I have had a quick play with Android App Inventor. Here are some initial observations… It’s implemented using a weird web app and Java app combination that sometimes don’t communicate well and produce errors. An ‘empty’ app with just a few screen controls produces nearly a 1Mb apk. Android blocks are not that intuitive for me. There’s no control of the menu or app icon. The help says there are currently "technical limitations to being able to upload an App Inventor app to the Andorid Market but we are actively evaluating the best way to integrate with the Market." I suspect this is something to do with lack of signing and the lack of being able to change the icon. Also, you can’t create multi-screen apps. You have to resort to swit...

Golly, I've not written anything here in a month or so. Time for an update: After losing the mighty Mary Nolan to antipodean climes (if you are in Australia: hire her FAST), we're looking for a new Product Owner. The quality of candidates we've had so far has pleased us mightily, we're interviewing at the moment and it's going to be a tough decision. Did I forget to mention that we hired a new ScrumMaster a few months ago? After an 8-year break, Cori Samuel (FP Employee #1 back in 2001) has returned to the fold and taken charge of keeping our teams and process singing: two wheels of our cart. Two of our products are doing quite nicely, thankyou. Roulette Cricket has been featured in the "What's Hot" list by Apple for a little while now and has passed 80,000 downloads; the app is also...

We’re excited to introduce the Ovi Browser beta for Series 40 phones to help meet the needs of mobile Internet users in emerging markets and around the world.  We believe users of Series 40 should be entitled to rich web browsing experiences like those of smartphones, but without the same price tag.The Ovi Browser is powered by patented Internet compression technology that delivers advanced web pages to your phone. The result is that pages show up quicker than ever, plus over the air data is reduced by up to 90%. Beyond performance, the browser includes an innovative user interface that makes it easy to access your favourite content directly from the start page without having to hunt through menus. Ovi Browser is available as a beta download for popular Nokia Series 40 phones includ...

With six updates in six months, Google Maps for Android has been getting plenty of new features, both big and small. A continued focus with each update has been on giving you better ways to find places nearby. In the most recent updates, Maps has gotten features like swiping between search results and info like photos, reviews, and more helpful content on the result pages. With today’s launch of Google Maps for mobile 4.4, we’re introducing an even easier way to find places around you: a dedicated Places icon that lets you quickly look up nearby places and pick a place to go using updated Place Pages, just like on your computer.On Android-powered phones with Google Maps 4.4, you’ll find the new Places icon in the app launcher with the rest of your apps. Press and drag it right onto ...

I've just seen my first "live" WiFi SSID from an Android device used as a tether - it came up in my local cafe as AndroidAP.However, it's made me wonder if there is mileage for an Android offload service (run by Google), rather than a tether, which is essentially the opposite.It is already well-understood that perhaps the most difficult part of WiFi offload is the on-device client and connection management experience, especially given the heterogenous nature of WiFi APs, between home, hotspot and work domains. There's a minefield of user interface, behavioural issues (eg switching off WiFi), log-on screens and so forth.Joining the dots with some of Google's WiFi efforts that I see in places such as US airports, it made me wonder whether it might be in the interests of Google, Nokia, Apple ...

[In a race for profits, the mobile industry finds itself squeezed between vertically integrated players like Apple and horizontal players like Google. What is the fate of handset manufacturers? Guest author Vinay Kapoor takes a peek into the future landscape of the mobile industry] The top 5 mobile OEM list was recently shaken and stirred by the entry of RIM into the list of top 5 OEMs and the subsequent exit of Motorola. Previously, the top-5 OEM leaderboard had been stable for half a decade and so the most excitement you could get would be a change in the relative position of the incumbents. Looking today at the comparative handset sales of RIM, Apple and Motorola, it is clear that the exit of Motorola from this list of top 5 OEMs has been a long time coming. While Motorola’s decline ...

Last year I whipped up a quick little mobile widget called QLauncher, which could be used on the home screen of S60 phones like the N97 or 5800 to quickly launch a web search box with various services as options. It used S60's Web Runtime Toolkit - or WRT - which is essentially a wrapper around the internal Webkit based browser the phone uses. When I switched away to my N900 based on Maemo (now MeeGo), the one thing (besides Google Maps) that I really missed was my little QLauncher app. Well, the Qt guys just launched their new Qt Web Runtime application framework for Maemo so finally I can get my QLauncher back! It turns out that the other .wgz widget file that S60 uses is slightly different from the W3C standard, which uses a config.xml file rather than an info.plist file, among some ot...

While cleaning up my blog I encountered an old blog of mine from 2007 and 2008, before iPhone native apps became mainstream. And I am not surprised at all about how things had turned out — exactly as I was expecting. From Is Local faster, fresher, better? Many say Yes…: Next, Apple will be releasing their SDK for the iPhone for the development of native Local apps. Let’s see what will happen there. Very cool applications are going to be created. I can’t wait to see the distribution channel: a portal for iPhone applications, or perhaps via iTunes; I believe that pain #1 for Local applications is the their discovery and download (distribution), which is why I am looking forward to see how Apple will tackle that problem. Let’s see how and what the iPhone, the mobile device tha...

I got an email this morning from BBC World Service radio, asking if I'd like to participate in a debate to "discuss whether the Apple bandwagon is grinding to a halt" in the wake of the iPhone antenna problem. I said sure, and they asked a couple of questions about my views.Unfortunately, when they saw my reply, they decided that my opinions were too similar to those of Computerworld columnist Mitch Wagner (link), who was also appearing on the program. It wouldn't lead to a good debate. They were very polite about it, and there are no hard feelings on my part.(By the way, Mitch pointed out the most interesting line I've seen so far on the antenna issue -- Microsoft COO Kevin Turner compared the iPhone 4 to Windows Vista. "It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm okay wit...

Diego is updating his blog again! Awesome! Check out his “the web is an app” post for a laydown of how generalized web development is shifting. Things were already tilting in the direction of “websites” being basically a static javascript loaded that pulled in resources and data as necessary. Mobile devices have really thrown a few cans of gas on the fire however. Before it was just annoying when logic crept into display code. Now with multiple distinct front-end views it’s gone from annoying to painful. The role of browser Javascript framework on the mobile end seems to be an area of hot contention right now. With behaviors optimized for touch devices being the headline item in most of the conversations I’m seeing. The Uxebu blog and Wolfram Kriesing...

Hello It would be great if you can complete and cross post this survey on your blog. I also seek questions which you can address to commissioner Neelie Kroes. The survey only takes 5 mins of multiple choice questions asking for familiarity with issues Survey is HERE Note: if you cross post please also email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com and also send me your question. For example my question is: What methods of collaboration will the commissioner use to fulfil this vision? The full document is EU Digital agenda. I summarise it below so you can frame your question Digital agenda site Summary from the document(sections) The overall aim of the Digital Agenda is to deliver sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market based on fast and ultra fast...

This morning London Datastore announced that TFL had lifted all restrictions on commercial reuse of its data (via @retomeier). I love the idea of building a London transport application for Android so I started playing around with the station data which lead me to investigate how Keyhole Markup Language functions on the Android platform. Launching the native Maps application from within a bespoke application with some KML data from the internet is really easy. public class LoadActivity extends Activity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); Uri uri = Uri.parse("geo:0,0?q=http://paxmodept.com/files/office.kml"); Intent mapIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, uri); startActivity(mapInt...

This is just amazing. There will $100 android tablets on the market soon. Digital photo frame makers and GPS device manufacturers – watch out. Your days are counted. What happens when tablets are even cheaper maybe as low cost as a paperback book? What new products will emerge? ...

1.2. You should have it tomorrow the latest.In a nutshell,- The world's first phone with Skype video calls- Google and SIP video calls, too- Other stuff like browser, exchange, browser etc improvements- Qt 4.6 for developers ... this is very important. This now bridges us to the forthcoming MeeGo apps that will then run also on you N900.So with all the above, with full Flash, Mozilla browser, and a lot of cool apps at Nokia OVI store and Maemo repositories, a very compelling little computer. And a phone, too.More info here....

Pix’n'love a nice French fanzine about retro gaming just published an article about one of the game I’ve participed on the Amiga, Unreal (and it’s not the FPS Unreal well know now on PC). I’ve mostly made the intro, using a technique called ‘VectorBalls’ . So here are a few scan of this article, but If you read French, I strongly encourage you to buy it and read it! ...

Packt Pub kindly sent me a copy of LWUIT 1.1 for Java ME Developers to review. Anyone who was involved in professional Java ME development knows that one of the biggest challenges of Java ME development is to write appealing and consistent UI across various devices. For the past few years I found many Java ME UI frameworks on the web. Among those, LWUIT definitely is one on the top you should consider because: - It is backed by Sun - It is free and open source - It is still under active development. - It has a rich set of features and good development tool Another question you may ask is: is Java ME still relevant? For the past two years, the landscape of mobile development have been changed dramatically. With the introduction of iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS and computer grade Maemo OS (Li...

Some interesting news on Spinvox, a company who's MWC stand design I have always rated as top notch - after $100m funding, with 250 employees, they appear to be struggling to pay salaries. Instead, they seem to be offering employees share options instead of salaries - I am in all in favour of offering share options on top of wages, but instead? Can you eat options somehow?More worrying is the suggestion that the more big deals they get (having already got some huge ones with Telefonica), the more funding they need - which makes their voice recognition technlogy sound a little unscalable... read the comments and find out why: almost all of the recognition is done by humans, hence the need for such a headcount and lack of scalability / chance of profitability.Big confidence trick on the VCs...

Java Mobile and Embedded Developer Days is only 6 weeks away... The event will be again held in Santa Clara, on January 21st and 22nd. The agenda is now fixed and it seems to contain a number of highly interesting talks and looks like one of my proposals was accepted as well (to provide the other end of the spectrum of presentation quality :-) I know what slides I am working on over the xmas break... ...