Last year, Google used the conference to show off their latest Android prototype and discuss their view of cloud connectivity and the future of Android.  This year, after successful commercial launches of actual Android handsets, we’re expecting even more news and insight.  With Apple launching iPhone OS 3.0, Palm’s Pre expected next month and Windows Mobile 6.5 chomping at the bit for release, this is Google’s opportunity to wow us with the next generation of Android innovation.

To stand a chance of winning one of the three Google I/O Developer Conference tickets, we’re asking you to tell us about your most memorable experience with the Android platform.  We’ll pick three, and those people will have access to the conference at the end of the month – if you can even get hold of a ticket they normally cost $400 each.  Remember, you’ll need to get yourself to San Francisco for the conference, plus have somewhere to stay.

Terms and Conditions

Competition is open to residents of the US over the age of 18. Family members of Google and R3 Media are not permitted to enter. Competition entries are only accepted in the forum thread for this article; entries left in the comments of any other post will not be recognized. Entries should be submitted before midnight pacific time on Sunday May 24th; one entry per person.

The winners will be announced on this site and contacted via email; they will be expected to respond within 48 hours else their prize may be forfeit and another winner selected. Editors decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Winner agrees that their name and details of their entry may be used for promotional purposes by, but not limited to, R3 Media. Each of the three prizes consists of a single ticket to the Google I/O Developer Conference, held May 27th to 28th in San Francisco. There is no cash alternative.  Winners are responsible for any travel, accommodation or sundry expenses incurred in visiting the conference.

About Jason Chen

Jason is currently a developer advocate at Google where he works on ensuring that developers for the Android platform are successful. He previously led the developer support team for Google Checkout. Prior to joining Google, Jason worked at IBM and Urchin Software.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0bGWv6k57o[/youtube]

The Introduction to Android platform session lasted around 90-minutes.  Jason announced that the source code to Android is currently available to Google’s Open Handset Alliance (OHA) partners.  The general public will get access to the source code when the first handset (that being the Android HTC Dream phone) ships.  At such time, Android will be called “Android Version 1.0.”  Android version 1.0 will be available to everyone and anyone who wants to download and port Android to any phone or any other devices they so desire.  Once Android version 1.0 hits the street, you do not have to be an OHA member and you don’t need to sign anything or ask for anyone’s permission to install Android on any device.  The audience wanted to know when will Android version 1.0 be available.  Unfortunately, Google would not provide any specific dates other than “the second half of 2008.”  When pressed, a Google source stated that it wasn’t really their call alone to make.  The release date is largely up to OHA members, especially manufacturers making the phones and the carriers who will sell and distribute the Android phones.  Lets hope all 31+ OHA members don’t take too long to decide when’s the best time to release Android version 1.0.

After his presentation, Jason opened up the floor for questions…

Q. What if somebody wants to build an application that is similar to a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) that can run other programs. What security implications are there for these kinds of applications?
A. It’s possible to do but we haven’t thought about it. There is a large security team working on Android. There are languages that are working to port their bytecode to the Dalvik VM, so it won’t just be for the Java language.

Q. Traditionally carriers rip out things. What steps do you take to prevent somebody like Cingular from making an “almost-Android” phone?
A. They could do that if they wanted because it’s open source. But Android is a complete stack of software so why would you want to break it? There’s value in a full stack and in a lot of applications. There’s no incentive to alter it in ways that wouldn’t be compatible. We want manufacturers and operators to customize in ways they can differentiate. They don’t all have to have the same home screen, the same look and feel, and so forth but they should be able to run any Android apps.

Q. When do developers get hardware?
A. When everybody else does (when retail phones are for sale).

Q. Does Android platform development follow the JSR (Java Specification Request) model?
A. Android is not Java technology. It uses the Java programming language but Dalvik is not a JVM. It’s not claiming to be Java tech.

Q. Is support for Flash lite planned?
A. Not at the moment.

Q. Will there be an SDK for PPC Macs?
A. Don’t think so. Just Intel.

Q. Will you have aesthetic standards like the iPhone?
A. We’re working with UI designers to put out a user interface guideline. Also android provides standard UI widgets.

About Jason Chen

Jason is currently a developer advocate at Google where he works on ensuring that developers for the Android platform are successful. He previously led the developer support team for Google Checkout. Prior to joining Google, Jason worked at IBM and Urchin Software.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05FcwoYej0[/youtube]

In the next article/video, I’ll walk you through the “other side” of this room to tour the different groups just hanging out and chit chatting about YouTube, Google Web Toolkit, Google Data APIs, Gears, OpenSocial Application, Android, etc. As Robert of Scolbleizer.com put, “How can you tell what’s hot at a conference?” Come to the party and check out the size of the crowds around the tables.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aaSMtxRHEU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quM0S3ZXhEw[/youtube]

More videos from the Android Fireside Chat coming soon.

That me – with the best seat in the house!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ffsjp0D1ZE[/youtube]

Q.  Do you have a more specific release date for Android now?

A.  [Android should launch in the] second half of this year.  What you saw on stage looks pretty good, but we want to make sure it’s perfect and that people have a really good consumer experience with it.

Q.  Will you have to buy the device with Android on it, or will you be able to load Android onto an existing device.

A. The software will be released as open-source when the first handsets are available … so people can do with it pretty much whatever they want.  We don’t dictate how it’s used.

Q.  Touch is heavily featured in the demo today, but Android is extensible to all sorts of different platforms.  Were you just showing off the most flashy parts … how did you make those choices?

A.  The platform is designed to be very generic, it has to work with touchscreen devices, D-pad devices and trackball devices.  Some devices might not even have a screen.  We chose to show a demonstration with a device that happened to have a trackball; we have other devices with a trackball.  We could’ve shown that exact demo completely driven by the trackball.  That’s pretty compelling as not a lot a lot of platforms have that flexibility.

Q.  Could you tell us more about the hardware of the touchscreen handset?

A.  The specific OEM who made built that hardware we’re under NDA with, but I can give you some details on components.  It is a UMTS handset, the demo was on HSDPA 3.6Mbps.  It was a Qualcomm MSM7201A [Ed: 528MHz] processor, it had a Synaptics capacitive touchscreen, 128MB of RAM and 256MB of flash.

When we announced the product and soon after we posted some videos, some of our partners demonstrated the platform at at MWC at Barcelona in March.  This is the most recent stuff; literally the finishing touches were put on the device last night.  The clock didn’t exist last night.

Q.  What was shown here first?

A.  I’m not totally sure if I’m right here, but notifications we hadn’t shown before, the desktop-like launcher of applications where you can put alias and icons on the desktop and get a spatial-representation of workflow.  The compass and accelerometer based Street View was a new application.  The unlock mechanism – letting the device learn the user’s gesture to unlock it for security and sleep purposes.  And Pacman was shown for the first time too!

Q.  The unlock gesture would only be available on the touchscreen?

A.  You could select each of the circles using the trackball, but it might make more sense using the touchscreen.

Google IO Android QA Part 2

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqq_HEx6yqg[/youtube]

Q.  [Apple are planning on playing a central role in distributing iPhone apps]  Do you see yourselves playing a similar role?

A.  I don’t think there’ll be any one place for [distribution of Android software].  We’ll provide infrastructure to allow application developers to easily get distribution and post whatever business model they have in mind.  Some developers just want to give stuff away for free, some developers want to allow you to try something before you buy it, maybe a demo version they give away for free, then try to upsell you to a different version.  The infrastructure will be similar to how YouTube works, just a repository that things get hosted on and the technology that lets you put that on a handset.

Q.  Geographically, are there regions that are more interested in Android or that you feel will help push it forward faster.

A.  It’s been limited right now to the planet Earth!  We have a lot of interest – it’s a global interest.  We’ve done a lot of things to make sure that in the development of this effort with the 34 partners of the OHA that everyone was represented
, we weren’t drawing any maps and saying “this is going to go this way, this is going to go that way”.  It’s really a collaborative effort, development is collaborative.
Q.  Could you talk a little bit about why you’ve chosen to keep it in-house up until this point, and then once you do open it up, how much will be open and what specifically will be closed, and what those closed parts might mean for developers.

A.  There are different types of open-source projects.  There’s the type where a bunch of people get together from ground zero and say “we’re going to create an open-something”; it’s loosely coupled, it’s normally not a corporate entity sponsoring it, it’s a bunch of individuals.  They grow it very organically and becomes something big, it takes a long time: that organic nature is rather unstructured.  Some argue that that’s a benefit, that it’s a period of incubation, that’s a very interesting time.  We think that there’s a window in the mobile industry where it’s very important that there’s a platform that’s open, that’s truly open.  That’s why we gathered the 34 members of the OHA to together create this thing, a little more structured than the organic model, and then open source it when it’s reached critical mass, and that’s what we’d call 1.0.  When the handset is capable of running the platform, and the consumer is happy with the experience, that’s what we call critical mass.  So the other question is related to licencing – do you pick the licence where you insist to the community that they contribute back their intellectual property right.  So it’s taking the position that, let’s create this collaboratively, but let’s not dictate business models or whether you have to give back your source code, so that’s why we chose the Apache licence.  The apache licence is, essentially, you can use the software, you can use the copyright to create whatever you want, you can use pieces of it, you don’t have to contribute your modifications – we encourage you to, it would be great if you did, I think this whole open-source thing is going to catch on.  There is open-source community contributions that we use in the stack, for example Linux which Android is built upon, but it’s pretty much everything you need to build a phone will be open-source.  The only things that won’t be are some specific applications for Google services where the services themselves haven’t been opened up.  And that’s just a roadmap thing, we’re on a mission to open up as many of our backend services as possible.

Q.  Do you envisage the carriers permitting people to be free with their phone, to install software?  Does that pose problems with management and reliability as we have with PCs these days?

A.  Why wouldn’t the carrier want to allow any application to be put on a cellphone?  So far they’ve not had a platform robust enough to give them a feeling of security, and I choose that word purposefully.  The platforms today, a lot of them are 20 years old.  There’s a lot of legacy, and security wasn’t considered then.  Now, here we are in the internet generation, and things come to you – that didn’t happen – when you build a platform from a clean state you have a chance to think about those things, think about what’s going to give the industry, whether an OEM or a carrier, a safety net should malware be produced for these handsets.  It’s a platform that will enable the carriers to do more innovative things with their services.

Q.  Will they?

A.  I hope they do!

Q.  [What about MultiTouch?]

A.  It’s typically a hardware function, and the handset that was demonstrated didn’t have a MultiTouch sensor.

Q.  Does the software support it?

A.  The software doesn’t need to support it, you don’t need to go out of your way to support any particular hardware sensor.  When that hardware developer puts that [MultiTouch] sensor in their handset, I’m hoping the hardware developer will go out of their way to develop the driver.

Remember, you can see all of our Android demo videos here.  Vincent is now off to hopefully spend some hands-on time with the prototype, so keep reading Android Community for more Google IO coverage!

As our exclusive demo videos show, the Android team have been putting in some long hours bringing the user interface up to the standard people expect. The iPhone sets the bar high, and leftfield rivals like Samsung’s TouchWiz GUI really pile on the pressure. What they’ve given us is, at first glance, a blend of the successful parts of each of those, together with a dose of Google’s own minimalist aesthetic. Hopefully you’ll agree with us, once you’ve looked through the photos and watched the video, that the design is a winner.

In this first video, we see an overview of the new interface and menu structure, including the clever pattern-based unlock screen. Much of the GUI can be interacted with – for instance pulling down the title bar reveals missed calls and new messages – using the familiar palatte of swipes and taps. You can also see the straightforward way to create shortcuts on the home screen; a matter of holding down your finger and then following through the contextual menus.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXolJrLVEg[/youtube]

Next up, Google’s Street View gets the Android treatment with a built-in compass. That lets you pan around the location-based image, turning the handset into something of an augmented reality device. As you can tell by the applause, this was one of the most popular apps!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PRfVKzuUJ4[/youtube]

Google briefly touched on their work with developers, including the latest round of entries in their Android Developers Challenge. Here you can see a port of Pacman, developed for the handset:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfruA4RzzpQ[/youtube]

In this last video, a demo of Google Maps, you can see how closely the Android experience matches that of the desktop. All of the usual mapping options are present – satellite views, traffic, etc. – and, with a 3G network, load and update quickly.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBHx5jHsqiU[/youtube]

Pac-Man on Android for the firs time!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q3gGNtbxhQ[/youtube]

Customize how you want to unlock Android

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGCIlAwrpvI[/youtube]

The keynote will be given by Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering, at 9:30am in Moscone West.  The title of the keynote will be  “Client, Connectivity, and the Cloud.”

After the keynote, there will be a press conference where I’ll have an opportunity to ask Google spokespeople additional questions and see product demos.  They’ll be discussing the news and may have some time for 1 on 1s.

9:47AM

The lights dimmed and keynote is about to start!  Vid Gundotra is on stage – Engineering VP, Google Inc.  There are now standing room only!

Vid is painting a picture of how Google will move forward with the “What? Why? How?” right now.  Allen Hurff, Engineering SVP is up on stage talking about what MySpace is doing with Gears.  MySpace allows for search and sort in mail and it’s available now if you have Gears installed.

Stay tune for tons of Android info and demos!!!