Are you an iPhone geek? An Android phreak? Are you holding out for the Palm Pre?

A lot has been said about the emerging battle between the “smart-phone” platforms. There are a bunch of ways to line the various options up against one another, and to help shed our own light on the subject, we’ve decided to break down features and functionality offered on both the the iPhone OS and Android platforms.

I’m Jory Cameron, an Intern at Roundarch, and I’m going to share what we like, what we want to see, what is happening now and what we think separates the two different mobile platforms at the forefront of hand-held consumer devices.

Maybe down the road, we will have some more exposure to and additional thoughts on the Palm Pre. Until then…  here is a dive into the iPhone and Android platforms, so you can determine which you think is “better”.

Platform Management

Google’s Android is completely open-source meaning anyone who wants’ to edit or change something inside the OS can. The main people who manage these changes though are Google, the phone manufacturer, and the cell phone carrier.

This leaves a big gap in features, and hardware that Google must fill. For instance Google will have to work with device manufacturers to ensure that their OS works on a variety of different types of hardware, and they will have to cut that OS down to the specific needs of the Manufacturer, Carrier, and Consumer (not to mention the future when we might see Android on other “devices” like televisions, etc).

We have seen this demonstrated by the Microsoft and their Windows Mobile V6 (don’t worry Microsoft, you’ll get there!) This could leave a big gap in feature varying from phone to phone. One phone could have internet tethering enabled, while another phone has stereo Bluetooth. Also, user interface changes could occur from phone to phone making the OS look, feel and behave totally different on each phone. If managed properly by all parties involved, these risks can be reduced, however it looks as if it might be a challenge (knowing how the carrier-driven market in the US tends to work).

But the bright side of being open source is that Google lets us, as developers, freely distribute our applications, unlike Apple who can deny your app from being put in the only “legal” source of distribution.

Apple’s iPhone OS is managed solely by Apple. Apple controls everything, which isn’t surprising considering they have this same approach to most everything that they do. What Mr. Jobs says goes. That’s the bottom line.

Being in control means that Apple knows exactly what is going to be on their OS and what the hardware looks like for all users. There are very few software casualty’s displayed by this. In fact, the only one that I can think of is that of tethering (which will vary from carrier to carrier).

The bad thing about Apple managing all of this is that they can pull certain features and capabilities from the OS for as long as they feel necessary (cough… MMS… cough). Software is software, though, and becuase of this, there are always means of activating some of these features, as well as getting non-approved applications installed on your iPhone (if apple doesn’t approve it). This is not supported though, and is outside of the bounds of Apple’s licensing agreements.

The primary way to circumnavigate the restrictions put into place by our friends in Cupertino, is “Jailbreaking” your iPhone, which allows the installation of third party applications and enables third party development.  Apple is trying to take away the right to “Jailbreak” their devices, because they are saying it violates the EULA, and there is talk of prosecuting individuals for editing the expensive software that you paid them for (tisk, tisk Apple).

The main thing to know out of all of this is that apple knows what they want, and where they’re going with it, while Google is still searching for its path. In saying all of this, I am not going to say that one or the other is going to beat out the competition just yet. It is too soon to tell, and with other platforms such as the Palm Pre due to hit the market, we will just have to wait to make a final judgment.

The new features in the iPhone 3.0 OS and the iPhone 3.0 SDK are as listed:

• Copy, cut and paste across all apps. Even supports copying photos into messages.
• Landscape keyboard on all apps that make use of a keyboard.
• MMS support.
• Push notification via Apple servers.
• In-App Purchase within paid apps and games.
• Core Location now supports turn-by-turn directions.
• Support for peer-to-peer connectivity.
• Apps will be able to communicate with accessories.
• New games
• Across the board Spotlight search.
• Maps now accessible via API.
• In all, 1,000 new APIs.
• 100 new features.
• Loads of minor feature tweaks such as YouTube account support, iTunes account creation, VPN, Proxy support, Note syncing, meeting invites, call log … and much, much more.

The new features in the latest, greatest Android build  (Cupcake 1.5) are as listed:

User interface refinements

System-wide:

• Refinement of all core UI elements
• Animated window transitions (off by default)
• Accelerometer-based application rotations

UI polish & enhancements for:

• In-call experience
• Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
• SMS & MMS
• Web Browser
• Gmail
• Calendar
• Email
• Camera & Gallery
• Application management

Performance improvements:

• Faster Camera start-up and image capture
• Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
• Smoother page scrolling in Browser
• Speedier Gmail conversation list scrolling

And Lastly, New features

On-screen soft keyboard

• Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
• Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
• User dictionary for custom words

“Home” Screen

• Desktop widgets
• Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
• Live folders

Camera & Gallery

• Video recording
• Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)

Bluetooth

• Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
• Auto-pairing
• Improved handsfree experience

Browser

• Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
• Copy ‘n paste in browser
• Search within a page
• User-selectable text-encoding
• Unified Go and Search box
• Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen

Contacts

• Shows user picture for Favorites
• Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
• One-touch access to a contact card from call log event

System

• New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
• SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
• SIM Application Toolkit 1.0

Google applications

• View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
• Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
• Upload videos to Youtube
• Upload photos on Picasa

New APIs and developer tools:

UI framework

• Framework for easier background/UI thread interaction
• New SlidingDrawer widget
• Horizontal ScrollView widget

Home Screen framework

• APIs for creating secure home screen widgets
• APIs for populating live folders with custom content

Media framework

• Raw audio recording and playback APIs
• Interactive MIDI playback engine
• Video recording APIs for developers (3GP format)
• Video and photo sharing Intents
• Media search Intent

Input Method framework

• Text prediction engine
• Ability to provide downloadable IMEs to users

Speech recognition framework

• Support for using speech recognition libraries via Intent

Misc API additions

• LocationManager – Applications can get location change updates via Intent
• WebView – Touch start/end/move/cancel DOM event support
• SensorManager – redesigned sensor APIs
• GLSurfaceView – convenience framework for creating OpenGL applications
• Broadcast Intent for app update install succeeded – for smoother app upgrade experience

Developer tools

• Support for multiple versions of Android in a single SDK installation
• Improved JUnit support in ADT
• Easier application performance profiling

Comparing the Hardware

As you can see most of these new features in iPhone 3.0 were already widely available through the process of  “Jailbreaking”, and frankly, long over due. Also there is one key feature missing in Android thanks to Apple, the illustrious MULTI-TOUCH.

The hardware available on Android right now, is pretty much just the HTC Dream (G1 or ADP1 and the HTC Magic.) Of course, by the nature of Android (and what we hear from the industry) there will be much more hardware to come as far as variety and improvements in both screen size, form factor and other aspects of industrial design. The word on the street is that Motorola and a handful of other device manufacturers are gearing up for Android-based smart phones.

The hardware available for iPhone OS right now is the iPhone (1st gen) and the iPhone 3G, and there will most likely be a new iPhone released this summer (were hoping to see something that says “WOW” and gives us back the warm fuzzies that we all felt with the first iPhone launch).

In comparison hardware features for the Android and the iPhone are pretty much just the camera, ram, on-board memory, and the HTC dream/Magic handy little track ball, a highly underrated feature that seems to have made G1 users quite happy.

The track ball is really handy to have on the android right now, because we don’t have multi-touch (so there is no pinch to zoom, or tap, etc) you can toggle this tack ball and it makes navigation a lot smoother with in apps, like the Opera Browser. From what we understand, other mobile device manufacturers are experimenting with other joystick or control-pad interfaces.

As far as camera goes the Android platform has started of strong with a 3.2 MP camera built into the devices that we have seen, while the iPhone lags along with just a 2 MP camera and no native support for video. Why Apple would make that decision, we have no idea.

Device memory is a sad subject at the moment, as the iPhone starts out a 8gb, and the android pushes 128 MB on the phones that have been released to date.  The android devices seem to be making the preferred data storage that of a Micro SD card instead of flash memory that is built in.

There is one more little problem I have. The batter life of both phones could be greatly improved.
On the iPhone I can barely push through a day, on the ADP1 I can barely push through 4 hours. I’m not going to say a bunch about it because I understand the issue and that mobile battery life has been a challenge for many manufacturers; all I am going to say is “please fix it”.

The latest speculations
The Samsung i7500 Android mobile phone may boast a 5 megapixel camera and a short leaked demo film on YouTube.

Another very exciting development is that Android net-books might be right around the corner. Right now, there seem to be a few different companies that supposedly have an Androidbased net-books in development. I’d think that televisions, and even cars might be next.

My personal thoughts on both platforms

Apple needs to grow up and give us want we want, don’t just think that because you’re the only one who has it you should just make it as perfect as possible and then release it to crush the dreams of all other device manufacturers.

Google needs to figure out where they are going and throw in a few more features (mainly multi-touch and a better web browser). Doing so will put them at an equal level in terms of desired functionality. At the moment multi-touch is only available though hacked version of the Android OS.

The Apple onscreen keyboard has become a staple of the device’s user interaction, but why not implement both (pull out QWERTY and on-screen) like android?  This is especially important when going after users who prefer the touch experience of real keys. Sure, the Android on-screen keyboard has a bit of a lag right now but they are still being applaud for it!  Take that step Apple! Take it!

Comparing Performance and Features

The performance of both of these operating systems could be better. They could both use a little speed boost, and faster processing speed. Aside from these big picture items, the features that I would like to talk about now are as follows:

App distribution: Android Market or App Store, which is better and why?

First off I would like to say as of this moment I am bias toward the iPhone app store. If you look at the UI you will see the app store is much better. Why?  Well, the app store has Photo previews, and a design that helps readability. Not to mention, because it is more mature and has been around longer (as well as having a larger user market) the iPhone has better applications and a more worthy review system.

The Android Market doesn’t have a very good search ( EX: Search aHome or aHome Lite and about 60 themes come up before the application that actually has that name).

The iPhone App Store and Android market both have a problem when it comes to individual developers and distributing their apps. Sure they both add the apps to their respective stores, but after that they just let it manage itself. This means that when you search (Task manager) 500 results come up on top of this poor guy’s application called “Task Manager”, when in fact, he has the best Task Manager application available.

I have to say that really annoys me. Give me the a way to sort my results so that I can get to the best apps fast.

Performance in mobile applications

Depending on the application and how much RAM it takes up, I would have to say both the iPhone and Android operating systems have a decent balance in performance. It isn’t fun to talk about only good stuff, so for now, I will but my appreciation on the table and do a little bashing of a few of the most expensive applications in the Apple store.

Why? CRASHING!

When it comes to these apps that remote control your desktop or bake a pizza they seem so great that you’re willing to pay $30.00-$50.00 bucks for them. So you use them a few days and all is well until you get a text message. You are forced to exit the application to read the message, and then when done, you ago straight back to it, causing a springboard virtual memory panic, which in return reboots your phone.

15 minutes later you go back into the same app, and bam… you happen to get a phone call (afterall, it IS a phone). Problem? The same exact thing happens.

So now that you’re upset, what do you do? You leave the app on your phone just to say you have it, and when your friends ask if it’s cool you say,  “yes it’s awesome” while you think to yourself angrily that you’ve wasted your money and time on an application that seems to taunt you with bad performance and memory management. You want to use it, but you know that launching it will just continue the cycle. Frustrating!

At least my Android asks me to end process instead of making me sit through at 5 minute re-boot.

Here is something else to consider

There is a little problem arising with Apple’s iPhone application distribution. Piracy. (and not the kind in Somalia).

Apple’s app store faces a big battle with cracked IPA’s being distributed regularly , although they just hit the 1 billion app’s sold mark, they most likely hit a billion apps pirated before that.

One iPhone developer actually took charge by polling versions of the cracked apps. iCombat, from a huge ratio of pirates to legitimate users: Nearly 5:1 for the app’s first week before leveling out to about 1:1 later om.

Five times as many pirated versions of the application than legitimate purchases. This just shows how big the market and demand has grown for mobile applications and robust platforms that can provide the backbone for developers like our team at Roundarch. At the moment the Android doesn’t have many piracy issues (it seems), but with a gain in popularity and with new Android devices hitting the streets soon, this may change and also become an issue for Apple’s competitor.

Wrapping things up, I hope you got at least some information, or speculation on these two mobile operating systems and hope that my research (and opinions) will help you form your own stance on which platform is right for you, or for the projects you are working on for your clients.

Preface:
Although he may have stopped reminding me Pek (Pongpaet) has been wanting me to share my experience at Flash In The Can (FITC) Toronto, well I told him I would, but I’ve been stalling since I’ve had something in the works with Brendan Lee from Ribbit… but let me regress: (Events not in Chronological Order)
@the Keynote Richard Galvan from Adobe said all the presentations from the conference would be up on tv.adobe.com… I’m still waiting. FITC seems they will also put up video’s of all the talks on their site, which I’m guessing they’re still under production, so I eagerly await.

Reaching Out And Touching Someone:
On the second day of the conference, April 27th, I got a call from Brendan at around 11am, at this point I knew him for close to 24 hours, he tells me to meet him by the Ribbit booth, he needs some help with something in Papervision3D. Through my excitement I step out of Ralph Hauwert’s “Professionally Pushing Pixels” (sorry Ralph), and I find Brendan hunched over his MacBook Pro, intently typing away, takes a quick glance at me, then just tells me he’s trying to finish a demo so we can put it into Chuck’s (Charles Freedman) presentation at 4pm. Here begins our adventure in XP (Extreme Programming).

I look over his shoulder and he show’s me what he’s working with. Its a few blocks of Augmented Reality(AR) code in Flex Builder. Tells me the basic idea, and I’m immediately psyched! At this point I’m sitting on my knees on the conference floor, still looking over his shoulder catching any errors, while at the same time suggesting the best route of attack from my perspective. At some point we switch I start coding away, and he takes my role. We continue going; doing our floor to seat swap for about an hour, completely oblivious to the hordes of people passing by as they move from one session to the next. We hit up the hotel’s lobby restaurant/bar for lunch, and continue our adventures in XP as we inhale Bison Burgers (which were delicious). Unluckily we didn’t get to finish in time for Chuck’s presentation; but during Chuck’s presentation he mentioned Roundarch with his Merapi/Ribbit Demo, and gave many thanks to Adam Flater for helping him out with the Merapi code for his demo. Brendan and I decided we would come back to our demo at a later time.

(If you want to get to the butter of my story just hop over to Ribbit’s Blog)

The third and final day of the conference, Brendan walked up to me towards the end of the day and asked me if I wanted to finish polishing off the application, I of course said yes. We went up the executive lounge on the top floor of the Hilton, and having an amazing view of city, accompanied by an equally amazing sunset, we began to code. The whole time while hanging out with Brendan he excitedly spoke of his wife and kids, and said I should meet them, they’re super-cool. I figured it would be a great chance for me to get out to the west coast and catch some California sun, but technology one-upped me. She sent him a video-chat invitation on Skype. I found this truly amazing, technology once again connecting people in completely different corners of the world. I had seriously been considering flying out to the California (and still am) just so I could meet his family, and hang out with them, but I got to meet them online first. It was by chance, but getting to see his kids climb over his wife, and poke at the screen at this stranger standing next to their father was truly amazing. I said hello, and apologized to Brendan’s wife, Christine, for taking up all of Brendan’s time trying to pump out this idea. I walked away for some time so he could take some time with his Family. We took a break and had dinner after.

After dinner we met Chris Allen |CEO/Founder of|  Infrared 5 and another friend Marsy Shattuck from Discovery Channel, and they wondered if we were going to the final FITC party that night? I had full intentions on going, Brendan I think was probably partied out, but I told them I would meet them there. Some time later Brendan and I were doing our little experiment with XP up in my hotel room, he was on his laptop, I was on mine both trying to solve different issues with the application; I looked at my watch and came to realize it was nearly 2AM, we’d spent the entire night coding! While everyone partied we coded, talk about dedication. We still didn’t get everything done that evening, so we figured it’d be best if we just collaborated on the project once we were back at our respective homes.

A week later we were back at it, this time using GotoMeeting. He was at home in San Francisco, I was in my apartment here in Chicago. We logged onto Goto, and started screen sharing, eventually taking over each other’s screens and coding while one of us took a break either to just watch, or in Brendan’s case got up and played with his kids. This experience was extraordinary, I can’t say that before this I’ve ever done XP with someone who wasn’t even in the same city as I was, but it was a fantastic learning experience. You can see the results here. Because of all of our efforts Brendan asked if I wanted to speak with him at a few upcoming conferences: 1. Flash on Tap (Boston) (Not confirmed, but in the works) 2: CAT(Creativity and Technology – New York)

Meeting People and Networking:
I met A LOT of people while at FITC! I found this to be one of the greatest benefits of the conference, put me in a room with a wide array of creative and intelligent people and I’m going to start talking. When I arrived at the Hilton on Saturday, April 25th, there were some workshops going on, the one that was of particular interest to me was one being held by Lee Fraser and Louis Marcoux of Autodesk. Louis is an expert in 3D Studio Max, while Lee is a Maya expert. I had a great chat with both of them about the 3D space in relation to the web, and more specifically with Flash. I was a little more drawn to Lee since my recent involvement with AwayBuilder and Away3D. AwayBuilder is an AS3 library for importing scene’s directly from Maya, then rendered in Flash through the Away3D Engine. The next day, I found Lee at his booth and got to show him a few more examples of what I meant, and gave him a few reason’s why Autodesk might want to jump into the Away3D ocean (although they already have wet their feet with Project Dragonfly).  In return for talking code to Lee, he showed me some REALLY cool features of Maya, I had no idea I could be using. He really simplified Maya for me. Thanks Lee!

I then met with Michael Plank, FDT evangelist for PowerFlasher. I was meeting Michael for the first time, and we sat down and talked code, best practices and FDT for about an hour, or until the battery on my laptop died. I was meeting Michael since he would be giving Roundarch a presentation about FDT on Monday, May 4th. The really cool thing about this presentation is that he would be doing it from Germany, over GotoMeeting, talk about global telecommunications. (Fast Forward>>)The presentation was received very well, and although I’m already a religious user of FDT, we had a few conversions from the Flex world.

Apart from that there’s a lot of people who I want to write equally as lengthy descriptions of our experiences but I fear this blog post is getting a tad bit long. So not to belittle their importance I’m just gonna do it laundry list style:

• Chris Allen, CEO of Infrared 5. I got to hang out quite a bit with Chris, and although I had previously met him (last year @Flashbelt), I got to know him much better this time around.
• Steven Sachs, creator of Gaia Framework for Flash. If you’re a Flash Developer and you don’t know what Gaia is, then well go learn about it. I’ve been utilizing it now for over 8 months, and it’s a thing of beauty.
• Jerry Chabolla CTO/Co-Founder of Influxis
• Mike Hansen of Moosesyrup.com. He’s an awesome designer.
• Chuck Freedman of Ribbit | Blog- Get Microphone
• R Blank of Rich Media Institute(RMI)

I’m sure I missed a few people, not on purpose I swear! I definitely have to thank the organizers of FITC for putting on an amazing event. I’d like to thank all of the Speakers, even the ones I didn’t get to see, I know my post doesn’t say much about any of the talks, but I’m hoping the video’s for the conference come up, and you don’t have to get my second hand account; there were a lot of talks I would’ve loved to see and can’t wait to see when they’re finally online. Here’s a few tiny snapshots, see you again next year?

The second Riapalooza will be held on Friday May 8th at the Illinois Technology Association (200 S Wacker 15th flr) from 9AM-5PM. It’s an unconference gathering of RIA (that’s Rich Internet Applications for you not in the know) professionals who are passionate about what they do.

There will be 6 exciting talks as well as ample opportunity to network. Here are the panel titles:

• RIAs Beyond The Mouse & Keyboard
• Top 10 Questions About RIA That You Never Had The Courage To Ask
• RIA Problems You Never Knew Existed
• Building Interactive Applications using UX Principles
• Empowering the Client-Side: Consuming Internet Services in RIA
• Social Media, RIA and Sustainability: A Website Development Case Study

Roundarch’s Adam Flater and Pek Pongpaet will be giving the talk on RIA’s Beyond the Mouse & Keyboard. This talk will be the last talk at the end of the day so we’ll keep it short, fun and sweet so people can get to the beer at 5. Without giving away too much, we’ll talk about how RIAs and computer interaction in general is moving away from the keyboard and mouse interface as can be seen by the success of the iPhone and Nintendo Wii.

Here’s a couple of sneak peek videos of some of the stuff you’ll see at our talk.

Flash + Merapi + Lego Mindstorm =

Flash + Papervision3D + Augmented Reality Toolkit + Twitter =

So be sure to join us as we demo some really cool stuff.

Before I tell my story, I figured I would reminisce a bit about when I was 16 years old. I inherited an electric piano from my grandfather and in the “working songs” song book was the musical notation and words for the song “16 Tons”.

To this day, I remember the lyrics, as well as how poorly I played it. “You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older, and deeper in debt”. If you think I am crazy, check out this Youtube video of Tenessee Ernie Ford singing this working-man’s classic.

Lets move forward 20 years…

A month or so ago, I was about to head to the SXSW technology conference in Austin, TX. I travel a lot, and whenever I hit the road, I have to pack up my 17″ MacBook Pro and tote it along with me, along with everything else I end up bringing along in my computer bag/man-purse.

My computer weighs a lot, and sometimes I question why I tote it along with me on trips when my main use of a computer is to check and respond to emails, give presentations using PowerPoint or keynote and browsing the Web while back in my hotel room.

To make matters worse, a week before SXSW, I had sprained my leg, and was walking with a cane for the foreseeable future. The promise of lugging a 30 pound bag while being on the road for a week and a half was not exactly my idea of fun. While there was nothing I could do about it, I thought to myself that I should start thinking about my future travels and what I could do to lighten my on-the-road load.

This is where my story really begins.

Up until this point, I had been reading a lot about netbooks. I used to be the “more is more” type of guy when it came to computers, but the notion of storing everything out on the cloud and using my computer for accessing remote data was something I’ve grown more fond of as I see connection speeds getting more reliable and machines getting smaller and more powerful.

I loved the idea of using a little netbook, but was unsure what it would be like to actually try to use one while traveling. My concerns were those of most folks: Can I type on it ok? Is it fast? How does the screen look? I couldn’t see buying one online until I had the chance to see one in person and test it out.

It was two days before I had to head to Austin, and for some reason, the idea struck me: Look on Craigslist to see if anyone in Austin might have a netbook for sale. I could meet them, check it out, and if I liked it, purchase it on my trip. The timing seemed perfect, so I started searching. I came across a post by a guy that was selling a Dell Mini-9. His ad was articulate, detailed and it was clear to me that whomever posted this knew more about hardware than I did. Not only was he selling a mini-9 netbook, but he made it clear that he could customize it for me. That was encouraging.

I tend to be pretty particular when it comes to how I like my own computers to be set up / configured (go figure), so I began to go back and forth in emails with him. He not only responded to my questions, but he started throwing all sorts of interesting ideas at me related to hardware customization and software development. It gave me the idea to ask him if I could have him pre-install some software, configure it to run a variety of operating systems, put in a large hard drive, upgrade the memory, etc. Hey, if I’ve got a guy who really knows his stuff, I might as well take advantage of it.

He wrote back with enthusiasm and even suggested that we take it a step further and replace the stock netbook display with a touch-screen. “That would be great with the proposed functionality coming in both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard”, he wrote.

I responded to him “This sounds great. Let’s get together in Austin and we can discuss it. By the way, you seem to know a lot about software and hardware and it is obvious that you are pretty up to speed on system-level programming and the like. Where do you work?”.

I had anticipated that he’d respond back to me with something like “I work at Dell” or “I’m an IT guy at a company in Austin, and I do this on the side”.

What I got instead was “I don’t have a job.”

Thinking that my new mysterious computer guru email friend might be a victim of the bad economy, I asked if that was the case. “Are you looking for a position now? Did you get laid off recently?”.

His response?

“Hey Dave. Actually, no. I didn’t lose my job. I’m only 15.”

I couldn’t believe it. 15?!? Where did this kid learn this stuff? How did he become such an expert? How does he have the time? Should I even be emailing back and forth with a 15 year old kid? After all, we did meet on Craigslist. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in a position to where I was negotiating with a minor without parental consent.

With one hand scratching my head, and the other on the keyboard, I emailed Jory back and asked if he would ask his parents to come with him to meet me at the conference center. I’d take them to lunch, discuss things with him, and see if I could get him to create my ultimate, custom, traveling computer.

Fast Forward two days….

It was 11:00 AM. I grabbed our two visitor passes from behind the Roundarch booth and headed down to the street to meet Jory and his mother, Shelly. I met them on the corner outside of the conference center, handed them their passes and thanked them for meeting me. Jory was excited, and his mother Shelly seemed thrilled that Jory was able to get in and check out all of the stuff at the conference.

The next few hours basically consisted of me introducing Jory to my peers in the industry. I introduced Jory to the Roundarch team, and tracked down my good friend Josh Holmes from Microsoft. You see, Jory is home-schooled, as was Josh. Josh is a brilliant technologist and is highly respected by others in the industry in his role of technical evangelist dealing with RIA and user experience-driven software for Microsoft. It was clear from the start that I wasn’t the only one who was blown away by Jory’s knowledge of technology and more importantly, understanding of experience design. He didn’t just talk about hardware and software, but how people use them. It is rare that adults have such balanced thinking when talking about next-generation technology, so I was floored to hear some of Jory’s thoughts on the balance of the two.

The Jory Show

After meeting with Josh, Adam Flater, Ryan Stewart from Adobe, an Engineer from AT&T Labs and several others we ended up sitting around in a cafe talking. Well… let me be clear: Jory talked. We, like the group of 10 or so bystanders, just sat back and listened to this 15 year old kid talk about everything from saltwater powered vehicles to porting mobile operating systems from one device to another. Jory told us about how he created a Web application that tracks the national debt, about his opinions on multi-touch, and he even gave an ear full of suggestions to the guy from AT&T about how the iPhone operating system could be optimized better for the hardware that it ships with. It was the Jory show.

Before I knew it, a line had formed. People wanted to talk to Jory. They wanted to meet him. He stood at the end of a table where we were all sitting and preached his version of the technology gospel, and before he was done, had a group of faithful believers. It was a thrill to see this all take place, and even more fun to spend some time with Jory and his mom to learn more about them, and about how Jory happened to soak up as much knowledge at such a young age.

I learned that Jory was doing HTML at the age of 5, lives 52 miles north of Austin in a rural community, is no stranger to ranching, rebuilt a VW bug by himself by reading books, and has very supportive parents that understand he’s not a typical kid. I was surprised to learn that Jory didn’t have a computer to use, because he had traded it for a Wii so his mom could use Wii fit.

The day blew past us quickly, and before long, it was time for Jory and his mom to head back to the country. My head was spinning over my conversations and filled with excitement. You hear so many stories about how kids are bad at math and science, and then you meet someone who has such promise.

Banding together to provide opportunity

I think all of my peers recognized something special in Jory. So much in fact that we decided to band together, throwing our cash and resources into a hat so we could help provide some support for our new teenage friend. Josh Holmes got Jory enrolled in the “Microsoft Dreamspark” program and Ryan Stewart from Adobe said he’s send Jory a box loaded with Adobe software. Pek Pongpaet, who works with me at Roundarch tapped into his contacts and the next thing I knew, Brian Fitzpatrick (who manages the Google technology center in Chicago) was shipping Jory a brand new Android developer phone and a bunch of Google swag. I received Paypal donations from a bunch of Roundarch folks as well as others in the industry, and was able to let Jory pick out his dream laptop on eBay, and went online with him to purchase it. I can’t thank everyone who contributed enough. You are all amazing folks, and have helped to give Jory a great opportunity to learn, tinker, build, and innovate.

This all just seemed like it was meant to happen. Jory’s knowledge, positive attitude and communication skills were inspiring to me. So much, in fact, that it prompted me to discuss Jory with the management team at Roundarch. I remember calling Jeff Maling (Co-President of Roundarch) to tell him all about Jory and about how interesting the last few days had been, and was thrilled to hear his response to me.

“Why don’t we hire him?”

So we did.

Welcome to Roundarch!

It is official. Jory, who just 16 years old, is now an intern at Roundarch.

He will be living in Texas and working remotely. We made things official a few weeks ago, and Jory and Shelly flew to Chicago to participate in orientation and introduce himself at our Monthly company meeting. Jory is going to be assisting with a lot of things at Roundarch, and will be focusing most of his attention on doing research and development for our Roundarch “Labs” projects, including working with building out human interface concepts and prototypes, development of hardware, mobile application design and development, and writing blog posts on his experiences and thoughts.

Jory Cameron, Roundarch’s new intern, engrossed in conversation with Roundarch’s Adam Flater on the morning that Apple announced the iPhone 3.0 SDK features

The first thing that Jory will be doing is writing a paper / blog post that compares the iPhone 3.0 SDK and hardware capabilities against that of Google Android and other device manufacturers.

We expect great things from Jory, and are very pleased to announce him as an addition to the Roundarch team. I’d like to thank everyone that played a role in this over the last couple of months including everyone at Roundarch, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe.

It is an exciting time, and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to help mentor (and learn from) such a brilliant young mind.

Jory? Take it away!

John Peebles and Aman Datta

Aman Datta, Vice President of Roundarch, and John Peebles, Vice President Online Marketing at Avis Budget Group, were keynote presenters at the Autonomy Interwoven GearUp 2009 Executive Briefing Roadshow in New York City this past Monday (4.27). Roundarch is a Platinum Partner of Interwoven and this event gave us the opportunity to share the Avis innovations with Autonomy and Interwoven executives, customers, and other partners. The presentation entitled “Driving Next Generation Solutions at Avis” explained how Roundarch and Avis used Interwoven solutions throughout the Avis project to develop an entirely new way to experience the car rental reservation process. Roundarch developed a multi-channel approach for Avis and three components of this approach were showcased in the presentation.

1. Avis.com – This was a full site redesign. Based on strategic research, Roundarch developed a new user experience and design that evolves the entire online car rental experience.

2. Site Extensions – This is a concept Roundarch has developed as a way to leverage the Avis.com site experience and extend the reach of Avis to partner sites and other sites on the Web. It is developed in Adobe Flex and is one of many innovations that Roundarch and Avis are bringing to the travel market. This site extension can be found at www.rentacar.com as well as on Air New Zealand.

3. iPhone app – Responding to customer needs to rent cars on the go, Roundarch saw a demand for the development of an Avis iPhone application as part of the overall strategy. Avis is the first car rental company to release a fully integrated mobile application.

The key goal of this multi-channel approach is to allow customers to perform a full service reservation process from multiple digital points. The project was not just about redesigning the website, but thinking about the entire reservation process in a whole new way.

Later in the day, Datta also participated in a panel discussion with Renee Rodgers, Senior Director of Interactive at Avaya and Patrick Gardella, Senior Director Interactive Architecture for Discovery Communications that was led by Anthony Bettencourt, CEO, Autonomy Interwoven. The discussion covered the future trends of the Web and how Autonomy Interwoven’s solutions are working to capitalize on these Web trends for clients such as Avis.

Patrick Gardella, Renee Rodgers, Aman Datta, and Anthony Bettencourt

GearUp 2009 Executive Briefing Roadshow is currently touring 5 cities across the globe.

Additional photos of the event.

Photos of the iPhone application.