The update doesn’t change any of the Android APIs or introduce any new ones. Eclipse users don’t need to update the ADT plug-in either. Once you’ve unzipped the file on your machine, you will want to update things like your PATH variable and, if you’re using Eclipse, the SDK location setting for ADT (hint: Preferences > Android).

Notice that if you did not yet upgrade from m3 to m5, you might take a look at the upgrade instructions and then the API changes overview. For even more details on the changes, there is an API differences report.

No big changes should be expected after the m5 release and the major API change in the SDK, in the next months at least. There will be more bug fixes and API improvments until we get hands on the first Android Handset.

Read also :

• Look inside Android, Day one
• Android SDK Launched for developers
• Tips: Howto Connect Android Emulator behind proxy
• Tips: Change Android Emulator Skin

The new k-dimensional tree or KD-Tree index adds a structure in Perst that stores and manipulates point objects in a k-dimensional space by partitioning that space. Practical uses include computer graphics, geographical information systems and biometric applications such as fingerprint matching. In addition to their efficiency in handling multi-dimensional data, KD-trees are useful in “normal” applications in which query predicates contain various combinations of object fields. For example, KD-Trees are used to construct Query-By-Example (QBE) features in which the user selects fields and values, and the application builds database queries based on these selections.

While many Java databases offer limited index support, Perst implements rich options for data access, including specialized collection classes optimized for different data layouts and access patterns, including:

• Classic B-Tree implementation;
• R-tree indexes for spatially-oriented applications such as GIS and navigation;
• Main-memory database containers, based on T-Tree indexes, optimized for real-time memory-only access;
• Patricia Trie index, which speeds searches in networking and telephony applications;
• TimeSeries class to efficiently deal with small fixed-size objects;
• Specialized versions of collections for thick indices (indices with many duplicates), and bit indices (keys with a restricted number of possible values);
• KD-Tree indexes

For McObject’s announcement of KD-Tree support see http://www.mcobject.com/pressroom.php?step=3&article=93.

For general information about Perst for Android, including links to the open source, complete Perst database source code, and to McObject’s Android-ready TestIndex database benchmark, go to http://www.mcobject.com/android/.

Read also :

• McObject, Object-Oriented Embedded Database for Android
• ODMG3 now hosted by ODBMS.ORG
• db4objects Announces db4o Database for Android
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15

Q1 : We have introduced iambic in the last weeks to OHM readers with GoogHelper and Tipper, What can we know more about the company ?

iambic was founded at the end of 1993. At the time, the company had two people developing solutions for one of the very first PDAs, the Apple Newton. Making it easy to do time and expense tracking while on the go was the primary focus. Later in 1994 the company expanded its area of focus to include personal information management (PIM). As a result, Action Names was born. Through the years, that application evolved to what is now Agendus, currently available for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, as well as Windows desktop PCs.

During the last few years, we expanded our portfolio of Windows Mobile applications — with the development of titles that had a broader reach in areas that include: personal productivity, including vehicle managers, health and diet applications, and call management and action taking. In a nutshell, our mission is to empower users to make the most out of their time wherever they are –on the go or at the desk–, through the creation of easy-to-use, yet powerfully customizable solutions.

Q2 : Why the interest to create applications for the Android platform ?

Since the announcement of the new Android mobile OS and related SDK, we have been intrigued by what it promises to deliver at a variety of levels. From a development standpoint, being able to access any tiny detail of the platform without having to jump through hoops is a great time saver, and also saves from countless “back and forths” with device manufacturers for updated handset specific SDKs.

Having the ability to closely interact with the built-in applications and related data storages (love Sqlite and I’m glad it’s the storage engine of choice of Android) is another definite plus. This without forgetting the new operating system is backed by a rather consistent number of prominent companies, leaders in their industry and market specific area. All this, of course, so far on “paper” or “bits” if you want in the form of a quickly evolving SDK, and slick emulator. Will the promises I mentioned above become reality when the first handsets hit the market? I truly hope so.

Q3 : How many developers are currently working on Android projects ? Did you hire or is it from the current dev team?

We have a developer fully dedicated to Android projects, from the current development team, while another one is playing with the SDK “just for fun” — creating small tools so to speak. I’m getting my hands dirty too. I’ve been checking out examples, documentation, and thinking about what else we can creatively use out of what made available through the SDK.

Q4 : Are you just porting current iambic mobile projects to Android or planning new ones also ?

So far, in order to start getting our “feet wet,” we ported a few titles while exploring the possibility of the platform, along with the expected rough edges of the SDK.

Q5 : Any commercial application for Android in your plans ?

We do plan to release commercial solutions for Android. GoogHelper and Tipper themselves might get revised and “enriched” to become commercially distributable.

Q6 : Will any of your iambic projects will take part of the Challenge ?

Yes, we are currently working on a project we plan to submit to the Developer Challenge.

Q7 : How do you compare development under Android to other mobile platforms ?

So far we are finding the development for Android a much more streamlined experience compared to other platforms. I believe this is because the operating system is young (there are no phones based on it yet), and therefore getting up and running with the development environment is extremely quick and straightforward. Unzipping the latest Eclipse, the Android SDK, getting the Android plug-in setup in Eclipse and being off stepping through a few breakpoints while debugging the app on the emulator took less than 15 minutes. On mature mobile platforms such as Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, or BlackBerry the process of installing a development environment, main SDK, various licensees’ customizations, etc. can easily take half day.

That said, the SDK itself is clearly a work in progress. Its documentation is sort of “hit and miss” at the moment and definitely not super clear. And a few of the API calls are not working as expected. Then again, this is the type of stuff I’ve seen in SDKs that are much more mature, so no real news there. It often comes down to looking around forums and message boards for solutions, and spicing up the approach with some trial & error.

The latest SDK released just a few days ago is quite a step forward, although it introduces a variety of changes both from an API/development standpoint as well as from a user interaction / usage model standpoint. The latter according to what the UI showcased by the emulator is telling us. We are investing quite some time now getting the projects we are currently developing up to speed with the latest SDK. Hopefully we won’t see a similar rather deep change in the coming updates.

Read also :

• Weekly Android Applications 12/2/2008
• Weekly Android Applications 5/2/2008
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree

Highlighted features in this release :

• New user interface - totally remodeled interface, new design and icons, looks much better.
• Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package
• Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
• New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
• Search Manager - A new search API is now available android.app.SearchManager, providing the ability to to search for user, system or network based data, making search a seamless, system-wide feature.
• Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

Something very interesting in the new interface is the new menus. Now it is more iphone-like - if I can say - Menus have been iconized which make it easier for touchscreen phones, and we can see the blurred menus by the end, so you can scroll down/up to see more menu options. To dig into the new Android interface here is some screenshots from the new SDK :

Home of the Android Platform

Android dialer

Android Dev Tools

Browser Menu replaced by icons

By clicking on more you get the entire menu

Android New Contact

Android Call Manager

Ready to go ? download the new Android SDK, read M5 announcement on the Developers blog.

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• Android Developer Challenge Deadline Extended
• Second Android SDK Update m3-rc37a
• Look inside Android, Day one

OpenIntents

OpenIntents defines and implements open interfaces for improved interoperability of Android applications. Another interesting Android project which aims to make your mobile experience unique on Android handsets. The project is very open; anyone can participate into OpenIntents with code or ideas. Many interesting experiments and applications are already available with OpenIntents; most notable the Sensor Similator, and the central shopping list.

Tipper

Tipper is the second cool utility from iambic, a handy “split tip” calculator for dining out. It saves time and effort by calculating the total and displaying the actual tip amount.

SeaThreePO Android Translator

Even if it’s a quick Synday project as David announced on his blog, SeaThreePO is a pretty useful Android translator. SeaThreePO is based on dims’ code and using simply Android XMPP and Google translation bots.

Read also :

• Interview with Adriano Chiaretta from iambic
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree
• ARM To Showcase Android Internet Devices at Mobile World Congress 2008

ARM will be showing advanced technology enabling the “Full Web in Your Pocket” experience, including the latest ARM® Cortex™ family of processors; the ARM Mali™ graphics stack; and the newest RealView® development tools. ARM technology is powering over 90 percent of the handsets on display at Mobile World Congress 2008, including graphics-rich, large-format, low-power Mobile Internet Devices.

We got the confirmation from ARM, if there will be really an Android phone to be shown Monday :

“ARM will have a demonstration of an ARM Powered prototype of the Android platform from the Open Handset Alliance.” an ARM spokesperson told Open Handset Magazine.

Currently there is no image or photo to show, but visitors of the Mobile World Congress 2008 will have the chance to see the first Android-based mobile phone powered by ARM. We will keep you updated as soon as we get more information.

Read also :

• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15
• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree
• Interview with Adriano Chiaretta from iambic
• Weekly Android Applications 12/2/2008

Android Location

Android Location is a social mapping application for Android, a revolutionary service that will change the way people use mobile phones to keep in touch with their friends. Android Location aims to facilitates real-world interaction between friends and puts an end to frustrating missed connections. There are already 9 developers member of the project, but notice that the application is beeing developed under J2ME to assure compatibility with other mobile platforms. Features include :

• Know where you are without having a GPS
• Connect with friends and get alerted where they are nearby
• Explore places and events recommended by friends
• Recommend new places
• Search for stuff to buy in nearby stores

Metosphere

Metosphere is a mapping application where users can explore virtual objects around physical location like messages, emergency alerts, news, events, reviews, games. The goal is to follow the Firefox/Eclipse model and provide the ability to create extensions and add-ons like a Geocaching Assistant, Location Messaging Client, Proximity-based RSS Reader, Flash Mob Communicator, Community/Campus Emergency Alert Notifier, or even a Meatspace MUD game. More objects are going to be supported in the future.

GoogHelper

GoogHelper is a snappy utility that helps you quickly launch various Internet searches using mobile friendly sites such as Google, Yahoo!Finance, Amazon, Wikipedia and many more. The application is provided by iambic, and according to a blog post there will be more applications for android coming in the next month. The company already provide a very large set of mobile applications for Palm, Smartphone, Symbian, PocketPC, Blackberry and more.

Netscramble

Netscramble is a port of the KDE game “knetwalk”. The player is given a network diagram with the parts of the network randomly rotated; he/she must rotate them to connect all the terminals to the server. You have to be an android to solve it!. Pretty fun game that you can enjoy from your keyboard or touchscreen.

Read also :

• Interview with Adriano Chiaretta from iambic
• Weekly Android Applications 12/2/2008

This merger gives researchers and students, as well as any software developer with interest in object oriented programming and persistence, a one-stop experience to find nearly 1,000 resources aggregated and selected by a team of more than 100 internationally renown experts on object database technology including names such as Alan Kay, Suad Alagic, Scott Ambler, Philippe Kahn, Michael Blaha, William Cook, and Carl Rosenberger.

“ODBMS.ORG is an outstanding resource to the community,” says Rick Cartell, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and a lead of the ODMG consortium before it was disbanded in 2001. “The group has done a great job re-igniting the ODBMS research and educational communities. The community no longer debates whether ODBMSs or RDBMSs are ‘best’, recognizing that the two will continue to co-exist. ODBMSs provide the only practical solution for many applications.”

ODBMS.ORG provides the Internet’s most up-to-date resource portal on object database technology, backed by a panel of 100 internationally recognizable experts and financial support from the three leading object database vendors, db4objects (db4o), Progress (ObjectStore), and Versant.

Read also :

• McObject Sharpens its Edge in Database Indexes With New KD-Tree
• db4objects Announces db4o Database for Android
• McObject, Object-Oriented Embedded Database for Android
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15

Based on the great feedback you’ve given us, we’ve made significant updates to the SDK that we’ll be releasing in several weeks. In order to give you extra time to take advantage of these forthcoming UI and API enhancements, we’ve decided to extend the submission deadline. In addition, a fair number of developers have also asked for more time to build and polish their applications.

Below the updated timeline :

• April 14, 2008: Deadline to submit applications for judging
• May 5, 2008: Announcement of the 50 first round winners, who will be eligible for the final round
• June 30, 2008: Deadline for the 50 winners of the first round to submit for the final round
• July 21, 2008: Announcement of the grand prize winner and runner-up

Read also :

• Android Developer Challenge Open
• Second Android SDK Update m3-rc37a
• Android SDK Launched for developers
• Android SDK Security Release m5-rc15

“The technology landscape evolves and, for Nokia, software plays a major role in our growth strategy for devices, PCs and the integration with the Internet. We continue to focus on areas where we can differentiate and add more value. Common cross-platform layers on top of our software platforms attract innovation and enable Web 2.0 technologies in the mobile space,” said Kai Öistämö, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia. “Trolltech’s deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40.”

A new challenge is awaiting Nokia and Symbian to keep its market share and possibly gain more in the current and next years. It was expected that a company such Motorola make the move to acquire Trolltech since it already use Qtopia for many of its handsets.

Nokia seems to be more interested into making SymbianOS better, not just introducing more Linux devices using Qt/embedded Trolltech technology. Trolltech is more ambitious to see their dream becoming true and that “Qt everywhere” won’t be just a slogan.

The question is, How will Symbian be affected by Trolltech purchase ?

Read also :

• Google and UIQ Partnership on Services, not on Android
• A la mobile demonstrates the first Android Platform on HTC Qtek 9090 Smartphone
• The Linux Phone Standards and the Open Handset Alliance