Google’s latest platform versions breakdown came out 3 days later this time. The expected time was last Tuesday. The good thing though is that Android 2.x now seems to handle well the ‘F’ word (aka ‘Fragmentation’). Since mid-June, Android 2.x has grown from 50.3% to 54.9% outgrowing earlier Android versions like 1.5 and 1.6.

In addition, on a post about a month ago regarding Android platform versions, I mentioned  it would be nice to have a historical analysis of this data. I was glad to see that the latest platform versions stats came along with a nice stacked line graph providing a history of the relative number of active Android devices running different versions of the Android platform.

Each dataset in the timeline is based on the number of Android devices that accessed Android Market within a 14-day period ending on the date indicated on the x-axis.

It looks like that Android 2.x is taking over control. What version are you running?

Ok, so this is so cool I just had to blog about it. Using some departure data fetched from the TfL API along with a bit of maths and magic, Matthew Somerville (with helpful hinderances from Frances Berriman and James Aylett) made a live train map for the London Underground. Yes, that’s right, this map shows all trains on the London Underground network.

The yellow pins are stations, the red pins trains. The trains move in approximately real time.

Apart from that you can also stalk all trains currently on approach to a particular station via this live train map.

Note that this was done in only a few hours at Science Hackday.

Remember those quick start templates Google added to Wave back in April? Well, time has come for some official Google Wave tutorials covering 3 basic tasks like planning an event, drafting documents and brainstorming. So the next time you visit Wave pay some attention to that link, under the quick start templates, titled “Tutorials: train me in the Wave way …” that brings you to this question: “What do you want to master?“. This will create a new wave pre-loaded with some content for you along with some instructions in order to get a quick grasp of using Google Wave.

By the way, Google Wave is now available for everyone as part of Google Labs. Just visit wave.google.com to try these tutorials for yourself.

As suspected, Google’s latest platform versions breakdown came out ~2 weeks after the latest report. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the platform versions report will be updated on a more steady frequency from now on, that is every 2 weeks. If so, it would be nice to have a historical analysis of this data.

Note: This data is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within a 14-day period.

Today’s platform versions report shows Android 2.1 gaining significant ground on other platform versions, rising from 37.2% to 45.1%. Incredibly, now almost half Android devices out there are running Android 2.1. It is also notable that Android 1.5 dropped from 34.1% to 27.6%.

But I guess that the Android “fragmentation” problem will probably be there for quite some time yet. Especially now with the forthcoming Froyo release possibly coming this or the next week.

Update: There has been some interesting buzz on Android “fragmentation” since Reto Meier made a post about it. Read more here.

The web browser is undeniably the most important piece of software on your computer. These days much of what you do with your computer happens in your browser. Today, Google Chrome leaves beta on Mac and Linux. Just in time! I recently made Google Chrome (beta by then) my default browser. So, that made me feel better about my decision.

How about you? Which browser do you prefer/use?

You can now download Chrome from google.com/chrome.

[ illustration by Christoph Niemann ]

I mean, having an Android overdose was expected today, but this?! Oh, I bet this day made some Apple fanboys jealous. So, the second day at the Google I/O 2010 was about 2 things; Android and Google TV. This time, live-blogging and live-waving was not enough so Matt Cutts started live-buzzing here along with the event.

Android

Yes, Froyo is out. (Android Gingerbread release currently planned for Q4, 2010). Froyo release includes major updates to these areas:

• Speed
• APIs and Services
• Browser
• Android Market

Three of the most striking changes there include over-the-air application installation, remote music streaming and the ability to turn your Android phone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

Except for that, Android 2.2 aims towards improved overall performance that includes (and is not limited to):

• Performance of the browser that has been enhanced using the V8 engine, which enables faster loading of JavaScript-heavy pages.
• Dalvik VM performance boost: 2x-5x performance speedup for CPU-heavy code over Android 2.1 with Dalvik JIT.

Google TV

Google TV is the second big thing revealed on the second day at the Google I/O this year.

Google TV is a new experience made for television that combines the TV you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet.

If you ask me, the closest thing to Google TV is Boxee box. Have you tried Boxee?

As expected, Google I/O keynote was thrilling. Google made some major announcements regarding the future of the web. The event began at 9 a.m. PDT, that is around 7 p.m. here in Greece. The keynote started with VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra taking the stage followed by VP of Product Management Sundar Pichai. It was all about HTML5 and open standards.

First and foremost, the VP8 codec. Last summer Google acquired On2 for its video compression technology. Today, Google announced VP8 codec as part of a new project named WebM. By the way, VP8 is now open-source.

The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.

One of the most important things about this is that the WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors! Read more here.

…including Microsoft!

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

What’s Great About WebM

• Very high quality video
• Great video playback performance, even on older computers
• 100% free and open to everyone
• Supported on popular video sites like YouTube

Later on, Adobe shared some HTML5 love on the stage.

The keynote continued with the Chrome Web Store. The Chrome Web Store opens later this year.

Users will be able to discover a broad range of amazing web apps while developers will be able to reach millions of new users.

Next was Wave. Google Wave has been opened up to everyone as of today (also part of Google Apps as of today).

The keynote ended with an extensive reference to App Engine, GWT and some great things coming from Google + VMWare.

VMWare has been working with Google to bring an open-source layer for the cloud

You can watch the Google I/O 2010 Keynote online here.

I am guessing Day 2 will be all about Android. Woo hoo!

P.S. By the time I am writing this Google Buzz APIs come into play. Take a look here.

So, Square has arrived at another phase of rollout these days. It is now available to everyone who is interested in mobile payments. You should know that it works on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android devices.

In case you are not familiar with Square, Square is an application that allows anyone to accept payment cards using their mobile device. This is done with a tiny card reader that plugs into the headphone jack on the device. Unfortunately, Square is unavailable outside U.S. for the time being.

Square intends to bring immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the financial world. We want to enable all people to accept payments instantly, with access to all the information they need, in a way that feels amazing and engaging.  When you think about it, paying someone is just another form of communication, an exchange of value that deserves to have the same design and product considerations that every social service prides itself on maintaining.

Square is, in my opinion, a very interesting and innovative technology and I am really looking forward to see how this turns out. Have you tried Square? What do you think?

You can follow @Square on Twitter.

Do you recall the Native Client technology revealed last fall by Google? Well, today Google released a developer preview of the Native Client SDK.

Native Client is an open-source technology for running native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps.

With the Native Client SDK -which is available under Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux- you can build web apps that seamlessly use native C/C++ code to perform high-performance computation, render 2D/3D graphics, play audio, and respond to mouse and keyboard events. If you are interested in building Native Client apps, visit code.google.com/p/nativeclient-sdk.

Check out the Getting Started guide for more instructions for building and running the examples.

Outdated plugins are a major source of security and stability risk for web users, and some studies have put the proportion of users with older versions as high as 80%.

Just visit mozilla.com/plugincheck/ to run a plugin check for your browser.

You should also check out SecBrowsing, another powerful tool that helps you keep your browser and plugins up-to-date. If you are using Google Chrome, there is a SecBrowsing extension that alerts you if plugins are out-of-date.