Google have launched a tool that will anyone (anyone, not just developers) to build applications for the Android mobile phone platform.

All the details are here.

It looks like a very powerful tool: I’ve signed up for access, which is being rolled out incrementally by Google as it’s a Beta program.

This isn’t really a surprise, or shouldn’t be. Several manufacturers have embraced Android, and there are some great handsets available now (or coming soon) which will appeal to anyone who isn’t Apple-addicted.

All the details here and here.

First of all, it’s a great device in its own right. Very fast, a great screen, the on screen keyboard is great, and the music player works really well with my itunes collection.

The fact that it has desktop widgets rather than an application launcher like the iPhone means it’s very easy to personalize in a useful and attractive way. My homepage currently contain links to my favourite applications (as with the iPhone) but also buttons for calling people, a dynamic weather feed, news feed etc, and a tiny music player. It makes the things I do all the time much easier than they are on the iPhone.

The app store (called android market) is useful, with lots of free and commercial apps. I’ve installed WordPress (with which I’m writing this post), Ocado and a program that reads business cards and converts them to contacts automatically. There doesn’t seem to be the same breadth of apps as you see on iTunes, but there are many, and the range is growing daily. There’s no Apple police to delay launch of new apps, so I expect there will be a lot more innovation long-term than there is on the iPhone: the presence of Flash, Python and a great scripting environment on the phone all argue for this. We won’t see debates like there were about Skype and spotify on the iPhone. By the way: Skype and LinkedIn, please release an android applications soon.

It syncs perfectly with Zimbra, our work email system, and with Google mail, and even links up your Facebook and Twitter contacts with your address book, though there could be privacy concerns with this.

So all in all this is a very useful and impressive device, personally I would say much better than the iPhone, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens as it evolves. The location based features, using gps and cell mast triangulation are the next area of exploration for me.

The future doesn’t necessarily belong to Apple and the iPhone, though. While the device has changed attitudes, and massively increased the use of the mobile Internet, it could well be the other devices that have followed in its path that end up dominant.

I’m sure Apple will continue to innovate, but the iPhone is now into an incremental improvement phase, and I’m particularly interested in where Google’s Android phones go for the next phase of innovation.

The iPhone is available in 1 size. It’s made by 1 company, who absolutely control what you can and can’t put onto it. It doesn’t fit in a shirt pocket, and I know people who carry a bag now just because they own an iPhone. Long-term, can one company with one device really compete with what Google are putting together?

First of all, we have many manufacturers today making Google phones. HTC dominate, but there are a host of manufacturers following behind. All the UK networks can offer you one, and they’re in all different shapes and sizes. The iPhone is £950 SIM free, if you were daft enough to buy one. You can get a Google phone for £200 nowadays, that will fit in your back pocket if you don’t want to carry a bag. And it has GPS, and it has thousands of applications, and all that. It isn’t locked down like an iPhone, either.

Of course Palm are coming along with their Pre as well, and Windows Mobile will update soon. But I think the main beneficiary of the iPhone long term will be Google and the Android. In the long-term, I think the attitude change because of the iPhone will be a lot bigger than its market share ever gets.

The inability of humans to control short-term impulses like this is well recognised in gamblers, for example, but it seems the phone has a very powerful grasp on us. Perhaps the people who are suggesting we should switch them off more often, leave them at home and so on have a good point?

Aside from the URLs in the ad, we’re also encouraged to search Google for specific search terms (doubtless incredibly well optimised for this advertiser). There’s also a QR code, or 2-d bar code, which is a machine readable image that contains a link or other information. The software to read these isn’t widely available yet, but the more organisations like Google support them, the more people will install the software. Next year, a large number of phones will probably have the QR code reader installed at the factory, so we can expect use of QR codes to become a lot more common.
Thanks to Blognation for the story.

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Tags: google, qr codes

QR codes are 2 dimensional bar codes. They look a bit like this normally.

This one directs you to my blog, since it contains the URL “blog.markhopwood.com”.

The idea is that you download a piece of software to your phone, then when you see one of these funny squares, you take a photo of it with your phone, and you’re directed to a website with related content. In the newspaper example, people reading an article about Radiohead might see one that links to a mobile site with one of their videos on it.

Why is this idea better than others I’ve seen (like this one that Iain Tait pointed out). The basic problem is that the software isn’t pre-installed on all our mobile phones yet, like it is in Japan. So the experience when you see one of these posters is pretty shallow. No software, no link. Maybe you think it looks cool, but that’s about it.

But if your favourite newspaper or magazine starts using them, you’ll have lots of reasons to download the software in each edition. And because it’s something printed, in your hand, rather than something on a poster or the side of a bus, you’ll still have all those QR codes when you’ve downloaded the software. And they can print instructions (like the ones below) on what to do when you see one of the codes. In short, there’s a bigger incentive to get the software, instructions and help with getting it, and it’s clear that it’s an ongoing thing. So it’s more likely to get used.

The best thing is that once you’ve loaded the software for your newspaper, you’ll have it the next time you see a poster in the street, so it’s driving technology adoption across the board.