Galois Tech Talk: Android G1: Experiences with an open mobile platform January 20, 2009

The next Galois Tech Talk, #2 for 2009, will be Isaac Potoczny-Jones (aka SyntaxNinja) on developing for the Android G1 phone.

The Android G1 is a TMobile phone whose operating system, Android is based on Linux and was developed by Google. It’s a very open smart-phone platform that rivals the iPhone.

While I’m no expert in Android or mobile platform development, I will discuss my experiences in Android development and demonstrate the toolchain used to develop software for the Android. I’ll outline the basic features of the platform, with a focus on the factors that make its openness so powerful:

* the inter-process communications mechanism whereby applications can advertise the services they offer and other applications can take advantage of those services,

* The open-source Java, Eclipse, and Linux-based toolchain,

* the OpenIntents project.

This will be an informal demonstration and discussion.

A group of us in collaboration between the Android Password Safe project and the Openintents project have implemented a cryptography service and a keystore service which other Android applications can use to keep data and passwords safe, in a way that’s convenient for the end user.

Our system allows a single password, and periodic single sign-on so that all applications can encrypt, decrypt, and store keys using the same master password that the user enters once.

* Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2008
* Time: 10:30am - 11:30am
* Location: Galois, Inc.
421 SW 6th Ave. Suite 300
(3rd floor of the Commonwealth Building)
Portland, OR 97204

Galois has been holding weekly technical seminars for several years on topics from functional programming, formal methods, compiler and language design, to cryptography, and operating system construction, with talks by many figures from the programming language and formal methods communities. The talks are open and free.

Official Website: http://www.galois.com/blog/2009/01/19/tech-talk-android-g1-experiences-with-an-open-mobile-platform/