Three Fields, Three Rings, Troika

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/07/mozilla-geode-released-with-support-from-pownce-and-fire-eagle/

Am quite intrigued: http://pandastream.com/

If you get a chance, please check it out and let me know what you think.

In a sign that all those 3rd party developers and companies are keeping pushing the envelope when it comes to apps for iPhone, MokaFive announces iPhone Sentinel: http://www.mokafive.com/solutions/downloads.php

I do get the programming itch from time to time. Yesterday I came by offices where my friends work, and I stood there, listening to their brainstorming on Java classes, interfaces, etc. Truth be told, sometimes I do like programming, sometimes I hate it. But I love nothing more than working along brilliant programmers, soaking up every gem of knowledge from them, even if that makes me look dumb compared to them.

I got rid of my bloated Eclipse Europa, reinstalled it, installed Spring framework, installed Tomcat 6.06. And now, the only thing I need is TIME… Determination and motivation are there, time is not…

There’s been some buzz going around the Internet that Android SDK is still full with bugs and is still very much in pre-baked state to be truly useful for the developers. The CNET says as much: Is mobile really a sure thing for Google?

The critics claim that Google is too “desktop-centric” and thus the field of mobile apps presents risk to Google due to its relevant inexperience in this industry.  I somewhat agree, but I don’t think that the obstacles are that dangerous or unsurmountable for Google. For starters, Google has already developed the mobile versions of its applications such as GMail and GMaps, and quite successfully! One only needs to take a look at the newest version of OS for iPhone, which sports the new GMaps functionality developed in collaboration with Skyhook Wireless, that mimics the GPS functionality.

I’d just give Google a bit of time to shake out the bugs and streamline the development efforts, along with the negotiating efforts with the related companies.

Finally started playing with this stuff (especially now that my employer replaced my laptop that died with a widescreen T61 Thinkpad). And one thing worries me a bit: the emulator is a memory hog (or is it?). See the screenshot below. What do you think? Given that it’s Java technology we’re talking about, it’s of course expected. Still, this coming from Google, famous for its fanatical adherence to the “lean and mean” maxim - this makes one think.

Exactly a week later, Google released the SDK for developers! Read here. Tomorrow I’ll download it and start checking it out… To get your hands on the SDK as well, download it here: http://code.google.com/android/

And here we already can witness some resistance to Android - read the BBC article.

For those of you who are really impatient and want to go down Aptana/Eclipse road later, you can download InstantRails - as explained on the project’s website, “Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment.”

For those of you who were wondering, the official website for Google’s Android project is: http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/index.html