Meet:Mobility is a project organised by Sascha Pallenberg of Netbooknews, JKK of JKKMobile.com and myself. We create regular podcasts and vodcasts and join together to cover major events. Be sure to add the podcast to your podcatcher!

Meet:Mobility Podcast 36 is now up. Recorded on Dec 3rd 2009.

JKK, Sascha, Chippy and special guest, Warner Crocker from GottaBeMobile talk about the new Fujitsu Handheld PC, Time Inc’s Tablet concept and the Crunchpad. What happened there? We also tell you how you could win a car with the Intel Atom Developer Program.

All the details including download, itunes link, rss and multi-format streaming link  over at Meet:Mobility

Meet:Mobility is a project organised by Sascha Pallenberg of Netbooknews, JKK of JKKMobile.com and myself. We create regular podcasts and vodcasts and join together to cover major events. Be sure to add the podcast to your podcatcher!

Meet:Mobility Podcast 36 is now up. Recorded on Dec 3rd 2009.

JKK, Sascha, Chippy and special guest, Warner Crocker from GottaBeMobile talk about the new Fujitsu Handheld PC, Time Inc’s Tablet concept and the Crunchpad. What happened there? We also tell you how you could win a car with the Intel Atom Developer Program.

All the details including download, itunes link, RSS and multi-format streaming link  over at Meet:Mobility

If you are interested in sponsoring the bi-weekly podcast, please contact us.

Intel are going to make my Mifi giveaway (coming up this week) look a little cheap! Read on…

Intel have just announced that the SDK for the Intel Atom Developer Program has reached Beta stage and along with the announcement comes information about how you can now start testing and submitting applications to their program. In order to get things moving, Intel are offering some big big prizes. How about a Smart Car or a $20K vacation? There are 100 netbooks on offer too!

Here’s a quick summary of what’s happening.

• The beta version of the Intel Atom Developer Program Software Development Kit for both Microsoft* Windows (C and C++) and Moblin (C) is now available. The features of the beta SDK include authorization, crash reporting, a consumer store client emulator for testing, license management and revenue management.
• Now that the beta SDK is available, developers can complete the required steps to submit their applications and developer components for validation to be sold through Intel OEM partner app stores starting in 2010.
• Submit early. Win big! Applications submitted by December 21, 2009 are eligible for big incentives.
• Enter the Intel Atom Developer Challenge by February 2, 2010. The first 100 validated applications will receive a tricked out netbook, and the talented developers with the most innovative application & elegant application design will win all-expense-paid “rock star treatment inch trip to GDC 2010!

You developers get all the perks. Where’s my old Kernighan and Ritchie book?

More information on the latest news and a ton of information links are available on the information page that has just gone live at Intel.

I should have been in bed but I got hooked into an excellent Gillmor Gang videocast (below) this evening. Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, P Rangaswami, Kevin Marks, and Saul Hansell talk a lot about the iPhone and Driod war, discuss the differences and then, all of a sudden, at about 39 minutes in, the conversation switches to the Crunchpad.

As I watched, I sent three important tweets out:

• “crunchpad is steamrolling” , “costs keep coming down”. “big news on that shortly” says @arrington
• Crunchpad is going to sell “for something between three and four hundred dollars” , web-only says @arrington
• “soft revenue”, “sponsorships” on Crunchpad. Sounds like ad-supported “without impacting the user experience”

There’s more in the video below.

$300-$400 dollars PLUS advertising (sponsorship) is what everyone will be talking about. For mass-market couch-surfing, that’s too expensive. The Archos Android tablet and iPod Touch have already set the pricing bar (and possibly the sizing) for home-based sofa-surfing devices.

To be fair, I don’t think Mike Arrington expects the Crunchpad to be selling millions and he understands that the home ‘pad’ market is just taking off so this, like many other 1st attempt projects, could be more of a learning and branding exercise than anything else. If you think about how Nokia are playing with their Maemo devices it’s much the same. They are nurturing awareness and developer support for a time when the market is ripe. That could be 2010, 2011 or beyond but you have to be ready to strike when the conditions are ready.

Clearly the Crunchpad is alive, it’s going to cost between 300 and 400 dollars, it’s Atom-based, it’s going to be sponsorship-supported, web-only and we should expect ‘big news’ shortly.

Related recent article from Ben: Slates, slates, they’re everywhere, they’re in the water, they’re in the air

Via: Techcrunch

Talk about being put on the spot! Just hours after the announcement of the Intel Atom Developer Program, Ajay Mungara, the Community Manager for the program, asks me about the type of applications we might see on netbooks, the compelling use cases and a ton of other stuff that really made me think quickly and deeply. 14 minutes of brain-drain! Hope you enjoy it.

And please, let me know what you think of the Intel Atom Developer Program. Do you think it will take off? If not, why not?

There’s a huge amount of information to digest around the announcement of the Intel Atom Development Program, or app-store but at a special lunch meeting with some of the key people in the IADP team I managed to refine what I think is going on here.

In summary you’re looking at Intel setting up a distribution, billing and  validation process for applications that are built to run on Windows and Moblin-based netbooks. Intel expect most of the (currently 19) Moblin distributors to build this into their Moblin-based distributions and on Windows, the system will be available as a downloadable application. It’s early stages for the program but I’m hearing that work on the back-end is well progressed and making an estimate that we’ll see this being fed into Moblin-based netbooks in the first half of 2010.

Key features of the program:

• To be available for Windows and Moblin-based netbooks initially with other Intel architectures being supported at a later date.
• Intel will manage the billing systems.
• Component sharing to allow code segments, engines etc to be shared in a controlled way and including a financial payments system.
• Reputation points. A feedback mechanism that scores developers.
• Validation process. Intel will run an operation that will check for thinks like: clean install, component use, malware, security, network utilization issues, appropriate content. They will not be testing software for bugs.
• Primary use is for binaries (executable programs) rather than source code. Open source sharing will be supported though.
• There will be a lightweight mechanisms for licensing code to restrict use and provide statistics for developers.

Clearly this is a significant step forward for Moblin but also a significant step forward for distribution of Windows applications for netbooks. Intel are saying that the program is not there to generate revenue directly but to enhance the platform and make it more attractive for end users and developers. (Increased product sales.) The revenue split is likely to be 70/30 with the 30% going towards financing the validation process back-end systems and further development.

With tens of millions of Netbooks already out there and tens of millions coming, this is clearly something that developers need to take a closer look at. Moblin is not just for netbooks and as the platform support widens, I would expect this to be available for devices based on the Moorestown platform later in 2010. With one CPU and software architecture running across all of those platforms, from smartphones to laptops, there is a lot of potential for this to rise high on the list of platforms that developers consider when they write mobile and web-focused software.

For more information, see the new app developer website from Intel

There are a number of companies lined up here to present their software and solutions. 4.5 mins per company.

I’ll try and summarise each one here.

1. Navteq

Digital map data provider promoting their developers network. Free sample map data available. API available for location based traffic and advertising.

Also promoting the Global LBS challenge.  Prize pool is $8.2 million in cash and licensing.

2. RX networks. Promoting their GPS-enhancing solutions.

Improving lock-times, indoor performance for mobile devices.

Products:

3.  Dial Plus

Enhancing phone calls with contextual information by using internet channel while you make a voice call.

Pulls in info from chosen social networks and cloud services.

4. Speaktech

Facebook and Twitter app for moblin.

5.  Accuweather.com

Working to provide weather data from 2.7 million locations in 38 languages. Working to get that on Intel MIDs.

6. Fluendo

Developers of Gstreamer open source media framework and codecs.

Have been working to optimise the codecs for Menlow and Moorestown platforms.

7. Discretix

Security applications for MIDs.

8. Aricent.

Independent design house for mobile and consumer devices.

9 Good technology.

Push information technology.

Working with Intel to provide push info/mail/social networking services on Moblin.

10. SNR Labs.

Providing radio control (control of 3G, Wifi etc) for power management and hand-over.  Working with Intel on Moorestown platform.

11 Asianux

Midinux linux solution for MIDs. Midinux 3 is launched.

11 Wind River.

Subsidiary of Intel working on UI development and Moblin 2.0 compliant OS builds.

Live demo of MID UI (video to be added) on Inventec Moorestown MID (first ever public demo)

12 Scalado

Imaging solutions solving issues of picture timing, panoramas, image enhancements. Providing slick gallery and slideshow solutions. Upload and sharing solutions.

13. Ixonos

Software services company for mobile industry.

Also capable of full hardware design of mobile devices.

14 Mobile Sorcery.

Cross-platform development product MoSync.

15 Axel

Axel provide a single user interface for multiple mobile TV formats. Terrestrial and over Internet.

16. Nuance.

Dragon naturally speaking. Speech technologies.

Demo Dragon naturally speaking on Linux. (Acer Netbook)

17 Skyhook.

Hybrid
location service provider. 30-40m accuracy in 2s, 90% of the time.

18 Maxim.

Designing analogue and mixed-signal ICs. Offering an audio and power solution for Moorestown.

19 Freescale

Offering audio and power management solutions for MIDs

20 NEC Electronics

Providing power management ICs for use in Moorestown.

And that’s it for the presentations today.

It’s only an early hands-on of the Archos 9 (they’ve got to get those first articles out quickly these days) but Gizmodo ends up with a positive vibe about the device. No word on battery life, performance or tablet features but there’s a hands-on video walkthrough. (Below)

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