Nexus

The family of author Philip K. Dick is suing Google over the name Nexus which he used in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electic Sheep, which in turn became the basis for the movie Blade Runner. As this article points out, it is quite ironic that Google named their Android-based phone after a line androids that killed its creator. Obviously there are no sci-fi fans in the Google marketing department.

Android Scripting Environment

When Google first announced Android, I was initially very excited, but that soon turned to disappointment when I realized that Java was the only supported language. It got even worse when I discovered that Android does not even use the standard JVM, which prevents projects like Jython (and JRuby) from being used. This article discusses the issue and mentions Scala as the only non-Java language that works on Android.

However, today I stumbled upon the Android Scripting Environment which offers some hope for those us who are not enamoured of Java. Damn, I'd already written off Android as a platform of interest so I stopped paying much attention to it. I will definitely be reevaluating that decision.