Google Rolls Out Android Programming Tools!

CNET News informs about Google's new Android and its programming tools. Yesterday, Google released Android – An Open Handset Alliance Project wherein a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, is developing Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.

"The Android software includes the Google-created Dalvik virtual machine for running Java programs, a browser based on the WebKit engine, and support for many media and image file formats. (Note: I clarified that the browser is only based on the WebKit engine.) And hardware abilities permitting, it also supports wireless communications using GSM mobile-phone technology, 3G, Edge, 802.11 Wi-Fi networks. Conspicuously missing from the list is the widely used CDMA mobile-phone technology developed by Qualcomm."

To boost this new release, just a few hours ago, Google Inc announced the 'Android Developer Challenge' where the person who creates the best cell phone software wins a sum of $10 million.

CNet goes on to inform that, "Android programmers can use the open-source Eclipse programming tool, founded by IBM and now supported by many companies, along with an Android plug-in for Eclipse. The SDK includes an emulator so programmers can write software even without phone hardware. However, as programmer Jason Chen cautions on his blog, "The look and feel of the user interface in the emulator is a placeholder for a final version that is under development."

The SDK also describes application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable programmers to take advantage of underlying support for location-based services, video and audio streaming and playback, and 3D graphics. However, support for Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless networking APIs isn't yet available, though they'll be added to the SDK, the site said. Google mentions support for two APIs for using Google services, too: Google Maps for displaying maps and XMPP for device-to-device communication tasks such as playing checkers.

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