Welcome MeeGo

MeeGo is a Linux-based platform that is capable of running on multiple computing devices, including mobile handsets, netbooks, tablets, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems. 

In February this year, Intel and Nokia announced joining their existing open source initiatives (Moblin and Maemo respectively) to form MeeGo project. MeeGo is hosted at the Linux foundation.

Why do I take notice? The following attributes of MeeGo makes it real interesting

• Aimed at Developers and other OEM manufactures - a proven product placement strategy (ask Android)
• Lowers complexity for targeting multiple device segments 
• Enables all players of the industry to participate in the evolution of the software platform and to build their own assets on MeeGo
• Offers differentiation abilities through user experience customization
• Offers a compliance program to certify software stacks and application portability
• Offers a compliance program to certify software stacks and application portability
• Supports multiple app stores

It's too early to say whether MeeGo can pose serious challenge to Android. Nonetheless it's good enough a platform for IT leaders to take notice.

More on MeeGo:

Any experience on MeeGo? Please leave a comment.

Adopting enterprise mobility using Smartphones

With ample help from my colleagues Basav, Jayendra and Dipen, I compiled my first study on role of Smartphone in enterprise IT. Check out the first draft:

Adopting enterprise mobility using Smartphones

View more presentations from Lalatendu Das.

Comments are welcome.

Andriod 2.0 on Motorola Droid

Code named as 'Eclair', Android 2.0 has some interesting improvements.

Check out the video on new features:



Motorola launches Droid on November 6th (first smart-phone running Android 2.0), with some nifty features such as:
- inbuilt app for gmail, facebook
- Google navigation
- plug in for flash 10



Would Droid be the iPhone killer?

Mobile application development - made easy!

After my fair share of procrastination, I finally succumbed to the charm of mobile application development. However, as the initial enthusiasm subsided, the reality struck..i.e where to start? Should I start learning Objective C?!@# malloc’s and calloc’s are certainly not my forte. Should I brush-up Java? or JavaME? will it work on iphone?

I chose the easier path out. I set-out to find cross platform tools, which can accelerate native mobile application development. To my surprise there are quite a few tools out there catering to wannabe mobile developers like me.

Here are my favorite picks:

Rhodes –

My Ruby developer friends will love me for sharing this (if not using it already). Developed by Rhomobile – free under GPL v3, easy pricing for commercial usage. The framework is referred to as "Ruby on Rails" of mobile development. It provides MVC framework (Model with – RhoSync & View and Control using Rhodes). Provides deep cross platform support, with application once developed can easily be deployed to iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian(! if still stays afloat after Nokia dumps it) and 'of-course' Android.

For iPhone fans: Support for native iPhone features is the best in the breed. Rhodes supports geolocation, camera, contacts, accelerometer, SMS, push, road map and audio / video capture.

One more interesting stuff, use of rhohub for distributed development and easy packaging of applications.

Phonegap –

By far the most widely used cross platform framework in the mobile world. Phonegap is developed by Nitobi – free under MIT license. Developing applications in Phonegap is as simple as it gets. All you need to know is Javascript and HTML. Provides cross platform support, portable to iPhone, Blackberry, and Android.

Provides decent support for native iPhone features such as geolocation, accelerometer and contacts.

Downside: you still may need to learn Objective C for executing server side action. Off-late Apple appstore has rejected some of the Phonegap developed apps under pretext of compatibility issues with future iPhone OS and the use of unsupported 3rd party APIs.

Titanium –

Developed by Appcelerator – free access to beta version – licensing is evolving. Easy to develop application using Javascript and HTML. Provides some sense of cross platform support, with option to port applications to iPhone and Android only.

Titanium provides decent support for native iPhone features such as geolocation, accelerometer, contacts and photos. Better integration with underlying apple libraries enables more standards compliant results.

Corona –

Developed by Ansca – free access to beta version – licensing is evolving. Uses Lua scripting language to develop applications. As of now, Corona enables application development for iPhone only.

Corona provides access to iphone file systems. Support for other native iPhone features such as camera and accelerometer is still under development.

Corona provides built in support for flash, hence has its advantages for development of two dimensional gaming applications.

As I make up my mind to take the plunge (leaning more towards Rhodes), please feel free to share your pick and experience on working with cross platform mobile development tools.

Augmented Reality

“The real world is way too boring for many people,” says Mr. Sánchez-Crespoa, project leader at Novarama, a game developer based in Barcelona. “By making the real world a playground for the virtual world, we can make the real world much more interesting.”

Welcome to the world of Augmented reality: a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data, where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

Though the concept of Augmented reality (AR) has been around since early 90's (term first introduced by Boeing Corp), it's only in recent past we are seeing a surge in interest for AR. In mobile computing and gaming software, AR is finally realizing a viable business model.

Austrian Company Mobilizy launched Wikitude.me in late 2008. Wikitude.me running on Andriod platform, provides information on 800,000 points of interest around the world on real time.

Earlier this month SPRXmobile, a dutch telecom company launched an Android application named 'Layer', which is being termed as the first AR browser. People in Amsterdam who download 'Layar' on their cellphones can look through the camera and see information about nearby restaurants, A.T.M.’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them. This information is provided by companies like Hyves, the Dutch social networking site, and ING, the financial services company. The businesses pay a fee to SPRXmobile for publishing their data.

See the video below on Layers.



Epilogue:

AR adoption is likely to increase in near future. I think what is key to success of AR adoption is the data quality and completeness. Big players like Nokia (owns Navteq - provider of map data and content)or Google can leverage this technology to bring in more and more value added services.

Alternate iPhone native application development platform

Ansca - a start-up company, launched a new iphone native application development platform named 'Corona'. Corona uses a scripting language named 'Lua' (more in line of Javascript/ActionScript).

So far, one of the entry barriers for new developers was the steep learning curve of Objective-C (on Cocoa/XCode). With Corona, we are likely to see many more first time developers developing native iphone apps. Happy browsing the AppStore !

Three reasons to bet on 'Android'

The humongous success of ‘iPhone’ has done enough to redefine the utility of ‘Smartphones’. While enterprise and consumers alike are betting big on future of mobile computing, it’s natural to expect fierce competition in the mobile software platform space. While veterans like Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry have already cornered a good deal of the mobile software market, the new generation platforms such as Android, iPhone (Cocoa), Brew and host of other Linux based platforms are beginning to challenge the old order. As enterprises moving towards mobile application development, the big question remains, which platform to bet on..

 Here are 3 reasons why I would bet on Android over other worthy competitors

1.      Open Handset Alliance – Android is backed by the heavyweights of the industry such as Google, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, China Mobile and NTT Docomo..to name a few. The backing of Open Handset Alliance (OHA) will certainly raise the entry barrier for any future competition

2.      Technical advantages – Open source, programming Java on Eclipse plugin (iPhone needs Objective C!!! on XCode IDE), can be developed on win/mac/Linux, runs natively (Blackberry needs special JVM). Along with the OS, you get host of other mobile applications such as an email client, SMS program, calendar and map applications..as bonus!   

3.      Positioning of Android – Shrewd marketing strategists as they are, Google is positioning Android in two parallel markets. With it’s leverage in OHA, there is a constant push for Android adoption by big players in both mobile handset manufacturing as well as mobile Operators. At the same time, as open source platform, it’s targeting consumer ‘first’. Eventually, when Android phones come to enterprise, it would come as consumer-purchased rather than enterprise-issued. On a related note, Google might extend Android to be a desktop OS..if and when such an event happens, the possibilities of cross platform application development would be huge..

All said and done, Android phones are yet to be launched in large scale (Currently being used exclusively on T-Mobile G1). The real test would come with it's application on more high-end phones in the hands of highly demanding consumers. However, as things stand, the future looks promising for Android.