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News features of Android 1.5 SDK »

Android 1.5 SDK was released on 13th. Here are the highlights:

User interface refinements

* System-wide:
o Refinement of all core UI elements
o Animated window transitions (off by default)
o Accelerometer-based application rotations
* UI polish for:
o In-call experience
o Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
o SMS & MMS
o Browser
o Gmail
o Calendar
o Email
o Camera & Gallery
o Application management

Performance improvements

* Faster Camera start-up and image capture
* Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
* Smoother page scrolling in Browser
* Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling

New features

* On-screen soft keyboard
o Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
o Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
o User dictionary for custom words
* Home screen
o Widgets
+ Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
o Live folders
* Camera & Gallery
o Video recording
o Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
* Bluetooth
o Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
o Auto-pairing
o Improved handsfree experience
* Browser
o Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
o Copy ‘n paste in browser
o Search within a page
o User-selectable text-encoding
o UI changes include:
+ Unified Go and Search box
+ Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
* Contacts
o Shows user picture for Favorites
o Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
o One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
* System
o New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
o SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
o SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
* Google applications
o View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
o Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
o Upload videos to Youtube
o Upload photos on Picasa

New APIs and developer tools

* UI framework
o Framework for easier background/UI thread interaction
o New SlidingDrawer widget
o Horizontal ScrollView widget
* Home Screen framework
o APIs for creating secure home screen widgets
o APIs for populating live folders with custom content
* Media framework
o Raw audio recording and playback APIs
o Interactive MIDI playback engine
o Video recording APIs for developers (3GP format)
o Video and photo sharing Intents
o Media search Intent
* Input Method framework
o Text prediction engine
o Ability to provide downloadable IMEs to users
* Speech recognition framework
o Support for using speech recognition libraries via Intent
* Misc API additions
o LocationManager – Applications can get location change updates via Intent
o WebView – Touch start/end/move/cancel DOM event support
o SensorManager – redesigned sensor APIs
o GLSurfaceView – convenience framework for creating OpenGL applications
o Broadcast Intent for app update install succeeded – for smoother app upgrade experience
* Developer tools
o Support for multiple versions of Android in a single SDK installation
o Improved JUnit support in ADT
o Easier application performance profiling

Thinking out of the box – civilian uses of nuclear weapons »

Forget about what they can do, but most of us would dread the words, “nuclear bombs”. Here is an article from Wired Science, explaining 7 crazy civilian uses of nuclear bombs.

Faster Bluetooth 3.0 to be unveiled on April 21st »

Bluetooth 3.0 specification will be unveiled on April 21st, 2009. The new specification is based on wi-fi technology (802.11n) and will be 10 times faster than USB 2.0. This should make things much simpler, because today, I prefer to use the USB connection of my Nokia E90, instead of bluetooth.

Hopefully, there will be more compatible bluetooth receivers (TVs/ DVD players, audio receivers etc), so that one can stream audio, images and videos directly from the phone. It would be cool to play a slideshow of pictures directly from your phone to your TV.

You can read more about Bluetooth 3.0 here.

OpenDNS blocking social networking sites? »

I use OpenDNS, both at my work and home. Today, I am not able to get on to Twitter, Flickr or even Facebook. Looks like they are having some problem with their servers.

Here is the message I get when I try to access Twitter:

ext4 file system – Intro and Benchmarks »

I did not use the minixFS, but I did get a chance to use all other Linux file systems as they evolved. With ext4 without the experimental tag, we can see it as the default linux file system in many distros before the end of the year.

Here is an interesting article from Linux Magazine, talking about ext4′s benchmarks. It also briefly covers the history of linux file systems and their size limitations.

Here is the interview with Theodore Ts’o about the design goals for ext4.

Six Technologies That Passed America By »

Here is an interesting article from Gizmodo about 6 technologies that US missed. Some of the technologies are not that ground breaking, but it just surprises me that TV on mobiles is already available in Brazil and South Korea, but not yet in US.

I am still waiting for 3G in Bangalore; so I guess I cannot make fun of US missing TVs on mobiles!

Microsoft’s My Phone Service »

Microsoft recently launched the My Phone service, for Windows Mobile phones. If you have missed the “service’ part in the title, you probably assumed that Microsoft is launching some thing similar to iPhone! Well, after the experience with Zune, I don’t think Microsoft would try any thing like that very soon.

Well, what is My Phone service anyway? It is an online service to sync data between your phone and the web. You can read Ars Technica’s review here.