Advances in mobile phone technology has been occurring rapidly, despite some of the best efforts of the carriers. After all, if it was up to them, we would all be paying $0.10 to send a 160 character SMS text message vs. downloading and watching YouTube videos for free. It does not pay to be a dumb pipe.

Sprint has been really difficult about opening their network to developers who want to build location-based services. In the recent past, they charged $5000 for access to their location SDKs. More recently, they have been working with third parties to give developers controlled access to the end customer’s location.

According to some informal testing run and reported by developers who attended last week’s Informal Android Developer Meetup, the Sprint-based Android smartphones are not providing location info from the carrier network. Fortunately, developers can still get the location info from the phone’s built-in GPS chipset. Given this alternative way to get location that is not dependent on the carrier, it is confusing as to why Sprint still has not opened their system more.

In related news, Sprint is adding more third party location providers to their network with its addition of technology from TechnoCom Corp. Just what developers need, more fragmentation.

Geogad has released its first mobile application so that travelers can used the advanced features of their smart phones to search and find Geogad content when they are on the go. This app works on the Google Android platform and is available from Handango.

To support future developments on Geogad’s Android app, I am pleased to announce the formation of the Informal Android Developer Meetup. Tonight was our first meeting. I admit that it was set up very last minute since this Meetup group only formed a day or so ago. Despite the short notice, we had quite a few people show and discuss Android programming issues.

Some tips for programmers that are new to the Android platform are that they should start slowly and build up. There is a great deal to learn, but Google has put together a great collection of tools and samples. My personal suggestions on how to start are

1. Download the Eclipse IDE. You can use another IDE if you want, but this one is well supported by Google. Of course, this is assuming that you already have downloaded the latest Java jdk.

2. Download the Android SDK from Google.

3. Read the intro docs on the Google Android developer site.

4. Work through the Notepad tutorial on the Google Android developer site.

5. Check out the API Demos that should be preloaded on the Android emulator.

6. Check out the advanced Android program samples from Google.

7. If you would like a quick, formal intro and money is not an issue, you might want to buy an ebook on Android programming like “The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development“. It has some good starter examples and can talk you through the basics. I don’t think that it has anything that you can’t find on the Google Android site, but it was totally worth the $35 just for the command to switch the emulator from portrait to landscape mode (Control-F12 on Windows).

If you are on Castro St. in Mountain View on Wednesday and want to chat with other Android developers, feel free to drop by Red Rock Coffee Shop. We will be the people with the Android phones on the second floor.

I am still buzzed about the Web 2.0 Mapping meeting last night. As regular readers of this blog know, Geogad was speaking there last night. There was a lot of energy in the room, and Geogad’s talk went well. Part of that may have been from the talk and part from the free Togo’s sandwiches available.

For those of you who were not able to attend, the slides from the talk as well as a professionally shot video will be available soon. The link will be posted on the Geogad site to help you find it.

Quite a few people had signed up for the meeting, but some were unable to attend because they had switched the event location. While the Web 2.0 Mapping meetings will all be held at Google through the rest of the year, they will be held in different locations each time. It really puts your mapping skills to the test, but it is confusing. Last month, I was 45 minutes late because I got rerouted through the adjacent Shoreline Amphitheater due to a Jonas Brothers concert. For this month’s meeting, the main Googleplex was packed for a Google Dance. Since that was the location for the last meeting, I am sure that many people saw the traffic there and assumed it was still in the same location.

Thanks to the free mapping APIs from big companies like Google and Yahoo, smaller companies and individual developers are able to mash up maps to information in ways not possible before. Previously if you wanted to use high quality maps on your web site, you might be force to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to companies like ESRI or Navteq to get access to their mapping data.

This ability to link maps with new applications is really growing. One of the best signs is the membership of free Meetup groups like the Web 2.0 Mapping group. I attended my first meeting last month and was very impressed by the number of people in the room. It was literally standing room only. The meeting leaders were expecting 40 people and over 80 showed!

This group is growing fast, and I hoping that the meeting next Tuesday, Aug. 19, will be even more packed. Why? Because Geogad has been selected as one of the companies that will present. It should be a really great meeting. Not only is Geogad presenting but so is Geotrax and Loopt, which has been a really hot startup in the mobile social networking space.

Be sure and join us at Google next week. But come early since over 70 people have already confirmed that they will be at the event.