I’ve started learning and developing for the Android platform and I found the best way for me to learn is by learning from ebooks. I’ve long ago stopped buying physical copies of technical and programming books. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to learn about digital technology from a dead tree technology. Here is a short list of the best Amazon Kindle books to learn how to program for the Android platform.
Philosopher George Santayana said that “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.” Steve jobs who lived through the Personal Computer Revolution is set to repeat Apple’s fortunes in the Smart Phone Revolution. With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple took the lead in a novel mobile device segment, the Smart Phone. Prior to 2007, there had been a number of business class phones that at best emulated the desktop user experience in a hand held device but non had the traction to change the cell phone landscape. By 2007, the cell phone technology had dramatically changed that Steve Jobs was able to pack more computing power in an iPhone that ever before and he revolutionized the mobile user experience with touch screens. Apple later took another significant evolutionary step in what we consider a smart phone platform when the iPhone SDK was released to developers and the iTunes app store was made available to consumers. With years ahead it’s nearest cell phone competitor such as Nokia, Motorola, or Microsoft, and key patents under their name, and thousands of apps in their online app store, most pundits would have thought that Apple’s market share would in smart phones would be firmly cemented.
If the iPhone ecosystem were a country, it would probably be a little like China with a strong authoritative central government, some limited free enterprise, and tight censorship. Apple has a tendency to dictate what the customer wants, for example, the common Apple mouse still has one button while a typical windows will have on average 3 buttons and a mouse wheel. Apple has never been an open platform. Apple’s close platform has always been it’s Achille’s heal but also core to how Apple designs it’s products. With the release of the first Macintosh, the first commercially successful personal computer, Apple develop a technical and marketing lead to it’s rival computer makers. With the help of IBM, an open architecture was developed that over time was standardized to the de facto personal computer, this architecture developed over time to the modern desktop which might include a Intel chip, Microsoft Windows OS, and other off the shelf components. A closed platform will always little footing to compete with an open one, especially when hundreds of vendors provided alternatives to fit every possible need and price. Overtime Apple’s market share dwindled to single digits. But even with a very narrow market share, Apple has learned to be profitable, it knows it can charge a premium for beautifully designed products that simply work more often than they are infected with viruses or fatal crashes.
Even being an active participant of the Personal Computer Revolution, and having a front row seat as Apple’s close platform lost market share, Steve Jobs is using the same closed platform playbook with the iPhone and iPad product lines. This time, instead of IBM, Google is leading the charge with an open alternative to Apple’s iPhone. Google’s Android has been picked up by a large number of phone makers. There is a wide variety of Android phones in the market aimed a different consumers as opposed to the two models (iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4) of iPhone currently available from Apple. Google claims that at least 200,000 Android phones are activated a day. It is clear that history will repeat itself, and Android will eat Apple’s lunch, or at least take it’s market dominance. With market share comes developer’s mind share.
Apple has been previously before lit the fuse the set off a technological revolution. It first did it with the Macintosh which sparked the Personal Computer revolution and it has done it again with the iPhone with the smart phone industry. In both situations, Apple held a lead over it’s competitors but gave way because of it’s closed platform. In having a tight and stringent control over the iPhone, Steve Jobs has conceded market share to the Android platform.
Let me first state that I am not a legal scholar but that doesn’t stop me from having my own opinions of legal case study, especially when it doesn’t make any common sense. That said, I think there is a lot of value in trademarks, just like there is some intrinsic value in copyrights and patents. But the use of trademarks, copyrights, and patents are a common good and like most common goods it falls victim to the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of patents are it’s patent trolls. The tragedy of copyrights are these perpetual copyrights for works that were original derived from public works. The tragedy of trademarks is that you can say one sentence without infringement on someones trademark, or at least that is what the lawyers want you to think.
One of the most heavy handed and ill conceived use of trademark law was by Microsoft against Mike Rowe, a 12th grade student that owned and operated MikeRoweSoft.com. Microsoft based their 2004 trademark case in that MikeRoweSoft sounds like Microsoft and that this might confused consumers, maybe blind consumers.
More recently there have been too many unfounded trademark suits filed by large corporate entities against operators of small website operators. One recent case pits Facebook who filed suit against Teachbook.com, an online forum for teachers, for “misappropriating the distinctive BOOK portion of the Facebook’s trademark.” This makes no sense at all. Facebook has trademarked the term facebook, not book, but they claim that the book portion of the name is distinctive enough that they can sue another company that uses the term book in their domain name. This is a clear example of an overreaching use of trademarks. This also indicates that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerborg intends to claim any domain of the form [\w|\d]*book. Teachbook is an online forum for teachers, not for FarmVille addicts. Teachbook does not in any direct way compete in the commercial space with Facebook.
Perhaps following Facebook’s legal precedent, it has been reported that eBay has issued a cease-to-exist to a website operator because the domain name ends with bay. The owner of theplayersbay.com posted the cease-to-exist, go kill yourself, which reads in part, “Arbitrary use of the word BAY in a domain is problematic if the connected website is used in association with a business making use of eBay or operating in the same sphere of business as eBay.” Again, some law firm is protecting consumers because thepalayersbay.com is confusingly similar to the giant auction website eBay.
Another similar case that grabbed my attention was of Matt Cooper, owner of Addroid.com. Which company would you think sent Mr. Cooper a cease and desist? No, not Google the maker of the Android mobile platform. No, not Motorola, the maker of the Droid branded phone. Yes, you guessed it, Lucas Arts! You see, George Lucas owns the trademark to Droid, a pay on the word android. From what I understand from his defense Mr. Cooper claims that the term Addroid is a plan on the general term Android, and does not infringe on Lucas Arts trademark droid.
I want to trademark the ampersand (&) symbol so that I could file a trademark infringement to all law firms with names of the form Dumb Dumber & Dumbest. That said, I have to acknowledge that there is value in protecting your trademarks, as well as copyrights and patents. But the legal cases listed here are not executed in good faith of trademark laws. I believe that trademark laws, much like any legal code, is a public good that if abused by loopholes, bullying tactics, or partiality hurt people’s faith in those laws.
Has Google lost it’s focus? It sure sounds like when you take into account all the investments that Google has made recently, such as investing in social game developer Zynga, a myriad of wind and solar energy projects, and even in DNA analysis outfit 23andMe. But nothing can be further from web search and a self driving autonomous vehicle. You may ask, what does developing an artificial intelligence for a driverless car have to do with Google’s mission of indexing the world’s information. Another question is why wouldn’t Google leave autonomous terrestrial vehicles to the military, or Ford.
Most Silicon Valley pundits have been predicting that Google next project would be Google Me, a social networking site to compete toe to toe with Facebook. But no one predicted these investments outside of search, ads, and mobile.
Over the past few administrations, federal funding for the National Science Foundation and NASA have been cut while military spending has increased. Maybe Google is the new NASA. They are funding and starting projects usually considered the realm of large federal agencies such as NASA or DARPA. What other areas of scientific research will Google fund or get into next? Will Google invest in unmanned aerial vehicles, much like the MQ-1 Predator?
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Google was working on a Googlenet artificial intelligence engine and robots powered with the Android platform.