Today I joined the BarCamp Shanghai. This was my first time being at such an event for hackers and innovators which was interesting to me. I gave a presentation about Arduino and OBD-II… again. Not much feedbacks on the spot but I got a guy from a car company (called QOROS which I never heard before) talking with after the presentation which might be some interesting opportunities who knows. Some pics of the event to share:

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The Google I/O at the Moscone Center in San Francisco is a meet and greet for lots of people and companies, a big dot-com over-the-top party, and most of all it’s geared towards “web, mobile, and enterprise developers building applications in the cloud with Google and open web technologies… Products and technologies to be featured at I/O include App Engine, Android, Google Web Toolkit, Google Chrome, HTML5, AJAX and Data APIs, Google TV, and more.” Maybe not so much Google TV or Google Wave this year but for open hardware and mobile folks, this was one of the most important weeks in history. Continue reading →

Google’s really not leaving any stone unturned at IO today — it’s now also announced a brand new Android Open Accessory standard, which promises to effectively be its own version of “Made for iPod.” That means that any accessory designed using the API (which could even be something like an exercise bike) will be compatible with any Android phone or tablet — running at least Android 2.3.4 or 3.1, that is. What’s more, Google is also making a reference hardware design dubbed an “ADK” available to developers and, get this, it’s based on Arduino. Right now, it only includes USB, but Bluetooth support is planned for the future — developers can hit up the link below for the complete details on how to get started with it.

Links:

• Arduino USB Host Shield
• Android Open Accessory Development Kit