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Android-Powered T-Mobile G1 |
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Subject: Android-Powered T-Mobile G1
Author: WebSpider
In response to: Mobile Web Applications - A Growing Market
Posted on: 10/21/2008 07:57:37 PM
Android is, of course, all about Google, and the first thing you do with the G1 is sign in with your Gmail login. (If you don't have a Gmail account, you'll need to get one.) Once that's done, the G1 automatically syncs up all your Gmail messages, contacts, Google calendar events -- everything, and they'll stay synced whenever you're in Wi-Fi or cell range. All my Gmail, contacts, and events synced up within a matter of minutes.
Still, while you're stuck with the G1's hardware quirks (such as the lack of a 3.5mm jack), the beauty of the open-source Android OS is that third-party developers are free to tweak any and all of the G1's core features, including the dialer, the music player, the browser, the email client - the sky's the limit. Of course, whether developers will take the opportunity and run with it remains to be seen.
Same goes with the Android Market, which was (unsurprisingly) sparsely populated during my tests. Still, I'm sure the Market will fill up rapidly once the G1 hits stores later this month, and the apps I did try such as an NFL tracker (coyly called "Pro Football"wait till Roger Goodell finds out), Locale (which changes your ringer profiles depending on your location), and Wikitude (which finds historical points of interest in your vicinity) stacked up nicely compared to their iPhone App counterparts. Apps installed quickly (typically in under a minute) and the G1 warns you of any security risks (such as whether the app will access your personal info, the dialer, or your GPS coordinates) before installation begins -- nice touch.
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> On 10/14/2008 01:38:09 PM WebSpider wrote:
Amidst the economic doom and gloom, bright spots can be found. The Mobile web applications arena one of them. No matter how slow the economy gets, and how much people changes their behavior, they won't stop communicating while on the go. Our mobile phones have evolved into powerful communications devices with high speed Internet access. This transformation has opened up a huge market for mobile web applications.
The mobile web applications concept isn't new. As reported in an article in Business Week's October 13, 2008 issue titled "Nokia's Bid to Rule the Mobile Web" the author, Jack Ewing, notes that Nokia's R&D group developed a mobile web application in 1996 called the 'dangerometer' which used satellite technology to match your location to an on-line database of crime statistics. If you happened to find yourself in a high crime area, the mobile application would alert you and prompt you to buy life insurance. Funny people, these Fins.
Mobile applications use has come a long way since then. In the article, Ewing cites research that found that the number of mobile phone users that access the Internet though their device has increased 36% in the past year, to over 40 million users. Ewing further states that Nokia, the giant in world wide mobile phone sales is expected to sell almost one half of one billion handsets in 2008! Nearly all of these new handsets have some level of Internet support. Nokia's most recent high end mobile phones are designed to compete with Apple's iPhone and other devices of this class. Any way you cut it, mobile Internet use has arrived and will increase regardless of the state of the economy for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it is time to go mobile with your web presence? Most hosting service providers are supporting Java, PHP, Python, C++, and Ruby on Rails, all of which offer tools to build mobile applications. The following links will get you started:
Sun's Mobile home page for Java - http://java.sun.com/javame/index.jsp
NetBeans IDE mobile support for Java - http://www.netbeans.org/features/javame/index.html
Nokia's Developer Discussion forum (Java, C++, Python, PHP) - http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/
Article on Alliances for Mobile Turf War - http://www.redherring.com/Home/24920
Ruby on Rails for iPhone - http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/35532
W3C's Best Practices for Mobile Applications - http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-mobile-bp-20080729/
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