Things are moving in Palm’s world!!! Short after presenting the awesome Palm Pre, Palm has just announced a DevCamp focused on this device.

The most remarkable fact of Palm Pre application development is the usage of standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS and Javascript. The good thing is that the potential developer base is awesome, including mobile application developers (like SevenClick) and web-based developers. We have certain doubts about how deep Palm will allow developers to access. I mean, javascript is not the quitessence of security, and allowing access to contacts, certificates, Telephony API, etc… will be a bit risky if not treated carefully. Let’s see…

For all of you who doesn’t know what’s a DevCamp, I’ll try to explain. It’s very simple. A bunch of developers/fanatics/geeks/freaks/put your own adjective here/people get together to talk and work around a topic, the Palm Pre in this case. Companies usually organize these events to foster application development and to allow developers get in touch with the gurus behind a technology. In my point of view, results are always interesting since developers can share knowledge and impressions. It has nothing to do wih sharing business cards, but sharing knowledge.

If you are interested in PreDeveCamp, check the official website.

Link PreDevCamp
Via MonkeyWeb

Some months ago RedFiveLabs launched the first release of NET60. It was a very important step forward, as it brought .NET CF applications to Symbian S60 cellphones.

But it has a big drawback. It only covered .NET Compact Framework 1.0. This was quite disappointing because nowadays the vast majority of .NET CF applications (at least, those that I’m used to) are targetting version 2.0.

Now, the South African company, with this new release, adds support for .NET CF 2.0. This means that we could start considering NET60 in our deployment decissions when talking about delivering applications for multiple platforms.

Moreover, while this is very good news, it’s even better. RedFiveLabs have added a managed wrapper for some Symbian native functionality: SMS, Telephony, GPS, Sound, Vibration, Camera and OpenGL 3D. And, if this is not enough, you can access all native Symbian APIs via P/Invoke.

In additon, making it even more frienly for .NET guys, the SDK includes a Visual Studio plug-in, for developing an generating SIS files from Visual Studio directly.

Awesome!

Via XatakaMovil
Link RedFiveLabs

We show you the first Fennec screenshots of the pre-alpha versions (M6). Now Fennec has reached Milestone 9, which means the first alpha release is out, and here you have all you need to know from Fennec, Mozilla´s mobile browser.

Fennec propose an interesting way of managing tabs, favourites and options, as this screenshot suggests.

First, you have to take into account that these working alpha versions are specially optimized for Nokia Internet Tablet N810, so the feeling its a kind of iPhone landscape mode browsing.

The website gets scaled to the device wide, so you can only browse the website up and down. Shall you pull right, your opened tabs will appear on the left. Pulling left, the toolbar with Favourites, Back/Forward and Options will show up.

You would like it or not, but it´s undeniable that its simple and clean. Perhaps we missed the use of transparencies so the web content won´t need to be moved.

Press the Options button for basic tunning, which includes some cool features like plugins (there are a lot available… there are a lot not working… but hey, this is not even a beta version!) as well as other not-so-cool options, as the one for not loading images which I guess is there more for melancholy of the old times than for testing purposes…

These are the complete set of features of Fennec Alpha 1, extracted from the release notes:

Easy navigation to Web content:

• Bookmarks, including tags
• Smart URL bar (“awesome bar”)
• Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
• Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
• Easy access to multiple search engines

Web content:

• Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
• Zoom in and out

Security:

• Instant Web site ID (“Larry“)
• Password manager
• Popup blocker
• Clear private data

Devices services integration:

• Click on a phone number to initiate a call
• JavaScript API to get device location
• Popup blocker
• Clear private data

Also:

• Searchable download manager
• Preferences pane

Fennec will officially be released on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Maemo (Nokia´s Linux) and WON´T be released on iPhone nor Android, according to Mozilla.

Fennec will soon be a strong contender for Webkit and Opera based browsers. It will have the developer community support, and Fennec development will increase quickly as Mozilla is working hard from the begining for getting Fennec as known as it could. This open marketing campaign includes demo versions for desktop systems, which you can download and test on the release notes website.

Google is betting heavily on mobile industry. In the same week Google unveiled T-Mobile G1 (the first Android), a patent application suggests it is planning to rid users of the need to choose a single network at all.

This latest Google patent application is called “Flexible Communication Systems and Methods”, and describes a system where a communication device is capable to connect to any available wireless network.

Talking to the wireless networks, the communications device is able to obtain the terms of services from these networks. So, wireless service providers can submit and adjust the real time bids offering their services (these can include voice, data, VoIP and various other communication forms), and users can either manually accept the bid that looks best to them, or have the phone choose one automatically (based on pre-programmed criteria).

It’s unclear whether the patent will result in an actual system, but the idea certainly is an intriguing one. “We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with,” the NewScientist.com report quoted a Google spokesperson as saying. “Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t.”

Vía xatakamovil, NewSciencist

Hologram mania is here, some weeks ago we reported about a hologram app for the iPhone, and now a similar application for the HTC Touch Diamond.

VR Hologram very similar to the wii Head Tracking VR demo made famous on youtube.
Uses G-Sensor to track tilt and update the VR Hologram view accordingly. 3D Hologram created using Managed Direct 3D Mobile (MD3DM). Found it easier to learn than the Managered wrapper for Opengl ES.

First Release V.1

MD3DM Graphics
G-Sensor view tilt (smoothed using moving average)
Nav sensor zoom
Tap screen to exit

This is Pauloke´s first 3D app/game and also his first windows mobile app, and he say this is only a concept can also be used to show those without the Diamond it abilities.

Congratulations! It is incredible!

Via XDA developers

Google has recently launched two ways of locating users behind web applications. Fistly we have the AJAX API, that allows to get an estimate of a user’s location based on their IP address. Secondly we have the Gears Geolocation API, we will concentrate in this one.

Gears provides a way to get a more precise estimate of a user’s location using the cell-ID of nearby cell towers or on-board GPS (if either is available). This way, users with mobile devices with Gears installed will be able to access their location in a more accurate way than before. Using both systems there will be less probability of location error. Later on this Geolocation API will add data from WiFi connections to improve accuracy even further, on both desktop and mobile. In all cases, Gears takes care of assimilating the results from each source and returning the best available position estimate.

From Google, we have seen this working on Google Maps with My Location, what we have already posted. To understand the concept of Gears Geolocation we can see the following video that explains the functionality of My Location system.

Gears Geolocation is opensource, so now third-party developers can use it. Good examples are Lastminute and Rumble, which are launching the first location-enabled web apps using this API on Windows Mobile. To access their geolocation ready websites just go to m.lastminute.com and m.rummble.com from your mobile device. These websites give you info according to your location. Lastminute advices you with restaurants nearby. And Rummble shows if you have “rumblers” around (places to visit and personalised recommendations from friends). You can see some example in the following video.

Additionally, if you are interested in this technology, there is also a similar product from Navizon, which offers a similar API.

Via Google Mobile Blog

Day after day, we hear about new austounding videogames being developed for iPhone, but just some have already been released on the App Store. This could change and speed up thanks to Exit Games. The company has recently announced support for iPhone Online Multiplayer Gaming on their Neutron platform and they are developing their own iPhone SDK for gaming. Neutron minimizes time-to-market and project risks, providing an infrastructure not only for developers (SDKs, doc and code centers, etc) but for the distribution and billing of your game, as well as services (e.g. webservices for MMOG).

iMyst is coming to the iPhone!

In fact, iPhone has a very good hardware for gaming. The accelerometer provides an innovative tool for developers. This specially fits on many kinds of games like car racing/driving games (see the video below of Real Racing, from Firemint) and some featured arcades (e.g. the acclaimed Super Monkey Ball). The touch-screen also helps on adventure games like iMyst, for instance (YES, Myst is being ported to iPhone, or that says a Cyan employee). And a good combination of both is used on Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which is coming to the streets on september. However, the lack of buttons and pad it´s a handicap for classical games, like First Person Shooters. There are many tests on the community (Yeti3D, iPhoneDoom, and many others you will have on the Installer App if you have a jailbroken device) for different interfaces with on-screen buttons, but that don´t make the trick.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed

Real Racing, from Firemint

Yes, iPhone can do this graphics. And it´s not the only one, here you can see exactly the same game on a Nokia N95. That´s thanks to the PowerVR MBX 3D chip that both devices have. You can have a look at some demos of the chip here. If you don´t know about PowerVR, they were one of the companies that started the 3D boom along with 3dfx. Both firms were forced out of the gaming market by Nvidia and ATI, but PowerVR (which also made the graphic chipset of Sega DreamCast) remained building for the low-power market.

In theory, the PowerVR MBX support of OpenGL ES (mobile version of the 3D library) provides a good grade of compatibility with some already developed 3D products. That´s the case of Digital Legends, a Spanish mobile developer firm, and their iPhone eagerly awaited RPG 3D game, Kroll. They ported the game from OpenGL to OpenGL ES in just four days, that achievement made them earn a post on the WWDC 2008 to present the game.

Digital Legends shows Kroll on WWDC 2008

Gaming for iPhone has been developing slowly, but now is growing faster and faster, and we will play very good games on the iPhone. Just time will decide if it achieves to consolidate as a first line competitor in the gaming handheld world.

Thanks to XatakaMovil we’ve got noticed of this interesting trial performed by researchers of Radboud University (Netherlands) at the annual Four Days Marches of Nijmegen. After 2006 edition, with the death of 2 participants and 69 hospitalizations, the University began studying ways to monitor the health of marchers during the event.

The system trialed included several elements:

• RFID Pill for checking body temperature
• Backpack-RFID reader
• Mobile phone

Every volunteer swallowed the pill that sends the measure of temerature every ten seconds to the RFID receiver in his backpack. That data was then transmitted via Bluetooth to a GPS-enabled mobile phone and then to the operation center.

“Based on their height, weight and age, the system was able to alert the volunteer if their core body temperature had reached a dangerous level,” in words of Martijn Bakkers, branch manager of healthcare at Progress Software, the firm that provided the event processing technology, based on CEP (complex event processing).

And, what is more important, thanks to the mix of real-time time processing, location aware and push services, in case a volunteer were at risk he could have been notified to have a rest or rehydrate. In fact, not only the participant at risk, but that ones in her vicinity and the medical team.

This is a fantastic example of how near field communications, mobility and real-time messaging technologies can be combined to provide useful services that can make our life easier and more safe.

Via XatakaMovil
Link RFIDUpdate HQInc

What the hell is this?, Please read this article from CrunchGear and tell me what do you think, it is insane!

Intel remotely fired up the audience today at the IDF R&D Forum Keynote by wirelessly powering a light bulb from a distance of 2 feet away. Using a signal generator and a power amplifier, wireless power transfer was effectively showcased by Alanson Sample from Intel Research, Seattle. Transmitting 60 watts at 75% efficiency, the technology lit up a small light bulb perched upon a set of odd-looking coils.

Originally developed at MIT, the demonstration worked by creating resonance between two magnetic fields. A comparison would be the famous example of an opera singer maintaining a high note long enough to shatter glass. This was the first public demonstration since the prototype was first developed last year.

With a four-year time frame in mind, the technology could eventually be used to power everything from laptops to cell phones. If the technology can be scaled for ubiquity, it “might make more sense to charge a capacitor instead of a battery”. When leaving an area supplied by wireless power, future devices could run off of quickly charging capacitors.

Can you think on a technology that makes one’s hair stand on end, everywhere!? not me, it is an utopia nowadays, unless the technology change in a healthy way, it might never go ahead .

Via CrunchGear

It seems that Android is stepping out from the fog and becoming real, at last. Many time and many things in the mobile arena have taken place since November 2007, when Android and the Open Handset Alliance were announced and the so-called ‘Early look’ SDK was released.

Yesterday, Google released the first beta of Android SDK, that was named ‘Android SDK 0.9 beta’, what means a relevant step forward in the road to see the first Android device.

According to the Android Developers Blog’s post, the new SDK has experienced a lot of changes.

• Many changes on UI, specially a new Home screen
• New development tools, such as a graphical preview for XML layouts for users of Eclipse
• New applications: Alarm Clock, Calculator, Camera, Music player, Picture viewer and SMS/MMS Messaging.
• New/improved APIs.
• Tons of bugs fixed.

But there are bad news, too. GTalkService and Bluetooth APIs have been removed, due to schedule and security reasons, from Android 1.0. We hope Google includes these important APIs in next releases. Anyway, this announcement will upset many developers, for sure.

However, up to now, all we have were delays and rumours about the so expected first Android real world device. But, along with the new SDK, a ‘Developers Roadmap’ has been issued with the commitment to be a living document that “will be kept up to date as the Android landscape evolves”.

Thanks to this, we can view some important milestones coming up shortly. These are the main milestones in Android timeline:

• 12 November, 2007 – “Early Look” SDK released
• January to August, 2008 – Android Developer Challenge I
• 18 August, 2008 – Android 0.9 SDK beta released
• September 2008 – additional Android 1.0 (pre) SDK releases made available, as necessary
• Q3 – Q4 2008 – Android 1.0 SDK release 1 available (first actual 1.0-compatible SDK)
• Q4 2008 – Android 1.0 devices available at retail
• Q4 2008 – Source code released
• Q4 2008 – Key Announcement on Android Developer Challenge II

Looking at this, I hope Google will keep up this schedule and that this important step will definitely bring Android out from vaporware.

Link AndroidDevelopersBlog DevelopersRoadmap