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Google Awards Android Dev Prizes, Introduces App Store
An anonymous reader writes "A group of Canadian engineering students was one of 10 teams to win a $275,000 prize from internet search giant Google Inc. Their program, Ecorio, gives users the ability to reduce their environmental footprint with tools that provide transit options for trips, invest in carbon reduction projects, and share their tips with other users. Other winners included a taxi location app, a price comparison app, and a settings manager than changes your settings based on your location."
Google has also started talking about their plans for Android Market, which is similar to the App store used for the iPhone. Ars Technica's coverage points out a blog post by Google's Eric Chu which notes that early handsets running Android will have a beta version of Android Market enabled.
First app? Duke Nuken Forever!
Hey, it's not like we've seen Android either...
TFA talks a lot about the cathedral vs bazaar model, which I find to be sort of funny. Android supports downloading applications (.apk files) from wherever you want, although it's intended that the market be the primary place you get them. In this sense it's every bit as open as a Linux distribution.
But wait. A typical Linux distribution doesn't actually support you adding other repositories or downloading packages from the web. Sure it might be technically possible, but you're going to encounter a lot of glitches, and if you ask the distro about that they'll just shrug and say it's your own fault for not using the official repositories.
In fact, given that the Android Market is planned to support for-pay software as well as free-beer software, that makes it technically more open than a typical Linux distro, in which the only reliable way of getting your software to end users is to get the distributors to do it for you, and they usually insist on particular kinds of licensing. Doing it yourself is a good way to find yourself in distro-compatibility hell.
(disclaimer: am a googler, but have no more info than the average slashdotter does on this)
Their program, Ecorio, gives users the ability to reduce their environmental footprint with tools that provide transit options for trips, invest in carbon reduction projects, and share their tips with other users.
I invented a diesel engine that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days per week and plays an airhorn reminding people to turn out their lights when not in use. I'm now seriously considering throwing out my current cell phone so I can buy an Android-enabled phone so I can run Ecorio and find out how I can be more environmentally responsible.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Oh yeah, Google will be quick on that one. There is no way The Goog is going to watch Apple's App Store make a million dollars a day and rake in a cool BILLION dollars in revenue next year and not respond.
;)
As a marketing consultant, I can appreciate how easy the App Store relieves people of their burdensome credit. Just fire up the App Store on the iPhone, select one of the thousands of apps, and press the BUY button. Voila, your pre-authorized credit card is charged with a sale. And you get emailed an invoice from Apple a few days later. I've done it myself, with purchases of up to $20 in fact. Steve must know how media starved and spend-easy us iPhone users are
The New Book That Could Pay You Back -100 Times Over: www.Economtricks.com
You know, that's a great solution!
While we're at it, why don't we have the UN tax genocides too. And that's only the beginning. Just think of all the problems we can solve this way!
</sarcasm>
Where can I download the Google powered brain implant?
Android software would be much more available if it were served to machines from Debian (or Ubuntu) style APT repositories, rather than Apple style "App Stores". Not just because free software is basically more popular and available than $pay software. But also because anyone can set up an APT repo, and anyone can point their machine at it. The machines ship with a list of tested/approved repos, but the machine's admins can easily add/delete from that list. They can even make their own local repo, or one shared among a user group or developer group, or a website of fanboys.
These repos make SW deployment trivial, even with complex interdependencies (though with some exceptions when the repos and packages are managed badly). Simple, reliable SW management is perhaps Debian-style OS'es best feature, and even more important on something like a mobile "phone", that's supposed to be super-simple for even the lightest weight users to master without thinking too hard.
Since Android is supposed to be a major OSS platform, I hope it quickly gets a F/OSS repo system that all its users can easily use if they want. Because that would kill the "all-proprietary only" SW model that phones now support.
--
make install -not war
Man, I was really excited for an android market - how shocked I was when it was just a software store. My android still needs gyroscopes
It'll be interesting to see how this competition for the mobile market shapes up between Apple and Google. Obviously Apple has a much larger vested interest in the mobile market, but ANY competition is generally good for the consumer.
I wonder they create a special Ubuntu edition for Android.
That's not a very creative solution at all. Even if there was an increased carbon tax, then carbon-reduction advice for individuals would still be in demand (even more so).
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Not if -- as is probably the case -- the top 90% most efficient ways to reduce carbon emission occur before any end user ("consumer") actually makes a decision. (Tide shipping more concentrated solutions, Walmart reducing drag on trucks, products being shipped less distance, factories recycling waste heat and energy ...) And I guarantee that the stuff this device iunds isn't in the top 90%.
Global warming alarmism has always been a rationale for micromanaging people's lives, not for finding the most efficient ways to reduce total carbon footprint, which a carbon tax would automatically do and with little effort from average people.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Here I thought they were gonna start a robotics-component market. What's this "handheld phone" business?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Carbon coaches would be like life coaches. "Use less fuel." instead of "Go to work everyday." and "Buy the less expensive product." instead of "Don't spend more than your income."
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
that sells androids, or leases them for housework and menial tasks such as xenomorph elimination, offworld mining and/or colonization, or act as overlords (with whip and monocle to match) for some particular breed of basement dweller, my lawyers would have to meet with Google's about other names that Google could come up with, to name their application.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The creation of a new meme is a beautiful thing...
In B.C., our fascism is green.
Now we just need a decent phone to run them on.
Since Google SMS does not offer an easy way to give feedback on their product pages they will hear my gripes here. In the past ~3 weeks I have noticed changes in their SMS search results -- FOR THE M-U-C-H WORSE!
Google SMS
==========
* [lowes in 11219] -> Google SMS had formerly understood a search request *within* a specific neighborhood in NYC. It spat out appropriate guesses like: If you meant Lowe's near Brooklyn NY here are results 1, 2 and 3 over two SMS messages. It was fuzzy and accurate. It worked beautifully.
Note that I use zip codes in searches as it is easier to type a 5 digit zip code to specify a FOCUSED location instead of a long and less focused section by neighborhood name. To wit, 11219 vs Borough Park vs Brooklyn NY. See?
However, the results recently are awful, non fuzzy-logic, with 1 or 2 results instead of the previous version's of 3 per search. Oh, and google now adds a lot of useless self adverting for their product in the guise of tips. It's the coup the grace.
So. Recently a friend asked me from her mobile while on the road where the local Lowe's was in Brooklyn. I know how to get there but I needed an address to give her to enter into her GPS -- GPS databases are so lacking so frequently that I rely heavily on Google SMS to get the latest locations for businesses. So I sent Google SMS [lowes in 11219].
** That used to tell Google SMS: search in zip 11219, or in Brooklyn NY, or in NYC, or in NYC Metropolitan including New Jersey. It didn't work however. In essence I wasted time, text money, finger calories, battery life, grief, and a good deal of patience and good will that Google will not be seeing anytime soon.
I sent half a dozen permutations of my search to get a valid result other than "check your spelling", for I know Google had the result. It had given them to me in the past.
I got a valid result when I thought, wtf! do they not understand zip codes anymore, and typed [lowes in brooklyn ny]. That worked!
Google Maps
===========
WTF have you done to it?
* Clicking on each driving direction used to bring a popup-GIF of the maneuver. No longer. We get huge Street View Flash photos instead! No. NO. NO!
* One could rearrange destinations by dragging them around on the left pane. No longer! NO!
* One could collapse LONG directions by clicking on a plus (+) previously. No longer. NO! BTW, Google does not tell the user when it makes assumptions about the destinations. To wit, I entered [10038 to fair view nj] and I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of long instructions to see that Maps had substituted something like Fair Avenue in Connecticut. WTF? I meant "fairview nj" apparently, I discovered after much mucking about. NO!
* After splining via-points by hand one could right-click and "remove this point (spline)". No longer! It magnifies instead! Nooo.
* I wont reiterate my other previous gripes about Maps.
* Oh, I hate that you have complicated the from/to entry box interface! Simplicity! Not complexity.
* Ah fuggit. Add calculate tolls, scenic routes options!
* Ah fuggit. Add calculate tolls, scenic routes options!!
* Ah fuggit. Add calculate tolls, scenic routes options!!!
Seriously, you guys have driven me to use Mapquest more and more.