Being a developer type I couldn't wait to start experimenting with coding on my new HTC Desire. Being Android powered it is very friendly and coding mainly takes place in Java, which I'm familiar with. This class of mobile device is incredibly powerful of course, armed not just with portability and web access but also decent processing power and a variety of sensors. We're still learning about what exactly this means and what opportunities it can bring and so it is very important to be able to experiment, try out ideas and build rough prototypes. This is where the Android Scripting Environment (ASE) comes in, and I used it to build a prototype application to scan a barcode on a book and use that code to see if it is in a library. Handy when deciding whether to buy a book!

An experimental Boxee application that lets you track how your Member of Parliament (UK) is voting on your television.
See: “Your MP” Boxee app Release Announcement

The notification bubble is a well known feature of Ubuntu, gently informing us when we are online, when we get tweets and new email and so on. It has an interesting feature that it commands attention for a few moments, but doesn't get in the way and the user can return to what they were doing without really stopping. At the moment I am trying to learn a bit of Swedish and wondered if these attributes might help when learning new words. What if I could use the notification bubble to show me words at random intervals so grab my attention momentarily while using my computer?

I like programming, I like mobiles, so naturally three months into my trial of the Nokia N900 my curiosity turned to how you might write your own applications for this very capable device. Notice I've said “applications” not “apps” here, as maybe “apps” doesn't really do it justice, especially with full sized applications like Abiword being ported. The device is really a pocket sized Linux computer with goodies such as a high resolution screen, GPS and Infra Red all thrown in so it has a lot of potential for creative application developers. You can develop code for it using tools on your laptop or if you just want to experiment a little you can even write Python programs on the device itself.

Programming a computer is actually quite an intellectually stimulating way to spend time, you also usually end up with something to show for your labour. Getting into programming now though can be very confusing, there are so many computer languages out there, where would you start? An additional problem is that this is not the 1980s anymore, printing out “Hello World” ad infinitum is not going to impress anyone. This is where “Quickly" comes in, a new template based programming system making its first appearance in Ubuntu 9.10. It is designed to be easy and fun and is there to help you from getting an initial program together right through to distributing it.

Today is a big day, we find out tonight how well the Open University entry has done in the Boxee App Development challenge. A small team of us had been thinking about big screen (web experiences designed for interactive television to be viewed at about ten feet away) web sites and what an OU experience might be like in such a setting. When the challenge was announced it was a fantastic opportunity to quickly develop something to get ourselves started in this exciting area, so we decided to go for it and in about four weeks went from having nothing to having a fully working application, complete with full user interface and graphic design by Dave Winter, client and server side code by me and communications, testing and creative input by Stuart Brown and Matt Rawlinson. It was hard work which gobbled up a few evenings and weekends but it was worth it.

I've written before about the blurring of offline and online worlds and here is a great example of the concept in action; an interesting program that allows you to integrate your Flickr account into the file system of your Linux-powered computer, making it as easy to upload and download files as copying and pasting between folders. This is continuing the idea of merging a web experience with the desktop experience rather than the web being confined to your web browser. The program that makes this possible is called flickrfs and is available as a package for Ubuntu systems and is worth setting up as it is interesting and useful in itself, but also because offers an idea of what it would be like to use a filesystem based on tagging rather than one based on rigid structure or classification.

One of my aims for this year is to learn the Python programming language. Why? Well it seems to be cropping up all over the place. If you own a Linux machine or an Apple Mac, chances are it is already installed. Google recently made it the primary language for their AppEngine platform. The design ethos behind it is very appealing, a down to business approach to programming that dispenses with needing lots and lots of code and allows the developer to ulitlise powerful libraries to get the job done. Python code can be run on many different devices, and it is possible to use it to develop desktop, server and web applications. Now it can also be used to develop applications for mobile phones. This is very appealing to me as a developer as it takes time to master a new skill and I would rather that skill provides a lot of flexibility and the chance to get involved in a wide variety of challenges.

Google this week anounced that it was going to let outside developers host their applications on Google infrastructure through a new product: Google App Engine. This is the latest in a long list of products from Google who are most probably the world's leading Internet company and may well become the most important IT company, if they aren't already. The offering from Google does not work in the same way as conventional web hosting, instead you must devise a solution that will work with their infrastructure, but in return the promise that your solution will be able to scale to keep up with demand with such things as load balancing taken care of automatically. This probably won't be a problem for most developers who are used to devising solutions that work with in-house IT requirements anyway.