The 20 greatest milestones of Android's first five years

The 20 greatest milestones of Android's first five years
Android, this is your life.

Happy birthday, Android! Although you were technically announced six years ago, it wasn’t until October 22, 2008 that you made your debut. Apple tried stealing your thunder this year by hosting an event or something on your special day, so we decided to hold the celebration a day early in order to keep you in the limelight. You’ve had an interesting five years, and it’s only right that we take the time to celebrate one of the most revolutionary things to happen to mobile.

First Android phone released (October 22, 2008)
The T-Mobile G1 (known overseas as the HTC Dream) is the first smartphone to ship with Android. Even though the phone was incredibly clunky, it was pretty well received overall and sold over a million units.

Google announces Cupcake (April 30, 2009)
The first major update to the OS, Android 1.5 Cupcake starts the trend of naming Android updates after desserts and adds support for widgets, video uploads to YouTube, and a virtual on-screen keyboard.

Android Donut unveiled (September 15, 2009)
Android 1.6 Donut rolls out to the small handful of Android phones and brings with it support for more screen resolutions. The update also improves the camera and adds a speech-synthesis engine that lets Android “speak” simple lines of text.

Verizon backs Android (October 26, 2009)
The Motorola Droid is announced for Verizon, making it the first Android phone for the carrier. The phone ships running Android 2.0 Eclair, which includes a better version of Google Maps. Verizon aggressively markets the phone, painting it as the antithesis of Apple’s iPhone.

The Nexus One is released (January 5, 2010)
Google decides to leave the carriers behind by releasing its own unlocked phone. The Nexus One is sold directly from Google with the promise of software updates directly from the search giant, free from any carrier or OEM interference.

Google announces Android Froyo (May 20, 2010)
Android 2.2 Froyo brings Adobe Flash to Android, allowing people to enjoy Flash videos and games on their smartphones.

Android Gingerbread debuts (December 6, 2010)
Android 2.3 Gingerbread adds native support for NFC (near field communications) and a number of other sensors including gyroscopes and barometers. Gingerbread would go on to be the most used mobile operating system in the world.

First real Android tablet announced (February 24, 2011)
The Motorola Xoom becomes the first true Android tablet and is announced alongside Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Honeycomb adds support for multicore processors and replaces the hardware navigation buttons with virtual ones.

Malware in the Android Market (March 1, 2011)
The Google Play Store (known then as the Android Market) suffers from a serious bout of malware. Google ends up pulling more than 50 infected apps, and people start to seriously question how secure Android really is.

Google shows off Ice Cream Sandwich (October 19, 2011)
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich gives the operating system a major makeover, bringing many elements from Honeycomb to smartphones. This version of the OS includes a number of new features including Android Beam, panoramic photos, and the ability to unlock your phone using your face.

Phablets become a thing (late October 2011)
Samsung introduces the Galaxy Note, sparking a trend of smartphones with bigger screens. The phone is panned in the United States but becomes a huge success overseas, outselling many regular-size phones. Copy editors everywhere cringe as people invent a new word for this not-quite-a-phone-but-not-quite-a tablet device.

Amazon makes its own Android tablet (November 15, 2011)
Amazon enters the Android tablet race with its Kindle Fire. The Fire runs a customized version of Android but has access only to Amazon’s heavily moderated app store. The tablet’s low price makes it a huge hit with consumers and the most popular Android tablet of the day.

Google announces the Nexus 7 and Nexus Q (June 27-29, 2012)
At the 2012 Google I/O, the company takes the wraps off a number of products including the budget-friendly Nexus 7 and totally bizarre Nexus Q. The Q unfortunately (fortunately?) never sees the light of day, but the Nexus 7 becomes an instant hit and sells out almost immediately online.

Oh, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (June 27-29, 2012)
What’s a Google product launch without a new version of Android? Android 4.1 Jelly Bean adds the ever helpful Google Now and helps to unify Android tablets and phones. The update also gives the OS a much needed speed boost thanks to the improvements in “Project Butter.”

500 million Androids activated (September 11, 2012)
Android is the most popular operating system in the world, with 1.5 million new devices activated daily.

Nexus 10 and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean announced (November 13, 2012)
Despite its event being canceled by a hurricane, Google goes ahead with announcing Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and the Nexus 10. This new version of Jelly Bean adds Photo Spheres and the ability to have multiple user accounts on tablets. The Nexus 10 marks the first 10-inch Nexus tablet and boasts an eye-meltingly high-resolution display.

Andy Rubin leaves Android (March 13, 2013)
The head of Android leaves the project to work on other things at Google. Sundar Pichai is put in charge of the department, tasked with running both the Android and Chrome teams

New Nexus 7 and new version of Jelly Bean revealed (July 24, 2013)
A slimmer, faster version of the Nexus 7 is launched running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. The update includes support for OpenGL 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy.

Hugo Barra leaves Google (August 28, 2013)
In a move surrounded by scandal and mystery, the vice president of Android, Hugo Barra, leaves Google for Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi. Barra was the face of Android and was the one who stood on stage introducing the Nexus 7.

1 billion Android devices activated total (September 3, 2013)
Android continues to grow and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. It’s still the most popular mobile operating system in the world and is starting to make its way into other devices like laptops, TVs, and watches.

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Crowd-backed EFF files to kill off ‘podcast patent’

Public donates $76,000 to take on patent troll

Having amassed a war chest of $76,000 in public donations and identified crucial "prior art," the Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday filed a formal challenge aimed at killing a patent being wielded by Personal Audio LLC against podcasters such as "The Adam Carolla Show" and "How Stuff Works."

The appeal to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office marks EFF's first legal action since announcing a crowdsourcing effort called "Help Save Podcasting" back in May.

From an EFF press release:

"As we show in our petition, Personal Audio is not the true inventor of this technology and should not be demanding a payout from today's podcasters," EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer said. "If you look into the history of podcasting, you won't see anything about Personal Audio."

Today's petition shows that Personal Audio did not invent anything new, and, in fact, other people were podcasting years before Personal Audio first applied for a patent. In preparation for this filing, EFF solicited help from the public to find prior art, or earlier examples of podcasting. In the petition, EFF cites three examples: Internet Pioneer Carl Malamud's "Geek of the Week" online radio show and online broadcasts by CNN and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

So how does Personal Audio defend its patent and enforcement efforts? Podcaster Ira Glass, host of This American Life, and Zoe Chace of NPR interviewed the company's principals, Jim Logan and Richard Baker, in May, and Logan said: "We didn't use these words back then, but buried within that patent description were ideas such as playlists and podcasting. ... I put my dollars and time and energy on the line. I took the risk."

Here's that interview:

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IT shops share OpenFlow, SDN best practices

Start small, go slow and reap the benefits, users say

NEW YORK -- Two users are putting OpenFlow and software-defined networks through their paces in projects of varied urgency.

Marist College is very bullish on OpenFlow as a way to interconnect data centers over optical fiber. The company is using OpenFlow controllers from NEC and IBM, and optical transport gear from ADVA.

Bloomberg, the business and financial market trading and media enterprise, is a bit more conservative in its implementation. The company is employing OpenFlow for monitoring and tapping, and network virtualization overlays for simplifying and scaling its data center fabric.

Both users spoke at the recent Interop conference and exhibition in New York.

Marist began researching OpenFlow and SDNs two or three years ago for monitoring servers, manipulating flows and moving VMs.

“How far can we take OpenFlow, and what can it do?” said Rob Cannistra, a computer science and IT professor at Marist. “We were a skeptic at first and now a true believer.”

Marist worked with the Floodlight open source OpenFlow controller but found that it needed a GUI. So the college created a GUI for Floodlight to add, delete and modify flows. It also developed a QoS module for the controller to prioritize flows.

The school also used the open source Ganglia tool for monitoring servers. Ganglia helps the school determine how to manipulate flows to move VMs when server resources require or accommodate it.

With these tools, Marist created a host-aware networking module within its data centers, Cannistra said. But the school now wanted to scale this host awareness among data centers, not just within.

Two weeks ago, Marist proved that it could use OpenFlow to spin up and tear down a wavelength between data centers to migrate VM workloads among them. The school tied sites together with optical connections through Internet2. It spun up connections to three different data centers using OpenFlow and SDNs.

The OpenFlow network was turned up in parallel with Marist’s traditional network, Cannistra said. A building or two was brought onto the OpenFlow network and then both networks were interconnected slowly and prudently.

“We have some individual data centers that are on the OpenFlow network, and we’re seeing how it scales,” Cannistra said. “We’re taking a very slow approach to it.”

Marist is still working with OpenFlow 1.0 code, working its way up to 1.3.

OpenFlow is the backbone of a purpose built network for traffic monitoring and tapping of financial application development at Bloomberg. The company didn’t want to clog up its production network with MAC learning conversations, says Truman Boyes, Bloomberg network architect for Research & Development.

Bloomberg is also looking at how an SDN overlay scales for onboarding and off boarding inter-cloud users. But the company is taking a very gradual, deliberate approach with its implementations.

“Most technologies work in small scale,” Boyes said. “Significant results with low impact is the place to start.

“But SDNs are absolutely consumable. You need to take an investment so you can get on that wagon and learn with everyone else. It’s like MPLS 10 years ago.”

Marist’s Cannistra agrees.

“Take baby steps,” he said. “Look at a use case you’re having difficulty attaining with a traditional network.”

“SDN is when protocols don’t cut it,” Boyes adds.

Unlike Marist, which is allied with IBM, NEC and ADVA, Bloomberg is investing in “the little guys,” Boyes said.

“It’s something new, you both have skin in the game and you can affect the road map,” he said. “Control your own destiny. We take on more risk in trying to roll it ourselves. You have to leverage as much code as possible from the community.”

For those embarking on SDNs, Cannistra recommends picking a controller first of all. Marist started with the open source Floodlight code but then switched to NEC for production use.

“In production, you’re going to have to use some proprietary features,” he said. “Floodlight…was not production ready. Spin it up, get some production traffic on that and then have a path to open standards.”

He said he is looking forward to the OpenDaylight open source controller being built by several vendors and other community members, including partner IBM.

“I have high hopes for OpenDaylight, I’m one of the optimists for it,” Cannistra said. “It’s standards we can all build on going forward.”

The fact that open source SDN code doesn’t have a support infrastructure around it doesn’t scare Cannistra away either.

“Companies built support models around Linux,” he said. “Why couldn’t they do the same with Floodlight or OpenDaylight?”

One of the SDN wrinkles still to be worked out is how it will affect the organizational structure of IT – the siloed server, storage, networking and application departments, the speakers said. Bloomberg and Marist are tackling it their own ways.

“There’s a lot that has to happen,” Cannistra said. “We’re still going to have niche guys but also people with a large-scale view. Those are going to be your powerhouse guys and girls in the enterprise.”

It will be disruptive within Bloomberg, Boyes acknowledges.

“We’re trying to address it at an organizational level by rocking the boat,” he said. “We’re just going to have to figure it out. We’ve put together a cloud team to straddle both worlds, jump start the rest of the organization. That will help us with time to market.”

Despite the uncertainty organizationally, Marist, for one, is all in.

“This is game changing,” Cannistra said. “We need to go full steam ahead.”

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