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.

What’s caught my attention lately? Google’s App Inventor for Android (@AppInv) and X.commerce web APIs allow you to build commerce apps quickly and visually using web based communication.

This article is the first in a series in which I’ll examine how to use App Inventor along with eBay’s web APIs to build Android commerce apps. In this installment, I’ll introduce App Inventor. I’ll discuss what it is, how to setup the development software and start using it, how to share App Inventor built projects and apps, and some of the limitations of this approach versus developing Android apps in Java using the Android SDK.

Future articles will look at how to access RESTful web APIs from App Inventor and what you can do with the eBay APIs. The final article in this series will build upon all the previous ones to walk you through creating an example Android eBay commerce app built using App Inventor.

What is App Inventor?

If you follow technology news, you know that Android has been a shining star of mobile success for Google. We’ve written quite a bit about Android here in the DevZone, and for good reason: It provides an open, flexible, widely adopted mobile application platform that enables you to build just about any kind of app you can dream up. But in order to develop for Android and use the Android SDK, one needs to be relatively facile with Java programming.

Some smart folks at Google Labs thought it would be interesting to try removing that Java programming restriction. Enter App Inventor.

As Google describes it on their “What is App Inventor” page:

App Inventor lets you develop applications for Android phones using a web browser and either a connected phone or emulator. The App Inventor servers store your work and help you keep track of your projects.

The key pieces of software that you use to build your app include:

• App Inventor Designer – used to select components for your application
• App Inventor Blocks Editor – once you’ve select components in the designer, you specify their behavior by assembling them together here
• Android emulator – used to execute your applications; alternatively, you may connect a real Android-based phone to your system and test deploy your apps to it (recommended if you have an Android handset)

We’ll step through how to set up and use the App Inventor software later in this article. To get a feel at this point for how App Inventor works, I’d encourage you to watch the App Inventor introductory video below (click here to jump to the video on YouTube if the embed below isn’t working for you).

Hopefully you now have a feel for what App Inventor is and the basics of how to use it. It’s time to get it installed and give it a test drive!

Setting up the software

You should follow the provided App Inventor setup instructions to get up and running quickly. Click here to access the instructions.

Important points:

• You need a Mac, Windows, or Linux system (detailed specs in the setup instructions linked to above)
• You need a relatively recent version of either the Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Internet Explorer browser (again details in the setup instructions)
• You need to have Java 6 installed and properly configured to be able to run Java Web Start applications

You should test your installation by loading the App Inventor Java test page at: http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/ode/JWSTest/AppInvJWSTest.html

Assuming the first part of the test (browser configuration check) passes, you should then click the orange Java icon “Launch” button to test launch a simple provided Java Web Start application (in this case, a Notepad). If all goes well the Notepad will launch and you should see something like this:

Once you have passed the browser and Java configuration stages, you still need to install App Inventor Setup into your development system. This contains the Android emulator and drivers for various Android hardware (the designer runs in the browser and the block editor via Java Web Start). Download and install the setup program via the instructions appropriate to your operating system:

• Mac OS X
• GNU/Linux
• Windows

Getting started

After installing the setup software, you are ready to do one of two things: Either setup your Android phone for development or build your first app with the emulator.

Although there are certainly some development and testing advantages to using a real phone, and I would recommend you do so for serious application development, we’ll stick with the emulator for consistency’s sake for the rest of this article. So, click here to start working through building a simple app in the emulator.

Google has provided very detailed instructions for you to follow as you build your first App Inventor app. The instructions being here: http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/setup/hellopurr/hellopurremulatorpart1.html

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d just call out the major steps and let you get all the details you need from their instruction page and the previously embedded example video. The main things you need to do to get a new project underway are:

1. Navigate to http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/ (this will launch App Inventor in your browser)
2. Create a new project
3. Drag and drop a “Button” component into the viewer (Screen1)
4. Upload an image for your button (I chose to use my ugly mug as shown below) and remove the unwanted button text as directed in the directions linked to above.
5. Launch the editor by clicking “Open the Blocks Editor” in the designer browser window (this will launch a Java Web Start download and may require you to approve several steps via popup windows before the blocks editor launches in a separate window)
6. Launch the emulator by clicking “New emulator” in the editor window (as noted in the screenshot below, this may take several minutes before it’s ready)

Once everything is launched and you’ve swiped right to unlock the emulator screen if necessary, click “Connect to device” in the blocks editor window and select your emulator instance; more magic will happen (this may also take awhile) and then, presto, you should see your app including the button image you specified running in the emulator.

Now you are ready to complete your application. Click here to work through the second part of the provided example including adding some text with a “Label” component and a “Sound” which you wire up to play when a user clicks on your image button.

The only thing left to do now is to make your app available for others to use. You do this by selecting “Package for Phone”. From there you can choose to:

• Show Barcode – provides a QR code that Android users can scan to install your app
• Download to this Computer – lets you save a local Android Package (.apk) containing your app which you can then use or redistribute to others as you see fit
• Download to Connected Phone – lets you deploy immediately to any phone you’ve been developing with

And that’s about all there is to building a simple Android app using App Inventor!

Click here to read the complete post on the PayPal X Developer Network including a discussion of limitations of using App Inventor versus the full Android SDK.

Senior Developer (Mobile and Web)

A3 Media Network is an international company whose customers include the largest mobile companies around the world and customers of their app stores. We create mobile apps, TV apps and mobile websites that bring our huge library of videos and images from leading entertainment brands to cutting edge devices all around the world. We are expanding our team of APP DEV NINJAS to create a collection of the greatest apps that mankind has ever seen!

About the role:
Do you like to stay on top of the latest and greatest gadgets and software?
Are you passionate about working with digital media?
Do you love geekin’ out and getting paid for it?
Are you detail oriented, responsible, fun and interesting?
Do you like to play with the coolest new phones?
Would you like to see your creations come to life on them?

Get ready digital media master, the job you’ve been waiting for is here!!!

Here’s how you’ll be spending your days:

• Developing and designing interface, coding and metadata handling for mobile applications, emerging application development platforms (tablets, connected TV, and beyond), and web sites across several platforms
• Prototype design, functional mockups, interface design, content updates and site/app maintenance
• Designing frameworks for products that work within mobile web browsers and can be adapted into smartphone apps
• Monitoring app/site traffic and scaling site capacity to meet traffic demands and maintain site performance
• Tracking traffic and conversion stats and adjusting sites to increase conversion and retention
• Working with internal and external developers to create, implement and improve internal content management systems and site publishing tools
• Select, edit, resize, rename, transcode and otherwise prepare media for mobile delivery
• Providing time estimates and manage project timelines for site development
• Staying on top of the state of the art in web design, mobile development, mobile delivery platforms and tools, and emerging new media platforms.
• Providing quality control and testing of mobile sites across a variety of handsets and carriers

What you’ll bring to the table

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Programming or related Web discipline
• Advanced and demonstrated competency in OO design/development
• Sandbox experience with HTML5, jQuery, JSON, CSS3 (including transitions and animations)
• Comfortable with open source language including PHP, MySQL, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, AJAX
• Demonstrated ability to deliver rapid prototypes and fast turnaround on layouts and wireframes
• Able to design, code and assemble an entire website from concept to delivery
• Your tools of choice include: Phonegap, CouchDB, Objective C, Android SDK, Java, Blackberry SDK, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Qt, Symbian, mySQL, PHP, Flash and ActionScript
• Experience creating Content Management Systems (CMS)
• In your spare time you’ve developed a knack for desktop image editing tools (Photoshop, Image Ready, Illustrator) and video editing tools including Final Cut Pro

And finally what you’ll enjoy:

• Competitive Salary
• Nice package of benefits including health club subsidy
• Exposure to the international media scene
• A very cool team of new media gurus to hang out with
• The opportunity to play with really cutting edge technology and get paid for it!

Goldstone Partners is helping this fast growing and very cool new media group find world-class talent that is shaping the next generation of consumer entertainment. Please send your resume to me personally at success@goldstonepartners.com. Principals only please. Unfortunately we are unable to support relocation or sponsorships at this time.

MOBILE APP DEVELOPER (IOS, Android, Windows Mobile)

A3 Media Network is an international company whose customers include the largest mobile companies around the world and customers of their app stores. We create mobile apps, TV apps and mobile websites that bring our huge library of videos and images from leading entertainment brands to cutting edge devices all around the world. We are expanding our team of APP DEV NINJAS to create a collection of the greatest apps that mankind has ever seen!

About the role:
Do you like to stay on top of the latest and greatest gadgets and software?
Are you passionate about working with digital media?
Do you love geeking out and getting paid for it?
Are you detail oriented, responsible, fun and interesting?
Do you like to play with the coolest new phones?
Would you like to see your creations come to life on them?

Get ready digital media master, the job you’ve been waiting for is here!!!

Here’s how you’ll be spending your days:

• Developing and designing interface, coding and metadata handling for mobile applications, emerging application development platforms (tablets, connected TV, and beyond), and web sites across several platforms
• Prototype design, functional mockups, interface design, content updates and site/app maintenance
• Designing frameworks for products that work within mobile web browsers and can be adapted into smartphone apps
• Monitoring app/site traffic and scaling site capacity to meet traffic demands and maintain site performance
• Tracking traffic and conversion stats and adjusting sites to increase conversion and retention
• Updating sites with a steady flow of new content and features
• Implementing our affiliate programs and integrating with other affiliate programs. Tracking and maintaining affiliate stats.
• Integrating up-sells and cross-sells, search engine optimization, keyword buys, marketing campaigns, advertising, SMS campaigns, and web promotion. Tracking results and optimizing each associated revenue stream
• Working with internal and external developers to create, implement and improve internal content management systems and site publishing tools
• Select, edit, resize, rename, transcode and otherwise prepare media for mobile delivery
• Providing time estimates and manage project timelines for site development
• Staying on top of the state of the art in web design, mobile development, mobile delivery platforms and tools, and emerging new media platforms.
• Providing quality control and testing of mobile sites across a variety of handsets and carriers

What you’ll bring to the table:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Programming or related Web discipline
• Intermediate/Expert in HTML5, jQuery, JSON, CSS3 (including transitions and animations)
• Demonstrated ability to deliver rapid prototypes and fast turnaround on layouts and wireframes
• Able to design, code and assemble an entire website from concept to delivery
• Your tools of choice include: Phonegap, CouchDB, Objective C, Android SDK, Java, Blackberry SDK, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Qt, Symbian, mySQL, PHP, Flash and ActionScript
• Experience with affiliate programs, web traffic generation, web banner and ad creation
• In your spare time you’ve developed a knack for desktop image editing tools (Photoshop, Image Ready, Illustrator) and video editing tools including Final Cut Pro

And finally what you’ll enjoy:

• Competitive Salary
• Nice package of benefits including health club subsidy
• Exposure to the international media scene
• A very cool team of new media gurus to hang out with
• The opportunity to play with really cutting edge technology and get paid for it!

Goldstone Partners is helping this fast growing and very cool new media group find world-class talent that is shaping the next generation of consumer entertainment. Please send your resume to me personally at success@goldstonepartners.com. Principals only please. Unfortunately we are unable to support relocation or sponsorships at this time.

PayPal X Platform

• Part 3 of my current @PayPalX series http://bit.ly/jz8cOK susses out Google Checkout, In-App Payments, and Wallet http://bit.ly/mDpyhN #
• Part 4 of my alternative payments series http://bit.ly/jz8cOK compares Dwolla to @PayPalX http://bit.ly/kydrnN #
• My latest @PayPalX post: Massive @PayPal user and mobile payments growth http://bit.ly/mmhSym #
• Wired mag interview with @Square founder Jack Dorsey http://bit.ly/mBIa99 #
• "Going, going, gone: Who killed the Internet auction?" http://bit.ly/lO3vWz is premature in reporting its death, but worth reading anyway #
• Would you like to read about @Magento, @AppInv for Android development, @PayPalX in local apps, or something else? http://bit.ly/ina47e #

Big data

• From evaluation to your first production #Hadoop cluster http://oreil.ly/m5LdQs via @radar #

Wireless and mobility

• Firefox Home is very handy; get the #iPhone #app here http://bit.ly/iGbw1O or for #Android here http://bit.ly/mSYlDD #
• How the iPhone effect changed everything http://bit.ly/iePGoX especially smartphones, handset vendor fortunes, and mobile data usage #

APIs and development

• The PDF Toolkit (pdftk) http://bit.ly/j19NmB is pretty dang cool stuff if you have to munge and muck around with PDF files. Recommended! #
• "PDF Hacks" is a terribly useful book from the maker of pdftk; check it out in @safaribooks online at: http://bit.ly/lVBVb9 #

Personal things

• Thank you, Clive Thompson, for providing a name for that thing I do before I actually bang out words for a project! http://bit.ly/mJDEsQ (“prewriting”) #
• Writing nakeder than Orwell http://bit.ly/lsL42i by @thisissethsblog (excellent!) #
• Another @thisissethsblog gem: "How do you know when it's done?" http://bit.ly/lExlGW (I fight this too often) #
• I'm enjoying the Financing Options for Startups series http://bit.ly/jB6lp6 by @fredwilson (loved the customers post http://bit.ly/mUQthj ) #
• How to use Google Plus http://rww.to/lGw4Ci via @rww #
• How one newspaper rebooted its workflow with @GoogleDocs and @WordPress http://oreil.ly/jqZgyK via @radar #
• To do: Check out Hunting GPS Maps http://bit.ly/mizhnp before next western trip #
• I do *not* like the new @gmail http://bit.ly/jQuIVP especially the big, ugly, red Compose Mail button screaming at me from the upper left! #

Running

• Ran 3.19 miles in 33 mins and felt alright. Hot! http://bit.ly/lRGfyk #
• Ran 3.31 miles in 34 mins and felt great. Beautiful, cool morning before the rain arrived. http://bit.ly/mF2kfG #
• Ran 4.02 miles in 45 mins and felt great. Mile paces 8:02, 8:23, 8:42, 8:49, 8:15, 8:47, 7:40, 7:49, and 7:54. http://bit.ly/jlLsSq #

We often hear that new, better ways to pay are just around the corner. While near field communication (NFC) based contactless payments have been in various trials and limited deployments in many places around the world for a while now, they always seem to be “not quite ready for prime time” for large-scale US deployments.

Recent news may indicate that this is finally about to change. Earlier this week three of the four major US wireless carriers announced they are going after smartphone payments using NFC tech. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are looking at doing an initial four city test before a wider rollout. The fact that these three cut-throat competitors are working together shows that there is serious money to be had by whomever gets contactless payments right, and the carriers would much rather it be them than the credit card networks.

Indeed, as US cell penetration has risen and ever more capable feature phones and smartphones have come to market, options for cell phone based payments have climbed rapidly.

Another example: PayPal partner Bling Nation is testing its chip tag based payments. (Bling Nation uses PayPal technology to enable consumers to get funds into its system for light touch purchases.) While the carrier NFC-based option only requires a NFC-capable mobile phone to get within a few inches of a reader for the payment to be made, Bling’s tag affixed to the back of a mobile handset must be lightly touched to a reader for payment to occur. This is at least superficially quite similar to MasterCard’s RFID-based PayPass technology.

Key point: Whether you are using contactless or “light touch” mobile phone payments, you’re able to make your purchase quicker and more securely than using a traditional credit card, and you can do it with the mobile phone you already have in your pocket (or hand) anyway.

Click here to read the rest of the blog post on the PayPal X Developer Network.

Java ME Application and Tool Repositories

Java ME Emulators and SDKs

Specifications:

• Mobile Information Device Profile
  (MIDP 2.0 Spec, 2.0 Reference Impl, and FAQ; 1.0 Spec and OTA Recommended Practice) — application runtime environment for wireless devices; requires CLDC
• Connected, Limited Device Configuration (CLDC 1.1 Spec, 1.1 Reference Impl, FAQ; 1.0 Spec) — base Java support for mobile phone, pager, PDA class devices
• Mobile Media API (MMA 1.0 Spec, 1.0 Reference Impl) — API for access and control of audio and video; targeted at CLDC and MIDP devices, but does not exclude support by CDC implementations
• Wireless Messaging API (WMA 2.0 Spec, 1.1 Spec, 1.1 Reference Impl) — APIs provides standard access to SMS and CBS messaging; WMA 2.0 will extend WMA to support multimedia messaging via MMS
• Java Technology for the Wireless Industry (JTWI 1.0 Spec, FAQ) — clarifies how MIDP, CLDC, WMA, and MMA technologies interoperate in real world end-to-end solution deployments
• Java APIs for Bluetooth (Java APIs for Bluetooth 1.0 Spec) — enables devices to integrate into Bluetooth environments
• J2ME Web Services (J2ME Web Services Specification 1.0 Spec) — optional package providing standard access to Web Services from Java ME

• Not find the Java ME specification you were looking for? Try searching through: All Java ME related Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
• Still not finding it? Try expanding your search to: All Java Specification Requests (JSRs)
• Related specifications: XHTML and HTML | HTTP 1.1 | TLS (based upon SSL) | HTTP over TLS | Compact HTML | Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) | Bluetooth | IEEE 802.11 standards

Books:

I’ve listed all of the Java ME development related books of which I am aware below, plus a few related wireless titles thrown in at the bottom for good measure. If you are considering buying one or more of these books, be sure you read the reader reviews on each page.

Additional books may be available by clicking here to search for Java ME titles in Amazon.com. You can also visit the kvm-interest archives for authors’ descriptions of their books and reviews from other Java ME developers.

• Riggs, Taivalsaari, and VandenBrink: Programming Wireless Devices with the Java(tm) 2 Platform, Micro Edition (The Java Series)
• John W. Muchow: Core J2ME Technology and MIDP (Sun Microsystems Press)
• Cynthia Block and Annette Wagner: MIDP 2.0 Style Guide for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (The Java Series)
• Jonathan Knudsen: Wireless Java: Developing with J2ME, 2nd ed (APress)
• Kim Topley: J2ME in a Nutshell (O’Reilly)
• Michael Yuan: Enterprise J2ME: Developing Mobile Java Applications (Prentice Hall)
• Qusay Mahmoud: Learning Wireless Java (O’Reilly)
• David Fox and Roman Verhovsek: Micro Java(TM) Game Development (Addison-Wesley)
• James Keogh: J2ME: The Complete Reference (McGraw-Hill)
• Daryl Wilding-McBride: Java Development on PDAs: Building Applications for Pocket PC and Palm Devices (Addison-Wesley)
• Yu Feng and Jun Zhu: Wireless Java Programming with J2ME (Sams)
• Michael Morrison: Teach Yourself Wireless Java with J2ME in 21 Days (Sams)
• Eric Giguere: Java 2 Micro Edition: Professional Developers Guide (Wiley)
• Enrique Ortiz and Eric Giguere: Mobile Information Device Profile for Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME): Professional Developer’s Guide (Wiley)
• Bill Ray et al: Professional Java Mobile Programming (Wrox)
• Michael Kroll and Stefan Haustein: Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) Application Development (Sams)
• Imtiyaz Haque and Brian O’Connor: J2ME Enterprise Development (John Wiley & Sons)
• Dan Harkey et al: Wireless Java Programming for Enterprise Applications: Mobile Devices Go Corporate (John Wiley & Sons)
• James White and David Hemphill: Java 2 Micro Edition (Manning)
• Vartan Piroumian: Wireless J2ME Platform Programming (Prentice Hall)
• Mikko Kontio: Professional Mobile Java with J2ME (IT Press)
• Paul Tremblett: Instant Wireless Java with J2ME (McGraw Hill)
• Dreamtech Software Team: Wireless Programming with J2ME: Cracking the Code (Hungry Minds)
• Hinkmond Wong: Developing Jini(TM) Applications Using J2ME(TM) Technology (Addison-Wesley)
• Mark Beaulieu: Wireless Internet Applications and Architecture (Addison Wesley)
• Martyn Mallick: Mobile and Wireless Design Essentials (John Wiley & Sons)
• Matthew S. Gast: 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly)
• Bob O’Hara and Al Petrick: The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer’s Companion

Related Sites:

Java Platform, Micro Edition homepage
KVM-interest mailing list archives (all things Java ME discussed here)
Bill Day’s blog

Discussions: Java.net Mobile & Embedded Community |Nokia Developer Boards | Keitai-L list | Siemens list

FAQs: Sun Mobility FAQs, Glossary | Wireless Telecom Glossary

Portals: Sun Mobility site | Forum Nokia | WirelessDevNet

Devices: Nokia device specs | RIM BlackBerry devices

US Carrier Developer Sites: AT&T | Sprint

802.11 Networks and WUGs: Community WiFi Cafes | Wi-Fi Hotspot List | Wi-Fi Zone Finder | NodeDB.com | 802.11b Community Network List

Bill Day’s technical presentations (Java ME and other topics)
Spotless research VM
Zev Blut’s Basic guide to developing iAppli programs (Java for imode)
O’Reilly Network 802.11 articles
Google Mobile

Events: java.net Event Calendar | JavaOne

News: Engadget | Wireless Week

The 61st installment of the Carnival is out. Jan Kuczynski has posted number 61 on Wireless World Japan, complete with a Matsuri theme.

My “Two horse race, soon to be three” post on the mobile handset market made the cut. Thanks Jan!

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.