I know this isn’t in the direction of my usual Android stuff, but I really want to spread the word about a local conference that is doing some great things in my area with respect to open source!

POSSCON is a conference all about open source technologies. They discuss how business are implementing and taking advantage of open source solutions, how you and your business can benefit from open source software, why and how to become part of the open source community and much much more. There are tracks for developers (technical), businessmen, educators, and much more. Some topics covered include:

• Cloud Computing
• Virtualization
• Big data and Hadoop
• Databases – Row vs Column vs NoSQL
• MySQL for Linux administrators
• Best Practices for open source adoption
• Secure cloud hosting
• The open source project lifecycle
• Boost libraries training
• C++ 11
• Open source email
• FreeNAS 8
• Open source licenses
• Open source eLearning
• Open source GIS
• Open systems in eCommerce

Interested? Good. Registration for the conference just opened yesterday (Dec. 15th) and continues until seating sells out (there are limited seats). The event takes place on March 28th and 29th in downtown Columbia. Yours truly will be there (just look for the guy talking about Android).

Check out POSSCON’s conference site for more details.

Its almost that time again people!  Google I/O registrations open February 7th.  Last year they sold out rather quickly, so if you’re interested in going, you might want to pull the trigger on this one quickly.  Focus this year will be given to:

• Honeycomb
• Google TV
• The usual development sessions

Price tag is a cool $450 for early birds, $550 afterwards.  Of course students / faculty get in for $150.  For an extra $100 you can attend the Bootcamp session.

How many Droidweb readers plan on attending?  Shoot us a comment / tweet below and let us know your #GoogleIO plans!

At Google I/O today, Android 2.2 (FroYo) was announced. News about the software and its features have been leaking for a little while now, so the move came as no surprise. What was useful about this release, is that we now know what features are included in the newest iteration of the Android Operating System platform. Here’s the official video from Google explaining those features:

In case you didn’t watch the whole video, the main features of Android 2.2 are:

• Speed
• API’s and Services
• Browser
• Android Market

The first and third feature will greatly improve the user experience, while the second and fourth issue will improve the toolset available to Android developers.  So what does Android 2.2 mean for you?  It depends on who you are:

What does Android 2.2 mean for Developers?

With Android 2.2 come some welcome features we’ve been clamoring for a for a long time.  Firstly there’s the updated 2.2 API.  Some new features are going to be present in this API, most notably the ability to push notifications via Google servers.  Google describes the additional functionality as being able to implement “alerts, send to phone, and two-way sync” via cloud to device messaging.  You can now send authenticated messages from your app server to individual devices via Google servers.  (See diagram below for how this works).

In the example included on the Official 2.2 video, a developer sent directions from Google Maps (on a Chrome browser window) instance, to a device.  Intuitively, the device knows to open the same map view in Google Maps.  It will be interesting to see what uses developers come up with for this service.   I see tighter integration between desktop and mobile applications coming in the future.

Next on the agenda is an extension of App2SD.  Developers can choose where to install their application (SDCard vs. Internal memory).  The user can override this choice, but no longer do developers have to be so conscious of application size and no longer are user limited to what their internal memory can hold.

Finally there are going to be improvements to the Android market.  The most important upgrade to the market will be the ability for users to submit bug reports to developers.  When an Android application hangs or crashes, users can choose to submit a report to the developer.  This report will be available through the developers market console.  This will be an ENORMOUS help to developers, allowing debugging to take place beyond the developer’s own device.

What does Android 2.2 mean for Consumers?

Android 2.2 will bring a much improved  user experience to the average consumer.  A lot of the features contained in this release concentrate on making the platform faster, and giving the user more management choices over his / her devices features.  Lets look at some of those features:

• Speed: Android 2.2 brings the Dalvik JIT (Just in Time) compiler.  This compiler offers a 2 to 5 time speed improvement over Android 2.1.  That means that that game you’re developing will finally run fast enough in Android!
• Backup / Restore: Applications can now backup their data to the SD card cloud.  Once you backup data for a given app, you will be able to restore that data on another device, effectively transferring you features and preferences between Android devices.
• Apps2SD:  Fact: You have more room on your SD card than your phone has internal memory.  Apps2SD takes advantage of this fact and allows you to install applications directly on the SD card.  Later, you can transfer the application between internal memory and the SD card of a given device.
• Portable Hotspot: Let the tethering begin!  Android devices will now support tethering be default.  It will be interesting to see how carriers respond to this.  No longer will users have to root / mod their device to use it as a wifi-router.
• Browser Power:  Your browser will be faster, much faster.  Google says improvements in the V8 scripting engine will make the Android browser the fastest mobile browser around.
• Market: There will be several market improvements in this iteration of Android.  Now you will be able to auto-update all of those application that require updating.  As long as the application doesn’t require new permissions to run, you can choose to automatically batch update those applications with a newer version in the market.

What features are you looking forward to in Android?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Yesterday Google unveiled a display of every Android device created so far. Yes, all 50+ of ‘em. Well the guys over at androidandme did what any Android enthusiast would do, photograph every one of them! If you’re curious, take a look at their flickr gallery below. What’s your favorite Android device?
[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157623971136149"]

Today is the day after my attendance at ConvergeSC, and my mind is still trying to process all the valuable information that was presented there. This conference was essentially the meeting of some of the most proactive programming minds in the Columbia area to put together an informative session about various technologies and strategies in the high tech workspace. Presentation topics range from Geno Church’s talk about branding and Joel Stevenson’s presentation on starting a business to Jessica’s Cook’s talk about the importance and role of content in web-based projects and Jason Dew’s overview of Ruby On Rails.

Picture courtesy of Mandi Engram (http://www.mandiengram.com/)

Here’s a quick recap of the day:

• The day kicked off with Geno Church’s talk on branding.  Talk about redefining marketing!  His talk encouraged others to make movements, not advertisements.

• Jason Beaird, from Cyberwoven spoke about Designing for Developers.  In addition to principles of design, he showed some very nice example sites.

• Jason Dew spoke about Ruby on Rails development.  In his quick overview he outlined some useful features of the platform that would help web application developers.

• Joel Stevenson, executive director at USC’s Technology Incubator, spoke about starting a business, including the importance of a business plan.

• Mike Mann spoke of the differences between and nuances of copyright, trademark, and other terms of software intellectual property.

• Chris Eargle spoke on the REST architecture.

• Jonathan LeBlanc (affectionately known among my friends now as “Awesome Yahoo! dude”) gave an impressive talk about Yahoo’s developers tools, including YQL.

• Robert Prioleau spoke about turning a website into a web experience (No, I’m not being melodramatic there).

• Jessica Cook gave a refreshing talk on the importance of content in web applications.

• Matthew Smith gave pointers on web designs good enough to make members of the audience “feel like a monkey catholic schoolgirl at a banana boy band concert”.  (Commentary courtesy of Bermon Painter via twitter)

• Greg Lunn, “Adobe CS ninja” shared some tips and tricks reguarding Adobe software, including integration between the different peices of software.

• Mark Gunnels spoke of how to work in the Era of big data and using the cloud to your advantage.

• Robyn Tippins, from Yahoo, spoke further about Yahoo technologies and how they could be used to reach Yahoo’s professional network of users.

My two cents:

• For a good example of a REST architecture API check out Last.fm’s API which I worked with quite a bit before.  Of course I now know that I could have saved time on writing XML data parsers by using YQL.
• Speaking of YQL, Yahoo’s developers tools are sweet.  I recommend anyone working in the web space to check them out.
• Content is king.  But don’t forget to augment that content with a little whitespace please .
• It was interesting watching everyone tweet about the conference as it proceeded.  I envision future conferences incorporating this type of viral expression into the event itself.

Useful Links:

• Speakers at ConvergeSC
• Thanks to Startlike.com for the after-party!
• CouchDB (This link is a tribute to you) @Bigbluehat

Anything I missed?  Please comment below!

ConvergeSC is a web conference where designers, developers, business and marketing professionals can gain insight into all aspects of our industry from some of the best and brightest the Carolinas have to offer.

Geno Church gave a nice presentation on branding. He emphasized keeping the connection as a human interaction, not just a corporation to person interaction. His prime example of was Fiskars, a craft tools company. Instead of helping the company ‘sell scissors’, he helped create a movement. A movement to make scissors sexy. Who knew.

Update 1:

• Golden ratio
• 960 Grid design
• Color Picking
• Fonts
• Symmetry
• And much more

He also provided some very nice examples for what was discussed.  For a very nice webpage design: Blue Acorn

From post presentation twittering:

• http://www.colorzilla.com : Choose your colors wisely

Update 2

Some snippets from the presentation:

• Git
• From twitter: Ruby on Rails scaling to 1 Billion…
• Memchached : For scaling sites…

Lee Congdon, Red Hat CEO speaking at POSSCON 2009

10:15: Lee Congdon, CIO of Red Hat started off the morning with his keynote address The State of Open Source Today. This speech provided the backdrop for the rest of the event. In an informative speech, Congdon provided a nice overview as to the importance of open source software in modern business applications. In addition, he bought the audience up to speed as to the state of affairs in the open source community, using Red Hat as a backdrop example.

11:00: Here, the conference split up into two tracks, one for developers, another for business. Greg DeKoenigsberg gave a captivating presentation, as usual, in the developers track about the importance of the community in any open source model. He also encouraged others to get involved, sharing some entertaining anecdotes along the way

Greg DeKoenigsberg speaks about the 'pyramid' nature of open-source projects

11:45: Chris Eargle (Self-proclaimed kodefuguru) showed off some of his favorite open source tools, including Notepad++ and other applications he uses at his .NET development job.

Chris Eargle shares some of his favorite open source tools

2:30 Ravi Ravindra talks about how Blue Cross Blue Shield uses Linux virtualization to power its web applications

Other Highlights

Dr. Buell does what he does best... Engage students. This time the topic of choice is parallel computing.

USC students go to play with the One Laptop Per Child laptop

Special thanks to Travis "tripod man" Taylor for assisting with photo taking and comic relief

Overall, the conference was a great success. Saturday saw host to a record crowd for the conference, including a diverse group of students, developers, businessmen, and other open source enthusiasts. The talks were informative, and entertaining. Special thanks to Todd Lewis and Verbus Counts at Palmetto Computer Labs for putting this together, USC College of Engineering and Computing for hosting, and all off the attendees for coming. Definitely looking forward to next year!

Complete photo gallery coming soon…

If you’re in the Columbia, South Carolina Area this weekend, I personally recommend that you attend POSSON 2009.  Short for Palmetto Open Source Software CONference, this is a meeting of some of the top developers and consumers of Open Source Software solutions.  In its second year, this conference is quickly becoming a premier Southeastern software conference.

Why should you attend?  Open Source software is the way of the future.  Android is a prime example of this.  By Google backing an Open Source solution, it is being shown that software does not have to be closed, proprietary, and expensive.  Come join us for discussion on emerging trends in software and computing.

Other reasons to come:

• Open Source Alternatives to Proprietary Software – this session is a must for businesses looking to save scarce budget dollars
• A Who’s Who of Open Source speakers and business leaders from throughout South Carolina and the southeast
• GREAT opportunity to network and meet new people
• It’s FREE of charge and they will feed you lunch

One of the things I’m most excited for is the keynote speaker, Lee Congdon, CIO of Redhat.  Last year, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Senior Community Architect at Redhat gave one of the most memorable presentations I’ve seen in a while.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is the networking.  If last year was any indication of the quality of this event, expect to shake hands with knowledgeable professionals in a cordial environment, and leave with a few more connections that you walked in the door with.

Interested? Find out more and register at their website.   Registration closes Thursday, April 16th, tomorrow!

I look forward to seeing you there!