Again, I read an article about the Android system and this time with the title: Open Source Developers Pick Android Over iPhone.

I am not really an open source developer, though I truly believe in that concept, I just don’t have enough spare time to put into it. Damn I don’t even have enough time to blog right here. Anyway, I was wondering if there are readers of you who develop Android application for the sole purpose of open source licensing. Apparently there are 357 open source projects for the Android platform existing by now. Most of them are not finished yet, but still, this is quite a number. I hope this number grows significantly this year. It will give the Android platform more exposure, more functionality and therefore, grow the platform to a level where it is widely accepted.

Are you an Open Source Developer? Leave a comment!

I just read that article Nexus One: Failure or a Late-Bloomer? I am bit confused by the article and wanted to share that. If I am wrong in any point, please feel free to correct me. The author says:

Slow and steady may work for the tortoise against the hare, but sluggish sales of Google’s Nexus One smartphone has the blogosphere calling its approach a failure.

First of all, the “blogosphere” (oh god, I hate this word!!!11!!!eleven!!!) does not care about sales. The real blogosphere one at least!

Secondly it is talking about:

it took Apple [...] 74 days sell one million units of the original iPhone back in 2007. [...] Google, meanwhile, has sold only about 135,000 Nexus One units, according to Flurry.

I don’t know where Flurry has their numbers from, but when I went to the Android Developer Labs 2010 two weeks ago, the official Google/Android representative was saying during their presentation that they are currently shipping 60,000 phones a day! I call that a success.

Today we had the last even of the Android Developer Labs ADL 2010 in Hong Kong – hosted by Google for free! I attended and I was more than surprised about how many Android developers and interested people actually showed up. Traditionally, the development community in Hong Kong is very small. Check out a part of the long registration line here:

And that’s actually after half of the participants already checked in. The venue was considerably crowded and I would say nearly 80% of the available seats were taken.

Below at the left side you can see a banner of the Hong Kong Google Technology User Group. Seems to sound like a nice idea, if you want to know about that, check it out here: Hongkong GTUG

As I didn’t follow previous ADL events I didn’t know that every registered participant gets a free Nexus One. To my surprise, Google had a big box with loads of N1 devices and I got another one – for free! Check out the developers lining up for the free Nexus One:

Below you can see all these dudes with white Nexus One boxes.

Nice event Google! The best step is definitely to give developers free phones. You can have the best simulator / emulator, but it is always a different experience when you run your application on a real phone. This is very important proper mobile application development. You need to use your application on a real phone – only then you figure out what you actually did wrong. Google definitely understood this. Thanks Google.

More

• ADL 2010 on Twitter

Hi Android programming folks,

Perhaps you already read this notification on the Android Blog about the Android Developer Labs World Tour. Google’s Android team will go on a trip and tour the world and host developing sessions in quite some cities all over the world. So if you are interested to get direct info from the Android team and your hands on new hardware (probably the Nexus One) just register at the end of this article.

Share your Developer Labs Tour with us!

If you are participating in one of these sessions would you mind taking one or two photos and share them with us? I am sure, that there are quite some developers out here who are not living in one of the mentioned cities and cannot go to such sessions. I will be attending one at least will share my shots with you guys. So if you would like to share yours as well, check out the following short instructions on how to let me know of your shots.

How to submit photos:

1. Upload your photos to flickr or Picasa.
2. Tag them with www.androiddevelopment.org

I will then put them up here on the blog so everyone can take a look how your session looked like!

Developer Labs World Tour Schedule

North America

• Austin, Texas – Feb 4
• Seattle, Washington – Feb 8
• Waterloo, Ontario, Canada – Feb 8
• Washington, D.C. – Feb 9
• Mountain View, California – Feb 10
• Cambridge, Massachusetts – Feb 11
• New York, New York – Feb 12

Europe

• London, UK – Feb 2
• Paris, France – Feb 8
• Berlin, Germany – Feb 10
• Zurich, Switzerland – Feb 13
• Madrid, Spain – Feb 13

Asia

• Singapore – Feb 28
• Taipei, Taiwan – March 3
• Hong Kong – March 4

Register for Developer Labs in your City!

There was just an article called “Android Market update: support for priced applications” published on the Android blog. The problem is that only developers from the US and UK are able to upload priced applications to the Android Market. While it is possible to create an Android Market from all over the world, selling applications for Android requires a Google Checkout account.

Google Checkout is widely known by now as an alternative to several existing online payment gateways. While the idea of Google Checkout is really great and I am looking forward to use; I have to say that I am very disappointed by Google with their Google Checkout strategy. Since Google Checkout has been started they were not able (or just did not want to) allow sellers from all over the world to use their system. A company that has “international” written in bold capitalized letters on their flags, should actually be a bit more international. Anyway, Google is still my favorite search / maps / image engine

Following the announcement of Eric Chu in the blog post, saying:

We will also enable developers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, and Spain to offer priced applications later this quarter. By the end of Q1 2009, we will announce support for developers in additional countries.

… tells us some interesting fact about Google Checkout: Google Checkout will be opened to sellers (merchants) from the five mentioned countries and more other countries in this quarter. I am just hoping that my country will be in there sooner than later! I am sorry to be that direct: but I do not see any reason why this is not possible now. We are living in an international world, Google is an international company, the Internet has even international as a part of its name. There are not just developers in the – so called – rich countries who would like to share their products with others. Seems we have to keep publishing free software for a free world!

Android Market: http://market.android.com/publish/Home

Just found this announcement in one of the news sites I follow every day. Google announced that a SIM-Lock Free HTC/T-Mobile G1 phone is now available for Android™ developers. So you need to have an Android Market developer account to be able to access the phone. Like me I guess many developers all over the world were looking for this kind of oportunity to get a phone for their testing purposes. Thanks Google!

Besides the SIM-Lock freeness this phone also has a nice artwork on the back (see photo) with our beloved Android logo. It looks slim, nice, modern and just chic. It costs only $399 and can be shipped to the following countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States of America. Be aware if you are not located in the US. The shipping costs to Germany for example are $179 (incl. tax and customs) which is quite high compared to the actual device price. You just see this at the end of the purchase process. If you are located in Hong Kong you cannot buy it there but you can buy it here.

If you want to have one you can check out and order the phone over here: http://android.brightstarcorp.com/