Xconomy has an insightful interview with Carter Lannigan, one of the member’s of the Locale Android app team that was among 10 teams awarded $275, 000 for winning Google’s first Android App Challenge. The app was actually developed as part of an experimental MIT class, “Building Mobile Applications with Android“.
Locale uses Android’s GPS and other positioning technologies to automatically change the phone’s settings when in certain environments. For example, the phone could be taught that once you enter a movie theater the ringer is changed to silent. Even cooler is the accompanying Twitter client the team wrote so that an Android phone could detect your location and provides updates via Twitter to keep friends and family up to date. This is a super-innovative use of location technology, much different than most of the location-based applications I’ve seen. And it should be noted that because this 3rd party application runs in the phone’s background, it wouldn’t work on Apple’s iPhone as per their SDK agreement; definitely a point of interest for those looking at the potential of open development platforms.
“The openness of Android creates an environment for applications that just aren’t possible on other platforms.”
Locale will be available October 22 when the Android Market and T-Mobile G1 launch. Definitely check out the interview, it’s pretty interesting. And for more information about Locale head over to Android’s website.
via allpointsblog