23 Musings

Google have announced the launch of Google Gears for Mobile.

I'm a regular user of mobile web apps on my phone, especially when travelling by train, and there's nothing worse than finding your signal dies and you lose connectivity at a crucial point. Well no longer; now developers can make their mobile apps Gears ready which will enable you to keep working until a connection returns.

I can already think of some great ideas for it; an offline blogger mobile interface which allowed you to write your blog posts offline, then connect to upload. Or maybe an offline mobile email app. And better still a mobile download of Google Calendars (or other online office apps) with both online and offline synchronisation capability!

It's currently only available for Internet Explorer Mobile so you're pretty much stuck unless you have a Windows smartphone, but expect it to go to other phone platforms pretty quickly.

This could be a great addition to Android, imagine a phone operating system which allows full on/offline synchronisation with all your favourite web apps available. That would be very cool!

More here from Google Code, including the video below.

I blogged last week about the rumour of an Android phone appearing this week and lo and behold more than one have, in fact there's been a veritable plethora of Android based phones on show at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The BBC have a report on it here, and Techcrunch have a video of an Android phone in use (see below).

It looks good so far but obviously these are all a work in progress so not that pretty and definitely not iPhone competitors as yet.

British chip maker ARM have announced that they will demo a Google Android based prototype phone at a show in Barcelona next week.

Sadly this isn't to be the Gphone that rumours again surfaced about last week, however it is definitely going to be interesting as ARM aren't a phone manufacturer, more an equipment and chips supplier.

Whether this is being worked on with Googles help remains unknown, I'm sure however that it is being demoed with their approval.

Yahoo has announced a new developer platform for their Yahoo Go mobile web service. The new platform is being set up to enable developers and publishers to mobilise their services quickly, at high quality and low cost, across hundreds of devices.

This is a very different approach to Google's who are launching a whole mobile operating system (Android) with the help of many partners.

Yahoo's system aims to build on the success of Yahoo Go and allow developers to tap into multiple phone manufacturers and carriers much more easily. It probably won't have the flexibility to be able to create as sophisticated an application as you can on Android but it may well have the Facebook effect and allow developers to create simple apps with viral qualities which could prove very successful.

Well it's the codename for the Open Handset Alliance software created by Google with input from a raft of other software and handset companies. It should (if all goes to plan) open up the mobile world completely and allow for much better applications and integration to occur on mobiles in the future.

The Open Handset Alliance have released a video (below) to explain Android:

Sounds very promising. I wonder how RIM and Apple are feeling?