News

Android continues to soar – 56% of recent buyers chose Android

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/26 19:45 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

Over the past three months, twice as many consumers purchased Android over iOS. The numbers returned as 56% for Android, 28% for iOS, and 9% for RIM. The remaining 6% was simply comprised as other. The market share currently sits at 43% Android, 28% iOS, and 18% RIM. With the pending release of both the iPhone 5 and the Nexus Prime , it will be interesting to see how the numbers are affected. Visit TalkAndroid for android news , android guides , and much more! Android continues to soar – 56% of recent buyers chose Android

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Android continues to soar – 56% of recent buyers chose Android

T-Mobile reveals Galaxy S II launch date and price

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/26 19:43 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

Samsung held the Samsung Galaxy S II event last month in New York, and T-Mobile was the only carrier  that did not allow anyone to play around with its variant. Those precious devices were kept under glass, but T-Mobile is now finally ready to release more details about this super-phone, as well as the price and availability. T-Mobile’s Samsung Galaxy S II will come with a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor and will be packing Android 2.3.5. The device is also Netflix compatible and NFC enabled. This phone should be nice for watching movies; it sports a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus display. But we’ll have to wait until Google Wallet comes to other NFC-enabled devices. It’s currently only available for Sprint’s Nexus S 4G. Other NFC-enabled devices will simply have to wait and see when/if it comes around. Either way, if you want to get your hands on this beast, it will be released October 12. Pre-sales start October 10. The Samsung Galaxy S II comes with a price tag of $229.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate on a two-year contract. T-Mobile users who’ve been waiting for this device to show up can now start breaking those piggy banks! Who’s signing up for one of these? Show Press Release T-Mobile Unveils Its Fastest Smartphones: HTC Amaze 4G and Samsung Galaxy S II T-Mobile USA CMO Cole Brodman details consumer adoption of 4G technology and unveils next-generation 4G devices SAN FRANCISCO and BELLEVUE, Wash. — Sept. 26, 2011 — Today at GigaOm Mobilize 2011, T-Mobile USA Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman outlined the company’s ongoing efforts to fuel consumer adoption of mobile data through increased speeds of America’s Largest 4G Network®, rate plans that make mobile data more affordable, and new devices that take advantage of the company’s faster 4G network and value. Unveiled during the T-Mobile keynote address at Mobilize 2011, the HTC Amaze™ 4G and Samsung Galaxy S™ II will be T-Mobile’s fastest smartphones and the first smartphones to take advantage of T-Mobile’s faster 4G (HSPA+ 42) network technology. The new smartphones will allow customers to browse the Web faster than on the average home Internet and are showing average download speeds approaching 8 Mbps with peak speeds around 20 Mbps on T-Mobile’s 4G network1 . Both smartpthones are expected to be available next month. In addition, T-Mobile today announced the T-Mobile ® Sonic™ 4G Mobile HotSpot, the company’s fastest 4G (HSPA+ 42) mobile hotspot, providing customers with access to T-Mobile’s fastest 4G speeds on up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices. America’s Largest 4G Network, which is now faster than ever with the 4G technology of HSPA+ 42, reaches more than 170 million Americans in more than 150 markets throughout the United States. “These new products unlock the full potential of our faster 4G network and deliver the best experience yet for watching video, surfing the Web, and creating and sharing content on the go,” said Cole Brodman, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile USA. “A 4G connection delivers a much improved experience, which entices consumers to do more with the devices they carry. We’ve seen that first hand; customers with 4G devices on our network consume roughly three times as much data compared as those with 3G devices. Smartphone buyers are increasingly looking for built-in 4G capability, and we’re offering what we believe is the best 4G product portfolio in the industry.” HTC Amaze 4G Exclusively available from T-Mobile, the HTC Amaze 4G features the most advanced camera experience of any smartphone and is the latest in T-Mobile’s family of advanced camera smartphones. The HTC Amaze 4G is equipped with an 8-megapixel camera and 1080p HD video recorder, a backside illuminated sensor for improved low light performance, zero shutter lag and a dual LED flash, as well as advanced digital camera features, including: SmartShot™, which captures five photos and creates the best shot using clear faces with smiles and no blinking. PerfectPics™, which is a separate album in the gallery created by scoring and filtering the best photos to the surface. PerfectPics prioritizes photos by using criteria such as important calendar events, the presence of faces, and overall picture quality. Additional innovative camera features first introduced on the T-Mobile myTouch® 4G Slide such as SweepShot™, ClearShot HDR™ and BurstShot™. The HTC Amaze 4G also enables high quality video recording with a full HD 1080p camcorder and an embedded video editor. Customers can instantly capture quality photos and videos with a dedicated camera button and T-Mobile’s first direct-to-camcorder button. Sharing photos is easy with one-touch access to post to Facebook®, Picasa ® or Flickr ® — all at 4G speeds. The device runs on Android™ 2.3.4, features a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ S3 Processor with a 1.5 GHz dual core CPUs, and offers the HTC Sense user experience. With support for T-Mobile TV, HTC Watch and additional apps and services, the HTC Amaze 4G is excellent at keeping customers informed, connected and entertained using its gorgeous 4.3-inch qHD super LCD multi-touch display. The powerful handset will also include NFC capabilities for wireless searching, information sharing and, in the future, mobile payments. Samsung Galaxy S II T-Mobile today also revealed additional details about the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 Processor with 1.5 GHz dual CPUs, running on Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) and NFC enabled, the Galaxy S II will offer T-Mobile customers speedy access to their favorite movies, TV shows, websites, games, applications and more. The smartphone also acts as a mobile entertainment center with quick and easy access to thousands of premium movies and TV shows through Netflix®, T-Mobile TV in Mobile HD2 , Samsung Media Hub and YouTube ®. The Galaxy S II rich entertainment features and experience are further enhanced with a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus touch screen —the largest screen available on a T-Mobile smartphone. With DLNA compatibility and HDMI out, this media powerhouse also offers the ability to view content on a compatible HD TV. T-Mobile Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot The Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot is T-Mobile’s fastest mobile hotspot, providing access to T-Mobile’s 4G (HSPA+ 42) network for up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices including iPads, music players, gaming consoles, laptops, cameras and eReaders, among other devices, all from virtually anywhere. Manufactured by Huawei, this sleek and ultra-portable on-the-go network hub weighs just 3.88 ounces, making it easy to slip into a pocket, backpack or purse. Whether staying connected on the go with colleagues and clients or providing a family Internet hub at a vacation spot or in the car, the T-Mobile Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot is a device that uniquely complements the company’s existing lineup of mobile broadband devices on America’s Largest 4G network. As an added benefit, the Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot comes equipped with an SD card slot that accommodates up to 32GB of expandable memory, enabling customers to share and save photos, documents, videos and more with their family and friends also connected to the Mobile HotSpot. The Sonic 4G also features an OLED display to show signal strength, number of devices connected, number of unread text messages, connectivity to the internet, battery level and network connection type. Availability The HTC Amaze 4G and Galaxy S II are expected to be available in an exclusive online pre-sale via www.T-Mobile.com beginning Oct. 10 and are expected to be available at T-Mobile retail stores and select dealers nationwide starting Oct. 12. The HTC Amaze 4G is expected to cost $259.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate card with a two-year service agreement and qualifying Classic voice and data plan. The Galaxy S II is expected to cost $229.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate card with a two-year service agreement and qualifying Classic voice and data plan. The T-Mobile Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot is expected to be available in October at T-Mobile retail stores and online at www.T-Mobile.com. T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 4G network, including increased speeds, not available everywhere. See coverage details at http://www.t-mobile.com. 1 Based on average download speeds on T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ 42 Mbps network in four major markets. 2 Mobile HD TV can deliver a bit rate of 800kbps and 16:9 resolution; the bit rate and resolution you experience will vary based on many factors, e.g., programming, network connection, and device.

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T-Mobile reveals Galaxy S II launch date and price

Project WOW

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/26 18:32 Posted in News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

Today’s post is contributed by  Edward Hartwell Goose of PA Consulting, who is working on an App for the UK’s Met Office  to report everyone's favorite bit of small talk, the weather. W e hope you find the discussion of his team’s experience using App Engine illuminating . The UK’s Met Office  is one of the world’s leading organisations in weather forecasting, providing reports throughout the day for the UK and the rest of the world. The weather information they provide is consumed by a variety of industries from shipping to aircraft, and powers some of the UK’s leading media organisations, such as the BBC. Although the Met Office is the biggest provider of weather data, they aren’t the only ones collecting information. Thousands of enthusiasts worldwide collect their own weather data, from a wide variety of weather stations – either simple temperature sensors or highly sophisticated stations that rival the Met Office’s own equipment. The question of course is: how do you harness the power of this crowd? Enter the Weather Observations Website The Met Office and our team from PA Consulting worked together to answer this question late last year. The end result was The Weather Observations Website , or “ WOW ” for short. In the 3 months since launch on the 1st June 2011, WOW has recorded 5.5 million weather reports from countries throughout the world. Furthermore, we can retrieve current reports in sub second times, providing a real time map of worldwide weather. We haven’t got the whole globe covered just yet and the UK carries the most sites, but most countries in Western Europe are reporting. We also have reports from a medley of countries throughout the world, from Mauritius, Brazil and as far away as New Zealand. We even have one site reporting at regular intervals in Oman  (it’s hot!). Better yet, as a development team of 2, since launch, we’ve spent almost no time at all doing anything but casual monitoring of WOW. No one carries a pager, and the one time we did have problems (we underestimated demand, and our quota ran out), I was able to upgrade the quota in a minute or so. And I did it from my sofa. On my phone. How good is that? WOW – Showing Live Temperature Data Across Europe Lessons Learn t Building for App Engine We learnt a lot building WOW. A huge amount in fact. And we’d love to share our insights with you. We’d also love to tell you what we love about App Engine - and why you should use it too. And so you know we’re honest – we’ll tell you what we don’t like too! Firstly – the good stuff. We think App Engine is a fantastic tool for prototyping and any team working in an agile environment. We’re big fans of SCRUM  at PA Consulting, and App Engine was a dream to work with. Compared to some of our colleagues working with difficult build procedures and environments, our full release procedure never took more than 5 minutes. Better yet, App Engine’s deployment tools all hook up with ANT  and CruiseControl  (our continuous build system), allowing us to run unit tests and deploy new code on every check-in to our code repository. This allowed us as developers to get on with what we do best: develop! The APIs are great too. The documentation is fantastic and is regularly updated. We use all but the Channel API at the moment (sadly, it uses Google Talk Infrastructure behind the scenes and this gets blocked by some corporate environments). If I could offer any advice to a budding App Engine developer it would be to thoroughly read the documentation, and place the following three questions and their solutions at the forefront of everything you do:         1. Can I do it in the background? – Task Queue API         2. Can I use the low-level API? – Datastore API         3. Can I cache the result? – Memcache API These three principles have given WOW the performance it has, and will allow it to scale effectively over the coming years. We’ve got some big changes coming over the next couple of months too that should provide even higher performance as well as exciting new features. Future Developments So, how about improvements App Engine could make? There are definitely a few, although how important they are will depend on the problems you’re trying to solve. To begin with, improvements to some of the non technical elements are needed before App Engine becomes truly mainstream. Needing a credit card to pay is a showstopper for some organisations. Backup and restore is also missing, unless you implement it yourself. This is perfectly possible, but can add significant man days to your development effort if your data structure is complex and fast changing. We also struggled with how to estimate quota to begin with too. One of the brilliant features of App Engine is how easy it is to spool up (and down) new instances to deal with demand. Unfortunately, this also means it can be quite easy to accidentally  spool up too many instances and burn quota quickly. Although this has never affected the actual data, it can cause an unpleasant spike in the amount of dollars spent. We also had a similar problem with a MapReduce job getting stuck overnight that caused a scare the next morning. Hopefully the new monitoring API should provide a bit more visibility of these issues as well as automatic email notifications to help catch these issues. Aside from that, other features will probably depend on the application you’re trying to build. Built in support for geo-queries would be invaluable for WOW. Currently we use an external library, but this adds some extra overhead on our development. Another common feature request is full text search which is essential for projects dealing with large text corpa. Both of these features would allow us to provide better search facilities for our users – for example search by site name or geographic location. These queries can be implemented in App Engine as it is now, but achieving optimal performance and optimal cost are difficult problems that we struggle to complete ourselves. Final Thoughts Overall, we’re really impressed by App Engine. The App Engine team regularly releases new versions, and although it does have limitations it has allowed us to concentrate on what really matters to us – the weather. We know WOW will scale without any problems, and we don’t have to worry about any of the hardware configuration or system administration that can easily consume time. Our small team of developers spends all of their time understanding the business problems and improving WOW. We’re really looking forward to taking WOW forward in the future, we hope you can join us: http://wow.metoffice.gov.uk . Edward Hartwell Goose ( @edhgoose ) Developer PA Consulting

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Why a Google antitrust investigation is a mistake

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/20 21:59 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

After years of suspicion and finger-pointing by competitors and would-be competitors, Google is finally coming under the scrutiny of federal antitrust regulators, with a Senate committee hearing scheduled to begin on Wednesday in Washington . Its critics say that the web giant has a monopoly in both search and search-related advertising, and that Google uses this market power — and the billions in cash it generates — to harm its competitors and to finance the company’s moves into new markets and services , giving it an unfair advantage. But the fact is that just like a similar federal investigation into Microsoft over a decade ago, subjecting Google to an antitrust inquisition is likely to be a massive waste of time and effort . The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Antitrust, which is entitled “ The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition? ,” is separate from the inquiry launched by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year , but the issues that are being investigated are fundamentally the same — namely, is Google simply a strong (and possibly even dominant) web player that is competing fairly, or is it using its market position to tip the balance in its favor and crush its competitors? After initially saying it wouldn’t testify before the committee, Google has sent chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt to give evidence, and others who have been asked to appear include Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and lawyer Thomas O. Barnett, a former federal Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. Is Google playing favorites in search? The testimony from Stoppelman in particular could be interesting, since Google has had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the restaurant-review site over the past year or so: after trying and failing to acquire the company in 2009, Google started including Yelp reviews in its Google Places service, but was slammed for doing this by Stoppelman. The search giant then removed Yelp reviews, and agreed to buy review-aggregation service Zagat . Google has been through something similar with group-buying service Groupon — it failed to acquire the company for $6 billion , and has been buying up other group-buying services to bulk up its own Google Offers business. One thing that Yelp’s CEO said about Google’s behavior could lead to some fairly pointed questions from the Senate committee. In an interview with The Telegraph , Stoppelman said that when he complained about Google scraping Yelp’s reviews, the company told him that if he didn’t like it, he could have his service’s results removed from Google’s entire search index altogether. To some, this might sound like an ultimatum — if you don’t play ball with Google and let your reviews be scraped, we’ll make sure you disappear from search. That sums up one of the core complaints about Google and its dominance. Because it controls an estimated 65 percent of the online search business, and because search is still one of the central ways in which people experience the web, the company has a huge amount of influence over the traffic that goes to websites and services like Yelp. And because the company doesn’t talk about how it ranks results — and tends instead to offer platitudes about its desire to help users find the best content and make the world a better place — there are all kinds of suspicions and conspiracy theories about how Google promotes certain companies and demotes others. Does Google use its monopoly power to enter new markets? To compound the problem, Google now plays in a lot more markets than just pure search, and some of those moves have effectively made it a competitor to companies like Yelp and Expedia, and to companies like Apple as well , thanks to its growing Android platform and operating system. In addition to companies like Zagat, Google has also acquired travel-information site ITA — which provides the data that services like Expedia rely on — and has agreed to acquire Motorola , which will give it control of thousands of mobile-technology related patents that it can use to bolster Android. So the charges are two-fold: one is that Google uses its dominance in search to steer users toward its own properties and services, and away from those of its competitors — instead of engaging in what some call “search neutrality,” by providing completely objective search results. The second is that Google uses the cash generated by its monopoly position in search and search-related advertising to fund money-losing businesses that compete with others, such as its Android business. Just as Microsoft used its monopoly on operating systems to promote its own products and services such as Internet Explorer, so Google tips the scales in its own favor, its critics say. This comparison to Microsoft is where the case gets the weakest, however — and the lessons learned from the software giant’s antitrust case (if any lessons were learned at all) suggest that a full-fledged investigation of Google would likely be a waste of both time and money. When it comes to abusing market power, being able to theoretically force computer vendors to put copies of your OS and links to all your related services on their PCs is significantly different from what Google is able to do: as the company often points out , no one is forced to use Google to do a search of the web if they don’t want to. Is Google disrupting others, or being disrupted? Not only that, but as Google has come to realize, the search business itself is changing rapidly. Now, social activity that occurs on networks like Facebook and Twitter drives huge amounts of traffic and influences behavior far more than a raw search arguably does — which is why Google has made repeated efforts to get into the social-web game, with Google+ its most recent attempt . It needs to be able to figure out the social signals that are occurring on these networks, which make both Facebook and Twitter competitors of sorts — or potential competitors. But despite its growth, Google+ is still far from being a dominant player, just as Android is far from being a dominant force in mobile. Supporters of the Microsoft antitrust trial might like to argue that it was a success, but what did it really accomplish? At most, it made Microsoft a little less aggressive, and tied it up in red tape and hearings for several years, which made it less able to adapt to the changes going on around it — and that was the real penalty. As one prominent study of the Microsoft case and other similar antitrust cases has argued, dominant players in the world of technology like Microsoft and AT&T are rarely unseated by governments or antitrust moves — in most cases, they are overtaken by the rapid changes in their industry, which disrupt them far faster and more completely than any government could. In every other market apart from search, Google is either an also-ran or a relatively minor player, despite its billions of dollars in ad money. And in search, its dominance arose from providing a service that was quantitatively better than others — one that neither companies nor individuals are forced to use — and it exists in a market with virtually no barriers to entry and a large and well-funded competitor. As even a former antitrust expert involved in the Microsoft case has argued, it’s going to be awfully tough to construct a compelling antitrust argument on that kind of shaky foundation. Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Mark Strozier Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro: Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial . Flash analysis: Steve Jobs Flash analysis: the tech startup investment environment, Q3 2011 Flash analysis: Collaborative consumption – a first look at the new web-sharing economy

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Why a Google antitrust investigation is a mistake

Google and Oracle Attempting Settlement Ahead of Trial

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/20 13:04 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

After spending more than one year of battling back and forth, Google and Oracle are in court, attempting to smooth things out. A quick primer – Oracle has accused Google of infringing on some of their Java software patents.  The CEO’s for both companies were in front of a magistrate yesterday, although much of the day was spent behind closed doors.  The two (Larry Page, Larry Ellison) were ordered to meet in court this week and, according to Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, should prepare to meet up until September 30. “It could be that they are truly making progress and need time to go back and look at the numbers,” Chris Renk, a patent attorney at Banner & Witcoff who isn’t involved in the case, said in a phone interview. “They may also be trying to show the judge presiding over the case, hey, we made a good faith effort at settlement talks.” A trial is scheduled to begin October 30th. Google and Oracle Attempting Settlement Ahead of Trial originally appeared on AndroidGuys . Follow us on Facebook and Twitter ! You May Also Enjoy… Oracle Trying to get 50% of Android’s ad Revenues The Latest Speculation on Oracle’s Suit Against Google Google’s Response to Oracle’s Suit

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Google and Oracle Attempting Settlement Ahead of Trial

Introducing Google Wallet

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/19 21:58 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

What did we tell you , Google Wallet is here today. In fact the Wallet app is pushing out right now to Sprint Nexus S owners through an OTA update. Currently Wallet is only available on the Nexus S, but expect more NFC enabled phones, and Google’s NFC sticker solution in the future; hopefully before the end of this year since Google is adding a $10 free bonus to the Google Prepaid Card if you set it up in Google Wallet before the end of the year. Video after the break. Read More… Visit TalkAndroid for android news , android guides , and much more! Introducing Google Wallet

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Introducing Google Wallet

Google gearing up developers for Ice Cream Sandwich

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/19 21:40 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

The official Android Developers Blog is getting ready for the Ice Cream Sandwich, ICS for short. SDK by providing helpful tips for developers. While the SDK isn’t yet available, various ways for developers to modify their honeycomb apps for ICS are detailed. Ice Cream Sandwich is coming, and with it, handsets will be able to install apps built on Honeycomb. We haven’t released the ICS SDK just yet, but you can start preparing your Honeycomb apps by thinking about how they should work on smaller screens. Stay tuned to the blog for more information about ICS as it nears release. ICS has got to be here any day now! In the meantime don’t forget to check out the unofficial ICS launcher . Hopefully that will help ease the anxiety. Visit TalkAndroid for android news , android guides , and much more! Google gearing up developers for Ice Cream Sandwich

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Google gearing up developers for Ice Cream Sandwich

Pictarine: pictures in the cloud

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/19 18:32 Posted in News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

Cross posted from the Google App Engine blog . Pictarine is a photo management web application, launched in 2010, that allows people to easily manage and share all of their photos from Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Pictarine developers Guillaume Martin and Maxime Rafalimanana have contributed the following post discussing their experiences using Google App Engine and Google Web Toolkit. From the start, we used Google technologies in developing Pictarine and we wanted to share our experience with them so far. In this post, we will shed some light on the weaknesses and strengths we found in Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Google App Engine. We will also discuss how we leveraged GWT to build a new technology that allows Pictarine to seamlessly display photos from the computer directly into the browser. The following diagram is an overview of how our application works. Building a mashup in the cloud with Google App Engine The Pictarine team is made of a web designer and two developers who previously worked mainly with Java based enterprise technologies and had a little experience with web technologies. When we started the project in early 2009, we were quite open on learning new languages like Python or Ruby, but when App Engine announced that Java would be supported, we were really excited to give Google App Engine a try. The first few months, learning about the App Engine environment was quite easy and dare I say fun. Testing our code on Google’s servers from Eclipse IDE was only one click away. So we built our first prototype fast and we quickly decided to adopt App Engine. Then we started to build the core of our application: the engine that uses the API from Flickr, Picasa, Facebook to fetch the users’ photos. This is where we hit the first limitations of App Engine. Most users have a lot of photos on these services and retrieving them can take some time. But App Engine has strict limits on how long a request should last: an outgoing HTTP request cannot last more than 10 seconds and cannot process a request for more than 30 seconds. So while building our architecture we found ourselves writing approximately one third of our code dealing with these limitations: paginating our requests, creating background tasks to store data in small batches, etc. In early 2010, when we launched our alpha version, everything went smoothly. We had some good press coverage and App Engine met our expectations in handling our first users. During 2010, we worked on implementing new features requested by our users, and during this period of time we were really impressed by the way App Engine evolved. Many of the limitations were lifted and great new features were added. We are now able to use Task Queues for requests that last up to 10 minutes, which we fully use to sync our users’ photos and albums. One of the features we like the most is the Channel API, a push notification system that allows us to instantly show a photo in every connected browser as soon as it is uploaded. App Engine is still not perfect but has greatly improved and when we see its roadmap, we are quite confident it will continue to improve. Building a fresh photo experience with Google Web Toolkit  When we started Pictarine, we wanted a fast, distraction free interface that would allow our users to focus on their photos. We wanted the interface to adapt to the screen resolution, displaying a lot of photos on large screens and fewer on small ones. We wanted it to be automatically updated when new comments or new photos are added. We wanted a web application. As we eliminated Flash quite quickly (based on our user experience…) we started to look at tools to build HTML/CSS/Javascript applications. We settled quickly on GWT: while coding in Java, with all the tools we are used to (even the debugger), we could produce optimized Javacript that would run in every browser! When we started with GWT, it was already 3 years old, so we had few complaints about it. The main issue was that we had to always keep in mind that the Java code we produced was ultimately translated to Javascript. So some Java methods, such as the Reflection API, are not allowed. Another thing that was not obvious to us when we started with GWT was that a java developer needs an intimate knowledge of HTML/CSS if he/she wants to go beyond the basic user interface provided by the GWT widgets. What we really like about GWT in our architecture is the ability to share code between client and server: we can use the same Photo or Album class on the client and the server and the GWT RPC system allows us to automatically share the same Java object on both side. We can also have the same data validation code on both sides: we can alert the user immediately on errors and still validate the data on the server just in case. Another great feature we like about GWT is its handling of internationalisation. From the beginning we wanted to build a website available for all Internet users, so supporting English as well as our native language (French) was almost obligatory. Fortunately, GWT makes it really easy to generate centralized localization files so that we just have to translate. Finally, to illustrate how great Javascript generation is, when IE9 came out, we waited a few weeks for GWT to support it and our application was compatible after a recompile! Of course, the IE9 team also did a good job with their HTML5/CSS3 engine. Building an universal uploader  After the launch of our alpha in 2010, our users were able to see and share their photos from Flickr, Picasa, Facebook. But they still had to put their photos on these websites first before coming to Pictarine. This limitation quickly became the first request on our feedback system. We needed to let our users do everything from Pictarine, including uploading photos. Uploading many photos from a website is still not a trivial process. Most websites choose Flash to allow users to upload multiple files at once, but our experience with it was that it often crashed after a while. Some use Java applets, but they are never well integrated and always look odd. At Pictarine we decided to tackle this problem by using Java Applet for their stability across all platforms but without using it to render photos or folders. We have built a technology that uses the GWT RPC mechanism to talk to a Java Applet: photos, upload progression are rendered in HTML/CSS and the applet takes care of photos resizing and uploading. Sharing a photo from a camera is now a one-step process. This technology also allows users to browse their local files directly in their browser and it is fully integrated in our design. We believe that this new use of Java applets can help blur the line between the Desktop and the Cloud by seamlessly integrating desktop files in any web application. In conclusion, we can say that we are really happy with the choices we made with App Engine and GWT. App Engine is a great service that perfectly handled the spike in traffic we saw right after articles on Mashable and Lifehacker were published. So we recommend it to every lean startup out there who loves developing in Java, Python or Go.

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Pictarine: pictures in the cloud

Google APIs Client Library for Java: now with OAuth 2.0

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/19 15:00 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

By Yaniv Inbar, Google APIs Client Team During Google I/O 2011 , we announced a major milestone by releasing the Beta version of the open source Google APIs Client Library for Java . This release included service-specific libraries and samples for Google APIs , built on our new client library generation infrastructure . Since that version 1.4 launch, we’ve been comfortable enough with the stability and features of the library that we want you to start building real production Java 5, Android , and Google App Engine applications and send us your feedback . Today we are announcing a new milestone for the Java client library. With the version 1.5 release, we’re making available the open source Google OAuth Client Library for Java in Beta, with support for both OAuth 1.0a and OAuth 2.0 . OAuth is an open standard for allowing a client application to securely gain access to a user’s private data stored on Google without ever asking for their password. Most Google APIs support OAuth 2.0, and we want to encourage adoption of OAuth 2.0 more widely on the web. That’s why we built this library to work with any API on the web — not just Google APIs — that comply with the OAuth specifications. Our current implementation of OAuth 2.0 is based on draft 10 , but we will update it soon to the final draft, once it becomes an official standard. We encourage you to try it and send us your feedback . Here is an example of how easy it is to use the OAuth 2.0 library to make a request using the library for the Google+ API (check out more samples ): // Set up the HTTP transport and JSON factory HttpTransport httpTransport = new NetHttpTransport (); JsonFactory jsonFactory = new JacksonFactory (); // Set up OAuth 2.0 access of protected resources // using the refresh and access tokens, automatically // refreshing the access token when it expires GoogleAccessProtectedResource requestInitializer = new GoogleAccessProtectedResource (accessToken, httpTransport, jsonFactory, clientId, clientSecret, refreshToken); // Set up the main Google+ class Plus plus = new Plus (httpTransport, requestInitializer, jsonFactory); // Make a request to access your profile and display it to console Person profile = plus.people(). get ( “me” ).execute(); System . out .println( “ID: ” + profile.getId()); System . out .println( “Name: ” + profile.getDisplayName()); System . out .println( “Image URL: ” + profile.getImage().getUrl()); System . out .println( “Profile URL: ” + profile.getUrl()); Finally, we are making available a Beta version of the open source Google HTTP Client Library for Java . This is the common HTTP client library that the above two libraries are built on, and is built to work with any API on the web. It features a pluggable HTTP transport abstraction that allows it to work seamlessly on any of the supported Java platforms, support for efficient JSON and XML data models for parsing and serialization, and a pluggable JSON and XML parser so you can use whatever works best for you. Please try it and send us your feedback . We are looking forward to finding out what you can build using these libraries on Google APIs. Please let us know how we can make the libraries easier to use and better suited for your needs. As we announced at Google I/O 2010 , we’ve been developing APIs that can provide descriptions of themselves via metadata . This new technique makes it easier to create and maintain client libraries that support more languages, work with more APIs, and are easier to use than ever before. This post announces one of several recent major milestones for our client libraries. Yaniv Inbar is a Senior Software Engineer and Technical Lead of the Google APIs Client Libraries & Tools team. He is the lead developer of the open source Google APIs Client Library for Java. Yaniv has worked at Google for 5 years, and has a total of 12 years industry experience as a software engineer. Posted by Scott Knaster , Editor

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Google APIs Client Library for Java: now with OAuth 2.0

Boeing Goes With Android For Their 787 Dreamliner’s Entertainment System

By Shrenik Vikam  |  2011/09/19 11:34 Posted in Android, News, Shrenik's Shared  |  Comments (0)

Boeing is going with Android to provide video, music, and airline specific apps in their new 787 Dreamliner. According to Mark Larson, a technical manager at Boeing, all Dreamliners in production are being outfitted with Android servers and touchscreens. Panasonic has built the first 787 Android touchscreen, but Larson adds “a lot of the larger screens (for business and first class) will be non-touch because you can’t reach them, although they’ve also got a prototype of gesturing”. The range of screen sizes go from 7-inches to 17-inches who Panasonic and Thales hold production on in the new 787s. The is some awesome news for Android and certainly to boast some advertising to who’s cool in the multimedia world (take that iPad). Hit up the break to check out some pictures of the hardware. Read More… Visit TalkAndroid for android news , android guides , and much more! Boeing Goes With Android For Their 787 Dreamliner’s Entertainment System

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Boeing Goes With Android For Their 787 Dreamliner’s Entertainment System