Fascinating morning keynotes

Android Open was jam packed with activities including a pre-conference day of workshops and then two days of main conference. Each morning of the regular conference began with a series of five to twenty minute long keynote talks and panels. You can see a complete listing of the speakers for both days in the conference schedule. You can also watch the keynote sessions via the Android Open 2011 Youtube video playlist (click here to access). I would encourage you to watch as many of the keynotes as possible; they contain a lot of interesting and inspirational material to get your Android juices flowing!

O’Reilly founder & CEO Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) kicked things off with his Day 1 opening keynote “What Android can learn from Steve Jobs“. Definitely an interesting choice of title for an Android conference! But Jobs’ passing the week before presented O’Reilly with an opportunity to discuss some of the key principles behind Apple’s success, especially the notion espoused by Jobs that a company needs to be “true to its soul”. O’Reilly examined Google’s “soul” at length, suggesting that it needs to never forget its original mission to help connect people to all the world’s information. Key takeaway for Android developers and businesses: Stay true to yourself and your mission while holding Google to its own high ideals, too.

The next keynote that caught my attention was a conversation between conference co-chair Marko Gargenta (@markogargenta) and Robert Stephens (@rstephens), CTO of Best Buy. Stephens is a pretty technical guy, even going so far as to say that Best Buy ought to get rid of their DVD section and replace it with an Arduino section! As you might imagine given the crowd, this was well received.

The thing that really stood out for me as a mobile payments developer, however, was Stephens’ discussion of the many issues with NFC deployment. He said Best Buy may bypass at least some NFC generations completely, going straight to purely cloud-based payments solutions. This joins the rising tide of anti-NFC sentiment and pragmatism that seems to be building, and echoes some of the many things PayPal has said publicly about NFC weaknesses in recent months. Takeaway: Watch major retailers such as Best Buy closely to pick up the beginnings of big shifts in mobile payments.

Day 2 saw a couple more morning keynotes that stood out for me. The first, “Android in Space” by Will Marshall (@wsm1) of NASA, dealt with building very cheap microsatellites based upon Android-based Nexus One smartphones, aka “phonesats“. “Very cheap” in this case means tens of thousands versus millions or billions of US dollars.

Marshall noted that because of the conservative nature of space flight, the CPU in phonesat Nexus Ones will actually be the fastest CPUs onboard a satellite to date when they’re launched into orbit later this year. He also asked the audience some provocative questions such as “What if we could each have personal satellites?” and “What if satellites became a software domain?”. Thing to note: Android software and off the shelf mobile phone hardware can reduce costs in some areas by two or more orders of magnitude versus traditional ways of doing things, and that could change everything in those areas.

You can read more about the phonesat project from this report from O’Reilly correspondent Alex Howard (@digiphile). Among other things, Alex links to an excellent documentary on early phonesat rocket launch testing.

The final keynote that fascinated me was “The African Laptop Killer: Android and the Developing World” by Claire Hunsaker (@chunsaker). Hunsaker discussed the tremendous rise of mobile technology in Kenya and elsewhere and how that technology is revolutionizing lives and economies. Some of the statistics quoted include:

• 99% of Internet access in Kenya is via mobile device.
• Cheap Android phones have dropped Internet access in Kenya from 31% of an average worker’s annual income to about 5%.
• Fully 20% of Kenyan GDP runs through the mobile wallet (predominantly M-PESA).
• According to Hunsaker, “Facebook will have access to most (Kenyan) users before thy can even own a mobile handset themselves” via borrowed/shared mobile handsets.

Please watch Hunsaker’s talk. It may change your perspective on the power and importance of mobile techologies.

Session highlights

There were a lot of great sessions at Android Open. Here are some notes from my favorites:

• Aleksandar Gargenta (yes, Marko is his brother) presented an excellent “Securing Android” session discussing how security is enforced. He made a number of comparisons to Java ME and desktop Linux security, noting that “Anytime something is in RAM, there are ways of recovering it”. I’d recommend spending a little time reading through Aleksandar’s slides (click here).
• Eric Burke (@burke_eric) from Square gave a nice “Beautiful Android” talk. I’d been hoping for a few payments fireworks, but Burke stuck closely to how to build attractive and functional Android apps. Among the things he noted, Android clip paths don’t handle antialiasing. This leads to very ugly interfaces unless you use offscreen bitmaps.
• Nick Farina (@nfarina) spoke about the importance of using WebViews in “From iOS to Android” (also, XCode is painful).
• Sean Byrnes of Flurry knocked it out of the park with his “Android App Engagement by the Numbers” talk! In particular, he called out the importance of releasing early and quickly to your followers, as statistics show that on average, an Android developer loses 38% of their users on the day they install your app, 50% in one week.
• Jesse Vincent (@obra) talked in “Dancing App Stores” about the somewhat suprising fact that new app versions dramatically increase sales, even with minimal changes to the app itself. He also made some good suggestions on secondary and tertiary app markets besides Google’s Android Market; check out his slides for more details.

All in all, the sessions had enough code and technical details while still being able to spark ideas in a wide variety of attendees, some Android programmers, some not.

Additional coverage and news from the conference

Conference organizers made a number of other news and information sources available to attendees. You can search some of the best via these links:

• Read the round-up of news and coverage curated by O’Reilly.
• Access all of the speaker slides provided to the organizers.
• View official conference photos.

One more highly recommended resource: The online show “All About Android” (@androidshow) broadcast live from Android Open at the end of Day 1. The conference co-chairs along with several speakers including Tim O’Reilly make appearances on the show. It’s probably worth your time to watch and get their perspective on the major Android developments flowing out of the conference.

Did it blend?

I found this first ever Android Open to be a great mix of community and technology. It struck the right tone of openness and provided both developer how-to and business oriented material. If you are interested in Android and appreciate a balanced perspective of the entire ecosystem, I would recommend this conference as a good place to tap into all things Android.

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

I was recently privileged to attend both the O’Reilly Android Open and X.commerce Innovate conferences back-to-back in San Francisco. Both were mind and network expanding events, and I’d highly recommend either to developers and business colleagues considering attending next year.

I hope to write more about my key takeaways from Android Open at some point in the future. For this article, let’s focus on Innovate.

So much transpired in a few short days that it would be impossible to capture everything in one short article. I’ll do my best to give you the overall flavor and major highlights, then I’ll dive a bit deeper to discuss some of the particular technical “breakout” sessions I attended.

Ready? Let’s go!

Keynotes and major announcements

The conference began each morning with a series of general session keynotes. You can access the conference schedule to see a full list of speakers, or better still, watch the keynotes (as well as breakout sessions) from the Innovate 2011 video site (click here to access).

Watch the Day 1 keynotes for yourself below (click here if the embed doesn’t work below):

Naveed Anwar, head of X.commerce community, discussed many of the key Day 1 developments in his blog post here. Some of the big ticket items for developers and merchants included:

• Launch of the “X.commerce Fabric“, a message-broker based system allowing developers to integrate and use various commerce capabilities. The Fabric ties together various components from eBay, PayPal, Magento, and other eBay companies with capabilities built by third parties, large and small. Much more on this to come.
• PayPal debuted “PayPal Access“, a new online “commerce identity” comparable to social identity, but for making commerce transactions faster and easier for the consumer. Read more about PayPal Access from the Janrain blog; I’ll also have much more to say about PayPal Access in coming months.
• Magento launched much tighter integration with eBay, allowing merchants to push products from Magento into eBay with just a few short clicks. You can read a third party take on the many and central Magento-related announcements via AuctionBytes (click here).
• Facebook announced Open Graph integration with Magento and GSI Commerce enabling, among other things, “Want” and “Own” buttons analogous to the already ubiquitous “Like” button. You can read much more about the eBay-Facebook partnership in this ZDNet article.

With the major announcements out of the way, the Day 1 afternoon and Day 2 morning keynotes could focus on inspirational higher ordered bits. These sessions were great motivation for attendees to take advantage of all of the technical tools at their disposal to make the world a better place. Whether by building corporate giving into their fundamental commercial business model, or by thinking about the effects of the current recession and the innovation that could get us out of it, or by imbuing everything we do with thoughtful design, these sessions were all meant to light the creative spark.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Steven Cooper (@developersteve), whom I featured in an interview article for the X.com site last year, receive a community award at the beginning of the day 2 morning keynotes. You can watch the awards presentation and all of the Day 2 keynotes here:

If the embed fails to load, you can alternatively click here for the Day 2 morning general session.

Other things I found striking during the second morning’s general session:

• Marshal Cohen spoke at length about the current recession and what might need doing, especially in the United States, to innovate our way out of it. One item in particular stuck with me: He pointed out that while the current recession is not the longest in US history (yet), it is the deepest by job losses. I have to agree with his conclusion that a fundamental shift is underway and many of the lost jobs aren’t coming back, so it’s more important than ever to focus on new commerce opportunities. Build your business to take advantage of inevitable innovations and the sky’s the limit.
• X.commerce developer evangelist Praveen Alavilli (@ppalavilli) showed some live X.commerce code in front of thousands. Always a gutsy move! Access his demo code yourself from GitHub here. By the way, Praveen has written a great blog post about getting started with the Fabric since Innovate completed; click here to check it out.
• Hip-hop artist Chamillionaire (@chamillionaire) stole the show discussing how he used community and tech skills to build his fan base from the streets of Houston to the Grammys and beyond. What an amazing innovator! I’d highly recommend watching at least his portion of the day 2 keynote; prepare to be impressed and inspired.

I could write several more articles about the various keynote speakers and their stories. Instead, I’ll encourage you again to watch the videos for yourself.

Partner pavilion and a free O’Reilly book for you

There was a wide range of X.commerce partners showing their wares in the Partner Pavilion during and in between sessions. Somtimes I wondered just how they were packing so many thousands of attendees in such a small space! (The secret, of course, was lots of free coffee, snacks, and soda.)

Here’s a shot I took the first day of the X.commerce booth to give you a feel for the foot traffic:

One other cool thing going on in the Partner Pavilion, in my not so humble opinion, was that O’Reilly Media was giving away printed copies of the new book “Building eCommerce Applications”. This book is a collection of some of the most interesting and varied articles written by contributors to the X.commerce DevZone.

Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, you can still download a free e-book copy from O’Reilly (click here to get your copy).

And yes, yours truly does have four articles included in the book, so I am a bit biased. Still, you can’t beat free, right?

Session highlights

I attended a number of interesting sessions at the conference. Rather than try to list them all, I thought I’d focus on the key points from the most interesting and useful for me.

• Two related sessions, “Introducing the X.commerce platform” and “From Code to Capability“, showed developers how to get started with the dive deep into the new X.commerce Fabric. I’d highly recommend clicking on the session titles and watching the sessions to get up to speed asap. You should also download the X.commerce Developer Package and the X.commerce Innovate demo code so you can try it out for yourself. Fabric will be a very important piece of the commerce development puzzle in the months to come.
• We all know mobile commerce is a BIG opportunity, right? What you might or might not know is how to take advantage of the various social, local, and mobile development strategies to capitalize upon it. “Commerce goes SoLoMo: Social, Local, Mobile” discusses what’s possible, focusing on Milo and Where.com (both eBay companies) in particular. I’d also recommend watching the “Mobile face-off: HTML5 vs. native apps vs. mobile platforms” panel to get a grip on the realities of native, HTML, and hybrid mobile development. I enjoyed both sessions and took away the point that we can do almost anything with today’s mobile technologies (boy have we come a long way since WAP and J2ME!).

Things to watch in the coming year

In summary, Innovate was crammed full of technologies to watch and good information on getting started with them. I’d recommend trying out Fabric and Access as soon as possible and paying attention to both as they roll out in the months ahead. There are also some very nice Magento and Facebook commerce opportunities coming; pay attention, and profit!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the conference, the news coming out of it, and the new commerce possibilities available as a result of those announcements. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think. And happy commerce hacking!

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

• @PayPalX and payments monthly highlights http://bit.ly/mJ2dXv #
• @PayPalX Mobile Checkout end-of-life 1 September 2011 http://bit.ly/mCS4oD (can anyone confirm?) #
• @PayPalX DevZone post: LinkedIn adds Jobs and Companies APIs http://bit.ly/muS215 #
• Doing Facebook development? Check out the unofficial FB Graph API Explorer http://bit.ly/jbTcWf (very handy, @PayPalX developers!) #
• Need to scan QR, Data Matrix, and/or UPC codes? Check out the AT&T Code Scanner http://bit.ly/lLeWUs (another @PayPalX post) #
• What is X.commerce? Learn all about the merger of the @PayPalX, eBay, and Magento developer communities here: http://t.co/hioE0JW #
• MEC from @PayPalX increased Crutchfield's mobile conversion 33.7%! Learn how you might get a similar bump http://bit.ly/j8fiBO #
• Part 1 of my new series comparing @PayPalX to alternative payment systems http://bit.ly/kkcTsA (this one examines Amazon FPS) #
• Part 2 of my alternative payments series http://bit.ly/jz8cOK compares Facebook Credits to @PayPalX http://bit.ly/jlhYlJ #

Big data

• Nice video training on Map-Reduce in #Python http://oreil.ly/m1QECy from @petewarden (read his write-up here http://bit.ly/jp6rJq ) #

Wireless and mobility

• Consumers now spend more time in mobile apps than on the Web http://on.mash.to/jO8ZtB via @mashable #
• Why Google App Inventor isn't just for novice #Android app builders http://oreil.ly/mAkJtE via @radar #

APIs and development

• Four key takeaways from the WWDC keynote earlier this month http://oreil.ly/muxsI4 really hammer on Apple's strong position via @radar #

Running

• How to train for your first 50k ultra marathon http://t.co/4nJwNML via @runnersworld #
• Ran 3.22 miles in 36 mins and felt great. First easy 5k after summer break. http://bit.ly/kL1Ydu #

Sascha Segan makes a very interesting point in his take on Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote:

Did anyone else notice how radically green Apple’s Macworld announcements were? Steve Jobs didn’t play up the environmental angle of his iPhone, Apple TV, and iPod Touch upgrades, but the vision he presented is far more radical than just a super-skinny, brominated-flame-retardant-free notebook.

With “Apple TV 2,” Jobs is turning the CE world on its head by releasing a major new product—without any hardware. Not only does it hasten the digital delivery of movies and TV shows (bye-bye plastic disks and cardboard boxes) but it makes Jobs’ major CE product announcements software, not steel.

Nobody needs to buy a new iPod touch to get e-mail. No Apple TVs will be thrown away by people who want movie rentals. And Jobs is fulfilling his promise to iPhone owners to keep their devices exciting and fresh; first, by trickling out new features, and soon by opening up the floodgates to third-party applications.

Al Gore is smiling from his Apple board seat somewhere. Sascha goes on to note that:

The best kind of electronics to buy are products that are going to last you a long time, that you don’t have to worry about recycling or throwing away. Raising the length of time between new hardware purchases is one of the greenest things the electronics industry can do.

Watch for more green-with-a-capital-’P’ news here in the not too distant future…

Steve Jobs announced the 1.1.3 iPhone software update today at Macworld, available now for download and installation via iTunes.

For more coverage of the Jobsnote, iPhone, and the 1.1.3 softup, see:

• Engadget iPhone and iPod Touch skinny
• Macworld.com keynote liveblog
• ars technica keynote announcements article

After reading about 1.1.3, it’s time to install it. During the firmware installation, you’re presented with the following “Important Information” detailing Apple’s take on the new capabilities:

iPhone Software
Version 1.1.3

This version of the software includes additional new features, bug fixes and supersedes all previous versions.

New features include:

• New Maps application
- Find location
- Improved UI
• Send SMS text messages to multiple recipients
• Customize Home Screen
- Rearrange icons
- Add Safari bookmarks to the Home Screen
- Create up to 9 Home Screen pages
• IMAP support for Gmail
• Support for iTunes Store movie rentals
• Enhanced Video Player
- Chapters
- Subtitles
- Alternate language tracks
• Lyrics support in iPod

For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the users guide for your iPhone at:
http ://www.apple.com/support/manuals/iphone/

For more information about iPhone, go to:
http ://www.apple.com/iphone/

To troubleshoot your iPhone, or to view additional support information go to:
http ://www.apple.com/support/iphone

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http ://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798

After you download the 160MB+ update and install it, you’ll be ready to try out the new location, home screen, and other features. Be sure to check out the updated Guided Tour from the iPhone site for a walkthrough of the new features, and/or the Engadget overview video below. Enjoy!

Check out this demonstration from NYU spin-off Perceptive Pixel for a glimpse of the possibilities:

and here’s a video of Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han premiering his multi-touch tech at TED in February 2006:

I wonder if Apple’s patent team licensed any of Perceptive Pixel’s work? It appears that Apple has talked with Mr. Han, but I’m not sure if anything other than words has changed hands(?). Anyone with the inside skinny, please speak up.

I’m also wondering how many points-of-contact (POCs) iPhone will be able to register simultaneously. Steve Jobs showed two POCs during his keynote as he pinched and stretched things, but I don’t recall seeing three or more at once. Jeff Han meanwhile illustrated using several fingers from both hands during his TED talk, admittedly on a much larger touchscreen than the iPhone’s. I could see more than two POCs getting really tricky on the limited real estate of a mobile phone screen.

[Thanks to m-trends.org for bringing the Perceptive Pixel videos to my attention]

Last July I wondered in writing about Q2 2006 NOK and MOT numbers:

Is mobile handset design and marketing now a two horse race?

As reported in this Chicago Tribune story on Q4 2006 results, the answer appears to be a big “Yes”. According to the Strategy Analytics numbers quoted by the Tribune:

1. Nokia increased Q4 share to 35.2% worldwide, versus 34.1% Q4 2005
2. Motorola rose to 21.9%, from 18.2% in the final quarter of 2005
3. Samsung lost share, down to 10.7% from 11.1% in the same quarter last year
4. Sony Ericsson is up to 8.7% from 6.6% last year
5. Closing out the top five, LG Electronics sank to 5.7% share from 6.6% in Q4 2005

Although Sony Ericsson increased its share a bit year-over-year, it appears to be more at the expense of Samsung and LG than of Nokia or Motorola. And even with S.E.’s rise, Nokia and Motorola still managed to pull slightly further ahead of the pack.

I wonder how things will stack up at this time next year, after iPhone has had a few months on the market? For Steve to hit his target of 1% share by 2008, Apple wouldn’t need to take very much from the major players.

Getting to the next order of magnitude, however, will be quite a bit more challenging. 10% share would position Apple in the top three mobile makers, assuming they grab share more at the expense of Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG than Nokia or Motorola. And as you can see from this quarter’s numbers, 10% iPhone market share won’t be easy to come by. But given the key bit of my quote from mid-2006, that this is a race based upon “design and marketing”, I’d say Apple has a better chance than anyone else at getting there from here. Assuming they listen to feedback and understand the shape of the mobile market, of course.

There have been a lot of so-so and a few really great articles on iPhone in the week since it was launched. What follows are my favorite blog posts, articles, and videos covering iPhone in week one.

David Pogue published an early first pass in his “Some Hands-On Time With the iPhone” after spending about an hour hands-on with an iPhone prototype the day Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced it at MacWorld. He followed that up with answers to a wide variety of reader questions in “The Ultimate iPhone FAQ” and “The Ultimate iPhone FAQ list, Part 2“.

Time covered iPhone’s development with “Apple’s New Calling: The iPhone“. Doubt after reading that one that Jobs is a bit paranoid? Read Fortune’s piece on “How Apple kept its iPhone secrets” to assuage yourself of that misgiving. Bogus prototypes to mislead employees and disguised software to hide the interface from development partners. You name it, and Jobs and company probably did it to keep iPhone hush hush the last couple of years. Good thing or bad thing, you be the judge.

What about the negatives of the device itself?

Lack of third generation wireless (3G) has been picked at by Nokians and others. Read my take in “WiFi is more important than HSDPA for early iPhone success“, which was picked for the Carnival of the Mobilists carnival #58.

Alan Reiter did a great job slicing and dicing the (lack of) imaging capabilities in his “Apple iPhone might be revolutionary, but definitely not for wireless imaging“. 2 MPix cellcam support, average at best. No flash or lens cover, argh. No video, OMG! One of my biggest disappointments with the first iPhone model.

And that leads naturally to my other really big disappointment: Lack of developer support.

As Jobs put it to the New York Times:

We define everything that is on the phone

Oh Steve, does your hubris have no end? Wait, I guess it doesn’t, as NYT reports Jobs continued with:

“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”

What about the hundreds of millions of Java ME handsets running mobile apps, Steve? Don’t most of those devices work on a regular basis? Would the mobile Java ecosystem have been possible if it’d been “a more controlled environment”? No way. Open wins in the end.

If you agree, consider signing the iPhone Third-Party Application Support Petition and blog your take far and wide.

Looking for more reasons to dislike iPhone? Check out “10 Ways the Nokia N800 is Better Than Apple’s iPhone“. Or if you’re just looking for more about iPhone and don’t know where to start, visit “All Things iPhone” for a running commentary of what’s known, unknown, and speculated.

Perhaps Stephen Colbert summed up our first week love-hate relationship with iPhone best in giving Apple a “double wag of the finger” while stating:

You can count me out as a customer, until you send me one for free

Watch the video for the true word from week one:

Only one week in, and it’s already been an interesting ride!