So if you haven't heard Google is in the works creating an operating system for cell phones. That's right we have another clash of the titans. coming up. And instead of the classic Microsoft vs Apple fanboi shinanigans we usually get to wade through its Google and Apple. Even Mac people are fans of Google so it will be interesting to see how the battle pans out. I am sure Google doesn't want it to seem like they are making a direct attack on the the "fruity" iPhone, but somehow saying that they are just trying to get in on an emerging market doesn't cut it with me. None the less I am going for Android and Google. I personally downloaded the SDK that Google put out and started playing around with the emulator that is supplied. According to a video on the Android site working with the emulator and porting to a device should be exactly the same experience. That is for all to see of course. The emulator comes with different programs that showcase a few of the things that you can expect to see from applications and such. How transition effects are done etc. After sitting throught the 1 hour developer video on the Android site they said that there will be no approval process for the applications. This is a double edged sword of course, and with all great powers one much use discretion. What this means is that anyone including myself will be able to develop for the platform. This is good and bad because I am, for instance, a shitty programmer. I have very little experience in a production environment let alone any experience developing a program for the masses. But I plan on making an application for the OS. It will be my first installment in this realm and I can only hope it is a good one :).

The first phones have not been released yet, but some pretty big names are in the mix. For instance LG has said that it plans of releasing a phone for the 2008 Holiday season, but says that may be a little optimistic. None the less LG is one of my favorite phone makers and I would be really stoked to get an Android phone from them. Well that should wet your appetite a little for more info check out the Android developer website and see what people are clamoring about.

What is Android?

Diet Update, Work, House

So it has been exactly one month since I started the diet. And so far everything is going as planned. I have actually lost 10 pounds since it all started. I made my goal weight of 175 and have plateaued. I am still doing the diet though. I am also still running. I do it M W F, and run/walk around 2.5ish miles. Right now I am doing .5mi run .25mi walk 3 times with a .25mi walk at the begin as a warm up and the end as a cool down. I should be running 3 miles straight pretty soon. Baby steps though.

As for everything else...tonight I am bored as shit. Should have maybe done some school work but I am tired. Didn't feel like it. Work has been what it will be. I started creating a database for inventory control. I would like to try to incorporate RFID into our inventory control. It is a cheap and simple solution to keeping inventory. We could even reuse the tags as the inventory is RMA'd through the course of its use. The tags are pretty cheap anyways. Looking online I can get tags the size of a quarter that are like 90ish cents each. Considering the amount that we could save with a well kept established inventory system this is small potatoes in my mind.

Also I was tasked with finding an upgrade for our ID card printer. The one we have now works but the printer tapes are expensive. You get 50 cards out of a tape and around 3-4 of each of those cards is a waste. The tapes cost like 30 bucks too making the per card cost pretty high around $0.64 each. I found a model of card printer that is a bit expensive on the initial side but the cost per card is only like $0.36 or something. I know that you would make up the price of the printer ($1600.00) after selling like 700 cards or so. Considering the old crappy one cost around 1300 and didn't have an automatic hopper (ie you don't sit there and manually feed cards) I would say this is a freaking bargain. In the card cost I also figured in the labor cost due to the fact that we would have to sit at the machine for the old printer. A costly en devour. None the less I did what was asked and have not heard anything back about it.

Also got some new toys for the house. An insecticide sprayer...well not really just for insecticide but it fits the job. I am using it to spray a "barrier of protection" around the house that is like 2" wide. According to the bottle that will keep the ants and stuff away for like 8 weeks. So far I love the sprayer makes the job way easier then that home defence bottle I was using, "pull handle spray for like 15 secs, pull handle 15 secs etc. This is pump for a about 15 secs spray for half the house, and pump again...and actually i only re-pump because i like the volume of spray when you first pump...the can will actually spray the whole bottle on just the first 15 secs...nice. Well I wont bore you tonight with any more I will tell you more later.