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At the AT&T Developer Summit earlier last month, one of the free development tools they announced was the Application Resource Optimizer. While Diagostic Tools usually don't ooze of excitement, AT&T did a good job of at least creating intrigue with Zynga and Pandora both vouching that it improved their apps in power consumption and radio communications. When we spoke with AT&T, they called it "Wireshark on steroids". It works across all platforms and carriers and is broken into two main compenents, the Data Analyzer and the Data Collector and the Data Analyzer. Here is what AT&T had to say about it: 

AT&T Application Resource Optimizer (ARO) Developer Tool from WIP Connector on Vimeo.

At the very least, we think ARO is worth giving a shot - any chance you can take to save your users' battery life, you take it! Are you already using ARO or Wireshark or some other optimization tool? We'd love to hear your experience.

The new year never really sinks in until the AT&T Developer Summit and CES come along. The WIP team was in charge of FUN at the AT&T Registration Reception this year and with close to 600 in attendance, it was a great night with developers and other mobile ecosystem members choosing 3 or 4 buttons that reflected who they are to pin onto their lanyards. With equal number of each button available, the Android one was the first to run out reflecting the large number of Android developers at the Summit. Beer Drinkers, Wine Drinkers, Apple Developers, Cocktail Drinkers Buttons were not far behind. If there's any takeaways from this informal exercise, it's that developers like Android and drinking.

The Buttons allowed for identification of like minded people and provided entry to various activities based on the pins during the evening: Frequent Fliers designed and threw paper airplanes, Red Wine Drinkers received an exclusive wine at the bar, and Music Lovers used their rap skills...

* Note:  This is a first in our series of 2011 Predictions.  Check back every day next week for others, and on January 1 for a collection of all of them, and to vote for your favorite.

One of my favourite people in the mobile developer ecosystem is Ed Schmidt from AT&T.  Ed is a Director in their Developer Program which is a nice title and all, but doesn’t really speak to the volume of his knowledge of mobile development nor his passion for developers.  I thought it would be fun to interview him and get his predictions for 2011. 

Deeper Apps vs Lighter Apps

As other technologies are evolving around mobile development, Ed sees a trend toward deeper and more capable applications coming in 2011.  Ed’s definition of Deeper Apps is similar to what we at WIP have been calling Mobile Apps 2.0 – a confluence of stronger technology, better tools, and better product/life cycle development.

Ed noted that some of this will come because of ‘the cloud; and the networking based...