The SoC Summit started yesterday with a series of interesting talk, including one given by Geogad. The promise of SoC (System on Chip) is to continue to standardize electronics, this time at the level of large system blocks both on the chip and in the library and driver software. It will help build new powerhouse of tech and in addition to more powerful devices. Because of the advantages of SoC, the new devices will be built from reusable semiconductor blocks and software code that can lead to faster design and construction times for mobile devices.

SoC will result in better, more advanced devices with a faster time-to-mmarket. Mobile has gotten even more interesting.

In a few hours, the SoC Summit in Taipei, Taiwan will turn to the topic of combining Android will SoC (Systems on a Chip). The conference will be providing up-to-date info on this important area of device design. It will also give manufacturers a better understanding of where the mobile phone market is currently and will be heading in the next year. The one this that I expect this summit to highlight is how rapidly the mobile industry is changing and the growth opportunities that are available to all players in the industry.

Hope to see you at the SoC Summit!

I recently returned from a trip to NYC. The trip went well and included a bit of networking with the local Silicon Alley community. The nice part about plane travel is that during some legs of the trip, you are forced to disconnect from the Internet and get info the old fashion way, by reading paper docs.

While reading through a few mags, I read a great article that directly answered some issues that have been plaguing some local startup founders that I know. If founders get only one thing out of the article by Jeffrey Bussgang titled “The Insider’s Guide to Venture Capital Financing“, they should get this: know your numbers cold.

You are talking to numbers guys and asking for their money. They may not be able to tell if you are an expert on tech since that is not their strength, but they will be able to tell if you are an expert on your numbers. If you are not, why would they want to invest with someone who does not understand the importance of numbers in business?

If you can’t understand or learn your numbers cold, you MUST bring in a partner that does and can present this critical part of your pitch to the investors.

Geogad hosts two local Silicon Valley meetup called the Informal Android Developer Meetup and the Informal iPhone Developer Meetup. New mobile developers at these meetings often ask which mobile platforms are worth their time to learn. Sometimes it’s a matter of money and the perception of which app stores have the best sales. Other times, it depends on a developer’s previous programming background.

TheFierceDeveloper newsletter actually addressed this question with more substantial info provided by a marketing report from VisionMobile. The most interesting part of the report to me was the estimates of the length of time required to learn a new mobile platform. To quite FierceDeveloper quoting VisionMobile,

…according to the report, coders require 15 months or more to figure out Symbian, compared to an average of 7.5 months across rival platforms. Android is considered the easiest platform to learn, with 22 percent of respondents claiming they absorbed its intricacies in under a month.

It is nice to see that some of the platform are relatively easy for new programmers to pick up. It should make for an exciting experience for mobile apps.

Geogad recently began its qwest to find the traveler with the best submitted tour stop to the Geogad website.  The Super Traveler Contest began on July 2nd, 2010 and will run through August 31, 2010.  Every Geogad Traveler will be able to not only enter in the contest, but also vote for the best user generated tour stops.

A Geogad tour stop is a video clip or a collection of MP3 and image files that are compiled by Geogad to form an audio slideshow. These multimedia files are associated with a specific location to form a tour stop, which is viewable through Geogad’s distribution platform on the Internet, the mobile web, and Android-powered smartphones.

To begin uploading your tour stops today, go to Geogad.