sdk

Attention coders: Google has released version 1.0 of the Android software developer kit.

The kit lets programmers create applications that will run on Android phones, even before T-Mobile starts selling the first Android-powered G1 on October 22. The biggest difference from the previous Android SDK 0.9: software built with version 1.0 will actually, not just probably, work on those real-world phones, according to the SDK release notes.

Google hopes its Android operating system project will help spur the mobile phone industry into a more enthusiastic embrace of Internet technology. Google of course profits from ads next to … Read more

Sony Ericsson announced its third annual Content Awards on Thursday. Developers are invited to submit content and applications for use on Sony Ericsson devices. The company released a free SDK two weeks ago.

Sony Ericsson is asking developers to create content and applications that address three questions: How can mobile phones help us monitor our carbon footprint? How can the next generation of mobile phones make our lives less frantic? In what ways can we make our phones personal?

Entries will be judged on ease of use, entertainment factor, innovation, look and feel, and audio performance. The seven categories include … Read more

Google on Monday released the first beta version of its software developer kit (SDK) for Android phones, a significant step in the company's hope for "open" phone technology.

Google, which is leading the 34-company Open Handset Alliance to create the largely open-source Android software stack for mobile devices, already had released an "early look" SDK in November 2007. With the new beta SDK, though, the company is telling programmers they can get started in earnest creating software that will work on Android phones due to start shipping later this year, though stopping short of promising full compatibility.

"Since this is a beta release, applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0," Google developer advocate Dan Morrill said in a blog post.

Among changes in the new SDK are the addition of the phone's new home screen as well as some new applications for controlling the camera, playing music, setting alarms, viewing pictures, and dealing with SMS and MMS messages.

Android phones, notably HTC's Dream, are due to ship in the fourth quarter.

Google had hinted in May that the new Android SDK was imminent, but the company ended up sharing it only with finalists in an Android programming contest until Monday. The Android Developer Challenge is awarding $10 million to coders to try to jump-start development efforts; on Monday, Google said a second challenge will be announced later this year that "will give developers a chance to build polished applications once hardware is available."

Google hopes Android phones will be open to run innumerable applications, not just locked down to handle a relatively small number of authorized packages. To achieve this promise though, one key step is helping programmers to write that code. And SDK does just that, for example, by providing a software emulator that can run Android applications without an actual Android phone. … Read more

In an effort to keep up (and possibly even surpass) other feature-rich NAS devices, such as the Synology DS107+ or the HP MV2120, Drobo Robotics today released to the Drobo Developer Community (DDC) the beta SDK for its ever popular Drobo products including Drobo, the external hard drive, and DroboShare, the network storage add-on.

The 18MB SDK includes a special firmware version for DroboShare that provides support for installing third-party applications and a sample application, which is an open-source UPnP Media Server. This means once installed, the DroboShare will allow UPnP-enabled devices, like Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, to access … Read more

A few days ago, I posted about Instinctiv's Shuffle application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It's an interesting piece of software that addresses a growing problem for some discerning listeners--how to get a meaningful playlist without having to program it song by song--but it only works on so-called "jailbroken" devices.

Instinctiv's FAQ alluded to problems that made it impossible for it to use the iPhone software developer kit (SDK), but I was curious to hear more, and Monday I had a chance to talk with Instinctiv co-founders Justin Smithline and Peter Brodsky.

As Brodsky … Read more

When Apple announced the iPhone apps store several months ago, it appeared to signal the end for the popular homebrew Installer.app by Nullriver. While the application has a few developer creations that cost money to use, most of the library is completely free, letting people load up on useful applications without spending a dime. The application became so popular it started coming with popular unlock and jailbreak utilities, including ZiPhone, which has had more than 3 million downloads of its latest version.

Apple's new system is a different story. It doesn't cost anything, but developers must go … Read more

One of the finer points worth digging deeper into from Monday morning's Apple news out of the WWDC is the company's new workaround to notifications from third-party apps in the latest iPhone system software.

Traditionally, when an application is running on a mobile device it will alert the user in real time when there's been a change or something needs their attention. With Apple's SDK (past, present, and immediate future), developer-made apps cannot run in the background, and therefore cannot ping for data unless you're running them explicitly.

The solution Apple announced Monday is a … Read more

Sling Media has plans to connect your Slingbox to Apple's 3G iPhone. But don't get too excited; there's no release date set yet.

Sling showed us a brief demonstration of what the company's mobile application, SlingPlayer, looks like on a jailbroken first-generation iPhone. It's merely a proof of concept, the company says, to demonstrate how superduperexcited it is to get started on an actual product.

This is, of course, all assuming that Steve Jobs announces the 3G iPhone Monday at the opening of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is all but assured at this … Read more

The era of officially sanctioned iPhone applications should kick off on Monday.

That's the same day Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage at the Moscone Center to unveil the next-generation iPhone at the company's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference. A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday, which could also imply that Apple's App Store will be up and running that day.

The App Store is going to be the only way to get … Read more