Android, the open-source mobile platform spearheaded by Google, is gaining favor with developers and online media. At its Google I/O conference in San Francisco last week, Google showed off a variety of new Android tricks to the nearly 3,000 developers in attendance. According to news reports, the developers were favorably impressed, and media outlets are teeming with reports on the conference.

Movement-Sensitive Street View

A big hit was a demonstration of Google Maps Street View and a touchscreen interface with a strange navigational approach.

Android engineering director Steve Horowitz used hand gestures on the touchscreen to move from screen to screen. But thereupon, with a view of San Francisco streets on the portable device’s Web browser, he turned around and the Street View followed his movement, using the device’s internal compass.

Other demonstrated features were notification of new e-mail, missed phone calls, or calendar appointments, as well as locking/unlocking shield software that involved drawing a shape rather than

using a password. While support for a touchscreen was shown, Android development is not yet up to multi-touch, where two fingers can be used, for instance to invent a photo larger, as on Apple’s iPhone. Reportedly, Android can support that technology for multi-touch screens.

There is plus a magnifying tool for enlarging Web composition, as well as reports that a centralized online store for Android applications might be in the works.

Google in Control

Some observers have been comparing Android and its Open Handset Alliance against the other open-source mobile platform offered by the LiMo Foundation, a consortium whose members include Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic and others.

But Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, said a big difference is that, even though Android is open-source, Google is in control of that platform while LiMo is more of a group effort.

Greengart noted that the…

Orginal post by Top Tech News