Mozilla building mobile OS to battle Chrome

Mozilla revealed preliminary plans today to take the Gecko engine that drives its Firefox browser and turn it into an open-source operating system that will eventually work on phones and tablets.

Called Boot to Gecko, it is known that the source code will be released to the public "in real-time," wrote Andreas Gal, a Mozilla researcher. Gecko is the rendering engine that powers Firefox and the e-mail client Thunderbird. By contrast, while Google's Androidmobile operating system is open source, the main development work on it does not become available until after Google has green-lit its publication--sometimes not until months afterward.

"We will do this work in the open, we will release the source in real-time, we will take all successful additions to an appropriate standards group, and we will track changes that come out of that process. We aren't trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we're trying to have them run on the web," Gal said in a forum post. Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of technical strategy, said that the Boot to Gecko apps won't use the Android SDK but instead run new and current Web app APIs

He also identified four areas for development. One is new Web APIs, which means building "prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content." This is how the operating system would support current essential mobile features such as telephony, SMS, cameras, USB, Bluetooth, and near-field chips. A second area for development is to build a privilege model, which is a key security feature for ensuring that new features are "safely exposed to pages and applications," he said.

Boot to Gecko will include some low-level Android code for kernel and driver support so that it can run on Android devices. This does not exist yet, and porting it to a new system could prove to be extremely challenging. Then there is the final area of development--that of applications. The idea behind Boot to Gecko is to create a system where native Web apps can run just as well as the native apps for iOS do on that device.

Shaver added that the company is looking at Tegra 2 devices because they offer hardware acceleration of open audio and video formats.

For people who want to get a stronger idea of what Boot to Gecko will amount to, Gal noted that its "starting point" is a device running Firefox for Android as its homescreen, with some custom APIs thrown in. He also admitted in that post that there is an "ultimate goal" to the project, that of "breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world."

Source: http://download.cnet.com

Google's Schmidt says Nokia still welcome to join Android

Eric Schmidt, now chairman of Google, seems to have developed into a permanent keynote fixture here at Mobile World Congress.  Last year, just his very presence was enough to stir up an atmosphere. This this year, in the immediate wake of the Nokia/Microsoft tie-up  - which left Google's Android the loser -  perhaps Schmidt and Google appear less the all-conquering threat and more like just another powerful player in the mobile ecosystem.

“We would have loved Nokia to choose Android and we certainly tried,” Schmidt told those assembled.  Asked what might happen if the alliance between Microsoft and Nokia failed or was less successful than anticipated, Schmidt answered: “The offer remains open for the future.”

Indeed.  The question many people have been asking here is not "Why Microsoft?", but rather why didn't Nokia hedge its bets and adopt both operating systems?  It doesn't appear that the agreement with Nokia involves any exclusivity and it's an approach other companies have adopted. Elop has also called Android "a worthy candidate" so the option doesn't appeared to have been ruled out on the Nokia side. Plus, having more or less dumped both Symbian and Meego, Nokia has the R&D resources. 

As things stand now, Nokia is facing a significant sales shortfall in Smartphones over the next 6 months as its potential users either wait for its new Phone 7 phones to appear or, just as likely and even more damaging, go out and buy an Android instead.  Then there's the possibility that, when Phone 7 Nokias do arrive,  users find themselves unexcited by them and don't buy those either. 

If Phone 7 doesn't generate big smartphone sales for Nokia and its share price tanks even further, perhaps Schmidt's offer will be taken up.


Source:telecomtv.com

Introducing Blogger Android App

Introducing Blogger Android App

Posted by Vinay Sekhri

Have you ever wanted to write up a quick blog post on the go? Now there is an easy way to do this on your Android phone! We are excited to announce our first version of the Blogger Android App. Using the app you can easily compose a post, attach a photo that you just took with your phone, and either save it as a local draft for later or immediately publish it to your blog. If you are an Android user, you can start using the Blogger app today by downloading it for free from the Android Market.

Feature highlights

• Multiple accounts and blogs: You can easily switch between different accounts and blogs that you have author rights to. Simply choose your account and blog and you are all set to go.

• Write and save/publish: You can write a post, assign labels, and then either save it as a draft or immediately publish it. Saving as draft is handy if you need to wait until you have Internet connectivity.

• Photos from camera and gallery: If you see something interesting, you can take a photo directly from the app and include it in the blog post. You can also browse your gallery to include the ones you like.

• Sharing to Blogger from gallery or browser: Blogger is one of the available sharing options. If you come across a photo in the gallery, or a website while browsing, you can share the content to the Blogger app directly from the sharing menu.

• Share location: You can share your location by activating the location bar and selecting the correct location. This information will be included in your post.

• View saved/published posts: By switching to the List View, you can view all your drafts and published posts that you wrote using the app. By performing a long-press on a published post you can invoke a menu that includes the option to view your post in a browser.

We hope you enjoy the app. As always, we would love to hear what you think so please feel free to share your thoughts with us through our feedback form. (Note: this app is available only on Android devices but we are working toward supporting other smartphone platforms to allow more of our users to easily post to Blogger on the go.)

Google Debuts a Honey of an OS

By Richard Adhikari

LinuxInsider

02/02/11 2:40 PM PT

Google hosted its big Honeycomb show-and-tell Wednesday, elaborating on the new Android version's features and capabilities. This is the first version of Android optimized specifically for tablet devices, and it will arrive in iPad rivals from many different manufacturers in the coming months. Google also released a preview of the Honeycomb SDK so developers can become accustomed to making apps for the platform.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) staged an in-depth look at its Android 3.0 operating system, aka "Honeycomb," at a press conference Wednesday. It marks the official arrival of the first version of the Android operating system to be optimized specifically with the tablet form factor in mind.

Features mentioned in the presentation include richer notifications for incoming messages, faster access to home screen settings, optimized 2D and 3D graphics performance and improved streaming video processing.

Google focused heavily on developers, also announcing the Android Market Web store  and in-app purchases, among other things.The event ended with the presenters conducting a video chat with musician Cee-Lo Green.Backstage, 18 developers demonstrated functions like in-app billing and other apps created with Honeycomb. Google announced that 50 developers will show off Honeycomb-optimized apps at the Mobile World Congress, to be held in Barcelona later this month.

Android 3.0 Stuff

Google's offering templates in Honeycomb that let app devs create richer, more advanced notifications, such as having the sender's picture pop up when the user receives an instant message on the device.While these Honeycomb notifications are "stronger and more impressive" than those offered by Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS for now, the two companies "will begin to leapfrog each other going forward," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, pointed out.Google did not respond to requests for comment by press time.Existing Android apps for smartphones work on Honeycomb, and Google demoed the game "Fruit Ninja" as proof.Honeycomb supports video chat with video stabilization technology. This keeps the image smooth and by so doing saves bandwidth because less movement means less bandwidth is required to render the video.

Gunning for the App Devs

Google focused heavily on developers in creating Honeycomb.The new OS includes a user interface framework to create apps for devices with larger screens, such as tablets. Devs can use new UI components, new themes, richer widgets and notifications and other new features.Honeycomb comes with a property-based animation framework that lets devs add visual effects to their apps. It has a built-in GL (graphics library) renderer that lets developers hardware-accelerate common 2D rendering operations in their apps."Performance and responsiveness is important for developers and is certainly key for a new generation of applications that really take advantage of the tablet's larger screen," Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, told LinuxInsider.

A new 3D graphics engine called "Renderscript" lets devs add rich 3D scenes in Honeycomb.

"The 2D and 3D hardware acceleration is huge and may lead to much richer games and stronger user experiences," Enderle said. Also, the "Monster Madness" demo is "a good indication that gaming will be strong" on Honeycomb, he added.New multimedia features such as HTTP Live streaming support, a pluggable digital rights management framework and easy media file transfer through MTP/PTP help devs create rich content.Honeycomb includes new APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP. These let apps offer audio streaming and headset control.For the enterprise , Honeycomb comes with administrative policies covering encrypted storage, password expiration and other features.Android 3.0 is optimized to run on either single- or dual-core processors.

Getting to the Money

Google Wednesday extended the Android market client from mobile devices to every desktop through Android Market on the Web. This includes merchandising features such as suggestion-guided search, deep linking and social sharing."If you don't need to go to an app market but can download an app from the Web, it makes things a lot easier for everyone and may translate to better sales," Enderle said.

The Honeycomb SDK

Google has released a preview of the Android 3.0 SDK with non-final APIs and system image.

However, applications developed with this can't be published on Android Market. Google will release a final SDK sometime in the next few weeks that can be used to build apps that can be published on the Android Market."The fit and finish of the SDK is not there yet, but for developers, what matters is a familiar language and IDE (integrated development environment)," IDC's Hilwa stated.

"Having Java as the base language is one of the key assets of Android as a whole and one of its key success factors," Hilwa remarked. "This will definitely carry over to Honeycomb."Android 3.0 is "among Google's best work yet," Enderle said. "I'm very impressed."  - LinuxInsider

Source: linuxinsider.com

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