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?

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.

Apparently, Android is trying out this new Feedback Experiment inside the Developer Console. Until now this feedback widget is periodically not showing up and the links shown there are not fully functional. According to this, Android developers will be able to view feedback for any app by typing its package name. That sounds pretty interesting, huh?

The links there -which obviously don’t work for now- look like this

http://market.android.com/publish/Home#SHOW_FEEDBACK:PACKAGE_OVERVIEW:com.android.browser

Update: I just saw that the search box in this Feedback Experiment is an autocomplete/autosuggest text field. Awesome!

Keep in mind though that this release requires Android 2.0 or above. It has been tested only on Motorola Droid and the Nexus One. And there is high probability to cause your phone to crash or make it temporarily unresponsive. You can still test Fennec on you desktop if you want to.

Weave Sync

There is an experimental version of Weave that is compatible with this build.

If you want to test Weave on your android phone, head over to mozillalabs.com/weave and click on “Experimental Version”. Read more on this on Vladimir’s blog post.

We’ve created a temporary Google Group for feedback about this pre-alpha build.

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.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Gowalla released a beta version for Android. Now it’s time for the first release which is available at the Android Market. Just go to ‘Market’ and search for ‘Gowalla’. Obviously this is a slightly better version than the beta one. (Note: I had to uninstall the beta version first because I kept getting an installation error ‘Package file was not signed correctly’)

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?

[ photo via dkrobinson ]

If you are into mobiles, gadgets and all the latest tech going on out there (especially Android), it’s almost inevitable you didn’t notice these series of short films, that came out lately, documenting the making of Nexus One. They are split up in five parts, each one containing a bit of the life cycle of a Nexus One ranging from basic concept and design details to everyday using of this superphone. The five parts can be summarized to this:

• Episode 1: Concept & Design
  
• Episode 2: Display & 3D Framework
  
• Episode 3: Testing
  
• Episode 4: Manufacturing
  
• Episode 5: Day One

All of them are brilliant! I have included here one of my favorites, that is Testing. Enjoy!

A couple of days ago, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. If you have no idea what Weave is you should check it out here. Weave aims to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences, by syncing bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs across your platforms. So, in short you can leave your home computer and access your, lets say, browsing history via your mobile phone.

For the time being such capabilities existed in the iPhone but only limited to the bookmark syncing via MobileMe features or via apps like Instapaper.
There is also Google Web History which merged with Google Bookmarks last summer and now has some great features like viewing your web activity, searching the full text of pages you’ve visited, getting personalized search results and more. However these features are only available if you install the latest Google Toolbar and there is no immediate access via your mobile phone.
So, Weave is here to change this. You don’t have to install any toolbar and now that there is an API out there the possibilities are numerous. Mozilla already released a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs including a web-based Weave client, an iPhone Weave client, a commandline Weave client and a WebOS Weave client.

Now that Weave API is out I would love to see a Weave client for my Android phone along with some import/export features in Weave or even better some Ubiquity commands to interact with the Weave.

By the way, does anyone know when the latest Ubiquity version will be available for Firefox 3.6?

While Apple was announcing the game-changer iPad, Nokia was also letting us peak behind the curtain of future mobile technologies. It’s about a technology named “Mobile Radar” which seems quite promising with endless possibilities.

In the video shown below, you’ll see researcher Jani Ollikainen use his hand to adjust the music player’s volume, without ever touching the hardware. Even with an object in his way (like your pants pocket or even a wood door), the radar works without a hitch. In the second demo, you’ll see fellow researchers Terhi Rautiainen and Risto Kaunisto measure the distance, speed, and direction of a human walking.

[ via - photo via 88941558@N00 ]