as the Pearl has a keyboard). The second device will be a cheaper model (under $100), and will likely be released after the holidays. Of course, right now this is just speculation — given the large gap of time between now and September, these plans could be completely rearranged or nixed altogether… even if they are accurate.

[via Engadget Mobile]

Just two days after we played with the latest build, the new Android SDK is out with improvements to the overall OS. Like last time, you can download it and play with it, but in the mean time, here are the updates, which include better file support (OGG, for one), better animations, and a better UI. We’ll update this post as we try the included emulator first hand.

On behalf of the entire Android team, I’m happy to let you know that an updated version of the Android SDK — we’re calling it m5-rc14 — is now available. Today, we’re continuing the early look at the Android SDK that we started back in November by providing updates to the Android APIs and the developer tools based, in part, on the great feedback and suggestions developers have been giving us. We’re excited about the progress that we’ve made and look forward to making additional updates in the future as the platform evolves towards production-readiness.

There are a couple of changes in m5-rc14 I’d like to highlight:

• New user interface - As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we’re continuing to refine the UI that’s available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.
• Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.
• Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
• New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
• Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

You can find more information about what’s changed in a couple of documents that we’ve published. First is an overview of the changes to the Android APIs in API Changes Overview. If you want a more granular view of what’s changed, an API diff between m3-rc37 and m5-rc14 is also available. Finally, Upgrading the SDK provides links to the two previously referenced documents and the release notes, as well as instructions on how to upgrade your development environment.

We still need your help in shaping the platform, so if you find issues with the Android APIs or the developer tools, please let us know through the Android Issue Tracker. If you have general comments or questions, please head on over to the Android groups to get in touch.

[via Android Developers Blog]

[image via Gizmodo]

The Android team is running another event, this time at Cambridge, MA. Registration is now open but space is limited, so sign up soon!

As promised, there’s another Android event coming up — though a little closer to home this time. Our Android Advocates are heading to Boston for a Code Day that will be taking place on February 23. Registration is now open, but space is limited so make sure you reserve your spot.

Here are the details:

Date: Saturday, February 23, 2008
Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Location: The Charles Hotel Harvard Square

1 Bennett St
Cambridge, MA 02138

As a reminder, a Code Day is an immersive introduction and hands-on session for Android.

It’s promising to be a real Android nor’easter. We hope to see you there!

[via Android Developers Blog]

Looks like Google is answering some questions about mobile advertising with their new youtube series called Alexandra’s Mobile [Ad]itude. Here’s what Google has to say about it…

You may have heard a lot of talk about mobile advertising, but it might still be hard to make sense of this rapidly growing and constantly changing market. To help us all understand this industry, its trends, and Google’s part in the market, I wanted to start this column — and hopefully a dialogue — about mobile ads.

First, let’s define what exactly mobile advertising is. In its simplest form, mobile advertising may be an SMS or an MMS sent to your phone. On phones with data plans, mobile advertising is more likely to be text or display ads on the mobile web’s search and content pages. On more sophisticated devices, you may also see broadcast TV or video advertising.

The mobile ad market, however, faces a number of challenges. While industry leaders like Japan have the technology and scale for mobile ads to thrive, other markets face a chicken-and-egg phenomenon in the development of the mobile web. Some potential mobile website owners aren’t sure how much they will be able to monetize a mobile website, or whether WAP will soon be replaced by HTML. And since the mobile web remains smaller than the regular web, mobile advertisers may not feel they have enough places to put their ads — or enough viewers to see them.

The times are changing, though. The combined impact of mobile advertising promises to be huge — and is projected to reach some $4B by the end of 2008. By 2011, this number is expected to increase to $11.3B. There are a few key reasons this market holds a lot of potential. For one, there are nearly more cell phones in the world than televisions, telephones, and personal computers combined. Secondly, smartphones that offer unlimited data plans and easy mobile web browsing are becoming increasingly popular. Smartphones already account for a majority of data traffic and are gaining in sales. Finally, mobile ads are still cheaper than their online counterparts right now.

Like I said, I want this to be a dialogue. So leave me your comments and questions below or on our YouTube channel. I’ll pick some of them to talk about in future posts. In the meantime, you can learn more about mobile ads or AdSense for mobile content or read related blogposts such as What’s new with Google Mobile Ads and Meet mobile Publisher Mikle.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Gizmodo has posted a video of their hands-on experience with a working Android equipped phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Here’s what they have to say…

 

We have been playing with the Android prototypes scattered through the Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona. ARM had theirs running on one of their lower-end processors. No fancy graphics demos, no iPhone-style multimedia fizzbang, just a humble ARM9 processor in a plain white prototype “to demonstrate the scalability of Android” and serve as a “development platform.” Our verdict: it works, it’s fluid, but it’s boring. Qualcomm’s Android prototype, however, is a real beast.

An ugly giganfatastic beast made of multiple boards right out of a Terry Gilliam movie set. It was faster and had wireless connectivity, something that the ARM model didn’t had enabled. And obviously, it was untouchable and development oriented.

As you can see, while the Android platform is solid enough for development and testing, it seems we are far away from seeing actual products getting into the market. ARM told us that everything is still pretty much up in the air at this point, and the actual physical cellphone specification is still coming from the Open Handset Alliance.

[via Gizmodo]