Tag: mobile apps

The chipmaker made a powerful call to app development companies to underscore its intentions in the market.

Recently in Boston, at the AnDevCon, Intel reached out to Android developers, placing a greater focus on its own determination to expand the role that it currently plays within the mobile technology marketplace.

During the keynote speech from Jeff McVeigh, the company admitted mistakes in its early mobile strategy.

Jeff McVeigh, the developer products division at Intel’s general manager of performance, client, and visual computing, gave a keynote address in which he acknowledged that Intel had not taken the ideal path when it came to the creation of its initial mobile technology strategy. This included his own assumption that the majority of Android development would go on within the Dalvik virtual machine. The Dalvik is essentially an intermediary layer occurring between the Android system and applications, which converts apps into Dalvik executables, which are a format that mobile and other less powerful computing devices can run more easily.

The Android Native development kit’s mobile technology has since been used for many of the best performing apps.

This, despite the fact that Dalvik is still the Android development vehicle of choice. That said, when using the Android Native development kit (NDK), the intermediary is eliminated, making it quite appealing to developers.

McVeigh explained that “If you look at the top 2,000 apps on the Google Play Store today, only one-third of them are using Dalvik only.” He also pointed out that “The other two-thirds have some level of NDK; some level of optimized code that’s been polished to a specific architecture.”

Furthermore, he also pointed out that even though Android has quickly overtaken all of the other mobile operating systems and has established itself in a considerable lead of that market around the world, developers could still do themselves a disservice if they don’t make certain that they are accessible to those using other platforms, such as iOS and Windows Phone.

He explained that in order to truly reach the broadest base over mobile technology, Android cannot be the exclusive focus. “I need to be looking across platforms, across operating systems, and developing my applications to span that experience.”

Skype and Microsoft Research collaboration has resulted in major technological advancement in telecommunication.

Microsoft has recently made technology news by revealing a new translation service for the freemium VoIP (voice over IP) and messaging app Skype, which has the ability to identify spoken words and translate these words into a different language and, in almost real-time, speak back the translation.

After 15 years of research Microsoft intends to launch the new service by the end of the year.

Presently, Skype has an estimated 300 million monthly users who utilize its service via smartphones, tablets, computers and television. At the end of 2014, Skype Translator will be available for Windows 8. However, Microsoft also has the intention to make it available to other operating platforms in the future.

Skype’s corporate vice president, Gurdeep Singh Pall, said “Skype has always been about breaking down barriers. And the language barrier is huge. It has been a blocker to productivity and human connection.” He went on to say that “Skype Translator helps us overcome this barrier. It’s going to make sure you can communicate with anyone without language barriers.”

The technology was demonstrated by Pall in California at the Code conference. He held a three minute conversation with one of his German colleagues via a Skype video call. Pall spoke in English and his words were translated into German while his colleague spoke in German and Pall and the audience heard the German to English translation in almost real-time.

There were a few mistakes during the conversation, but these were extremely minor compared to those that occurred when the service was first demonstrated two years ago, translating English to Chinese. This shows the technological improvements that have been made in such a short time.

Microsoft’s technology news could preserve Skype’s competitive edge.

Skype was acquired by Microsoft back in 2011 for $85 billion. Globally, Skype continues to be the most used video and voice chat. However, it has a lot of competition from other popular messaging services like WhatsApp, FaceTime and Hangouts. The translation feature could be what allows Skype to keep a leg up over its competitors.

It is likely that there will be more Skype-related technology news in the future as more advancement are made and because Microsoft has yet to announce if the new translator service will be free or not.