Weekly Android

Weekly Android – Issue One

chris — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:25:32 +0000

Android leading the smartphone market

In the last quarter shipments of Android-based devices surged to 10.6 million units, increasing the operating system’s market share to 17.2%.
Android has already overtaken iPhone and may bypass RIM by the end of the year.

→ wsj.com
→ zdnet.com

Oracle is suing Google over Dalvik

Oracle has launched a lawsuit claiming that Google’s Dalvik VM is infringing on seven software patents which Oracle recently acquired with Sun.
Long-time Java developer Charles Nutter has written a highly recommended summary about the topic and possible outcomes at his blog headius.com.

Scoreloop scores in Asia

Multi-platform highscore provider Scoreloop announced they will provide a social gaming platform for Taiwanese phone carrier Chunghwa Telecom.
The Munich based start-up recently raised a $2.8M series B round of financing and is expanding to new markets through white-label partnerships.

→ games.venturebeat.com

Apps & Games

Popular blogging platform Tumblr releases app on for Android → talkandroid.com
Namco launches Crush the Castle → pocketgamer.biz
Happy Island, a Facebook game with 7 million players, launches Android version → droidgamers.com

Various

Five years ago, Google acquired Android Inc. → businessweek.com
Android smartphone shipments to surpass 55 million units worldwide → digitimes.com
Video of Google’s “mobile press event” online [30 min] → youtube.com
CyanogenMod 0.6 release candidates are now available → cyanogenmod.com
Samsung Galaxy tablet leaked → engadget.com

Oracle suing Google over Java in Android

chris — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:04:30 +0000

Last night it surfaced that Oracle is suing Google over the Dalvik Java implementation in Android. In particular Oracle claims that Google infringes on 7 Java-related patents which they had acquired with the company Sun, the original inventor of Java. Earlier negotiations between Google and Oracle seem to have failed.

More details:

Oracle uses James Gosling patent to attack Google and Android developers (by Ed Burnette, zdnet.com)
Comment by James Gosling (Father of Java, he received one of the patents)
Oracle sues Google over use of Java in Android (arstechnica.com)
Comment thread at HN
Discussion at Android Developers mailing list

The exact patents Oracle claims to be infringed:

#6,125,447: Protection domains to provide security in a computer system; Li Gong
#6,192,476: Controlling access to a resource; Li Gong
#5,966,702: Method and apparatus for pre-processing and packaging class files; Nedim Fresko, Richard Tuck
#7,426,720: System and method for dynamic preloading of classes through memory space cloning of a master runtime system process; Nedim Fresko
#RE38,104: Method and apparatus for resolving data references in generated code; James Gosling
#6,910,205: Interpreting functions utilizing a hybrid of virtual and native machine instructions; Lars Bak, Robert Griesemer
#6,061,520: Method and system for performing static initialization; Frank Yellin, Richard Tuck

Progress

chris — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:56:57 +0000

Right now we are setting up the NewsVault, our place to store, review and vote on stories for the next issues. It’s designed for multiple editors to paste interesting items for a community review. We hope this will help finding the highest rated news items for each week.

We try to get many editors from the Android community involved to find the most interesting topics and events. The easiest way to participate is to simply submit stories you find exceptionally interesting, either via the website or the bookmarklet.

What’s left to do before launching?

Getting a few more editors involved
Finishing the website
Finishing the NewsVault
Basic interface for sending the mails

If you have questions, ideas or other feedbacks, send us a mail or just leave a comment. Thanks!

Hello World!

chris — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:43:01 +0000

Hi everyone!

Weekly Android is a new email newsletter with a weekly digest of what’s new and hot in the Android sphere. We will include the highest rated topics, including apps, games, custom roms and mods as well as official and community related events.

We are almost ready to launch. Just one more dry test with a limited user base. Then we’ll start reaching out to the currently subscribed users