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?

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.

On the contrary, the iPhone App Store is still far ahead, having 180.000 apps and counting. But it wouldn’t surprise me if we see a statistically significant decrease of the gap between iPhone apps and Android apps by the end of this year.

What do you think?

Google believes that developers should have their choice of tools and technologies to create applications.
Andy Rubin, Google VP of Engineering, Android

In a blog post today, Andy Rubin announced that Google is partnering with Adobe to bring the full web, great applications, and developer choice to the Android platform.

On the other hand, Foursquare now has a new person leading the Android app development, Mark Wyszomierski. There are already some nice new features added to the latest foursquare app like adding friends, managing friend requests and global search.

What do you think? Who will eventually win? Foursquare or Gowalla?

• Steve Jobs showed up saying they want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product.
• There was a little talk about the success of the iPod and the iPhone over the last years with some historical and data reference. Plus, saying that Apple is a mobile devices company, that’s what we do.
• After wondering if there is room for a third category device in the middle of a laptop and/or a smartphone, Steve just said iPad.
• From that time and on it was all about applauding and embracing this new magical thing called the iPad.

We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts — we want to make the best tech, but have them be intuitive. It’s the combination of these two things that have let us make the iPad.

iPad’s main features inlcude:

• 9.7-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
• Wi-Fi + 3G model
• 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
• Built-in speakers
• Microphone

You may find out more about the iPad here. However, as you may have noticed, there a few missing features.

If you ask me, I was getting ready to catch up with the event along with gdgt’s and engadget’s live coverage. I was ready to listen to whatever Steve was ready to say. I mean, we were all ready for the best tablet pc ever, right? Well, the first impression of the iPad was like “hmmm.. it’s not bad”. Not that I don’t think this is an exceptional mobile device. Maybe I was overwhelmed by all the buzz going on about the Apple Tablet. I was waiting for something truly innovative and outstanding.

The User Interface was awesome, as usual in all Apple products. Could be better though. The whole idea of downloading the same apps you download for your iPhone was a bit surprising and also a good way to endorse the power of the iPhone App Store. Everything else seemed to be quite elegant.

Anyhow, Apple’s iPad has definitely killed the netbook market and we are about to witness, as I have said before, a change in personal computing in the years to come shifting the Personal Computer (P.C.) towards the mobile devices.

Don’t forget to check out this real-time look at twitter mentions of terms related to Apple’s product launch earlier today.

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

A few hours ago I installed Evernote beta for Android. You can download it directly to your phone here (make sure you have checked the box that says “Unknown sources” in the settings first). Well, the first screen that you get when you first launch Evernote on an Android phone is a simple login form. After that the magic unveils.

After a few hours of use I can give you 3 main reasons why you should try out Evernote beta for Android.

• Note everything!
  The first one is that with Evernote you can take notes of any type! Not just text notes, but also pictures, voice notes and even pdf files. There are quite a lot of notepads, todo lists and task managers in the Android Market with various features including advanced notifications, great user interface and even encryption. For my text notes and todo lists I mainly use Astrid which is a life saver for me. Astrid also supports syncing with Remember The Milk. Evernote is not exactly a todo list but you could use it as if it was. OI Notepad is another Android app which supports voice notes and encryption. Evernote combines some of the best features in these apps, but still has work to do.
• Your notes in the cloud.
  The sync feature between many devices is perfect. You can capture a picture with your phone and then access it from anywhere.
• The icon rules!
  The icon’s look and feel is awesome! It is one of the best icons I ‘ve ever seen in the Android platform. Just this.

There are also a few video tutorials and some very interesting user tips here that are worth watching.

However there are a few drawbacks in this current release. (Remember this is a beta release). In my opinion, the most major drawback of all is the lack of speed. I am aware that every note is synced to the cloud but speed is very important for an application like this, let alone a mobile application like this. Except for this, I believe the whole user interface needs a lot of improvement. It needs icons above each menu option and maybe a few custom components making it more evernoted. Not everything has to be Android-native. Maybe just the homescreen’s search textfield and button.

Compared to the iPhone version, the beta Android version still has work to do. Anyhow, Evernote beta for Android looks promising and I can’t wait to see how the first final version will look like. What do you think?