DROIDCON UK APPROACHING...
It’s coming to that time of year again when one of the main Android events comes around - Droidcon UK Last year I spoke about taking Android beyond ‘phones, this year I’ll be speaking about developing apps which scale well on single and multi-core devices (from single core, to dual, to quad, and beyond), which is something that’s going to become more and more important as we see more low-end single core devices, mid/high-end dual core, and top-end quad core devices come to market.
DOES GOOGLE SEE UK DEVELOPERS AS UNIMPORTANT?
This morning Google announced a number of new developer events around the world, and, as a result of what was announced, it would appear that the UK will not see a high profile Google developer event this year, which seems odd to me. If you look at London (which most would consider the UKs' strongest candidate for an event) it’s the most populated city in Europe with over double the population of its' nearest rival (Berlin), has one of the worlds busiest international transport hubs (Heathrow Airport, the only european airport in the top 5 for passenger throughput), is home to Googles second largest engineering center outside the US (after Zurich), and if Google did fly people in from Mountain View there would be no language barrier.
REORGANISING MY SOCIAL NETWORKS & BLOG
I currently use Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and this blog for interacting with other people. Each has it’s own merits and draw backs, and after thinking about how I could best use each one I’ve come up with the following plan; Twitter - This will be my most frequently used method of interacting with people. My posts will mostly be related to Android and Technology, but I may go off-topic. Reason; Twitter, due to its' 140 character limit, is easy to scan.
WHY I RECOMMENDED AN IPHONE
Why I recommended an iPhone I’m disheartened to admit that I’ve just had to recommend a current iPhone user upgrades to another iPhone instead of switching to Android. Reasons high-level reasons were; They already know iOS, so little to no learning curve. They’re a power user, not a “geek”, so availability of apps & media is probably more important than customisation. (There is no equivalent to iTunes for obtaining Movies, TV shows, and Music in one place on Android outside the US, and many main stream apps appear as iOS first releases in the UK)
GOOGLE TV IN THE UK
[Imported from Google+] One plug change and 15mins to setup/update, and I have a Logitech Revue Google TV working in the UK; Now all it needs is the TV schedules for the UK and a silencer for the fan… [Update 1 - Answers to some questions asked] TV Schedules are not available so search doesn’t work through them Some apps are region locked and so won’t work (e.
GOOGLE/MOTOROLA DEAL OPINION
[imported from Google+] I’m not convinced of the benefits of the Motorola-Google deal. Patent protection will be good for Android, but it essentially creates a preferred hardware supplier for Android who is US focused. For all that’s said, Google management has to report to shareholders who will want to see Google get the most value out of Motorola, and an easy way to do that would be give Motorola an exclusivity period on all future releases of Android.
RUMOURED ANDROID ICE CREAM SANDWICH SCREENSHOTS
[Imported from Google+] I’ve seen the rumoured Ice Cream Sandwich leak, couple of things make me suspicious; Kernel Version; It’s the same as the current Gingerbread AOSP build, and all of the 3 Honeycomb devices I have are based on 2.6.36 kernels, not 2.6.35, so it seems odd to me a later Android version would use an earlier kernel. Baseband version; It’s the same as the current Gingerbread release.
NEW MARKET LAYOUT SUGGESTIONS
[Imported from Google+] The new Android Market client recently started to roll out and looks like this; I can’t help feeling the following tweaks to the new non-US Market layout might be useful; Change the “Staff Choices” button to an “Apps” button Put “Staff Choices” where the current “Editors Choice” is Put the “Editors Choice” where they Grey featured app block is (Where the pageonce app is in the screenshot), and rename it “More Featured Apps.
TIME CAPSULES, DATA CENTRES, AND MY ICLOUD ....
I’ve been following the rumours around Apples' data center and WWDC announcements for a while and I can see an idea that ties them together in a way which would seem to make sense. I’m going to outline it here for those who are interested because I see it as an interesting and appealing proposition to users, and a way for Apple to further boost their hardware sales. The first part of the puzzle is the 12 Petabytes (or more) of storage Apple are rumoured to have ordered for their new mega-datacenter.
COMBINING MY COMPANIES
I’ve been split between running two companies for the last couple of years; Enterprise Data Safe Ltd. and Funky Android Ltd., and while the two operate in different technology areas it’s been a bit tough to keep both plates in the air, so I’ve decided to buy out my co-founder in Enterprise Data Safe and combine the two. Funky Android Ltd. will be the company which exists beyond the merger, and it will honour all the existing commitments of Enterprise Data Safe, so most folk won’t notice any change.