Android debuts in Barcelona

Mobile World Congress , February 11th-14th, besides leaving Barcelona without a free hotel room, nor free taxi and bringing Robert Redford to our hometown, the first cellphones using Android have been presented.

Secretism and speculations have surrounded the first demos of this system we talked about last January, 14th.

According to the following video (InfoWorld) during the 2nd half of this year first cellphones using pre-installed Android will be launched into the market. This OS simplifies the creation of mobile applications like QR-Code readers.

Android, welcome to Barcelona.

Via InfoWorld Videos

PS. Robert Redford, “Lions for Lambs” is almost as transgressor and commited as Mary Poppins. Welcome to Barcelona anyways.

Android (… and more Google)

Adroid

“The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, we’re offering an early look at the Android Software Development Kit.” (Source Google)

We miss Nokia at the OHA Members list – Open Handset Alliance, but it seems serious , with possiblities and a cool project. Good luck!

Here you can see a presentation video of the Android Project. Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz explain better than we will ever do what the project is about and what are Google’s expectations.

Obviously project ZXing (see post January 9th) has its Android’s version.

[SWF]http://www.youtube.com/v/1FJHYqE0RDg,485,405[/SWF]

ZXing (Google again…)

We found in the coders’ section at Google project Zxing (definition is copied+pasted below).

zxing

ZXing (pronounced “zebra crossing”) is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode reader library implemented in Java. Our goal is to support decoding of QR Codes, Data Matrix, and the UPC family of 1D barcodes. It will provide clients for J2ME, J2SE, and Android.

Why? There are several great readers out there, and there are bits of open-source code already for decoding, but not both at the same time. We want everyone to have access to some great source code to play with, so we decided we’d try an experiment, and open up our in-progress effort. Maybe some of it will be useful to you — maybe you can help improve it.” (Source Google)

At this point the status of the project is “pre-alpha“, but it can become a great project. Great name, great logo, great idea. ¡Good luck!

More Print Ads…

Last november 20th we posted “Estoy en Google, luego existo” where we pointed that Google has taken QR-Codes as standard and presented their new service Print Ads.

printads.jpg

It is a quite innovative and confusing service (even more if you don’t know what QR-Codes are). For those who want to know more about it, Google has developed an on-line demonstration on this service and interesting business model.

View the full list of newspapers [PDF]. So far this service is only available at the US, but looks like it’s going to spread all over the world

I am on Google therefore I am

Yesterday we found out thanks to Roger’s blog from Kaywa that Google has launched their Print Ads 2D Barcodes.

Everything we have written in this blog now loses all its sense (if it has ever had any). All of the hypothesis and predictions must be left behind.

QR have succeeded and they now are part of Google. Let the QR-party begin!

google_qrcode.jpg

Today’s post title is paraphrasing “I shop therefore I am” by Barbara Krueger (http://www.barbarakruger.com/) who also paraphrased “I think therefore I am” that a guy named Descartes said once (he has not a website so we cannot link ;) .

exclama.gif “Bonus-track”

For what we see in their page, Google is planning to capilarize into the physical world. At the same time they are presenting QR codes the offer their services as a traditional paper-based agency.

Whoa, what a day!

Going mobile

We’ll try not to go to much off-topic in this blog (QR-Codes and 2D-Codes) but this post at google.dirson.com shows that internet is getting in our cellphones.

gm.jpg

Most of them are not betas anymore. They are realities. We have to take into consideration the m-versions of our websites from now on as a key issue.