Elephantsquared. » 2010

Google I/O 2010: Day 2. Hint: android.

George T — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:15:51 +0000

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?

Google I/O 2010: Day 1. Hint: open standards.

George T — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:59:23 +0000

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.

2010: The year we learned how to ‘check-in’

George T — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:36:08 +0000

After the iPhone, the Android and the Palm version it’s time for the Blackberry version of the well-known-and-soon-to-be-the-next-big-thing-in-2010 Foursquare! Yes its true, all the blackberry users can now access foursquare through a beautiful app from their own Blackberry. It’s only been a couple of weeks since Foursquare launched its Palm version and decided to go Global. I guess this is the right time to say a line from ‘Toy Story’ where Buzz (yes, Lightyear) said “no time to loose”.

Our BlackBerry app is still in beta so bear with us as we add new features. In the near future look for the the ability to add friends and view nearby tips… stay tuned!

Great work is been done over there at Foursquare. Both the iPhone and the Android version are quite excellent mobile apps driven by the need to check-in! I can’t tell for the Palm version which I haven’t used so far. Who would know that the year we learned how to ‘tweet‘ (aka 2009) would be followed by the year we learned how to ‘check-in‘ (aka 2010)? After hours, days and weeks of usage (of the Foursquare app), talking and coffee with friends, Foursquare naturally became one of the most (if not the most) desirable/likable mobile application. Location data seems to be quite important these days. No wonder why Foursquare is expanding so fast lately.

Have you tried foursquare yet? What do you think of it?

Google’s Happy New year explosive message

George T — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:01:11 +0000

It turns out that the countdown that google.com showed every time you pressed the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button over the last few weeks, which was ticking down the seconds, suddenly when the year was 2010 it turned into an explosive Happy New Year message floating over Google’s homepage!

And a couple of hours later Google’s special new year’s Doodle for 2010 showed up.

2009 has been an amazing year for Google, including many UI changes inside Google products, new programming languages, a lot of Android madness and last not but not least a true Google-branded bleeding-edge device coming up in a few days. I can’t wait to see what’s next for Google in 2010.

Happy New Year to all! :)

Foursquare, Gowalla and Rally. How much location can you handle?

George T — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:23:27 +0000

Foursquare, Gowalla and Rally. If you are not familiar with these three (3) apps I think it’s time you change this, because 2010 is going to be all about location, location and location. These apps launched in 2009 and are about to get crazy in the following years. All these location-based social applications are excellent pieces of software that converge to the provision of one of the most valuable type of information nowadays, that is location. It occurs to me that location is more like a synonym to the year 2010 and an indistinguishable part of the new era of the mobile industry.

The first one (foursquare) which is available on both iPhone App Store and Android Market is the one that, in my opinion, is the predominant candidate for this convergence. The second one (Gowalla), looks a lot like foursquare but outcomes foursquare when it comes to the user interface (for the time being..) which is definitely far more attractive. However both of them can be considered as the best location-based social app. The latter (rally) is the newest member of the “location” family and it claims that it brings real friends together by utilizing some unique concepts like the “home” location. I didn’t have the chance to use rally but to what I ‘ve heard, rally is taking a long shot here by refreshing/filtering your social network and I am sure it will be discussed a lot in the near future.

Do you like/use/prefer/enjoy/dislike/etc. any of these apps? The sure thing is, we ‘ll see more apps like these coming up and there is nothing you can do to stop this. :P