Archive for the ‘Mobile Computing’ Category

Sony Erricson, Toshiba, Vodafone & 11 others join Open Handset Alliance

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

The Open Handset Alliance announced the joining of 14 additional companies yesterday. This includes the likes of Sony Erricson, Toshiba and Vodafone amongst others.

New members will either deploy compatible Android devices, contribute significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or support the ecosystem through products and services that will accelerate the availability of Android-based devices.

The new members will add to the momentum of Android device availability, providing developers with an even greater opportunity to deploy compelling applications that will reach a global audience. As a result, consumers around the world benefit from a superior mobile experience that features less expensive devices, more compelling services, rich Internet applications, and easier-to-use interfaces.

The complete list reads: AKM Semiconductor Inc., ARM, ASUSTek Computer Inc., Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International Inc., Huawei Technologies, Omron Software Co. Ltd, Softbank Mobile Corporation, Sony Ericsson, Teleca AB, Toshiba Corporation and Vodafone.

For more information visit the press release here.

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Android Stock Quote Application

Monday, November 24th, 2008

I got a chance to work some more on my pet project over the weekend (thanks to my wife and daughter). I started off with the idea of saving stock symbols to a portfolio. These would provide a high level picture of all stocks, their last traded price, change and movement (up/down) on one screen. These would auto-refresh when the app started. This resulted in creation of 2 tabs, “My Portfolio” and “Get Quote”.  The “Get Quote” tab would provide details about the stock quote. Also, added a feature to view quote details by just clicking on the symbol (linked the 1st and the 2nd tab).

Here is a 2-min demo of the app as it functions today. Here are a couple of screenshots:

Get Quote details for a single stockAdd stock symbols to your portfolio

Technically, what i have learnt so far is working with Android UI (TextView, AutoCompleteTextView, Button, ImageView, Tab, LinearLayout, RelativeLayout and TableLayout and when to use which, using span styles and better way of displaying error messages).

Now, only if i can get hold of a real Android phone……

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My First Android application

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

I started developing my first Android application last week. It is a Stock quote app that fetches real time stock quotes from www.webservicex.net . In it’s current form, it simply shows the quote information given a NYSE stock symbol. It’s hosted as an open source project on SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/androidstockquo/

I am planning to add new features like:

  1. Auto-refreshing quote information for top n symbols.
  2. Alerts based on symbols pricing going below or above certain thresholds.
  3. BSE/NSE (Indian) quotes.
  4. Real-time graphs depicting intra-day stock movement.

If you think any of these features (or any additional feature) would be useful to you on your Android enabled phone, please let me know. By the way, you can download this app free of cost at https://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=244087

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Android v/s iPhone

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

There is a lot of debate going on recently about which is a better mobile computing platform. Is it the iPhone or the Android? In my opinion, Android will emerge as a eventual winner. Here’s why:

  1. It’s developed on an open source platform (iPhone runs on a closed Cocoa platform thats runs on a scaled down version of OS X).
  2. It’s developed by a group of 30+ technology and mobile companies including Google, Intel, Ebay, Sprint, T Mobile, etc., (except just Apple).
  3. It will not tie down the consumer to a a limited number of Service providers (like AT&T for iPhone). Theoretically any Mobile manufacturer can build a phone that supports the Android platform.
  4. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK.  Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use, which runs on top of a Linux kernel. Google provides a plugin for Eclipse to help test your Android apps within Eclipse with an Emulator. iPhone apps are written in Objective C.
  5. The first Android phone->T-Mobile G1 is available for $179 (http://www.t-mobileg1.com/pre-order-g1.aspx)  available on Oct 22. iPhone 8Gb is now available for $200 half of what it was when Apple started selling it.

Here are some interesting links to convince you:

  1. Open Handset Alliance member companies
  2. Open Handset Alliance Home Page
  3. Android home page on Google
  4. Android Developer challenge(Teams writing Apps on the Android platform to win cash prizes)

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