What: TechWeekend featuring “What makes Google Android different from other systems, and from regular Java” by Navin Kabra, “Maps, GPS and sensors in Android” by Rohit Ghatol, with a demo on an Android G1 phone, and more
When: Saturday, 1st August, 4:30pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Please register here.

What makes Google Android different from other systems – Navin Kabra.

Google’s Android is a brand new platform for mobile phones, and has been created from scratch specifically for this purpose. This means that it is a “modern” system that does not suffer from any legacy issues, and has taken the best ideas from various other projects to build a system that is arguably better than any of the other, competing, systems. Thus, for example, it uses the Java language as the development language, but has rejected the rest of the Java ecosystem. Specifically it uses a compeletely new virtual machine (Dalvik) which is redesigned with mobiles in mind – and has a number of very interesting design decisions that we will discuss. Similarly, the Android application framework represents a departure from the traditional way of doing things, and has a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it is great, especially for allowing different apps to share data, code, and in general co-operate.

We will explore and discuss this and various other design decisions in Android.

Maps, GPS and Sensor Capability – Rohit Ghatol

Rohit Ghatol is a co-founder of the Pune Google Technologies User Group (PuneGTUG), and one of the early adopters of the Google Android platform. He has already built a number of applications on Android, and is working on some interesting ideas in this area. In this talk, he will be discussing the mapping in the Android framework, and how the GPS and sensor capabilities can be combined with it to give powerful and rich experiences to users. He will be using his Google Android G1 phone to demonstrate these capabilities.

There will be one more speaker, but unfortunately, the details of that talk were not ready in time for this announcement. Please check back in a day for that update.

Also check out Dhananjay Nene‘s slides from the first TechWeekend: “REST Explained.”