Gosling will develop communication technologies for seafaring robots

James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language, has quit Google after only five months at the firm, and has joined a startup that uses wireless communication technologies for data harvesting.

Gosling joined Google in March of this year, after a long stint at Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle in 2010. His role at Google was largely undefined, “I don’t know what I’ll be working on. I expect it’ll be a bit of everything,” he said at the time, but he apparently didn’t stick around long enough to find out.

His new role as chief software architect at a small startup called Liquid Robotics, will see him take over the development of the onboard software—sensing, navigation and autonomy—and the company’s datacentre. The firm has a growing fleet of autonomous marine vehicles that rove the ocean collecting data from a variety of onboard sensors and uploading it to the cloud. The robots are connected by satellite uplinks as well as GSM and WiMax communication gear and GPS units.

The robots harvest energy from the waves for propulsion and can stay at sea for a very long time – longer than two years in some cases. They can cross oceans, slowly, but at a great speed for data collection, Gosling said.

Orange promised developers a faster route to its global subscriber base

International carrier Orange has announced an overhaul of its own-branded application store that it said will dramatically cut the time it takes for developers to get their apps to Orange customers.

Orange Partner Connect allows developers to submit applications online through a single portal interface for distribution—if deemed suitable—across the Orange footprint, the carrier said. The initial phase of the project, which begins this month, caters only to developers of applications for Android handsets, although Orange said that support for Java and Blackberry platforms will be available in the first quarter of next year.

Orange said that developers can register online; sign a single online agreement to distribute their applications through the Orange App Shop in the markets of their choice; submit applications; create their publishing account; benefit from application review and quality assurance testing from Orange experts; know when their applications go on sale in each county; monitor sales and downloads; and collect payments.

The firm said that it will be giving developers a 70/30 split of revenues, although developers will be given the option to channel some of their share into marketing programmes that could see their applications given extra exposure on the Orange digital inventory.

“We have learned from our experience in publishing Orange-branded applications on various app stores and listened to the needs of application developers to create a service that works for them. Orange Partner Connect has been designed so that our developer partners can benefit from Orange’s global scale, local presence and trusted customer relationships. With this new service we aim to establish a transparent win-win business partnership that developers can trust to truly market their applications to local audiences,” said Yves Tyrode, Executive Vice President of Orange Technocentre.

Google has vowed to defend itself against Oracle's allegations

US software firm Oracle has issued a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the Android operating system backed by the internet services player infringes a number of patents that relate to the Oracle-owned Java software. Java was developed by Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired in a deal that was completed early this year.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Oracle claimed that Google “knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property,” adding that the lawsuit “seeks appropriate remedies”.

The lawsuit describes the Java platform as “one of the most important technologies Oracle acquired with Sun.” It goes on to detail the elements of the platform that it believes Google has purloined.

“The Android operating system software “stack” consists of Java applications running on a Java-based object-oriented application framework, and core libraries running on a “Dalvik” virtual machine (VM) that features just-in-time (JIT) compilation.Google actively distributes Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and promotes its use by manufacturers of products and applications.” Android and Dalvik VM violate seven Oracle patents, the firm said.

Furthermore Oracle alleged that Google had known that it would be infringing Java patents since it hired Java engineers from Sun earlier in the decade.

Google responded to the lawsuit, calling it “baseless” and pledging to fight to clear its name.

So says the University’s Dr Aladdin Ayesh: “Issues under discussion vary from the practical, covering the ways in which AI technologies are seeping through into our daily lives, to the abstract, where ideas can sometimes feel as though they have a touch of science fiction about them, but then not too long ago, robots were considered to be science fiction and now they are a reality.”

French company Aldebaran Robotics will have its Nao robots on display. These are autonomous, humanoid robots which can be programmed for a variety of purposes, as shown in this spectacular video. There will also be a demonstration of SEMAINE-2.0, a ‘Sensitive Artificial Listener,’ which can sense your emotions, and encourage you to talk about anything you want – a virtual therapist of sorts.

Perhaps SpinVox founder Christina Domecq should book herself in for a session, to help her deal with the final commercial failure of her ambitious voice to text project. Well, it wasn’t so much over-ambition which killed the venture, it was more mismanagement. New owner Nuance was unimpressed with the way SpinVox had been run, noting that the firm “incurred large historical losses, owing to expenses associated with its international expansion and substantial staffing.” And it really stuck the boot into Domecq as well, saying: “The company did not adequately capture all necessary information to administer PAYE properly and to identify expenses that were personal to the CEO.” Still, she had a good time. Apparently the parties were amazing.

The upshot is that Nuance is currently gutting the Marlow-based company and as of today its consumer service will be terminated. Last week the firm sent a message to its undisclosed number of consumer users telling them their service will be disconnected by March 27. Nuance is instead integrating SpinVox’s carrier services with its own speech recognition platform to help it scale to meet the needs of its existing customer base.

Speaking of dead technologies, WiMAX isn’t one of them, says Motorola. Still flying the flag for the platform, the US firm said this week that it has shipped its two millionth WiMAX device, just five months after shipping its one millionth. Moreover, since hitting the two million device shipment milestone in February, Motorola said it has also received a significant order from Mexican service provider Axtel to deliver additional WIMAX CPE units.

WiMAX also got a much needed boost from US carrier Sprint Nextel, which was showing off an HTC built, Android-powered WiMAX device at the CTIA trade show this week. The HTC EVO 4G is similar in form factor to the HTC HD2 and from what the Informer has heard, clips along at a nice little pace with its WiMAX connectivity and Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor.

Android continued its run of positive news, getting access to a whole new library of pre-written applications, as mobile middleware developer Myriad launched a tool which it claims seamlessly converts Java MIDlets into Android applications.

Myriad’s J2Android is able to take the tens of thousands of MIDlet applications already on the market and develop new revenue opportunities for the Android community. Software features include adaptive screen scaling and the ability to apply virtual keypads and softkeys.

While Android’s looking good at the moment, it’s principal backer’s feeling the Chinese burn. The Big G’s big trouble in not so little China might put Android adoption in that particular market under threat. Since Google stopped censoring google.cn search results by redirecting searchers to its Hong Kong site after suddenly developing moral objections to actively withholding information from people – or retaliating to alleged Chinese attacks on its infrastructure – a good number of local Chinese companies have got very prickly with the web giant. Mobile carrier China Unicom is one of these and has announced that it will no longer be using Google search on any of its handsets.

There’s a lot of political posturing and hand wringing going on around this, but does it really matter whether Google is in China or not? That’s what the Informer wants to know. Local search engine Baidu will always have the biggest market share, whereas Google was trying to move in on a very different culture. The moralistic argument and Google’s ‘openness’ are pretty much negligible here. If Google was required to censor out pictures of cats doing funny things instead of links to the Falun Gong, then there would be uproar.

Speaking of openness, browser firm Opera is looking to take advantage of Apple’s decision to relax the rules on third party browsers for the iPhone and has submitted Opera Mini for iPhone to the Apple iPhone App store for approval. So confident is the company that its creation will be allowed into the App Store that it has put a widget on its site counting up to approval and is offering up a shiny new iPhone to whoever makes the closest guess. After showing a sneak peek of the browser in Barcelona in February, the Norwegian firm has now made a video available to the general public, and the Opera browser, which is billed as six times faster than Safari on the iPhone does indeed look very whizzy.

Ah, but there’s a catch. “Due to server-side rendering, Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90 per cent before sending it to the phone.” Now this server side compression technology is likely based on Opera Turbo – a box that Opera sells to operators to stick on their networks to improve the mobile web experience. So what happens if the operator in question doesn’t have the box installed? Will users get a slower experience? Answers in a tweet please: @telecoms

There will likely be a lot more of this compression taking place, what with the whole data boom taking place. At CTIA this week, Swedish kit vendor Ericsson announced that global mobile data traffic surpassed voice during December 2009, after growing 280 per cent during each of the last two years. And global mobile data traffic is forecast to double annually over the next five years, the company said, adding that the crossover occurred at approximately 140,000 Terabytes per month in both voice and data traffic, while traffic on 3G networks also surpassed that of 2G networks.

As discussed in telecoms.com’s recent feature on the network capacity crunch, this stellar growth in mobile data is causing a major headache for operators both financially and technically. And from a technology angle, femtocell proponents are pushing their technology as the most effective solution. Which brings us to a new feature in AWIW: Analogy Watch, or, AWIWAW as it shall be known. Some of the concepts discussed by the telecom heads on a regular basis are difficult to explain, and the Informer has heard a lot of old twaddle in his time, but some of the analogies used are such gems they deserve to be archived, so we’ll kick of this week with one from Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum, who is talking about the data boom. “The vast majority of usage is going to be in homes and offices. Trying to service this need with the outdoor network is the equivalent of trying to improve the experience of reading in bed by making lampposts outside brighter instead of installing a bedside lamp,” he said. Thank you, Simon.

Moving on, and money has been changing hands among the companies which, er, help money change hands. Big billing firm Amdocs swooped in and acquired messaging provider MX Telecom for $104m, giving it a leg up in the mobile transaction space. While German carrier Deutsche Telekom acquired online payments firm ClickandBuy for an undisclosed sum.

Elsewhere, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of Kazaa, Skype, and more recently, the Joost IPTV operation, were using their Midas touch to help the money flow in their direction, with an eye to investing in European startups. Investment vehicle Atomico Ventures II this week completed fundraising to the tune of $165m and will seek to invest in early stage, high growth technology companies in Europe.

On to the big story of the week now, and the long awaited exchange between the two emerging markets giants, Bharti Airtel and Zain, is thought to be a done deal.

Indian operator Bharti closed financing for the deal to the tune of $8.3bn earlier this week, and looks to be transformed into a major global operating group, becoming the world’s fifth largest operator by customer footprint with the acquisition of Zain’s sub-Saharan operations.

Analysts at Informa Telecoms & Media say the case for Africa as an attractive investment destination is based largely on subscription growth potential. At the end of 2009, there were just over 450 million active subscriptions across the region, accounting for a penetration rate of below 45 per cent. Such is the preponderance of multi-SIM activity in Africa that in fact single user penetration is closer to 35 per cent and with Informa forecasting that half the region’s population will remain unconnected in 2014, the potential for connecting new customers is therefore tremendous.

But, as Zain discovered, there are obstacles to be overcome. And it is with this in mind that the Informer’s chums and Informa principal analysts Nick Jotischky and Matt Reed have put together a guide to investing in Africa’s mobile telecommunications market in ten steps, the first instalment of which will be published next week.

That’s all for now. There won’t be an AWIW next Friday as those boffins over in Geneva will finally get around to smashing things up with the Large Hadron Collider and we’ll all be swallowed by a black hole. Actually, it’s because it’s the Good Friday bank holiday. So for the next fortnight, take care,

The Informer

Myriad turns Java into Android apps

Mobile operating system Android got access to a whole new library of pre-written applications this week, as mobile middleware developer Myriad launched a tool which it claims seamlessly converts Java MIDlets into Android applications.

Myriad’s J2Android is able to take the tens of thousands of MIDlet applications already on the market and develop new revenue opportunities for the Android community. Software features include adaptive screen scaling and the ability to apply virtual keypads and softkeys.

“As Android devices appear in greater volumes, the challenge has been how quickly the industry can make apps and content available to cope with user demand. One obvious source is the catalogue of quality titles already available but locked away in Java format,” said Malcolm Dawe, chief product officer of Myriad.

In other Android news, the platform continues to make headway with the operators as UK MVNO Virgin Mobile announces four new devices to be launched over the next few weeks.

Hot on the heels of Virgin’s first Android device, the LG InTouch Max, Virgin Mobile is introducing the Samsung Galaxy Portal, the HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson’s flagship Android handset, the Xperia X10.

LG’s InTouch Max features a touch screen and slide out QWERTY keyboard, and is available free on a £22 per month tariff; the Samsung Galaxy Portal features a 3.2inch screen and a 3.2 megapixel camera and is also available free on a £22 per month tariff. The HTC Desire, based on a Qualcomm 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, with a 3.7inch AMOLED screen, will launch in April, as will the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

UK operator Orange has scored an exclusive on the X10, which is Sony Ericsson’s first Android handset. The UK carrier will also be offering the device in white, rather than the standard black, from early April.

The X10 claims an intelligent face recognition feature that can recognise up to five faces in any picture, automatically connecting them with users social phonebook and all other related communications with that person. The handset also comes with an integrated 8.1 megapixel camera/camcorder, a 4” WVGA touchscreen and a 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

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Sun warms up Java on Snapdragon

US software firm Sun Microsystems has been making its presence felt in the mobile space of late, most recently announcing the porting of its Java platform to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon ARM-based processor.

Sun said that it has been working with Qualcomm for nearly a year to port a complete, optimised, and standard version of the Java SE platform onto Snapdragon, allowing rich internet and media with full web browsing capabilities and longer battery life for Qualcomm’s newly announced ‘smartbook’ form factor.

As the explosive growth in mobile broadband has been partially stimulated by the burgeoning netbook or ultra mobile PC market, vendors are keen to find the next niche and lucrative mobile gadget. And US vendor Qualcomm believes it has hit upon the next big thing by creating a whole new category of device that falls between the high end smartphone and the netbook.

The “smartbook” as senior vice president of marketing and product development at Qualcomm, Luis Pineda, dubbed the device type, promises “the smartphone experience in a larger form factor.”

Telecoms.com is struggling to understand this one, it all sounds a bit too much like Palm’s ill-fated Foleo strategy. There is a wide range of netbooks available for under the £300 mark, many of which boast a full fledged operating system like Linux or Windows XP, integrated wifi and 3G, and a highly portable form factor. As a result, the opportunities for a ‘smartbook’ look doubtful.

Nevertheless, Pineda said that around 15 companies are on board with the concept and there are around 30 such devices in development. The first of these will hit the shelves towards the end of 2009.

Apple takes 12% of mobile apps market

Application store trailblazer Apple managed to capture 12 per cent of the mobile apps market in 2008, according to figures released this week.

However, industry researcher Strategy Analytics, which carried out the study, said that the iPhone App Store’s value is significantly lower due to intense competition between developers which has pushed down application prices.

While the original App Store’s favourable revenue share for developers has created a tremendous buzz and fostered innovation, resulting in a high volume of downloaded applications, the downside to this popularity is that competition between developers has become fierce and the majority of applications are available for free or very low cost.

“Other handset manufacturers have reacted to Apple’s success by launching their own stores, but in the past it has been the carriers which dominated application distribution. Carriers are now changing tactics, hoping to re-attract developers-leading to a rapidly changing environment where each company category has its own strengths and weaknesses. Apple’s has won the initial skirmishes but the war is far from over,” said David Kerr, vice president of Strategy Analytics.

Indeed, Google has launched its own app store in the shape of Android Market, Nokia has one built on the Ovi platform, RIM has BlackBerry App World and Microsoft’s offering is due to come out later this year.

And the app store frenzy continued earlier this week as Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Java developer Sun Microsystems, revealed his own plans to get in on the game, on a much bigger scale.

Whereas Apple blazed the trail for the app store phenomenon, targeting around 21 million potential users today, Sun has its eyes on a much bigger prize.

The US software shop reckons Java is installed on around 2.1 billion mobile phones and other handheld devices, and is targeting an active market of about one billion Java users (other devices such as desktops included) around the world with its own app store – the Java Store.

And while the main focus of Sun’s Java store may be the desktop market, with its JavaFX platform, Sun also has a great interest in the mobile space. JavaFX Mobile is a scripting language designed for creating rich content and applications to run on Java-powered devices from mobile phones to Blu-ray Disc players, set top boxes, navigation devices and automobile dashboards. Interestingly enough, Vodafone, the world’s biggest carrier by revenues is a big supporter, and user, of the JavaFX technology in its own Live! services.

Sun brings Java app store to market

The app store frenzy continued this week as Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Java developer Sun Microsystems, revealed his own plans to get in on the game, on a much bigger scale.

Whereas Apple blazed the trail for the app store phenomenon with its own offering for the iPhone, targeting around 21 million potential users today, Sun has its eyes on a much bigger prize.

The US software shop reckons Java is installed on around 2.1 billion mobile phones and other handheld devices, and is targeting an active market of about one billion Java users (other devices such as desktops included) around the world with its own app store – the Java Store.

“Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search),” said Schwartz. “As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience.”

And while the main focus of Sun’s Java store may be the desktop market, with its JavaFX platform, Sun also has a great interest in the mobile space. JavaFX Mobile is a scripting language designed for creating rich content and applications to run on Java-powered devices from mobile phones to Blu-ray Disc players, set top boxes, navigation devices and automobile dashboards. Interestingly enough, Vodafone, the world’s biggest carrier by revenues is a big supporter, and user, of the JavaFX technology in its own Live! services.

There’s also the ill-fated Java-based mobile OS known as SavaJe. Sun acquired the intellectual property assets of SavaJe for an undisclosed sum in 2007 after SavaJe ran into financial difficulties.

What SavaJe proposed to do was deliver an open and flexible user interface based on the desktop version of Java. Its roots made it attractive to the developer community, while operators loved the customisation options and security. Even so, the company had problems getting mainstream vendor support.

Essentially, SavaJe set out to do what Java ME did not do. As it is both a programming language and an application execution environment, Java ME promised application standardisation across all handsets. But due to the vast differences between devices, these promises were short lived and the write once, run anywhere idea remained a dream.

Internet telephony champion Skype on Thursday announced support for Android handset, Java-powered phones and Intel Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

Skype lite, a thin client version of the software brings the full functionality of the VoIP application to Android and Java capable phones, but uses the voice network to connect to an internet server to complete the call, and the data network for presence.

The company also announced the availability of an application for Intel-based MIDs, based on the Intel Atom processor and Moblin Linux OS.

Skype said the MID implementation will provide support for wifi, WiMAX, 3G and 4G devices going forward.

Web giant Google released a new version of its Gmail, email application on Thursday, catering for BlackBerrys and Java-capable devices.

As well as expanding its potential user base through support for more platforms, Gmail for mobile 2.0 is also designed to be more reliable in low signal areas and provides basic offline support for phones like the Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson W910i, and BlackBerry Curve.

This means you can still access your existing mail and compose new mail when offline, to send and update your mailbox when you reconnect. Users can also log into multiple accounts at the same time.

“For this version, we changed our fundamental assumption about the network. We re-thought every action that you might perform with the app and tried to solve for the case where there is no signal. We wanted to make the mobile client faster and more reliable and added some other new features along the way,” Google said.