Back at IDF in September we heard a lot about how Intel would be bringing an app store to Windows and Moblin-based netbooks. The Apps store is due to launch early in 2010 but if you want to get a head start on writing apps for a potential 30 Million plus customers (!) then today is your day. The software development kit has arrived.

The goal of the Intel® Atomâ„¢ Developer Program Software Development Kit (SDK) is to provide programming framework and libraries that enables the interaction with the Intel® Atomâ„¢ Developer Program processes and infrastructure.

The SDK (available here) allows you to program in either C (on Moblin) or C or C++ on Windows.

I’ve written a lot about the IADP on MIDMoves so check this article out (and this one) to find out the IADP and about how to win prizes that include an all-expenses-paid trip to CES!

Intel have set up a big range of resources that you can use too.

• Participate in the new Intel Atom Developer Program SDK Forum.
• Subscribe to the Intel Atom Developer Program Blogs.
• Follow us on Twitter @develop4atom and @intelsoftware
• Join the Intel Atom Developer Program Facebook Fan Page.
• Join the Moblin.org Facebook Group or Moblin.org Facebook Fanpage.
• Watch our Videos on YouTube: http://bit.ly/AtomAppVids and on the Intel Atom Developer Site.
• Follow the IADP Community Manager on Twitter. @mungara

And don’t forget one of the most important aspects about Moblin During 2010 you will see the platform extended to handhelds too. The potential market for Moblin is rather large!

The nice folks from Gearzap.com sent me a netbook case to check out. The case is specifically designed for 10.1 inch netbooks, and is a simple messenger bag which is designed to be worn over the shoulder.
It is smaller than you might be used to if you’ve ever carried a full sized notebook case. It has a pretty simple design with a white stripe offset to the right of the central axis if looking head on. Along the white stripe is a rubber banana logo (which is a bit odd because, well… it’s a banana) which had some leftover rubber around the edges which should have been trimmed better when the patch was cut. Aside from this, all of the stitch work seems rather well done and durable.

The netbook specific aspect of this case makes it really light which is great if you got a netbook with the intention of reducing the weight of your kit. You won’t find the typical shoulder pain from weight being put on one shoulder that you might have experienced if you’ve ever hauled around a monster desktop replacement laptop in a messenger bag! On the other hand, this also makes the bag quite small. If you are a big you might find yourself looking a bit silly with this relatively dainty messenger bag draped over your shoulder. But of course that is personal preference. At least the bag has a nice dark blue hue and metal accents (zipper, clasps, and brackets) that are made to look as though they were finished with chrome. This adds a bit back to the bag in terms of masculine appearance.

The bag is almost more of a square shape than a rectangle, and thus the flap which covers over the main pocket is somewhat long. This makes it sort of strange if you want to access the contents while the bag is actually on your shoulder as you have to go around the flap to get there. Magnetic clasps hold the flap closed. The magnets are reasonably strong, but the clasps are ‘button shaped’ if you will, and since they are on the inside of the flap, you kind of need to feel your way around until the button part finds the receiving hole that is designated for it, though you’ll hear a satisfactory metal click when you get it just right.

The main pocket has your usual padded slot designed to hold the netbook and an elastic strap with velcro to keep the device secured. Since the bag is not very deep (doesn’t go far out from the wearer’s perspective), there isn’t a lot of depth to the main bag, and fiddling with the elastic strap seems like more trouble than it’s worth, especially considering that a zipper already seals the main compartment. The netbook sleeve couldn’t fit the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] any better. The fit really feels just perfect. There is padding on the front and back of the sleeve. The main pocket also has your standard pen/pencil holder fare, two mesh pockets on the padded separator of the netbook sleeve, and a few other pockets. The main compartment is a perfect size for the netbook’s power adaptor and a few other small items, though if you are planning on using this case for for school, be forewarned, it isn’t large enough to fit standard binders or folders, but you should be able to get plain old paper in there.

There is also a second zipper pocket on the front with no special padding and no holders inside, just in case you want to cram a few more things in there. Also on the back of the case is a final zipper pocket, but this one doesn’t have any depth structured with the fabric, so thin things back here only!

Overall I’d say that as long as the bag fits your taste in terms of style, it’ll work well if you have an appropriately sized netbook. The sleeve fits 10.1 inch netbooks perfectly, and there is still room in the pocket for the A/C adapter and a number of other curios, as well as the two other zipper pockets.

Thanks again to Gearzap.com. If you are in the market for netbook accessories, they have a pretty extensive collection, have a look! Also if you’d like to see all of the Cool Banana brand cases that Geazap offers, head here.

No, this isn’t Moblin 2.1 for handhelds but it’s a step in the right direction along the roadmap shown below. As 2.1 for handhelds feeds in (due for a beta release before the end of the year) the two branches of 2.1 should merge to make way for a unified OS that can support MIDs (on Moorestown) UMPCS (with some tweaking of drivers to support Menlow) and the netbooks and nettops that this new release of Moblin is aimed at.

Moblin Roadmap

The new release was announced through a press release and on the Moblin website.

The Moblinâ„¢ project steering committee today announces the project release of Moblin v2.1 for Intel Atom* processor-based netbooks and nettops. This project release includes the broadest feature additions, customer requested improvements, and overall polish to date. With this community release you will see significant feature additions and improvements including enhanced browser functionality and plug-in support, UI enhancements, support for 3G data connections, Bluetooth* device management, input method support for localized languages, integrated application installer for the Moblin Garage, performance and stability improvements, and additional overall help and documentation.

Key features of the new build include a new browser, new Intel Linux graphics drivers (anyone able to see what GPUs are supported? PineTrail clues?) 3G support, new Bluetooth capability, the application installer and more.

I’m currently testing Linpus Lite with Moblin 2.0 but it looks like I might have to abort that now and catch up with what is happening in 2.1

Image via netbooknews.de who have already posted some details in German.

Moblin v2.1 project release for netbooks and nettops – it’s here | moblin.org.

P.S. Anyone notice the parallels between Maemo and Moblin. They look like two brands and builds of the same core OS. Any devs out ther care to comment on the similarities in the SDK?

Download and test Moblin 2.1 here.

Sascha Pallenberg from netbooknews and our very own Chippy had a nice little debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the MID vs. the Netbook, and they also touch a bit on the Atom Developer Program which will cross both device groups.

Tnkgrl got see see the Nokia Booklet 3G [Portal page] up close and personal today at a preview in San Francisco. A hands on video and a nice set of images are yours to consume if you are interested in the Nokia Booklet 3G.

Head over to the original post at tnkgrl.com to see what she does and doesn’t like about the NB3G.

Remember that hot upcoming touchscreen swivel netbook that was totally going to bring forth the era of the tablet-netbook? Yeah, you know that one that was topping the Portal popularity charts for some time several months back? Yeah, that one! The Asus Eee T91. This device is nearing the anniversary of its announcement and has yet to hit the market in sufficient numbers (we reported on the T91 back at the beginning of January!). Not because of lack of demand, mind you, but because of lack of supply, it would seem. This once hot device has since fizzled and according to the portal, has lost much of the popularity that it had previously acquired.So what happened? It’s hard to say exactly, but the links section on the T91’s Portal page can help us reconstruct the story.

As I mentioned, we first reported on the T91 back on January the 7th, where it was announced at CES during an Asus event. As early as February, we saw some pretty detailed hands-on information, but presumably, this was still a pre-production model. We watched as the T91 passed through the FCC in April. Three months later, the T91 got an official product page on Asus’ site. Also in July, Asus UK told us that there would be three versions of the T91!

At this point, anticipation is really ramping up for the device.

Production model reviews start showing up from major sites around mid-July. But after all of this media attention, hands-on’s, and reviews from many websites, the T91 seemed to be released in a very limited quantity, and never hit the market with enough force to satiate the demand, or the attention that the T91 was being given at the time. A shame too because it seemed as though a lot of people were looking forward to this device. We reported on the 1st of August that T91 shipments were delayed to distributors (in our comments alone you can see that people were upset by this news), and the new shipment date should be sometime in September, but it isn’t even clear if that date was ever met with additional supply — if it was, it was too little, too late.

While the T91 did pop up for sale on Amazon and a few other sites, it quickly sold out and hasn’t been in stock since. So what’s the deal Asus, why was there such a lack of supply at the release of the T91? It really seems like they missed a good opportunity to capitalize on the anticipation of a product that people were actually looking forward to. The T91 had the distinction of being different than just another model number in the Eee line-up. Search popularity was well in line with a model that Asus is still selling plenty of, as seen by the following Google Trends chart in which ‘Eee T91’ search term is represented by blue, and ‘Eee 1008HA’ in red:Demand was there, but we don’t really have any explanation for the lack of supply. Much of what I’m seeing could be mostly from a US perspective, but I believe that the missing T91 is a world-wide phenomenon (correct me if I’m wrong). I’ve dispatched some questions to Asus to see if we can officially get to the bottom of this, and I’ll let everyone know as soon as I get any word back.

If you are in the netbook or MID business and haven’t looked through the Intel IDF content catalogue yet, do so now. Download relevant PDFs before they are gone because they contain some real information gems.

For example, IDG are predicting that the netbook market will reach over 30m units in 2011 rising to 45m in 2012 and that the netbook market will represent just 15% of the overall market for laptops (staying steady at 15% from 2009 until 2012 at least.

Or how about that the average netbook price in the US is way lower, at just over $300, than anywhere else in the world where prices are nearer to $400.

On Linux, Intel says that it will DROP in market share between 2008 and 2012 with Windows 7 taking the lions share. That doesn’t stoke much confidence in Moblin does it!

Western Europe is currently the biggest netbook market at over 2x shipments compared to the US.

Source: SF09_MPTS007 (via the Content catalog.)

There are some interesting stats about users and buyers too. 85% of netbooks are bought for one’s own use and that person is in their mid-30s. Internet surfing is the most common use with video streaming coming in at a tiny percent of usage (2%)

Source: SF09_MPTS008 (via the Content catalog.)

There’s a nice set of study data too. Did you know that most smartphone, MID, laptop and netbook usage sessions are under 5 minutes long and that 70% of active time was to social-related applications?

78% of usage is through the browser.

Source: SF09_RESS008 (via the Content catalog.)

Other interesting presentations to check out:

Intel’s Next Generation System-On-a-Chip (CETS003) Find out about the CE4100 Atom processor targeted at IPTV applications. Interesting items: CivX certifications, jpeg decode acceleration, 1080p acceleration and more.

Mobile PC Power Sources: Li-Ion Battery Technology (EBLS003) In interesting presentation that will bring you up to date about what’s happening in the real world of Li-Ion technology. (My notes here)

Check out the set of MID-related presentations too. SF09_MIDS005 talks about the telephony stack and the SNRLabs connection management software that will be in Moblin 2.1 for handhelds.

On the Moblin side of things, at least take the time to check out MOBS001 which has an excellent diagram showing the breakdown of developers across mobile platforms and how Moblin will span MIDs, netbooks, nettops, auto and embedded markets. Did you know that gesture support is planned for 2.1, that sync and sensor support is planned for V2.2 and that later versions in the 2011 and 2012 timeframe should support intelligent multi-screen, multi-touch and context-aware software? Check out the Moblin roadmap.

There are other presentations about cloud computing, turbo-boost technology, Moorestown (my analysis here) and I’ve listed some more recommended sessions here.

If the links above don’t work, you can find the downloads on the IDF 2009 Content Catalog

Chippy has a nice photoset of the upcoming Viliv S10 here in the ultra mobile PC gallery. Take a look. These were taken during Computex.