>> ELIASHEVSKY: My name is Ilya Eliashevsky. I am an Android Product Manager for DataViz
Inc. We have actually two applications for Android currently. We have RoadSync which
is a Microsoft exchange ActiveSync client that provides secure, wireless and direct
push synchronization with Microsoft exchange 2003 and 2007. And it pushes your e-mail,
your contacts, and now we’re demoing support for calendar, as well. The other application
that we have for Android is Documents To Go, which is available on a wide variety of mobile
platforms as well. And Documents to go is currently available on Android market supporting
Microsoft Word and Excel Office 2007, viewing and editing. And what we’re demonstrating
at Google I/O is our upcoming support for PowerPoint and PDF.
>> So, you just used Android for this App. Tell me what is your motivation behind choosing
Android? >> ELIASHEVSKY: Well, Android is a great opportunity.
At DataViz we see a lot of potential behind the current devices that are in the market,
as well as where we think some of our partners are going to be headed with that. And it’s
just a great device, it’s really easy to use and I think our engineers have been pleasantly
surprise with developing on Android and the flexibility that it offers. So, we’re excited
to bring some productivity to the Android platform.
>> And so, is there any particular “war stories” that you already collected as part
of your development for a difficult period and how you got through that.
>> ELIASHEVSKY: Actually, it’s, you know, it sounds cheesy but really there aren’t
too many horror stories. There’s something that we like to see, for example, we like
to plug in to the built-in calendar and have your exchange data go in to the same where
your Google Calendar might be synchronizing and that’s not currently possible. But it’s
not a horror story, you know, we have clever work around of how we’re going to be supporting
that feature. But to be honest our development as we’ve taken some of our solution and
ported them to Android has gone a lot quicker than we ever expected. We had prototype, the
concepts for both applications and the prototype went so quickly that we—-the project actually,
it’s hard to catch up with an order to speck out. It was almost, you know, it was nearing
completion without actually defining it, which is totally unusual and actually great. You
know, there’s no way around that. >> So, with new features were kept to date
were you able to use it in your application? >> ELIASHEVSKY: So, we have a couple of new
features, the primary one that probably sticks out and is the most useful is in Documents
To Go. We’re now supporting live folders. And what that means is that you can add on
the desktop of your Android device, you can add a live folder for your recently used documents
in Documents To Go. So, with that and having support for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF,
any file that you downloaded as an attachment, or you open on an expansion card will show
up in this dynamic list. So, you have quick access in all your files right at your fingertips.
So, that’s a cool enhancement and I actually—-I’ve been using quite a bit not just demoing but
as for traveling for the show. >> What specific tips and tricks did you use
in developing your applications? >> ELIASHEVSKY: I’m not really sure what
tips and tricks we used. We have some clever things that we’re doing or things that are
nice on Android. So, for example with RoadSync, when we’re synching your contacts information
down to the device to support e-mail addresses, home addresses, business addresses and what’s
nice is that we’re populating the built-in contact application. We then, by default get
support for Google Maps. So, you just click on the contacts address and it will show where
they live and how you get there. And now with Cupcake, we’ve also added support for the
on-screen keyboard and new selection mode with Documents To Go so if you don’t have
a physical keyboard you can now access menus and things accordingly.
>> So, these are features that you can do in your App that you weren’t able to do
in other platforms? >> ELIASHEVSKY: Well, like I said, just going
in to the built-in contacts database, the one thing with integrating with Google Map
is nice. With RoadSync, it’s a push e-mail solution and it also supports HTML messages.
So, one of the things that we found is quite nice and really easy to integrate with was
synchronizing HTML e-mail messages to the device. We tapped into Google’s APIs to
do that. And we’re able to turn that feature on relatively quickly. And so, that was a
nice enhancement. >> So, since you are here at I/O, is there
anything that you particularly enjoyed or anything that’s going to stay with you when
you go back? >> ELIASHEVSKY: Yeah, I guess, this I particularly
enjoyed is the free HTC Magic Device that all attendees got. And for my engineers and
my product team, this is going to stick with me when I go back. But now it’s really good,
just to be able to test a lot of these new features that we have been showcasing on the
device that supports it, it’s really good. >> Well, that’s great, thank you so much.
>> ELIASHEVSKY: All right, thanks for having us.