With the recent terrorist attack on the flight heading to Detroit, there is a flurry of renewed priority to install scanners that can detect small amounts of explosives hidden on the body. There are two vying technologies for body scanning, low level back scatter x-ray and millimeter wave imaging. They have been slow to catch on due to the cost, speed and privacy concerns but with this new attack, the TSA is reportedly expediting the order for 300 new machines.
It appears 150 of these were already ordered from OSI Systems' Rapiscan unit which manufactures x-ray machines. From our industry's perspective, we hope many of these are mmWave body scanning machines which provide high resolution 3D images. Companies like L-3 would benefit from this increased buying if mmWave technology is used. There are still privacy concerns but the machines have softwave that can prevent abuse. We always seem to have to give up some privacy or rights to improve security.
What do you think - which technology is better? Do the privacy concerns out weigh the security risks??
Ho Ho Ho! Follow Santa's journey around the world on your phone
Like most kids, all I wanted to do on Christmas Eve was stay up and wait for Santa to arrive. One year, I went downstairs in the middle of the night and sat down in front of the Christmas tree to wait for Santa. Unfortunately, I soon fell asleep. When I awoke on Christmas morning the presents were under the tree and the milk and cookies I left out for Santa had been eaten. I had missed him. But next to the plate of crumbs, there was a note... from Santa himself! He thanked me for trying to wait up for him. I was so excited that I got a note from Santa that I forgot all about having fallen asleep and missing him. Every year after that I made sure to go to bed extra early to make sure that Santa stopped by.
This year, no one needs to go to bed early to make sure Santa comes over. Since NORAD is tracking Santa's journey around the world, you can find his current location on the 24th. If you see he's getting close by, just hop into bed. And if he's already passed by your house but you don't yet see presents (or coal!) under the tree, rest assured he'll be looping back once you're asleep. Read more about how NORAD tracks Santa on our Official Google Blog.
To make following Santa's journey even easier, you can find him on your phone too. Make sure you have Google Maps for mobile (available for most phones). Then just search! Just as you'd put in a query for "pizza" to find pizza places, or "San Antonio" to find it on a map, you can search for "Santa" to find where he is at the time. This way, you can stay up to date whether you're lounging by the fire at a ski lodge, stuck in traffic en route to Grandma's (get your kids to look it up for you!), or at the dinner table. To get started, go to m.noradsanta.org on your mobile phone, or just search for "Santa" in Google Maps for mobile on December 24th.
Matt Aldridge, Mobile Elf
This year, no one needs to go to bed early to make sure Santa comes over. Since NORAD is tracking Santa's journey around the world, you can find his current location on the 24th. If you see he's getting close by, just hop into bed. And if he's already passed by your house but you don't yet see presents (or coal!) under the tree, rest assured he'll be looping back once you're asleep. Read more about how NORAD tracks Santa on our Official Google Blog.
To make following Santa's journey even easier, you can find him on your phone too. Make sure you have Google Maps for mobile (available for most phones). Then just search! Just as you'd put in a query for "pizza" to find pizza places, or "San Antonio" to find it on a map, you can search for "Santa" to find where he is at the time. This way, you can stay up to date whether you're lounging by the fire at a ski lodge, stuck in traffic en route to Grandma's (get your kids to look it up for you!), or at the dinner table. To get started, go to m.noradsanta.org on your mobile phone, or just search for "Santa" in Google Maps for mobile on December 24th.
Matt Aldridge, Mobile Elf
JPA/JDO Java Persistence Tips - The Year In Review
If you’re developing a Java application on App Engine you probably already know that you can use JPA and JDO, both standard Java persistence APIs, to interact with the datastore. What you may not know, and what I’m here to point out, is that for the past few months I’ve been accumulating a collection of practical, real-world examples that can help you take full advantage of these powerful APIs.
In episode one I put together a working example of an owned, bidirectional, one-to-many relationship and demonstrated how you can persist child objects just by associating them with parent objects. In episode two I demonstrated how to perform a batch get by issuing a query that only filters on the primary key property of your model object. In episode three I explored the exciting world of “transparent persistence,” explaining how you can modify the persistent state of objects without making any explicit calls to repersist them. In episode four I issued a keys-only query and got the results back crazy-fast because the datastore skipped the extra scan that turns keys into full-fledged entities. And in episode five I demonstrated how serialized fields can help you store arbitrary objects in the datastore.
After episode five I got a little bit tired, but there was still so much more to say, so I pressed on.
In episode six I powered through a discussion of long-running transactions and unearthed the ancient secret of how you can use optimistic locking to prevent users from updating stale data. In episode seven I explained how using unindexed properties can speed up your writes and save you valuable CPU time. In episode eight I attempted (cautiously) to blow your mind with a solution for case-insensitive queries. And finally, in episode nine, mere hours after releasing support for != and IN query operators in the SDK, I dove under the hood of these operators to help you understand their performance characteristics.
Many of these topics were inspired by questions from you, our users, so if there are topics you’d like to see covered in the coming year please let me know via the forum. As long as you keep reading and asking questions, I’ll keep writing.
In episode one I put together a working example of an owned, bidirectional, one-to-many relationship and demonstrated how you can persist child objects just by associating them with parent objects. In episode two I demonstrated how to perform a batch get by issuing a query that only filters on the primary key property of your model object. In episode three I explored the exciting world of “transparent persistence,” explaining how you can modify the persistent state of objects without making any explicit calls to repersist them. In episode four I issued a keys-only query and got the results back crazy-fast because the datastore skipped the extra scan that turns keys into full-fledged entities. And in episode five I demonstrated how serialized fields can help you store arbitrary objects in the datastore.
After episode five I got a little bit tired, but there was still so much more to say, so I pressed on.
In episode six I powered through a discussion of long-running transactions and unearthed the ancient secret of how you can use optimistic locking to prevent users from updating stale data. In episode seven I explained how using unindexed properties can speed up your writes and save you valuable CPU time. In episode eight I attempted (cautiously) to blow your mind with a solution for case-insensitive queries. And finally, in episode nine, mere hours after releasing support for != and IN query operators in the SDK, I dove under the hood of these operators to help you understand their performance characteristics.
Many of these topics were inspired by questions from you, our users, so if there are topics you’d like to see covered in the coming year please let me know via the forum. As long as you keep reading and asking questions, I’ll keep writing.
Cyber Wars: Wireless Networks, Drones and Hacking
When the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Iraqi insurgents have been intercepting video communication signals from United States Predator drones over the last year, they characterized the actions as �the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas.�
The truth is that cyber war has been the fifth warfare domain for some time, a new theater of war teeming with invisible enemies. The frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks is increasing daily, driven home by the insurgents� wherewithal to both know that a $26 piece of pirating software could intercept these video signals (the Pentagon admits assuming local combatants wouldn�t know how to exploit the vulnerability), and actually pull it off.
Dale W. Meyerrose, head of Harris Corporation�s National Cyber Initiative and former Director of Command Control Systems at NORAD Headquarters, is quoted in Government Computer News that characterizing the incident as �hacking� is inaccurate; he likens it more to criminals intercepting police radio traffic than breaking into secure computer networks.
What is not being brought to light, is that whether or not the intercepted packet-based video was securely encrypted, the Iraqi insurgents potentially obtained location information about where the video is being sent � a much more severe disclosure than the targets of the surveillance.
Rajive Bagrodia, founder and president of Scalable Network Technologies, explains in a Defense Systems article that that �passive eavesdropping can be used to reveal the location of other network nodes, and the traffic pattern used to deduce other strategic information. If a wireless device is physically captured or hijacked, it risks revealing location information and packet contents while the rest of the network remains unaware. The most secure mobile wireless networks must therefore operate in a �trust but verify� mode with every other peer node, and protect information, including routing information, at every layer of the network stack.�
However you spin it, the exposure of this year-long espionage shines a bright light on the severe vulnerability of wireless network transmissions�which the military is becoming more dependent upon in the larger shift to net-centric warfare. The specific ability to �eavesdrop� on drone-to-ground video transmissions, and what to do about it, was the subject of a demonstration conducted at this year�s I/ITSEC Conference by SNT of Los Angeles, CA. SNT has pioneered a new class of advanced network simulation and emulation tools called software virtual networks (SVNs) that are capable of rigorously vetting net-centric communication systems, particularly the most vulnerable domain of mobile wireless networks.
A recently article by Kevin Coleman in Defense Tech
This is exactly the kind of wireless network and application engineering challenge that SVNs were created to overcome. First introduced in 2008, SVNs are exact digital replicas of physical networks in virtual space � indistinguishable from a real network. SVNs are based on emulation, which makes them able to interoperate with applications, devices, management tools, and people � at real time speed. SVNs emulate all of the layers in IP networks and can also emulate networks as large as thousands of nodes. This provides cyber security planners high fidelity results that are comparable to physical testing�but faster and at much lower cost. This in turn enables application developers and network engineers to do exactly as Mr. Coleman suggests � design security into the networks and applications themselves.
Courtesy of Camille Cox: camille@onrampcomm.com .
The truth is that cyber war has been the fifth warfare domain for some time, a new theater of war teeming with invisible enemies. The frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks is increasing daily, driven home by the insurgents� wherewithal to both know that a $26 piece of pirating software could intercept these video signals (the Pentagon admits assuming local combatants wouldn�t know how to exploit the vulnerability), and actually pull it off.
Dale W. Meyerrose, head of Harris Corporation�s National Cyber Initiative and former Director of Command Control Systems at NORAD Headquarters, is quoted in Government Computer News that characterizing the incident as �hacking� is inaccurate; he likens it more to criminals intercepting police radio traffic than breaking into secure computer networks.
What is not being brought to light, is that whether or not the intercepted packet-based video was securely encrypted, the Iraqi insurgents potentially obtained location information about where the video is being sent � a much more severe disclosure than the targets of the surveillance.
Rajive Bagrodia, founder and president of Scalable Network Technologies, explains in a Defense Systems article that that �passive eavesdropping can be used to reveal the location of other network nodes, and the traffic pattern used to deduce other strategic information. If a wireless device is physically captured or hijacked, it risks revealing location information and packet contents while the rest of the network remains unaware. The most secure mobile wireless networks must therefore operate in a �trust but verify� mode with every other peer node, and protect information, including routing information, at every layer of the network stack.�
However you spin it, the exposure of this year-long espionage shines a bright light on the severe vulnerability of wireless network transmissions�which the military is becoming more dependent upon in the larger shift to net-centric warfare. The specific ability to �eavesdrop� on drone-to-ground video transmissions, and what to do about it, was the subject of a demonstration conducted at this year�s I/ITSEC Conference by SNT of Los Angeles, CA. SNT has pioneered a new class of advanced network simulation and emulation tools called software virtual networks (SVNs) that are capable of rigorously vetting net-centric communication systems, particularly the most vulnerable domain of mobile wireless networks.
A recently article by Kevin Coleman in Defense Tech
This is exactly the kind of wireless network and application engineering challenge that SVNs were created to overcome. First introduced in 2008, SVNs are exact digital replicas of physical networks in virtual space � indistinguishable from a real network. SVNs are based on emulation, which makes them able to interoperate with applications, devices, management tools, and people � at real time speed. SVNs emulate all of the layers in IP networks and can also emulate networks as large as thousands of nodes. This provides cyber security planners high fidelity results that are comparable to physical testing�but faster and at much lower cost. This in turn enables application developers and network engineers to do exactly as Mr. Coleman suggests � design security into the networks and applications themselves.
Courtesy of Camille Cox: camille@onrampcomm.com
The Iterative Web App: Feature-Rich and Fast
Every mobile engineering team -- including Google's -- struggles to make its applications available to all users on all devices. Even if you scope your work to today's smartphones, you're left with no less than five major operating systems. But we pay this cost because native code is often the only way to build an app that's rich enough and fast enough to meet users' needs. Enter the mobile web.
A growing number of mobile devices ship with an all-important feature: a modern web browser. And this is significant for two reasons:
Over the past 8 months we've pushed the limits of HTML5 to launch a steady string of Gmail features, including:
As of today, and thanks to numerous optimizations, I'm happy to report that Gmail for mobile loads 2-3x faster than it did in April (see Figure 1). In fact on newer iPhone and Android devices, the app now loads in under 3 seconds. So yes, the mobile web can deliver really responsive applications.
Figure 1: Best and Worst Case Gmail for mobile start-up times, April 2009 vs. December 2009. All figures recorded on an iPhone 3G with EDGE data access.
The Gmail for mobile team isn't done, of course. We've focused primarily on performance over the past few months, but many other features and optimizations are on the way. So keep visiting gmail.com for the latest and greatest version of the app.
Looking ahead, it's also worth noting that as a worldwide mobile team, we'll continue to build native apps where it makes sense. But we're incredibly optimistic about the future of the mobile web -- both for developers and for the users we serve.
A growing number of mobile devices ship with an all-important feature: a modern web browser. And this is significant for two reasons:
- As an engineering team, we can build a single app with HTML and JavaScript, and have it "just work" across many mobile operating systems. The cost savings are substantial, not to mention the time you can re-invest in user-requested features.
- Having a web application also means we can launch products and features as soon as they're ready. And for users, the latest version of the app is always just a URL and a refresh away.
Over the past 8 months we've pushed the limits of HTML5 to launch a steady string of Gmail features, including:
- Full label support
- Swipe to Archive
- Smart Links
- Faster address auto-complete
- Move and Enhanced Refresh
- Outbox
- Auto-expanding compose boxes
- And many more...
As of today, and thanks to numerous optimizations, I'm happy to report that Gmail for mobile loads 2-3x faster than it did in April (see Figure 1). In fact on newer iPhone and Android devices, the app now loads in under 3 seconds. So yes, the mobile web can deliver really responsive applications.
Figure 1: Best and Worst Case Gmail for mobile start-up times, April 2009 vs. December 2009. All figures recorded on an iPhone 3G with EDGE data access.
The Gmail for mobile team isn't done, of course. We've focused primarily on performance over the past few months, but many other features and optimizations are on the way. So keep visiting gmail.com for the latest and greatest version of the app.
Looking ahead, it's also worth noting that as a worldwide mobile team, we'll continue to build native apps where it makes sense. But we're incredibly optimistic about the future of the mobile web -- both for developers and for the users we serve.
WiGig Alliance Completes Multi-gigabit Wireless Spec
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) is an organization advancing the adoption and widespread use of 60 GHz wireless technology worldwide. They recently announced the completion of a unified wireless specification that enables high performance wireless display and audio and provides data transfer rates more than 10 times faster than today�s wireless LANs, extending WiFi technology while supporting backward compatibility with existing WiFi devices. The completed specification is now ready for member review and is anticipated to be made available to WiGig adopter members in Q1 2010.
This is a nice setup where devices would use the higher throughput WiGig spec for short distance applications and automatically switch over to WiFi for longer distances. It could be used for wireless HDTV to eliminate wires including connections to other video sources. The beauty of the 60 GHz solutions is they are inherently short range due to the high absorption in air (oxygen molecules) so they will not interfere with other signals (and could be used for more secure military applications).
There are several standards vying for wireless HDTV applications such as lower frequency solutions like 802.11n/WHDI (5.8 GHz) and UWB (3.1 to 10.6 GHz) plus the higher frequency (60 GHz) solutions like WirelessHD, ECMA-387 and IEEE 802.15.3c. There was a nice article covering these different solutions in our August 2009 issue called �MM-waves in the Living Room: The Future of Wireless High Definition Multimedia.�
Which one do you think will win out and why???
This is a nice setup where devices would use the higher throughput WiGig spec for short distance applications and automatically switch over to WiFi for longer distances. It could be used for wireless HDTV to eliminate wires including connections to other video sources. The beauty of the 60 GHz solutions is they are inherently short range due to the high absorption in air (oxygen molecules) so they will not interfere with other signals (and could be used for more secure military applications).
There are several standards vying for wireless HDTV applications such as lower frequency solutions like 802.11n/WHDI (5.8 GHz) and UWB (3.1 to 10.6 GHz) plus the higher frequency (60 GHz) solutions like WirelessHD, ECMA-387 and IEEE 802.15.3c. There was a nice article covering these different solutions in our August 2009 issue called �MM-waves in the Living Room: The Future of Wireless High Definition Multimedia.�
Which one do you think will win out and why???
App Engine SDK 1.3.0 Released Including Support for Larger User Uploads
Today, we've very excited to release version 1.3.0 of the App Engine SDK, now available to both Java and Python developers. The newest SDK includes a new experimental Blobstore API for storage of files up to 50MB.
Store and Serve - Files can be uploaded and stored as blobs, to be served later in response to user requests. Developers can build their own organizational structures and access controls on top of blobs.
Pricing and Quotas - We include blob storage and transfer under the same datastore pricing and quotas you're already familiar with. For more information, see the App Engine quotas page.
The new Blobstore API is now available in both App Engine SDKs for local development. At this time it can only be used by applications that have enabled billing. There's a lot more information about the API and how it works in the Blobstore documentation (Python, Java) so please check that out and post any questions to the groups.
This release also includes some performance tweaks to the Java runtime. For example, we've sped up many reflective operations by up to 10x resulting in improvements on the order of 10% for applications based on dynamic languages. As always, there are a few other minor changes and bug fixes in this release, so make sure to read our release notes (Python, Java).
Store and Serve - Files can be uploaded and stored as blobs, to be served later in response to user requests. Developers can build their own organizational structures and access controls on top of blobs.
Pricing and Quotas - We include blob storage and transfer under the same datastore pricing and quotas you're already familiar with. For more information, see the App Engine quotas page.
The new Blobstore API is now available in both App Engine SDKs for local development. At this time it can only be used by applications that have enabled billing. There's a lot more information about the API and how it works in the Blobstore documentation (Python, Java) so please check that out and post any questions to the groups.
This release also includes some performance tweaks to the Java runtime. For example, we've sped up many reflective operations by up to 10x resulting in improvements on the order of 10% for applications based on dynamic languages. As always, there are a few other minor changes and bug fixes in this release, so make sure to read our release notes (Python, Java).
An Android dogfood diet for the holidays
At Google, we are constantly experimenting with new products and technologies, and often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements in a process we call dogfooding (from "eating your own dogfood"). Well this holiday season, we are taking dogfooding to a new level.
We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.
Unfortunately, because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details. We hope to share more after our dogfood diet.
Tis the Season to be Merry and Mobile
Holiday season is in full swing (again). And we want to help you take advantage of everything your mobile device can offer to help deck the halls or hit the malls. If you're like us, you'll probably use your phone to research products and check out reviews, locate stores, purchase gifts, or capture holiday memories with a photo or video. In fact, a recent study estimates that 19% of consumers will use their phone for holiday shopping research, coupons, or purchases (a number that's likely much higher for our mobile-savvy blog readers). So we've posted a 'Holiday Help' section in our Mobile Help Center to share tips and tricks for using Google's mobile products during the holidays. Take a peek if you want to learn some new tips and tricks to help you get through the season. Happy holidays!
Radio Heads Growing
I have read and seen a lot at trade show the changing demands of cost reduction and greater efficiency in cellular base station design are leading to a growing market for remote radio heads. According to a new study from ABI Research, this market is on track to exceed a value of $1 billion in 2014.A basestation traditionally was made up of a rack of equipment with a long coaxial cable up to the antenna. This configuration is more expensive and has higher losses due the long cable up to he antenna. Remote radio heads are compact so they can be mounted right on the back of the antenna greatly reducing the losses. They are also less expensive and software controlled so they can be configured and updated remotely. Multiple heads can be attached for MIMO operation and controlled by a single basestation to further reduce costs while enabling higher capacity. They are becoming more important as WiMAX and LTE technologies are implemented that will utilize MIMO operation.
There is also the shift to IP based radios which makes the software portion of the radio even more important. The capacity of these radio systems is increasing quickly, and I see nice solutions from suppliers such as Dragonwave, Ceragon, Harris Stratex, Exalt and more at every trade show. This trend enables more complicated but higher throughput technologies such as adaptive modulation. For more on this subject read our Expert Advice this month by Greg Friesen from DragonWave.
All these changes in the radio implementations will affect the type of demand for components and software as this shift continues. Suppliers will need to improve device efficiency, reduce component size and improve reliability as servicing these heads is more difficult than traditional basestations. Typically discrete devices are used so future integration of multiple functions will reduces costs and improve reliability.
Have you experienced this change in demand at the component level? Has it changed the demands on antenna performance??
New version of Google Mobile App for iPhone in the App Store
Hello, iPhone users! We have just received the good news that our new version of Google Mobile App for iPhone was approved and is now available on in the App Store everywhere.
In this version, we have a redesigned search results display that shows more results at once and, more importantly, opens web pages from the results within the app. This will get you to what you need faster, which is always our goal at Google.
For those less utilitarian and more flamboyant, we've exposed our visual tweaks settings called "Bells and Whistles" - some of our users had discovered this already in previous versions. You can style your Google Mobile App in any shade: red, taupe, or even heliotrope. If you're on a faster iPhone, like the iPhone 3GS, you may want to try the live waveform setting which turns on, as the name suggests, a moving waveform when you search by voice.
On the subject of searching by voice, you can now choose your spoken language or accent. For example, if you're Australian but live in London, you can improve the recognition accuracy by selecting Australian in the Voice Search settings. And now both Mandarin and Japanese are supported languages as well.
If you don't have Google Mobile App yet, download it from the App Store or read more about it. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to join in on our support forums or suggest ideas in our Mobile Products Ideas page. You can also follow us on Twitter @googlemobileapp.
In this version, we have a redesigned search results display that shows more results at once and, more importantly, opens web pages from the results within the app. This will get you to what you need faster, which is always our goal at Google.
For those less utilitarian and more flamboyant, we've exposed our visual tweaks settings called "Bells and Whistles" - some of our users had discovered this already in previous versions. You can style your Google Mobile App in any shade: red, taupe, or even heliotrope. If you're on a faster iPhone, like the iPhone 3GS, you may want to try the live waveform setting which turns on, as the name suggests, a moving waveform when you search by voice.
On the subject of searching by voice, you can now choose your spoken language or accent. For example, if you're Australian but live in London, you can improve the recognition accuracy by selecting Australian in the Voice Search settings. And now both Mandarin and Japanese are supported languages as well.
If you don't have Google Mobile App yet, download it from the App Store or read more about it. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to join in on our support forums or suggest ideas in our Mobile Products Ideas page. You can also follow us on Twitter @googlemobileapp.
Request performance in Java
If you've been following the App Engine Java runtime group, you may have noticed some discussions about performance of the Java runtime. Many of you have complained about hard-to-predict DeadlineExceededExceptions, or unexpectedly slow requests that use a high amount of CPU. These issues often have the same root cause: App Engine is preparing a new instance of your code to respond an incoming request. We call this occurrence a "loading request". Since App Engine provides server resources on demand, there are several reasons why you might experience a loading request:
You can expect that during the course of developing your application, you will often experience the first two scenarios. In comparison, for a production app receiving even a very small but steady amount of traffic, loading requests are relatively infrequent.
As an application developer, you can influence the length of your loading requests by controlling the amount of work done initializing your application and its dependencies. The App Engine team has also been working diligently on the Java runtime to reduce the time spent in loading requests.
First, we're introducing a new class-loading optimization in 1.2.8 called precompilation. Precompilation makes loading requests faster by doing class-loading work ahead of time in the App Engine environment. We've seen significant improvements with precompilation, but we've left it opt-in by default for 1.2.8. You can enable it for your application by adding precompilation-enabled to your appengine-web.xml:
Second, we've been profiling applications with longer loading requests. Often they include large dependencies like Groovy and JRuby. We're working directly with those teams to improve startup by spotting and reducing unnecessary initialization.
Finally, we're continuing to work on additional startup improvements we hope to unleash on the Java runtime in the future, and make it easier to identify loading requests in application logs. We will continue to pay close attention to performance issues that both Java and Python developers see, both through changes to our APIs and to our service.
For more information on how to understand the performance of your Java applications, check out the set of frequently asked questions we've collected and answered about performance characteristics of the Java runtime. Also check out Max Ross's recent post on the performance of the new != and IN filters in JDO and JPA.
- You just uploaded a new version of your application.
- Your application may have gotten no traffic recently.
- Your traffic has become high enough to need another JVM to scale.
You can expect that during the course of developing your application, you will often experience the first two scenarios. In comparison, for a production app receiving even a very small but steady amount of traffic, loading requests are relatively infrequent.
As an application developer, you can influence the length of your loading requests by controlling the amount of work done initializing your application and its dependencies. The App Engine team has also been working diligently on the Java runtime to reduce the time spent in loading requests.
First, we're introducing a new class-loading optimization in 1.2.8 called precompilation. Precompilation makes loading requests faster by doing class-loading work ahead of time in the App Engine environment. We've seen significant improvements with precompilation, but we've left it opt-in by default for 1.2.8. You can enable it for your application by adding precompilation-enabled to your appengine-web.xml:
<precompilation-enabled>true</precompilation-enabled>
Second, we've been profiling applications with longer loading requests. Often they include large dependencies like Groovy and JRuby. We're working directly with those teams to improve startup by spotting and reducing unnecessary initialization.
Finally, we're continuing to work on additional startup improvements we hope to unleash on the Java runtime in the future, and make it easier to identify loading requests in application logs. We will continue to pay close attention to performance issues that both Java and Python developers see, both through changes to our APIs and to our service.
For more information on how to understand the performance of your Java applications, check out the set of frequently asked questions we've collected and answered about performance characteristics of the Java runtime. Also check out Max Ross's recent post on the performance of the new != and IN filters in JDO and JPA.
Mobile Search for a New Era: Voice, Location and Sight
Editor's note: today Google held a launch event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Fresh off the stage, we've invited Vic to highlight the mobile team's announcements, and the unique set of technologies that make them possible. (All [video] links point to event footage that will be viewable later today.)
A New Era of Computing
Mobile devices straddle the intersection of three significant industry trends: computing (or Moore's Law), connectivity, and the cloud. Simply put:
Just think: with a sensor-rich phone that's connected to the cloud, users can now search by voice (using the microphone), by location (using GPS and the compass), and by sight (using the camera). And we're excited to share Google's early contributions to this new era of computing.
Search by Voice
We first launched search by voice about a year ago, enabling millions of users to speak to Google. And we're constantly reminded that the combination of a powerful device, an Internet connection, and datacenters in the cloud is what makes it work. After all:
Over the past 12 months we've introduced the product on many more devices, in more languages, with vastly improved accuracy rates. And today we're announcing that search by voice understands Japanese, joining English and Mandarin.
Looking ahead, we dream of combining voice recognition with our language translation infrastructure to provide in-conversation translation [video]-- a UN interpreter for everyone! And we're just getting started.
Search by Location
Your phone's location is usually your location: it's in your pocket, in your purse, or on your nightstand, and as a result it's more personal than any PC before it. This intimacy is what makes location-based services possible, and for its part, Google continues to invest in things like My Location, real-time traffic, and turn-by-turn navigation. Today we're tackling a question that's simple to ask, but surprisingly difficult to answer: "What's around here, anyway?"
Suppose you're early to pickup your child from school, or your drive to dinner was quicker than expected, or you've just checked into a new hotel. Chances are you've got time to kill, but you don't want to spend it entering addresses, sifting through POI categories, or even typing a search. Instead you just want stuff nearby, whatever that might be. Your location is your query, and we hear you loud and clear.
Today we're announcing "What's Nearby" for Google Maps on Android 1.6+ devices, available as an update from Android Market. To use the feature just long press anywhere on the map, and we'll return a list of the 10 closest places, including restaurants, shops and other points of interest. It's a simple answer to a simple question, finally. (And if you visit google.com from your iPhone or Android device in a few weeks, clicking "Near me now" will deliver the same experience [video].)
Of course our future plans include more than just nearby places. In the new year we'll begin showing local product inventory in search results [video]; and Google Suggest will even include location-specific search terms [video]. All thanks to powerful, Internet-enabled mobile devices.
Search by Sight
When you connect your phone's camera to datacenters in the cloud, it becomes an eye to see and search with. It sees the world like you do, but it simultaneously taps the world's info in ways that you can't. And this makes it a perfect answering machine for your visual questions.
Perhaps you're vacationing in a foreign country, and you want to learn more about the monument in your field of view. Maybe you're visiting a modern art museum, and you want to know who painted the work in front of you. Or maybe you want wine tasting notes for the Cabernet sitting on the dinner table. In every example, the query you care about isn't a text string, or a location -- it's whatever you're looking at. And today we're announcing a Labs product for Android 1.6+ devices that lets users search by sight: Google Goggles.
In a nutshell, Goggles lets users search for objects using images rather than words. Simply take a picture with your phone's camera, and if we recognize the item, Goggles returns relevant search results. Right now Goggles identifies landmarks, works of art, and products (among other things), and in all cases its ability to "see further" is rooted in powerful computing, pervasive connectivity, and the cloud:
Computer vision, like all of Google's extra-sensory efforts, is still in its infancy. Today Goggles recognizes certain images in certain categories, but our goal is to return high quality results for any image. Today you frame and snap a photo to get results, but one day visual search will be as natural as pointing a finger -- like a mouse for the real world. Either way we've got plenty of work to do, so please download Goggles from Android Market and help us get started.
The Beginning of the Beginning
All of today's mobile announcements -- from Japanese Voice Search to a new version of Maps to Google Goggles -- are just early examples of what's possible when you pair sensor-rich devices with resources in the cloud. After all: we've only recently entered this new era, and we'll have more questions than answers for the foreseeable future. But something has changed. Computing has changed. And the possibilities inspire us.
A New Era of Computing
Mobile devices straddle the intersection of three significant industry trends: computing (or Moore's Law), connectivity, and the cloud. Simply put:
- Phones get more powerful and less expensive all the time
- They're connected to the Internet more often, from more places; and
- They tap into computational power that's available in datacenters around the world
Just think: with a sensor-rich phone that's connected to the cloud, users can now search by voice (using the microphone), by location (using GPS and the compass), and by sight (using the camera). And we're excited to share Google's early contributions to this new era of computing.
Search by Voice
We first launched search by voice about a year ago, enabling millions of users to speak to Google. And we're constantly reminded that the combination of a powerful device, an Internet connection, and datacenters in the cloud is what makes it work. After all:
- We first stream sound files to Google's datacenters in real-time
- We then convert utterances into phonemes, into words, into phrases; and
- We then compare phrases against Google's billions of daily queries to assign probability scores to all possible transcriptions; and
- We do all of this in the time it takes to speak a few words
Over the past 12 months we've introduced the product on many more devices, in more languages, with vastly improved accuracy rates. And today we're announcing that search by voice understands Japanese, joining English and Mandarin.Looking ahead, we dream of combining voice recognition with our language translation infrastructure to provide in-conversation translation [video]-- a UN interpreter for everyone! And we're just getting started.
Search by Location
Your phone's location is usually your location: it's in your pocket, in your purse, or on your nightstand, and as a result it's more personal than any PC before it. This intimacy is what makes location-based services possible, and for its part, Google continues to invest in things like My Location, real-time traffic, and turn-by-turn navigation. Today we're tackling a question that's simple to ask, but surprisingly difficult to answer: "What's around here, anyway?"
Suppose you're early to pickup your child from school, or your drive to dinner was quicker than expected, or you've just checked into a new hotel. Chances are you've got time to kill, but you don't want to spend it entering addresses, sifting through POI categories, or even typing a search. Instead you just want stuff nearby, whatever that might be. Your location is your query, and we hear you loud and clear.
Today we're announcing "What's Nearby" for Google Maps on Android 1.6+ devices, available as an update from Android Market. To use the feature just long press anywhere on the map, and we'll return a list of the 10 closest places, including restaurants, shops and other points of interest. It's a simple answer to a simple question, finally. (And if you visit google.com from your iPhone or Android device in a few weeks, clicking "Near me now" will deliver the same experience [video].)Of course our future plans include more than just nearby places. In the new year we'll begin showing local product inventory in search results [video]; and Google Suggest will even include location-specific search terms [video]. All thanks to powerful, Internet-enabled mobile devices.
Search by Sight
When you connect your phone's camera to datacenters in the cloud, it becomes an eye to see and search with. It sees the world like you do, but it simultaneously taps the world's info in ways that you can't. And this makes it a perfect answering machine for your visual questions.
Perhaps you're vacationing in a foreign country, and you want to learn more about the monument in your field of view. Maybe you're visiting a modern art museum, and you want to know who painted the work in front of you. Or maybe you want wine tasting notes for the Cabernet sitting on the dinner table. In every example, the query you care about isn't a text string, or a location -- it's whatever you're looking at. And today we're announcing a Labs product for Android 1.6+ devices that lets users search by sight: Google Goggles.
In a nutshell, Goggles lets users search for objects using images rather than words. Simply take a picture with your phone's camera, and if we recognize the item, Goggles returns relevant search results. Right now Goggles identifies landmarks, works of art, and products (among other things), and in all cases its ability to "see further" is rooted in powerful computing, pervasive connectivity, and the cloud:
- We first send the user's image to Google's datacenters
- We then create signatures of objects in the image using computer vision algorithms
- We then compare signatures against all other known items in our image recognition databases; and
- We then figure out how many matches exist; and
- We then return one or more search results, based on available meta data and ranking signals; and
- We do all of this in just a few seconds
Computer vision, like all of Google's extra-sensory efforts, is still in its infancy. Today Goggles recognizes certain images in certain categories, but our goal is to return high quality results for any image. Today you frame and snap a photo to get results, but one day visual search will be as natural as pointing a finger -- like a mouse for the real world. Either way we've got plenty of work to do, so please download Goggles from Android Market and help us get started.
The Beginning of the Beginning
How Designers Search
The results of a survey by a trade journal serving the Integrated Circuit market on �How Designers Search � Survey Results.� offered some interesting food for thought. The information was gleaned from the 185 managers, engineers and programmers working in commercial or military sectors out of 443 respondents to a survey sent to eg3.com�s 43,000-plus subscriber list.
The survey attempted to determine how engineers and programmers search for information on technology, what types of content they were seeking, and how they went about finding it. As might be expected, search engines ranked high and were used by engineers, virtually all the time, with Google leading the pack, followed by Yahoo (a distant second) and Microsoft�s Bing.
The survey results also provided insight into how engineers use these search engines. Not surprisingly, most engineers do not give up after the first page of links, but go deep into the result pages. In fact, almost 40% �often� or �always� go as far as Page 10 on their searches. This makes sense for people working in highly technical and specialized fields and represents one flaw in general search engines such as Google. Since they serve the general public, specialized content is easily buried. I know this to be true from my own research efforts, which can often require going far into the Google results. I wouldn�t be surprised if the problem gets much worse before we start seeing a backlash and a shift in the use of search technology and introduction of alternative products/services.
Beyond search engines, online media was ranked as a very good source of information to the engineering community, while emails and newsletters were also highly regarded. Perhaps online media should be ranked as the highest source of information, since search engines ultimately just redirect engineers to these sites anyways.
Social media as a source of information is growing slowly but currently ranked low enough among the survey takers to make some people conclude that social media is greatly overhyped for distributing information. I have a different opinion. I have just recently started using Twitter, Linked-in and Facebook to distribute information that I find useful and assume others will to. If e-mailing a good article to colleagues is common among engineers (which according to the survey, it is), then I believe social media will be adopted for a similar purpose in much greater numbers in 2010. Instead of forwarding an article and listing all the recipients' e-mail addresses, I can forward an article in two mouse clicks via Twitter and cover all the people who follow my Tweets. Think of it as a recommendation service - "As someone working in the microwave/wireless field I found this interesting and think you will to". Its like a custom ad-hoc newsletter. We have just implemented this share capability (Twitter, Linked-in,.. ) on the Microwave Journal web site, and I hope many of you take advantage of it. Engineers may not necessarily be first adaptors but once they discover a time-saving tool, watch out.
The survey found trade shows and print publications still popular but significantly behind search engines for research. This also makes sense. Print has many great qualities, providing a unique, tactile reader experience that the web cannot deliver, although hyper-linking isn�t one of them. I also know that many of our print subscribers hold on to their copies for many months or pass them around the office. This information educates many engineers before they ever go online and fire up the search engine.
In the �What do Designers Want� category, �hands-on� items such as demos, software and evaluation kits rank very highly. On the flip side, vendor articles and webinars ranked moderately low and podcasts very low in response to a �What Information do you seek� question. I found thess results very surprising and perhaps weighted by an abundance of self-promoting, marketing focused articles appearing elsewhere on the web. I know these are a big turn-off for technical people, looking for information to get their jobs done.
Looking at the attendance of MWJ/Besser webinars and download rates of vendor white papers, which remain quite high, I believe the continued popularity of both is testament to the quality of information (and self-restraint) that the marketing people in our industry have shown when developing and presenting information about their technologies and products.
If we can do more to help you find what you need, feel free to comment. The suggestion box is open.
The survey attempted to determine how engineers and programmers search for information on technology, what types of content they were seeking, and how they went about finding it. As might be expected, search engines ranked high and were used by engineers, virtually all the time, with Google leading the pack, followed by Yahoo (a distant second) and Microsoft�s Bing.
The survey results also provided insight into how engineers use these search engines. Not surprisingly, most engineers do not give up after the first page of links, but go deep into the result pages. In fact, almost 40% �often� or �always� go as far as Page 10 on their searches. This makes sense for people working in highly technical and specialized fields and represents one flaw in general search engines such as Google. Since they serve the general public, specialized content is easily buried. I know this to be true from my own research efforts, which can often require going far into the Google results. I wouldn�t be surprised if the problem gets much worse before we start seeing a backlash and a shift in the use of search technology and introduction of alternative products/services.
Beyond search engines, online media was ranked as a very good source of information to the engineering community, while emails and newsletters were also highly regarded. Perhaps online media should be ranked as the highest source of information, since search engines ultimately just redirect engineers to these sites anyways.
Social media as a source of information is growing slowly but currently ranked low enough among the survey takers to make some people conclude that social media is greatly overhyped for distributing information. I have a different opinion. I have just recently started using Twitter, Linked-in and Facebook to distribute information that I find useful and assume others will to. If e-mailing a good article to colleagues is common among engineers (which according to the survey, it is), then I believe social media will be adopted for a similar purpose in much greater numbers in 2010. Instead of forwarding an article and listing all the recipients' e-mail addresses, I can forward an article in two mouse clicks via Twitter and cover all the people who follow my Tweets. Think of it as a recommendation service - "As someone working in the microwave/wireless field I found this interesting and think you will to". Its like a custom ad-hoc newsletter. We have just implemented this share capability (Twitter, Linked-in,.. ) on the Microwave Journal web site, and I hope many of you take advantage of it. Engineers may not necessarily be first adaptors but once they discover a time-saving tool, watch out.
The survey found trade shows and print publications still popular but significantly behind search engines for research. This also makes sense. Print has many great qualities, providing a unique, tactile reader experience that the web cannot deliver, although hyper-linking isn�t one of them. I also know that many of our print subscribers hold on to their copies for many months or pass them around the office. This information educates many engineers before they ever go online and fire up the search engine.
In the �What do Designers Want� category, �hands-on� items such as demos, software and evaluation kits rank very highly. On the flip side, vendor articles and webinars ranked moderately low and podcasts very low in response to a �What Information do you seek� question. I found thess results very surprising and perhaps weighted by an abundance of self-promoting, marketing focused articles appearing elsewhere on the web. I know these are a big turn-off for technical people, looking for information to get their jobs done.
Looking at the attendance of MWJ/Besser webinars and download rates of vendor white papers, which remain quite high, I believe the continued popularity of both is testament to the quality of information (and self-restraint) that the marketing people in our industry have shown when developing and presenting information about their technologies and products.
If we can do more to help you find what you need, feel free to comment. The suggestion box is open.
WiMAX Growing Quickly as LTE Looms Large
ABI Research just released a report that mobile WiMAX subscribers will be about 2 million strong by the end of 2009 this month. They state that Clearwire in the United States has already declared 173,000 subscribers, Yota in Russia has been growing at a decent rate reaching 100,000 subscribers in August and 200,000 in October, and PacketOne in Malaysia has reached 130,000 subscribers.
Plus we have UQ Communications that expected to reach 300,000 subscribers by the end of 2009, but is behind schedule in its rollout and will fall short of that initial target. South Korea has seen KT�s and SKT's subscriber numbers remain fairly stagnant, while these service providers prepare for another big push as a third WiMAX service provider comes to South Korea.
This handful of WiMAX service providers alone will account for a significant minority of the nearly two million mobile WiMAX subscribers expected by the end of 2009.
I have read a lot about South Korea's outstanding mobile WiMAX network that works well even throughout its underground subway. They have fast data rates and low drop out rates with a multitude of applications available. They boast the highest broadband household penetration rate of 95% as referenced in our Oct cover story on the US Broadband Initiative (compared to the US rate of 60%).
ABI's practice director Philip Solis says "Mobile WiMAX service providers around the world find themselves in very different situations". Some are mainly focused on fixed services for homes and businesses, while others are jumping feet first into mobile WiMAX, offering a variety of external modems, laptops, netbooks and even handsets tied into HD multimedia services, as with Yota in Russia. Some have little fixed or mobile broadband competition, while others are competing directly against fixed and mobile broadband services.
"Some, such as Japan's UQ Communications, are behind their buildout schedules and subscriber expectations, while others such are Clearwire are increasing the pace of their deployments because of more-than-adequate funding. Still others such as Yota in Russia are exceeding all expectations. Some are remaining local, while others, such as Clearwire and Yota, are building networks in more than one country."
Just as the mobile WiMAX market is starting to bloom, LTE networks from early movers such as Verizon Wireless and NTT DoCoMo are targeting the same potential customers. The LTE ecosystem will eventually be vastly larger than the mobile WiMAX ecosystem, but just as LTE deployments start picking up in 2011 and 2012, some 802.16e service providers will begin upgrading their networks to 802.16m.
How soon do you see LTE taking over the lead over WiMAX for subscribers? I think it will be a couple of years but it will happen. They both have their place depending on the application and location so I don't think one is always better than the other.
Plus we have UQ Communications that expected to reach 300,000 subscribers by the end of 2009, but is behind schedule in its rollout and will fall short of that initial target. South Korea has seen KT�s and SKT's subscriber numbers remain fairly stagnant, while these service providers prepare for another big push as a third WiMAX service provider comes to South Korea.
This handful of WiMAX service providers alone will account for a significant minority of the nearly two million mobile WiMAX subscribers expected by the end of 2009.
I have read a lot about South Korea's outstanding mobile WiMAX network that works well even throughout its underground subway. They have fast data rates and low drop out rates with a multitude of applications available. They boast the highest broadband household penetration rate of 95% as referenced in our Oct cover story on the US Broadband Initiative (compared to the US rate of 60%).
ABI's practice director Philip Solis says "Mobile WiMAX service providers around the world find themselves in very different situations". Some are mainly focused on fixed services for homes and businesses, while others are jumping feet first into mobile WiMAX, offering a variety of external modems, laptops, netbooks and even handsets tied into HD multimedia services, as with Yota in Russia. Some have little fixed or mobile broadband competition, while others are competing directly against fixed and mobile broadband services.
"Some, such as Japan's UQ Communications, are behind their buildout schedules and subscriber expectations, while others such are Clearwire are increasing the pace of their deployments because of more-than-adequate funding. Still others such as Yota in Russia are exceeding all expectations. Some are remaining local, while others, such as Clearwire and Yota, are building networks in more than one country."
Just as the mobile WiMAX market is starting to bloom, LTE networks from early movers such as Verizon Wireless and NTT DoCoMo are targeting the same potential customers. The LTE ecosystem will eventually be vastly larger than the mobile WiMAX ecosystem, but just as LTE deployments start picking up in 2011 and 2012, some 802.16e service providers will begin upgrading their networks to 802.16m.
How soon do you see LTE taking over the lead over WiMAX for subscribers? I think it will be a couple of years but it will happen. They both have their place depending on the application and location so I don't think one is always better than the other.
App Engine SDK 1.2.8 Released Including New Admin Console features
The App Engine team has been hard at work tackling our the issues on our tracker, tweaking APIs and closing bugs. In addition to a ton of bug fixes, 1.2.8 also includes:
Enhanced Admin Console - Users will notice new tools for managing tasks and queues created with the Task Queue API, and more visibility into index processing.
Improved Java Compatibility - This release adds support for new filter operators and inheritance to JPA and JDO as well as support for JAXB, the single most requested feature for the Java SDK.
This was also the first release we "previewed" with developers before formally rolling out changes. Thanks very much to all the developers that gave us feedback on the preview release. And if you're interested in helping with future prereleases, please subscribe to the discussion groups to see preview release announcements.
1.2.8 is now available for both Python and Java developers. Take a look at our release notes for details on all the changes included in this release.
Enhanced Admin Console - Users will notice new tools for managing tasks and queues created with the Task Queue API, and more visibility into index processing.
Improved Java Compatibility - This release adds support for new filter operators and inheritance to JPA and JDO as well as support for JAXB, the single most requested feature for the Java SDK.
This was also the first release we "previewed" with developers before formally rolling out changes. Thanks very much to all the developers that gave us feedback on the preview release. And if you're interested in helping with future prereleases, please subscribe to the discussion groups to see preview release announcements.
1.2.8 is now available for both Python and Java developers. Take a look at our release notes for details on all the changes included in this release.
Keep your starred items in sync with Google Maps
(cross-posted with Google LatLong Blog)
Google Maps for mobile has long allowed you to add stars on a map to mark your favorite places. You may have noticed a few months ago that Google Maps for desktop browsers introduced the ability to star places as well. Unfortunately, there was no way to keep these starred places in sync with Google Maps on your phone. With today's release of Google Maps for mobile 3.3 on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, you'll now be able to keep the starred places on your phone and on your computer completely synchronized. It's like magic, but magic that you can use. Let me show you how:
My colleague Andy is at his desk right now, and he wants to check out some comedy in London tonight. Google Maps lists the 4th result as Upstairs at the Ritzy -- it sounds like a great spot: cheap, fun and comfortable. With one click, Andy stars the item and he's done. When he walks out of the office and turns on Google Maps on his Nokia phone, Upstairs at the Ritzy will be the top place in his list of Starred Items, and it will show up as a star on his map. From there he can call the theater, get walking directions, or even SMS the address to a friend.
Starring on Google Maps for desktop computers and Google Maps for mobile
Starring places also works great when you're out on the town and you find cool spots using your phone. I was in Paris with my wife recently. We visited the obvious tourist spots like la tour Eiffel and le Musée du Louvre, but we also found a few interesting places we hadn't expected. While wandering the streets of Paris, we stumbled upon a cafe...the sort of place you'll remember forever, but immediately forget the name. I started Google Maps on my Nokia phone, searched for the name of the cafe (Les Philosophes) and starred it, knowing that when I come back to Google Maps on my computer at home, it will be starred, right there, on my map. How cool is it to create a trail of interesting places from your phone?!
For users upgrading from an older version of Google Maps for mobile, you'll be asked, when you log in, whether you'd like to synchronize your existing starred items with your Google Account. This means you can preserve all the work you've put into customizing your map on your mobile, and have it show up, conveniently, in Google Maps in your desktop browser.
To enjoy the benefits of all this mobile synchronization goodness, download Google Maps for mobile for your Symbian or Windows Mobile phone by visiting m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser. And don't worry, we're busy building this same functionality into our other mobile versions of Google Maps -- so sit tight.
Google Maps for mobile has long allowed you to add stars on a map to mark your favorite places. You may have noticed a few months ago that Google Maps for desktop browsers introduced the ability to star places as well. Unfortunately, there was no way to keep these starred places in sync with Google Maps on your phone. With today's release of Google Maps for mobile 3.3 on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, you'll now be able to keep the starred places on your phone and on your computer completely synchronized. It's like magic, but magic that you can use. Let me show you how:
My colleague Andy is at his desk right now, and he wants to check out some comedy in London tonight. Google Maps lists the 4th result as Upstairs at the Ritzy -- it sounds like a great spot: cheap, fun and comfortable. With one click, Andy stars the item and he's done. When he walks out of the office and turns on Google Maps on his Nokia phone, Upstairs at the Ritzy will be the top place in his list of Starred Items, and it will show up as a star on his map. From there he can call the theater, get walking directions, or even SMS the address to a friend.
Starring on Google Maps for desktop computers and Google Maps for mobile
Starring places also works great when you're out on the town and you find cool spots using your phone. I was in Paris with my wife recently. We visited the obvious tourist spots like la tour Eiffel and le Musée du Louvre, but we also found a few interesting places we hadn't expected. While wandering the streets of Paris, we stumbled upon a cafe...the sort of place you'll remember forever, but immediately forget the name. I started Google Maps on my Nokia phone, searched for the name of the cafe (Les Philosophes) and starred it, knowing that when I come back to Google Maps on my computer at home, it will be starred, right there, on my map. How cool is it to create a trail of interesting places from your phone?!
For users upgrading from an older version of Google Maps for mobile, you'll be asked, when you log in, whether you'd like to synchronize your existing starred items with your Google Account. This means you can preserve all the work you've put into customizing your map on your mobile, and have it show up, conveniently, in Google Maps in your desktop browser.
To enjoy the benefits of all this mobile synchronization goodness, download Google Maps for mobile for your Symbian or Windows Mobile phone by visiting m.google.com/maps in your mobile browser. And don't worry, we're busy building this same functionality into our other mobile versions of Google Maps -- so sit tight.
SA Says GaAs Evolving to Stave Off Si Challenge
Strategy Analytics reports that the GaAs industry is creating innovations designed to stave off the dual challenges of integration and low-cost silicon technologies. Newer BiFET and BiHEMT processes will enable GaAs device manufacturers to integrate HBT power amplifiers onto a single die with HEMT-based switches and other functions. Meanwhile, the use of optical lithography for production of smaller geometry processes will enable more cost-effective production of millimeter-wave ICs. But HBT and HEMT processes will continue to underpin the commercial market for GaAs devices which will be worth $4 - $5 billion by 2013, as stated in the latest Strategy Analytics study.
�BiFET and BiHEMT technologies will enable the development of a future class of products, providing integrated solutions that retain the industry-leading performance offered by GaAs and necessary for next-generation wireless markets,� noted Steve Entwistle, VP of Strategy Analytics� Strategic Technologies Practice.
�GaAs is still erroneously perceived by many as an exotic, expensive technology,� said Asif Anwar, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor Technologies Service. �The reality is that GaAs technologies continue to meet the requirements from cost-sensitive markets, such as cellular handsets and is the most cost-effective technology for markets that require millimeter-wave performance.�
Mr. Anwar concluded, �The application of optical lithography for millimeter-wave IC production will significantly enhance the cost-effectiveness of GaAs compared to silicon technology-based offerings, while retaining the benefits of performance and faster time-to-market.�
How much progression do you think GaAs BiFET and BiHEMT processes are making to fend off Si improvements in integration and lower cost?
�BiFET and BiHEMT technologies will enable the development of a future class of products, providing integrated solutions that retain the industry-leading performance offered by GaAs and necessary for next-generation wireless markets,� noted Steve Entwistle, VP of Strategy Analytics� Strategic Technologies Practice.
�GaAs is still erroneously perceived by many as an exotic, expensive technology,� said Asif Anwar, Director of the Strategy Analytics GaAs and Compound Semiconductor Technologies Service. �The reality is that GaAs technologies continue to meet the requirements from cost-sensitive markets, such as cellular handsets and is the most cost-effective technology for markets that require millimeter-wave performance.�
Mr. Anwar concluded, �The application of optical lithography for millimeter-wave IC production will significantly enhance the cost-effectiveness of GaAs compared to silicon technology-based offerings, while retaining the benefits of performance and faster time-to-market.�
How much progression do you think GaAs BiFET and BiHEMT processes are making to fend off Si improvements in integration and lower cost?
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