Nikolai Tillmann, Microsoft Research
http://research.microsoft.com/
The world is experiencing a technology shift. In 2011, more touchscreen-based mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will be sold than desktops, laptops, and netbooks combined. In fact, in many cases powerful and easy-to-use smart phones are going to be the first and, in especially in developing countries, possibly the only computing devices which virtually all people will own, and carry with them at all times. Although these devices have sufficient memory and processor capacity, they present challenges for user interface design, especially when going beyond typical consumer tasks and instead considering content creation, and even application development or editing on a phone. In the talk we will consider the capabilities of these devices for software development. As an example of what is already possible, we will present a new tool from Microsoft Research, TouchDevelop, which is an application creation environment that runs on the smartphone itself, no separate PC required.