It

1-Click to go from 2.7 to 2.8: BOOM!!! ;)

Just a quick one. First day of the Google I/O 2009 in San Francisco (CA). Apart from a lot of informative and interesting topics and breakout sessions (I mainly focused on App Engine and Android), I came back at home full of: Stickers T-shirt Google Chrome comic paperback version A brand new “Google I/O device”, that is a black HTC Magic sim and firmware unlocked for developers + Android Market with Paid Apps support + Amazon Mp3 store +…!!!. How much? For FREE, of course!!! ...

I just wrote a comment to an article I read on the Symbian Foundation blog: "Improving the developer experience", by David Wood. I think it’s worth replicating it here: detronizator Says: May 18, 2009 at 9:58 AM @Mark Burton: I had EXACTLY the same experience. It was like jumping back to the “future” of software development and see that IT’S NOT MANDATORY to have to deal with ANCIENT C++ to write software for mobile. More funny: it’s all based on Open Source/Open Standard technologies, like gdb and qemu!!! @wtr1: Did you ever see Android running on the Emulator (because that’s what it is: WINSCW is a SIMULATOR)? And Symbian itself? I did when I was there. A guy started working on Symbian for QEMU, achieving to start th OS in a 10th of the time, if not less. Even faster than ANDROID to boot!!! But at that time people took me as a fool for supporting this guy so strongly… Seriously: WINSCW is “theoretically” faster but so badly written that it’s actually slower. @David Wood: I basically agree with you, but to say that “there isn’t such a Symbian controlled by manufacturers”, it’s what I’ll call “more than just a personal and partial opinion”. The control and the “steering” of THE manufacturer (who said “Nokia?”) was in every step that was taken in Symbian. And that was absolutely “correct”: after all Nokia owned the most of it. Now you are “step by step” trying to change this. But the problems you are dealing today are heritage of a “not so far past”. And, as you said yourself, “it’s not going to change overnight”. A last thought: I’m realizing that the most of those posts are focused on discussing the “technical philosophy”, “political moves”, “current market”, “business model” of Symbian but… are we ever actually going to discuss technical and more interesting stuff? And, bear in mind, this is not a critic to the audience here, neither to the bloggers (who always arise good, important and interesting points): my critic is to make people realize that the problems of this Platform are so “deep in developers soul” and “frustrating for beeing so old complex”, that the main discuss driver is always away from the technical stuff. For example: what about “common mistakes made by C++ developers and how symbian address and solve them” or “how to build a Client-Server architecture in 5 minutes” or “how to optimize performance of a UI-intensive application” or “how to generate JSON files in your web-based S60 app”… and I could say more. Developers, at least of my age, want code, snippets, smart patterns and so on… My 5 cents. PS Please, bear in mind that WINSCW is a “SIMULATOR”, while QEMU is an “EMULATOR”, like the ARM one that Nokia preferred to QEMU… and we are still waiting here! :P PPS At least this is the definition you can find on books from Tanenbaum or Sterling. ...

For the once of you that tried “home made ways” to update their ADP1, like my previously published how-to, this news can be interesting. Google and HTC finally managed to push-out an official page on the HTC site, to explain step-by-step how to update firmware and baseband of the device. I just did it, having a very pleasant and straightforward experience. The phone seems to be way more stable, bug-free and the battery lasts for more then 50 seconds ;) ...

WOW! I mean… WOW! Look at what people are doing using the power of HTML5 + a very fast Javascript Engine! Those experiments are collected here: Chrome Experiments (note the subtitle: “Not your mother’s JavaScript” - LOL). Bear in mind: this is not only because of Chrome itself. This is the power of HTML5 Canvas element, plus, of couse, the very (very) fast V8 Javascript engine). And indeed, I ran them on my Safari 4 beta without a glitch: the Javascript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme (SFX) is pretty good too. ...

If you, like me, have a Android Dev Phone 1 (“ADP1” from now on), you are probably wondering how to take the latest version of the Android Source Code, the “GIT Master”, compile and put on your device. I googled and googled and googled, finding some sparse material. But it’s all messed up: sometimes it was incomplete or partial, sometimes it was a matter of formatting/style, it could get very difficult to read. So, this post is my way of making it organic and organized. Let’s get it started! ...

Google just introduced a new service, Latitude. I will not go in the details of explaining what it does, simply because the official web page is detailed enough, and has a nice/fancy video. What is relevant for me is the list of phone with which it will work: Will it work with my phone? Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for mobile on these phones: Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1 (coming soon) iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon) most color BlackBerry devices most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones) many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon) This service is free from Google; carrier charges may apply. ...

Images and Videos say more than ever here. --’ Here it comes again!!! --' Steve, please say something: Source: The Apple Lounge

I was sure that is was just a matter of time, before we started to see Android spreading all around into every possible flavour of Mobile (only?) piece of hardware. It started when just the first versions of the SDK were out in the wild: people were “just” recompiling the kernel, and boom! The magic was happening. That was a demonstration of really good and effective layering: just adapting the kernel to the hosting hardware was making it up and running. Now, with the source code available to everyone, the porting festival is becoming even larger, with small-medium company, as well as university guys, porting Android everywhere. ...