why Android now? 10 million $

http://code.google.com/android/adc.html

Companies and OS's for handhelds

current companies and OS's for handhelds:

Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, Palm
OS X, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm

post-processes/ontologies: open eyes on technologies, economies, and politics

technologist, technology analyst, economist, and political analyst

After my previous blogs, I found that I began to see many things differently. It is not easy to summarize all those changes of mind and heart, so, I just put those job titles here.

Note that it is not just "processes" and "ontology" anymore, it is much "thick" now. I now believe the concept of "processes" misses the point. Ya, "processes" are important, but if you know those (8 core) techniques, you surely already know those "processes". "Processes" is simply experiences you gain when you use those "8 core techniques".

As for "ontology", they are extremely important; there is another phrase, "methodological analysis". Here, just like the concept of "ontology" in both computer science and philosophy, "methodological" can be interpreted as both the concept of "process" in software engineering, and a concept in philosophy that is in parallel with "metaphysical" and "epistemological". Combining "ontology" and "methodological analysis", you have all the conceptual tools to tackle any issues in our information age.

I know, all those sounds abstruse and philosophical. That is indeed the exact point I want to make next: they are important, but too abstract, for everyday thinking. To really apply "ontology" and "methodological analysis", we need concrete "examples", hence all those job titles -- we need to open our eyes, on technologies, economies, and politics.

it is time for handhelds and games -- Google's Android now and Wii later

----------excerpt from http://blogs.sun.com/jag (I hope it is "reasonable use"; also, take a look of the "Cell phones in Japan": it is amazing, but I cannot cut/paste it here, please go to James Gosling's blog!)

One of the games was a bowling game that you play roughly the same way that you'd use a Nintendo WII: you hold the phone as though it's a bowling ball, and you go through the motions of throwing the ball. You use a button press to release the ball. When this happens, it does the physics. But the phone doesn't have accelerometers to measure how you move the phone. They used one of the most glorious hacks I've seen in years: images are captured by the camera as you swing it in your hand, which are then analysed and correlated and motion vectors are computed from the interframe deltas.
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Note: as you will see in the following, this is not M$ vs Java, it is much broader, although the core is the same, as always.

It is time to expand software development vision to devices and games, for example blackberry (and other "handhelds") and wii.

I mentioned blackberry in my previous blog. To reflect the light of holidays, I should have mentioned games also, e.g. wii. Sorry, I do not like Xbox, and I do not like playstation; I feel "pure computer game" is too boring, I like "physical" game.

My deep believe is that serious computing is enterprise computing, even they look not that exciting or "high tech", in reality, they are the real high tech stuff. However, now I believe it is time to deal with handhelds and games. They are "connected" of course: handhelds need enterprise system, and although/while it is not clear how games can be "incorporated" into the corporate world, there is clearly some effort to integrate wii into the web.

As I indicated in my previous blog, the keys are (a) they are massive market now; (b) the devices are powerful enough so that we can leverage PC experiences.

It is interesting to compare iphone (real product now) and gphone (conceptware) and Android (google), you can see the positive and negative sides of Apple and Google.

I noticed that Apple is also in the process of opening iphone to 3rd party software.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071105-its-official-google-announces-open-source-mobile-phone-os-android.html
Google is leading its way or catching up (depending your point of view; it is a significant thing regardless which view you take).

Again, the keys are that (this time I put it in one sentence) the java dream that ubiquitous devices and network applications in the hands of the mass is finally coming; there are killer applications (GPS is one of them, I believe camera/scanner is also one of it, and barcode and RFID technologies).

What do all those things mean?

All those things make you think -- we need to broaden our perspective.

In the past, I did that to my 8 techniques: the first step is to expand the 8 techniques to "business processes", and then, "ontology". They are all fine (but I am now putting less and less emphasis on formal processes -- I am more and more convinced that they are simply flexible applications of 8 techniques, nothing more). However, I did not put the dreams of AI and device network (drones of the borg ;-) in the picture.

time to invest in handheld software development?

Now, handhelds are inexpensive enough to be interesting to the mass.
Also, they are now powerful enough that they are close to PC (or Apple) computers, so that we can leverage the PC/Apple software experiences.

I anticipate that within a few years, everyone will have a PDA, with real key board, GPS, camera/scanner, OCR, recorder, voice recognition.

I will begin to look into handhelds. Basically, they should be just like a PC/Apple 10 or 15 years ago, the only difference is that they are smaller and portable.