Hi Guys,
Assume most of you guys heard about the open mobile platform called Android that google announced yesterday. It's interesting news and while the SDK won't be available to download until next week (Nov 12th), I was wondering what you guys think it might mean for Drupal....
It seems inevitable that internet on a mobile handset is going to be 'the next big thing'...and it not only opens up a huge amount of opportunities (think about all those billions of people who don't have their own desktop computer, but, have a mobile and will start surfing) and google's approach, alongside the 30+ partners, gives the open-source community a huge boost: the whole essence of the android system appears to be based upon the open source philosophy.
That said, google haven't revealed what their pound of flesh is for driving the initiative forward, but, I much prefer a future where we aren't reliant on the big 2 (apple / microsoft) and instead are reliant on a Drupal-esque open community.
One opportunity I always saw for Drupal is as a framework for an online desktop...which can be accessed via mobile/desktop/anywhere. In other words, instead of synching mobile/desktop devices, day-to-day tasks such as email, blogging, wordprocessing, media storage etc. happens on that 'online desktop', but, I suppose the single biggest opportunity for Drupal (I think) following google's announcement will be the huge rise in demand for revamping existing websites over the next few years. Drupal, I think, is perfectly positioned to be the chosen platform for developing desktop-and-mobile (incl. Android) friendly sites.
One thing that's unclear to me at the moment and that is will someone else develop the equivalent of Drupal for the Android platform or will it be as simple as creating an Android_API.module for Drupal?
Any thoughts?
Dub