Last week Google released an SDK (Software Development Kit) for it’s Android platform. Android is a cell phone platform that allows us programmer types to write programs for cell phones. On the release day I decided that a really good application for cell phone would be an MMOG or Massively Multiplayer Online Game.

As soon as I could, I created a Google Group for developers who want to build such a game. The response has been awesome. There are over 100 members of the group and about 20 who are actively working on the game itself. Quite amazing.

If you want to see what we are doing go here: http://groups.google.com/group/android-mmog

I just went to openmoko.com to check out the Neo 1973. Not only is it an open-source phone, but they also made it very easy for you to modify the hardware of the thing. The part that was most amazing to me is that it has a 2.8″ screen at 640×480 resolution. Here are some of its specs:

• 2.8″ VGA TFT color display
• Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
• 266MHz Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
• USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
• Integrated AGPS
• 2.5G GSM – quad band, voice, CSD, GPRS
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Micro SD slot
• High Quality audio codec

It doesn’t feature 3G or WIFI unfortunately, so it doesn’t have any way to do high speed data transfer on the road, but it offers bluetooth 2.0, so users should be able to transfer data at high speeds when there a close to the computers. The advanced developer kit includes the following items:

• Neo 1973
• Battery (2x)
• Headset
• Carrying Pouch
• Stylus
• Lanyard
• MicroSD Card (2x)
• USB Connectivity Cable (2x)
• Debugboard v2 with Flex Cable
• Ruggedized Toolbox
• Neo Tools

So, if you have the hankerin’ to completely customize your phone and have total control, you should check out the Neo 1973.

Among the various podcast hosting websites out there is site called Podango. On the surface they appear to be like most other podcast hosting service. Under, however, they have a bit more under the hood then other podcast hosting platforms. Besides allowing you to post media, use remote players, and view statistics sits an API that allows podcasters to access their podcast information from any application or website. Based on the REST standard for APIs, the Podango API allows any Podango user to receive XML listings of their podcasts.

One of the best parts about the Podango API that sets it apart from other media hosting companies, such as YouTube, is that it allows you to upload content directly to Podango without even going to the site.

For more information about Podango visit www.podango.com

Every wonder where the Digg elite find there stories? Well, you can go and see where they’re getting their stories simply by viewing their stories, right? Well, technically yes, but you’d have to scroll through a ton of pages to see them all and that’s a lot of pages to remember. I’ve always wanted to know the distribution of where they are looking for the stories they submit. I have therefore started to build the Digg research tool. It allows you to type in a Digg username and see the exact count of where they are getting their content. It’s quite interesting to see and I think you can learn a lot from it. You can check it out over at sneegg.com/digg_stats.php

I was just Digging a story from Reuters.com and I thought up a great idea. I want to write a program that checks RSS really often and when they are different, it quickly loads up a page that allows me to Digg the new stories. That way, I get the latest stories in the quickest time possible. I’m gonna do it.

It seems to me that the biggest thing on the web right now is social networking. One of the more popular site out there is MySpace. MySpace allows people to create accounts where they can post pictures, music, or personal information. The reason why it’s a social networking site is that users can exist on a network. A network is a virtual list of users all tied together through the network. This allows them to easily see what the other users on the network are doing with there lives. Open-sourcing is a popular way to develop software. For example, this blog is running using WordPress, which is an open-source blogging engine. Open-source means that you can see the source code. Blogging and content management seem to be popular open-source projects. I really would love to make an open-source MySpace type engine. I think that if people had the ability to completely tweak their personal site, they would love it. If anyone would like to join in this project, please tell me and we’ll see if we can start something up.

Recently, as I was browsing the Firefox add-ons directory, I stumbled across a few interesting looking plug-ins that I thought I would try out. I downloaded and installed them. Being the curious developer type that I am, I decided to dissect the plug-ins to see what they did internally. One of the plug-ins in particular seemed quite innocent. It gave the browser the ability to highlight specific keywords on a page so that it would be easier to find them. Seemingly harmless, right? Well, after further investigation, I discovered something interesting. This plug-in, after clicking the highlight button, would replace all the Google AdSense ads on the page with different ads. I discovered this by using the Live HTTP Headers plug-in, another add-on for Firefox. It allows you to view the ingoing and outgoing http requests being sent. Every time I clicked the highlight button it would make a request to the Google AdSense server. Then, using the Firebug plug-in, I was able to profile the page and see what JavaScript was running. The plugin traversed the DOM, replacing the highlighted text and also finding the Google Adsense ads and replacing them with different ads. What does this mean? Well, either there was a mistake, which I doubt, or the person who wrote the plug-in is raking in a fair amount of dough. I’m pretty sure that this is against the Google AdSense Terms of Service, but was quite an ingenious idea while it lasted.

Although it has been around for awhile, many developers that I have met have never used the Yahoo UI library. This library has been release for quite some time now and it has been one of my favorite web development tools. Yes, there are others such as scriptalicious, prototype, and even some Google alternatives, which are also good, but I have come acustomed to Yahoo’s UI library and find that it fits my needs very well. Among some of the things it does are:

1. Drag and Drop
2. AJAX
3. Modal Windows
4. Events
5. DOM
6. Menu Creation

I have found their AJAX solution especially good to work with. It allows you to easily set the request type, the url, and the callback methods. I have also had great success with the drag and drop library. Yahoo has made each element of the library easily extendable so you can enhance the functionality in a way that fits your individual needs.

I would highly recommend Yahoo’s UI library for anyone who is interested in making there web UIs more appealing. The library along with documentation can be found here: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/.