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Android Market -- Google's upcoming content distribution system announced this week -- will operate
more along the lines of YouTube, according to a revealing post on the Android Developers Blog
yesterday.
T-Mobile hopes to sell over half a million G1 Android phones before the end of the year, according
to estimates reportedly supplied to AndroidGuys. The figures would have T-Mobile preparing to add
about 200,000 new customers through selling the G1 as well as 40,000 incremental additions. As many
as 278,000 of the buyers would be owners renewing their contracts to upgrade to the device,
bringing ...
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused
on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently—the
upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labor Day weekend. And with this week's apps,
there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
The political applications, sadly, tend to swing pretty far to the side of app absurdity:
Obama/McCain
Inauguration Countdown: Tick down the days to January 20 for the candidate of your choice,
complete with rotating quotations and photos. Also useful for reminding yourself that the one and
a half years of inane campaign coverage on TV will soon be over. Sadly, they're a buck.
BAC
Calc: Ahh, but here's some utility for the weekend. A blood-alcohol-level calculator to
quantify exactly how hammered you've gotten while getting riled up by McCain and Obama quotes
with your buddies. Just enter your consumption, alochol volume of your booze, your weight and
your gender. But remember kids, the law won't care if your iPhone says you're under the limit
once you find yourself in the drunk tank. Free
Beer
Bounce: And once all your friends go home on Monday night, there's no sense in stopping the
party when you've got Beer Bounce, the first virtual quarters game for the iPhone. As you
progress through the rounds, difficulty is increased by adding blurriness and staggering to the
game. Nice touch! $3
Blofeld:
While it has nothing to do with anything, really, Bond fans will have to love the concept behind
Blofeld. It places an image of a feline pelt on your phone, and purrs when you stroke it, evil
genius style. I can't believe this costs a dollar, but again, hats off to the concept, especially
the icon.
Earthscape:
And just when you thought the App Store was only filled with meaningless pap, there's Earthscape,
which brings a great-looking Google Earth-style satellite image browser to your phone. It's a
little laggy at times, and the image quality isn't as high as GMaps, but a great way to kill a
few minutes if you're stuck in line somewhere. $5
This week's app coverage on Giz:
Tris, the free Tetris game, was pulled from the
store (voluntarily) for copyright violations. Infinite sadness.
Our
Question of the Day found that a typical Giz reader has spent between $1 and $10 on apps,
but with many bigger spenders also responding. Go vote if you haven't yet.
A fairly harmless comic app Murderdrome
was rejected from the store, and its creators want a rating system for apps to avoid
censorship, which is a great idea.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this
week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even
more apps: see what you
missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon.
Have a good long weekend everybody.
The $3.75 million in prizes distributed by Google to Android developers includes several
applications that take advantage of location-aware technology in mobile phones.
T-Mobile hopes to sell over half a million G1 Android phones before the end of the year, according
to estimates reportedly supplied to AndroidGuys. The figures would have T-Mobile preparing to add
about 200,000 new customers through selling the G1 as well as 40,000 incremental additions. As many
as 278,000 of the buyers would be owners renewing their contracts to upgrade to the device,
bringing ...
Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the
categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008.
Visit the ContentNext Reports
page
If you haven’t been paying to attention to news related to Google’s Android, you
might not know that Google has been running the Android Developer Challenge, which awards 10
teams $275,000 prize money, and $100,000 to the another 10 teams, out of a total of 50 finalists.
Now that everything has been said and done, the results are out, and it looks like Google’s Android will have a
nice catalogue of software to play with when it’s launched sometime soon.
Google has
named the winners of its Android developer challenge. It's handing out $275,000 to each of the 10
grand prize winners and $100,00 apiece to 10 second prize winners (full list here).
For most app developers, those prizes are likely to be the biggest payouts they ever get for
their work. But if Google really wants to reward app developers, it can throw in yet another
prize: Bundling their work in the intial set of apps the Android-powered handsets will feature.
Think Brickbreaker on the Blackberry.
Here are our suggestions, culled from list of challenge finalists, for apps we'd like included
with an Android-powered handset. We're favoring useful over cool and quirky.
Compare Everywhere
(formerly called Scan) - Winner of a $275,000 prize: If you're in a store and you want to buy a
product, you can use this app to take a picture of the barcode, and the app will search the Web
and show you the price of the item at other stores. You can then use GPS to find the nearest
location of that other store and get your product for less.
TuneWiki -- $275,000
winner: This app is supposed to do a good job emulating the music player on the iPhone, but it
also has cooler features -- like showing you the lyrics of a song while you're playing it. It
can also use GPS to tell you who's playing the same song as you nearby.
Locale -- $275,000
winner: Automatically changes your phone's settings based on your location. For example, once
you enter your office, the ringer could move to silent mode (great idea even for people who
have to do this manually, by the way). You set up the locations in advance, and the app uses
GPS to pinpoint when you are in a specific area. You can also specify times (put the phone on
silent at 11 p.m., for example), and other triggers.
PhoneBook 2.0 --
$100,000 winner: Store your contacts in the cloud and use your phone book as a social network -
get mood and status updates and share pictures with your friends. The cool thing about
Android's platform is that Google insists that it won't favor any particular app, whether it's
something Google made, something a big developer created, or the product of a mom and pop shop.
So even things like the phone dialer or the home screen can be discarded and replaced with
third-party creations. So in this case, you could get rid of the phone's existing contact list,
and replace it with this one, which is more robust and secure.
The Weather Channel --
$25,000 winner: Get weather alerts, look at interactive maps - basically everything
weather-related you would need on your phone.
Google has revealed the Android Market, a software distribution channel for deploying third-party
Android applications. Unlike conventional Linux package management systems, however, Android
Market is a highly centralized system with a single point of failure, and a single point of
control. Ars looks at the details revealed so far and wonders if it is a cathedral or a bazaar.
Google has revealed the Android Market, a software distribution channel for deploying third-party
Android applications. Unlike conventional Linux package management systems, however, Android
Market is a highly centralized system with a single point of failure, and a single point of
control. Ars looks at the details revealed so far and wonders if it is a cathedral or a bazaar.
Since we started the first Android Developer Challenge late last year, we all have been eager to
see who the winners of $275,000 and $100,000 would be. All 50 applications that emerged from Round
1 of ADC I showed great promise, and these teams have been working intensely for the past several
months to polish their apps for the final round.
Similar to round 1 we sent laptops preconfigured with the judging environment, emulator, and all
entries to each of our seven judges. In this round, each judge reviewed all 50 applications, took
collaborative notes and gave initial scores. Then, all judges met together over conference calls to
discuss and debate these applications, finally coming to consensus on which applications should
receive $275,000 and which should receive $100,000.
We're pleased to present all of the winners and finalists in our detailed ADC gallery. Peruse and
enjoy — there are awesome applications and unique uses of the Android
platform. We would like to congratulate the winners and thank all the entrants for their hard
work!
C'est une nouvelle importante que vient d'annoncer Eric Chu, l'un des chefs de projet de la
plateforme mobile Android de Google. A l'instar d'Apple qui a lancé son « App Store
» le mois dernier pour référencer [...]
C'est une nouvelle importante que vient d'annoncer Eric Chu, l'un des chefs de projet de la
plateforme mobile Android de Google. A l'instar d'Apple qui a lancé son « App Store
» le mois dernier pour référencer [...]
Google vient de publier la liste des gagnants de son concours Android Developer
Challenge, qui récompense, pour un total de 10 millions de dollars, les développeurs
des meilleures applications conçues pour son système d'exploitation mobile. Voici la
liste des 10 premières applications sélectionnées par le moteur.
Lire l'article
Yesterday, Google
announced the winners of the Android Developer Challenge I, a contest that awarded cash
prizes to the most innovative and promising applications designed for the upcoming mobile OS,
Android. The ten top teams received $275,000 and 10 other teams received $100,000. The ADC
Gallery lists all the winners as well as the finalists.
Although Google has already named their winners, we decided to browse through the gallery to find
the apps that we're most excited to use. Some of the apps, like for example, cab4me, may have been declared a
winner, but we know not everyone lives in a major metropolitan area where hailing a taxi is a
part of everyday life. Instead, we picked out some apps that have more universal appeal. They are
as follows:
An app that backs up your
contacts for you to a remote server can give you piece of mind in case your phone is ever lost or
stolen. However, the app isn't just a backup tool. PhoneBook 2.0 combines mobile social
networking with your address book to let you share your mood, location, and photos with your
friends.
The App That Keeps Us From Getting Lost:BreadCrumbz
Sure, sure, the phone has
Google Maps, but BreadCrumbz is even better. Instead of getting directions, you get picture-based
routes so you know to turn at that huge oak tree or the building with the blue awning. Your
friends can make routes for you and record them with the camera and GPS.
There are not one, but
two, apps that basically do the same thing: compare prices and save us money. Using the camera,
you can "scan" the barcode of an item by snapping a picture. The app will then comparison shop
for you. You can read online reviews and even create price alerts if the price drops.
CompareEverywhere also lets you use the GPS to find nearby stores and then call them directly.
This one wasn't a grand
prize winner, but looks like a handy app to have around. With Teradesk, you can store files in
the cloud with file transfers that allow for pause control, resume, and full recovery of broken
transfers. You can share files with friends via Bluetooth and MMS and the app even integrates
with Google Docs.
There were several of
these "alerting" apps, but only one that won the grand prize. Life360 is an app that sends you
messages from your family and local community. You can be alerted to a danger in the community
(rapid dog on the loose!), but you can also just receive messages from family, too (mom's running
late today). This is a personalized alert system that displays only the messages you need to
hear.
No Google phone would be
complete without an app that lets us use GoogleTalk to IM our friends. Maverick lets you exchange
messages, location, and multimedia content in the form of audio clips, photos and scribbles
(drawings created on the mobile phone) with other Maverick clients, Gtalk users, or iChat users.
You can also use the app to publish content to Blogger.
Another case of having
two great apps for music. TuneWiki won the grand prize with their social music maps that displays
audio, video, and lyrics. You can also use the GPS to see what other people are playing nearby in
real-time. Although only a finalist, Diggin looks interesting, too. This app lets you listen to
thousands of streaming radio stations and downloads the album art for what you're listening to
automatically.
The App That Lets Us Whiteboard With Colleagues:ShareYourBoard
Did your co-worker miss
the meeting? Now you can get them up to speed with ShareYourBoard. Designed specifically to
capture and enhance whiteboard images with edge detection, geometry transformations and image
enhancement, ShareYourBoard takes great pics in any angle, any lighting, and with any type of
whiteboard or markers used.
Maybe you shouldn't have
those rockin' ringtones turned on at the office...and perhaps that wallpaper is a bit
inappropriate, too. Instead of having to adjust your profiles yourself is an app that knows how
to do so automatically. Using Android's built-in GPS, will let you set up "Situations" (like
At Work, At Home, In a Meeting, etc) which you can have automatically triggered by setting
conditions like location (via the GPS), time, or other conditions which you add. The app can then
adjust your ringtone, wallpaper, and other settings automatically.
The App That Scans Our Eyeball and Saves Our Passwords:BioWallet
Honestly we wouldn't care
what this app did, but it happens to be a "safe wallet" that stores sensitive information
(passwords, certificates, documents, conversations, notes, pictures, etc.). The info can only be
accessed through iris or handwritten signature based authentication. Oh come on! It does retina
scanning! We didn't get an Android phone to play space monkey games, now did we? This one
delivers pure geek cred.
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused
on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently—the
upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labor Day weekend. And with this week's apps,
there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
Yesterday, 
An app that backs up your
contacts for you to a remote server can give you piece of mind in case your phone is ever lost or
stolen. However, the app isn't just a backup tool. PhoneBook 2.0 combines mobile social
networking with your address book to let you share your mood, location, and photos with your
friends.
Sure, sure, the phone has
Google Maps, but BreadCrumbz is even better. Instead of getting directions, you get picture-based
routes so you know to turn at that huge oak tree or the building with the blue awning. Your
friends can make routes for you and record them with the camera and GPS.
There are not one, but
two, apps that basically do the same thing: compare prices and save us money. Using the camera,
you can "scan" the barcode of an item by snapping a picture. The app will then comparison shop
for you. You can read online reviews and even create price alerts if the price drops.
CompareEverywhere also lets you use the GPS to find nearby stores and then call them directly.
This one wasn't a grand
prize winner, but looks like a handy app to have around. With Teradesk, you can store files in
the cloud with file transfers that allow for pause control, resume, and full recovery of broken
transfers. You can share files with friends via Bluetooth and MMS and the app even integrates
with Google Docs.
There were several of
these "alerting" apps, but only one that won the grand prize. Life360 is an app that sends you
messages from your family and local community. You can be alerted to a danger in the community
(rapid dog on the loose!), but you can also just receive messages from family, too (mom's running
late today). This is a personalized alert system that displays only the messages you need to
hear.
No Google phone would be
complete without an app that lets us use GoogleTalk to IM our friends. Maverick lets you exchange
messages, location, and multimedia content in the form of audio clips, photos and scribbles
(drawings created on the mobile phone) with other Maverick clients, Gtalk users, or iChat users.
You can also use the app to publish content to Blogger.
Another case of having
two great apps for music. TuneWiki won the grand prize with their social music maps that displays
audio, video, and lyrics. You can also use the GPS to see what other people are playing nearby in
real-time. Although only a finalist, Diggin looks interesting, too. This app lets you listen to
thousands of streaming radio stations and downloads the album art for what you're listening to
automatically.
Did your co-worker miss
the meeting? Now you can get them up to speed with ShareYourBoard. Designed specifically to
capture and enhance whiteboard images with edge detection, geometry transformations and image
enhancement, ShareYourBoard takes great pics in any angle, any lighting, and with any type of
whiteboard or markers used.
Maybe you shouldn't have
those rockin' ringtones turned on at the office...and perhaps that wallpaper is a bit
inappropriate, too. Instead of having to adjust your profiles yourself is an app that knows how
to do so automatically. Using Android's built-in GPS, will let you set up "Situations" (like
At Work, At Home, In a Meeting, etc) which you can have automatically triggered by setting
conditions like location (via the GPS), time, or other conditions which you add. The app can then
adjust your ringtone, wallpaper, and other settings automatically.
Honestly we wouldn't care
what this app did, but it happens to be a "safe wallet" that stores sensitive information
(passwords, certificates, documents, conversations, notes, pictures, etc.). The info can only be
accessed through iris or handwritten signature based authentication. Oh come on! It does retina
scanning! We didn't get an Android phone to play space monkey games, now did we? This one
delivers pure geek cred.