GTUG Stockholm meeting December 2009

Like the happy crazy people we are, we had a GTUG meeting only days after the Android Hackathon. The upside of that was that we could have a recap for those unfortunates who didn't have the time or ability to attend.

About 30 people came, which is OK, but made me think maybe we should do the meetings bi-monthly instead of every month. Not sure either way, but I'll decide after next meeting.

The people who came were as always from a lot of different companies; Spotify, formerly of Spotify, Voddler, Qbranch and many others.

After my short introduction and talk on some new Google technologies (Mostly Closure) Tommy Widenflycht from Google Sweden did a talk on Google recruitment and then answered questions for a long time, handing out frisbees and hats to the best ones.

Apparently, there's a need for really talented Server-Side coders (C++/Java) and A/V Codec programmers in the Stockholm office (and elsewhere). If you feel that you fit the bill, contact me by direct email (psvensson@gmail.com) or comment this post and I'll make sure you get to talk to the right people.


Then it was time for the much-anticipated JavaScript on Android talk by Mikael Kindborg. I was really impressed with the research Mikael had done and what he had managed to do.

First he had compiled Rhino for the Dalvik VM and used that to parse incoming JavaScript string. So far, so good. To do that he had made a simple JavaScript app server called RhinoDroid (You can get it here from github) that made it simpler to push JS from an external source (like a browser, or in Mikael's case, the Squeak Smalltalk environment. That's was really cool in itself. What happened then I could have understood if I had thought about it, but I hadn't had the time.

Since all Android APIs (that has been compiled into the RhinoDroid app) are accessible by the JavaScript script when running, Mikael showed how he could build up a simple Android interface asynchronously, adding some buttons, which popped up on the Androdi screen, push those a bit - nothing happens.

Then send some JavaScript event handlers that bind to those buttons, which get dynamically evaluated and then the button do something. So he was building an Android UI - and changing it - in realtime. Think about that for a while.


The next talk was Johan Burell who did a run-down of the Android Hackathon the previous Saturday; Which apps had been created, which ones had _almost_ been created, and so on. Several people who had been present was in the audience as well, so we had some recaps and discussions about team @froderik's Android Hudson front-end and the other apps as well.

The last talk for the night was by Sony Ericsson's strategy manager Thomas Bailey, who did show and pass around an actual X10 Android phone. It's surprisingly and reassuringly heavy and a screen that is 'right' sized. The interesting parts of Thomas' talk was the fact that Sony Ericsson is starting their own Android App store, to be able to offer developers a more controlled environment to publish their apps to, and Sony Ericsson's signature apps (Organizing and formatting activity streams and media) which will exist only on their phones but can be extended using XML files, which will pop in future sources of contacts, media and other things, which is a neat concept in itself.


Our next meeting will be on January 14th, where we will cover the following topics:




  • Peter Svensson - State of the code (+some Dojo layout goodness)






  • Ingemar Resare - Google Apps use cases.





  • Peter Sönnergren - App Engine + Java




  • Johan Burell - Google Go (+ Android Cntrllr)




  • Leonard Axelsson - App Engine + Groovy




  • See you guys then, and a Merry Spaghettimas to you all!
    Cheers,
    PS

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