Technical Convention

     My first experience in attending a convention.I got to know about this through mail.Had a brief idea about FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) through a magazine called Linux for you and I am also familiar with Linux.The thirst for gaining knowledge always beckons me,to know what is happening around the world,which new idea is taking shape,stimulates my brain.Sometimes I over do it,that's when the whole system above the neck hangs,but in the end you take some and leave some,because even though you want your brain to take in all,it gets exhausted.
     Open Source India(OSI) was a three day event,I went on the third day,even though I wanted to keenly  attend the first day's events that was on 1.FOSS for everyone 2.Kernel day,missed it because of other commitments.I've heard a beautiful quote,which I quite didn't understand it in the beginning and as days went by I Learnt to appreciate the beauty of this quote,"Leave something for next time." :) Second day's topic was on Web Development which was totally out of my league so I skipped that.The events were divided based on passes,Platinum,Gold and Silver passes.I got a Silver Pass.
      Third day event was for Mobile developers,but before this event started we had a key note given on Simplify OSS development : About Google Chrome and why did Google go for it  when there are enough web browsers on the market,basically three points

• Made for speed
• Simplicity : They wanted to make a browser which is invisible,which does not interfere between the user and the website.
• Stability

And why did they opt to open source Google Chrome,so that more developers can work on it and in that way the platform gets richer.Google has also come up with a web programming language called DART which is again open source.Then he went on about

• Development tools characteristics
• Project Hosting characteristics
• Deploy App characteristics
• App Engine

Open Source Mobile Virtualization Using Sky Eye : 

        This one was pretty interesting,Sky Eye was created by Chinese and one technical difficulty is all it's documents are written in Chinese and you have to search it  on a chinese search engine.Google doesn't throw much information on Sky eye.You can check the definition virtualization on Wikipedia.The important terms discussed was

1. Emulation : The software that mimics even the internal features of the given Hardware(firmware)
2. Simulation : The software that mimics the behavior of the hardware(external features)

 Both the above software does not take the help of the hardware,but in virtualization,it takes the help of the hardware.Why is it important to embedded space?

• Reduces initial development and maintenance costs
• Help create Hardware and software parallelly 
• And the apps don't have to be accurate

He spoke about various other tools,comparison between Qemu and Sky Eye and coming back to Sky Eye

• It is a board simulator 
• Flexibility to add different kinds of boards 
• Architecture and peripherals
• Prerequisites of the board simulator : config file file,tool chain and boot payload(uboot or linux kernel)

The last part of the session was a demo on how to use Sky Eye.

Android Device Drivers(ADD) :

     This session was what I was waiting for,but  ADD pretty much was the same as Linux Device Drivers (LDD) apart from the few  minute changes which was not presented to the audience.A simple hello world demo program using the init module and the cleanup module,just like how we would write for LDD,absolutely no changes.

Display in Mobile Devices :

     The speaker showed us how the mobile display has changed from a two line monolithic (black and white) screens to colour and how the touch keypad and the display are combined into one these days.He went on too talk about 

• The different kinds of displays the mobile phone manufactures use.
• The Architecture of SOC (System On Chip) used for this : In PC we have only the GPU to process the image,but here along with GPU we have the video accelerator and they process two different images.
• MIPI,smart and dumb panels.
• Linux Kernel  Display Framework : Direct Frame Buffer which is designed for embedded systems

This session concluded with a video of,Future of display devices and how it will change the way we view things now.

Cross Platform Mobile Application Development Using Phonegap : This was more about writing the code for the mobile appication you want to create on any mobile phones working on any platform all under one roof called Phonegap.You can visit the website www.phonegap.com for more information on this and how it works.
      Well,these were the four sessions on Mobile Development.I enjoyed it,having seen so many fancy mobile phones these days and getting to hear about mobile apps,it was more fascinating to know how these are being created,maintained and launched in to the world.To witness,people continuously innovating and collaborating in bringing the best ideas for the world to see  is absolutely fantastic and seems to me like a really cool area to work in.