Android getting Google Music sync in Gingerbread?

By Chris Ziegler posted Jan 14th 2011 2:04PM Google's been teasing cloud-based music features in Android since its I/O conference last year, and the recent leak of a revamped first-party Music app suggests that the plans haven't evaporated into thin air. Here's the latest tidbit: GizmoFusion claims that this screen shot comes from a device running Gingerbread, clearly showing "Music" as one of the accounts configured in Android's settings, which suggests that the system will be pretty deeply-integrated to sync your tracks just as it would your Twitter updates, your Facebook friends, or your calendar entries. Note that we don't have any new evidence beyond this one shot -- and we need to take GizmoFusion's word that this is a Gingerbread device -- but we're wondering if maybe this isn't one of the new features in that Android 2.4 build we've been hearing a lot about lately.

[Thanks, Bryan]

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So Much For Standards, Google Says WebM Plugins Coming Soon For Safari And IE9

We’ve already done a full breakdown of Google’s clarification of their H.264 pullout today. But buried in their post is another interesting nugget worth highlighting by itself: WebM plugins are coming shortly for Safari and IE9.

Yes, plugins.

This is both humorous and terrifying on a few levels. First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google’s, Mozilla’s, and Opera’s preferred codec for that standard, we’re right back to plugin land! Why don’t we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?

Here’s Google on the matter:

Bottom line, we are at an impasse in the evolution of HTML video. Having no baseline codec in the HTML specification is far from ideal. This is why we joining others in the community to invest in WebM and encouraging every browser vendor to adopt it for the emerging HTML video platform (the WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9).

In other words, they’re going to try to get Safari and IE users hooked on WebM by working around Apple and Microsoft. It’s an attempt to create a standard by way of plugin. Again, ugh.

And while somewhat interesting, it’s unlikely to work. And it’s a dangerous move away from working together on standards and instead is likely to piss off Apple and Microsoft.

Generally, plugins suck because they’re not standards. Even ubiquitous ones like Flash aren’t everywhere. And that creates headaches for web developers and surfers alike. There will never be a truly unified web with plugins. Even plugins backed by Google.

Update: Google has this to say in response:

The HTML

That’s a bit obtuse, but as I read it, that sounds as if Google is trying to say that the WebM plugin more of a “half plugin”. When I asked if that was a fair way to think about it:

Haha, yeah, a ‘half-plugin’ is one way to think about it. There are plug-ins that add non-standard capabilities to a browser that web developers can make use of but then their code is non-standard and reliant on that particular plug-in. This is not the case here. The HTML standard

So it’s a standard-compliant plugin. But still a plugin. Also, does this mean Apple will make a H.264 Chrome extension next? I’m only half-kidding.

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Learning Ruby: Expert Advice for Absolute Beginners

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The Ruby community and the language itself are a fast-growing phenomenon that plays an ever-increasing role in the ecosystem of web apps we all know and use.

If you’re a beginning Ruby dev, this post is for you. We have polled seven experts in the Ruby community — developers who have come highly recommended and respected by their peers.

This is the advice they give specifically to new Ruby developers. We hope you find it useful, encouraging and enjoyable.

If you’re a seasoned pro or an intermediate Rubyist, stay tuned. We’ve got lots more where this came from, and our seven experts have got tips, tricks and code snippets for you, too.

Jacques Crocker is a Rails Jedi based out of Seattle who loves working on early-stage startup ideas and launching new products. He’s helped launch almost a dozen Rails apps this year including HeroScale.com (automatically scale your Heroku workers and dynos) and WordSquared.com (a massively multiplayer online word game). Next year, he’s planning on using Rails to launch 24 new web apps.

In an e-mail exchange, he told us new Ruby devs should “start building something and get it released to GitHub as soon as possible.

“You don’t have to have a new or exciting idea to implement. When you are learning, just build stuff that has been done before. Build a scaled down version of Twitter. Or reimplement a blog.”

Crocker says he once ported a PHP-built job board to Rails — a thoroughly educational experience.

He continued, “I’d recommend finding a project that looks interesting on OpenSourceRails.com and getting up and running locally (and the tests functional). Then try adding a few new features to it. And get it upgraded to the latest Rails version while fixing the dependencies.

“Jumping straight into development work without experience will definitely be difficult and frustrating. However the amount of learning you’ll receive will be enormous… Making yourself suffer through the pain of a new environment will help you learn faster than you ever thought possible.”

Yehuda Katz is a member of the Ruby on Rails core team, and lead developer of the Merb project. He is a member of the jQuery Core Team and a core contributor to DataMapper. He contributes to many open source projects, like Rubinius and Johnson, and works on some he created himself, like Thor.

He advises newer Ruby developers, “Don’t be intimidated. Take advantage of the very many robust community resources that exist, and make connections with community members through open source. The Ruby ecosystem is hungry for new developers, and if you make your mark, you won’t go jobless for very long.”

In fact, Katz says the community itself is one of the strongest points of the Ruby language. “Even though most of the web development community is focused around the Rails framework, there are standalone libraries for just about everything, like virtually every new NoSQL database and connectivity with services like Twitter and Facebook.

“There’s a spirit of experimentation in the Ruby community that makes it extremely strong.”

Obie Fernandez is the founder and CEO of Hashrocket, a Florida-based web consultancy and product shop. He’s a well-regarded blogger and speaker, and he’s also a series editor and book author for higher-education publishers Addison-Wesley.

He said, “Don’t try to bring over your old idioms and patterns, because they’ll just weigh you down.

“When I came over to Ruby from Java, my first instinct was to try recreating a bunch of concepts and architectural patterns that I already knew, such as dependency injection, instead of learning new ones more appropriate to Ruby. If you’re coming from a statically typed language like I did, you might have some trouble letting go of the perceived security of type constraints.

“There’s like this whole Zen aspect of working with Ruby where you have to let go of trying to exercise control over every possible interface for your objects.”

He also echoes Katz’s statements about the Ruby community. “We’ve got this amazing, creative and hard-working global community of people working to make Ruby the most enjoyable environment. There is no big commercial vendor getting all capitalistic on us and causing problems like you see with Oracle and Microsoft and their developer communities. Almost everything that gets done in our space, 99% is done for open-source love and passion and because it is useful to the person doing it.”

Ryan Bates is the producer and host of Railscasts, a site full of free Ruby on Rails screencasts.

For beginning Ruby devs, Bates recommended, “You can learn a lot by asking questions, and you can learn even more by contributing, yourself.

“With every problem you run into, there are many others who will likely run into the same thing. When you find a solution, write about it to help others and to get feedback on better solutions. We’re all learning.”

Bates takes his own advice, as well, by contributing to sites like Rails Forum.

Disclosure: Mashable‘s features editor, Josh Catone, is the co-founder of Rails Forum.

Desi McAdam is a Ruby developer at Hashrocket. She also co-founded and regularly contributes to the technical blogging group DevChix.

She said the thing that helped her most in her study and use of the Ruby programming language was “pairing with other masters of the language.” Since not everyone who wants to learn Ruby has one-on-one access to the masters, however, she has a few suggestions for beginning devs.

“I would also suggest reading books like The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton and Programming Ruby, a.k.a. The Pickaxe Book, by Dave Thomas, Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt.

“If Ruby happens to be the first language you are ever learning I would suggest Learn To Program by Chris Pine. My sister is a nurse who has never done any programming whatsoever and she was able to use this book to learn the fundamentals of programming and she did so at a remarkably fast pace.”

Raquel Hernández is an experienced hacker/mathematician with a background that includes many programming languages and many work environments, from freelance and contract work to startups and larger companies. However, she’s made a particular focus of Ruby and Rails.

She came to us with a list of specific steps and tools for new developers.

“I would suggest reading Programming Ruby 1.9: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide (The Pickaxe Book) in order to get familiar with Ruby.

“For Rails-specific stuff, I’d highly recommend Railscasts as starting point. Pick a fun project; complete the Getting Started with Rails tutorial; and deploy it to Heroku.

“After completing these three steps, you’re going to be having so much fun and getting lots of things done that there won’t be coming back.”

José Valim is the founder of Plataforma Tec, a web development shop and consultancy. He’s also an open source developer and a Rails Core team member.

For beginners, he writes, “Ruby is a very powerful language… it is natural that when you start your first project, you get carried away by the productivity the language gives you and don’t worry about Ruby’s best practices.

“My advice is to control a little this initial amazement and read up on Ruby best practices. Ruby is an object-oriented programming language, so the knowledge of features like encapsulation and inheritance and principles like single responsibility are extremely important to have.

Valim also advises new Ruby devs to not leave testing out of the picture. “Ruby ships with a built-in test framework, and there are several others available as open source, all with plenty of documentation and books. It will reduce your productivity at the beginning, but it definitely pays off withs well-tested, organized and readable code.”

If you’re new to Ruby and you have a question, feel free to drop it in the comments! Our panelists are likely to stop by with more feedback.

Likewise, if you’re a more experienced Ruby dev and you feel like answering questions or passing on some great advice of your own, please leave a comment and school us all.

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Image of José Valim courtesy of Flickr, levycarneiro.

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“The Daily”: A Peek at the iPad-Only Newspaper’s Social Media Strategy

Ahead of the launch of Rupert Murdoch’s much-anticipated (and now delayed) iPad newspaper, many of us at Mashable have wondered exactly how the app-based publication will approach and utilize social media.

A source familiar with The Daily‘s social media plans has shared a few key items about its strategy, which is being headed up by Abigail Jones, a young woman with an impressive resume (dual masters degrees from Columbia Journalism School and the University of Edinburgh, bestselling co-author of the nonfictional Restless Virgins: Love, Sex and Survival in a New England Prep School), but little, we understand, experience with social media tools and strategy specifically.

Jones will concentrate much of her energy on The Daily‘s one blog, which will be hosted at blog.thedaily.com and powered by Tumblr. Like the Tumblrs of several established news media organizations, Jones will deconstruct stories covered by the publication, conducting interviews with staff about the reporting process on a particular story to entice the platform’s users to subscribe to The Daily in the App Store for a rumored $0.99 per week, or $4.25 per month.

Jones, we’re told, will also leverage Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube to promote the day’s content — the cover, links to top stories and behind-the-scenes coverage, etc. — and to engage in conversations with readers and prospective readers alongside staff, who will particularly focus on Twitter to engage with audiences. From what we understand, content from the app will be shareable across social media channels, although our source was unable to go into further detail about exactly how that will work. We suspect that — as seen with Food & Wine magazine — users will be able to link to a web version of the article (perhaps trapped behind a paywall) from the app.

All of that sounds fine and well, but it’s not yet clear how Jones or the rest of The Daily‘s staff will keep pace with the real-time, 24/7 news cycle of the real-time social web, given that the publication does not plan to add content or push updates to the edition it releases to the App Store every morning. We’re also curious if The Daily will allow comments in the app and/or on its site, what the site’s paywall structure will be like and how it plans to cultivate its initially small community of core readers.

The Daily‘s early days will present a unique set of challenges for Jones, at any rate.

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Fujitsu unveils Esprimo FH99/CM, touts it as the world's first glasses-free 3D desktop

By Ben Bowers posted Jan 14th 2011 7:08AM After seeing Sharp's 10.6 glasses-free 3D display last September, we left convinced that parallax barrier 3D technology was a long way off from being ready for prime-time, and then we reached for a bottle of aspirin. Demonstrations by Intel and Sony at CES this year proved, however, that a lot can change in four months, and we hope for Japan's collective eye sight that Fujitsu's Esprimo FH99/CM desktop PC follows this trend. That's because Fujitsu claims it's the world's first glasses-free all-in-one, and it's scheduled to launch in the country on February 25th with a whopping $3,100 price tag. All that dough will get buyers a naked-eye 23-inch full HD 3D display plus top-of-the-line features such as a Blu-ray drive with 3D Blu-ray support, a 2Ghz Core i7 processor, 4GB of memory, a 2TB hard drive, and two USB 3.0 ports. There's no word whether the computer will land stateside, but if it doesn't, Toshiba has hinted they could fill the void with a glasses-free 3D PC of its own by late 2011. Still, we wouldn't recommend stomping your 3D glasses just yet.

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BlackBerry Storm 3 shows up again, tracking for September launch?

By Chris Ziegler posted Jan 14th 2011 12:57PM RIM's mythical BlackBerry Storm 3 is one of those products that shows up every few months with just enough new information to have you believing that it's real and it's eventually coming before slithering back into the night, going totally radio-silent for another month or two. We've no doubt that the phone is real at this point, but considering the lukewarm reception the Storm 2 got, we're surprised RIM hasn't pushed harder to get the updated device to market -- only thing we can figure is that the carrier partners keep sending it back for tweaks. Speaking of tweaks, BGR says that we can expect a phone with a 1.2GHz processor (same as the alleged Torch 2) along with a 3.7-inch WVGA display, 5 megapixel camera, dual-band WiFi with UMA support, mobile hotspot capability, and BlackBerry OS 6.1. Word has it there will be at least two versions released around the globe -- codenamed Monaca and Monza -- and it's on track for a September release. That's all well and good, though these specs aren't going to blow anyone away as we approach Q4 '11.

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