I attended the Analog Devices (ADI) Analyst�s Day on Thurs and discovered how much they are going to focus on RF technologies and leverage their expertise in the converter market, where they are dominant (44% market share/ $1.1 B in sales), to expand their RF business in the transmit/receive chains. They currently have RF sales of about $200 M from a total available market of about $8 B if you exclude handsets. They are targeting high performance, high margin markets so they are not aiming for the handset or WLAN markets which are more commodity oriented. They have products covering the entire T/R chain but are not widely known outside the converter, modulators and PLL/VCO/Synthesizer markets from what I have seen but they expect to change that.
I was surprised to learn that the Barry Gilbert who invented the Gilbert Cell mixer works at ADI and still leads their development efforts in that area. The also emphasized their expertise in fast hoping PLL synthesizers and RMS detectors along with variable gain amplifiers. They recently released (ADRF670x and ADRF660x) a transmit modulator and receiver down converter that integrate many functions onto a single chip for high performance infrastructure applications. They expect strong RF growth in the medical, wireless infrastructure and building automation (smart grids, security, etc.) markets and they expect to grow at over 15% in the RF market going forward. It is good to see companies expecting large growth this year in the RF market.
App Engine Community Update
It's been a while since the last community update post, and you've probably been wondering what the App Engine community has been up to over the holiday period. There's been a lot of activity, so without further ado, here's your community update.
Open Source Projects
There were a lot of new App Engine Open Source projects released since the last update, for both Java and Python, and including everything from libraries to complete working apps.
gdispatch is an extension to the Python webapp framework that allows you to embed routes alongside your request handlers. SUAS is a Python library that provides straightforward authentication and session management for App Engine apps. If you're looking for a complete, lightweight framework, tipfy might be what you're looking for - it bills itself as "a cute little Python framework for App Engine which follows the basic concepts of web.py and webapp".
The Java community has been even busier, with members releasing simpleds and Objectify, both of which provide alternative interfaces to the App Engine datastore for those of you who prefer systems designed specifically with App Engine's datastore in mind over JPA or JDO. For your unit testing needs, there's Kotori Web JUnit Runner, which allows you to run JUnit unit tests in production. Finally, appleguice provides a sample application demonstrating how to integrate Guice dependency injection with GWT and App Engine.
Interesting Apps
The last few months have also seen a plethora of App Engine based apps released, many of which provide source code so you can deploy your own, or contribute to their development. We've picked out a few that we think you'll find of interest.
JobTracker is a Python app that provides an interface to allow tracking working hours and tasks in your team, and is licensed under the APL 2.
Nimbits provides a time series service on App Engine, allowing you to record regular measurements - be they server latencies or fishtank temperatures - and process and export them via APIs or a web interface.
nxdom is an interface designed to make picking the domain name for your next project easier; it operates on lists of recently expired domains, and its Python source is freely available.
OpenShare is a new banner exchange service targeted at open source projects; it's written in Python and is available under the GPL 2.
If you're feeling nostalgic, z-machine lets you play interactive text games through a browser interface, or over XMPP. You can even save a game in one interface, and continue playing in the other. If you're inspired by this, the Parchment project implements a z-machine interpreter in pure Javascript.
Worried about your app when out and about? App Engine Watch is an Android app that lets you monitor your app's quotas from your phone.
A lot of projects have centered around Twitter integration, with Pulse of the Planet letting you visualize tweets in real time on a map, while Lazytweet provides a friendly interface for convincing other people to do your work for you (or doing their work for them, if you're feeling generous). Tweet Engine makes tweeting using a shared Twitter account easier by allowing you to share an account with your group without needing to give them all the account password. It's also open source - you can get the source here and deploy your own, or just use the live instance at http://www.tweetengine.net/.
If that's still not enough microblogging for you, TypePad has released TypePad Motion, their open source community micro-blogging app. It's available here.
Runtimes
If your favorite language isn't Java or Python, that doesn't mean you're out of luck. As long as there's an implementation on the JVM, you can use it on App Engine! Several projects are improving integration between App Engine and other JVM languages.
This post discusses how to use Clojure on App Engine, while this post covers using Quercus - a PHP implementation for the JRE - with App Engine task queues. Finally, if Groovy is your language of choice, definitely give the gaelyk project a look, and if you prefer JavaScript, take a look at appenginejs.
Blogging
Many bloggers continue to turn out insightful and useful posts relating to App Engine. Here's a few that caught our eye:
If all the Twitter related projects interested you, and you're wondering about implementing your own, this article on building feedertweeter and this article on using Twitter's OAuth API on App Engine are probably of interest.
There's an excellent blog post on hitching.net about practical use of geohashing for geospatial apps on App Engine.
Just about everything on the gaejexperiments blog is worth a read if you're a Java coder. Recent posts cover topics such as using reCAPTCHA, using the Java blobstore API and using the task queue.
The Django-nonrel folks are showing some impressive progress - see their post on how to deal with noSQL databases, and read their blog for more information.
The wolfire blog has a great post on how AppScale helps prevent App Engine 'lock-in'. If you want to learn more, this post on the IBM developerworks site goes into more detail about AppScale.
If you want to keep up with blogs, articles, and news about App Engine, the App Engine reddit should be your first port of call. And if you want to see your own post or project up here, submit it to the reddit, or mention it in the groups!
5 more tips for using Google Buzz on your phone
Last week we shared some tips for getting the most out of Google Buzz for mobile. We're back with more ways to help you become a power buzz poster and find the most interesting buzz while you're on the go. Try these 5 tips for the Google Buzz for mobile web app (buzz.google.com) on your iPhone or Android 2.0+ device.
1. Post buzz with your voice.
You can post your public buzz simply by speaking it. From the Google Mobile App for iPhone or Quick Search Box on Android, select the voice search icon, say "post buzz" followed by the text you'd like to post, and watch your words appear. Before your post is sent, you'll be able to edit it or change its tagged location.
2. Filter the Nearby tab for a specific place.
From the Nearby tab, you can easily filter buzz by a specific place, such as a sushi restaurant you're about to walk by, to only see posts from that place. Open the menu showing nearby places, for example "Tartine Bakery and 20+ other locations nearby," and then select a specific place from the list. Now, you'll see all the public buzz anyone's ever posted from that place or you can quickly create a post that is tagged with the place. To go back, just open the same menu and select your current location shown with the blue dot. You'll once again see all the recently posted buzz around your location.
3. Search!
As you'd expect from any Google product, Google Buzz for mobile has a powerful search feature that lets you search all public buzz for topics that interest you. Open the menu or just select the magnifying glass icon to see the search bar. You can also search specifically for nearby posts by checking the "Search nearby" box before submitting your search (it's already checked if you're in the Nearby tab). Now you can find out what people around you are saying about the closest pizza spot or a traffic jam.
4. Post from your city-level location.
Tagging a post with your location is easy and adds context to your buzz posts. Sometimes, your post isn't about a specific place or you'd rather not share your exact location. You can easily show your city-level location, so your post has a general city location tagged and will be browsable in the Nearby view and Maps Buzz layer. When posting, just select the ">" in the location box, scroll down, and select the city-level location option.
5. Refresh your location.
On the other hand, sometimes you really want your location to be exact. When you visit the Nearby tab or want to tag your post with a location, Google Buzz will try to get your location using your phone's GPS. If you're not happy with the location accuracy, you're moving, or you're just stepping outside to get a GPS signal, hit the 'refresh' icon to tell the Google Buzz web app to get your location again. You can also learn more about troubleshooting location problems.
Stay tuned for more tips! Visit our Help Center to learn more or tell us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum. You can also give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.
1. Post buzz with your voice.
You can post your public buzz simply by speaking it. From the Google Mobile App for iPhone or Quick Search Box on Android, select the voice search icon, say "post buzz" followed by the text you'd like to post, and watch your words appear. Before your post is sent, you'll be able to edit it or change its tagged location.
2. Filter the Nearby tab for a specific place.
From the Nearby tab, you can easily filter buzz by a specific place, such as a sushi restaurant you're about to walk by, to only see posts from that place. Open the menu showing nearby places, for example "Tartine Bakery and 20+ other locations nearby," and then select a specific place from the list. Now, you'll see all the public buzz anyone's ever posted from that place or you can quickly create a post that is tagged with the place. To go back, just open the same menu and select your current location shown with the blue dot. You'll once again see all the recently posted buzz around your location.
3. Search!
As you'd expect from any Google product, Google Buzz for mobile has a powerful search feature that lets you search all public buzz for topics that interest you. Open the menu or just select the magnifying glass icon to see the search bar. You can also search specifically for nearby posts by checking the "Search nearby" box before submitting your search (it's already checked if you're in the Nearby tab). Now you can find out what people around you are saying about the closest pizza spot or a traffic jam.
4. Post from your city-level location.
Tagging a post with your location is easy and adds context to your buzz posts. Sometimes, your post isn't about a specific place or you'd rather not share your exact location. You can easily show your city-level location, so your post has a general city location tagged and will be browsable in the Nearby view and Maps Buzz layer. When posting, just select the ">" in the location box, scroll down, and select the city-level location option.
5. Refresh your location.
On the other hand, sometimes you really want your location to be exact. When you visit the Nearby tab or want to tag your post with a location, Google Buzz will try to get your location using your phone's GPS. If you're not happy with the location accuracy, you're moving, or you're just stepping outside to get a GPS signal, hit the 'refresh' icon to tell the Google Buzz web app to get your location again. You can also learn more about troubleshooting location problems.
Stay tuned for more tips! Visit our Help Center to learn more or tell us your feedback and questions in our Help Forum. You can also give us suggestions and vote on other people’s on the Mobile Product Ideas page.
In stock nearby? Look for the blue dots.
(Cross-posted with the Google Merchant Blog)
Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.
Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated last December a preview version of Product Search for mobile with local inventory, which lets you see right in your search results whether items are in stock at nearby stores. We're happy to announce that as of today, if you're searching for a product that is sold by participating retailers, including Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, or West Elm, you can just look for the blue dots in the search results to see if it's available in a local store. If you see a blue dot, you can tap on the adjacent "In stock nearby" link, and you'll be taken to the seller's page where you'll see whether the item is "In Stock" or has "Limited Availability" near you. You'll also see how far away the stores are from you -- as long as you've enabled My Location or manually specified your location.
If you have an iPhone, Palm WebOS phone, or any Android-powered device, and you're in the US, just go to Google.com in your mobile browser, tap on the "more" link, and then select "Shopping." Or look for the "Shopping results" section in Universal Search results when you search on Google.com.
Finally, if you're a retailer and you'd like to participate in this program, we want to hear from you. Please fill out this brief form to let us know that you'd like to be considered. In the meantime, you can get prepared by making sure your Local Business Center data is up to date, and ensuring that your Product Search data is in great shape.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)