Artem Russakovskii - 78/125 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Artem is a die-hard Android fan, passionate tech blogger, obsessive-compulsive editor, bug hunting programmer, and the founder of Android Police.
Most of the time, you will find Artem either hacking away at code or thinking of the next 15 blog posts.

Follow @ArtemR

Feb

Sonos Controller App For Android Coming To The Market In March, To Be Demoed At MWC

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Sonos, a company that develops wireless speaker solutions, announced today that the official Android app was almost ready to rock your speaker setup and would be available soon.

Fully supporting multi-room configurations, the app will let you control music that is flowing to your Sonos speakers, sync all rooms to play the same song (hey, that's actually pretty cool), search your collection, control individual speaker volume, listen to online radio, and play music from a variety of services, such as Napster, Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, and LastFM.

The Sonos setup is not cheap - the flagship S5 wireless speaker costs a whopping $399 and the multi-room setup goes all the way up to $1000.

Feb

BBC iPlayer App For Android Goes Live In UK Market; First Order Of Business - Top Gear. Oh, And User Revolt

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Earlier this week, BBC teased us with some delicious news of the official iPlayer app for Android arriving later in the week. The app lets UK residents watch TV, listen to the radio, manipulate their favorites, and look up schedules of TV programs. Oh yeah, and it just went live in the UK Android Market.

Watch and listen to BBC TV and Radio programmes from the last 7 days

BBC TV and Radio programmes now on Android. Watch and listen live, or choose your favourites from over 400 hours programming from the last 7 days.
- Watch live TV
- Listen to live radio
- Scroll through and find Featured and Most Popular programmes
- Add programmes to your favourites and have them ready and waiting when a new episode or series is available
- Browse through the schedule for upcoming programmes

Sounds good, right?

Feb

INQ Cloud Touch Will Ship With A Keyboard Based On SwiftKey's Predictive Fluency Technology

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Cloud Touch, INQ, News

Yesterday, we saw INQ's Cloud Touch Android handset with deep Facebook integration revealed in all its socially introjected glory in an exclusive TechCrunch demo. Coming to Europe in May of this year and possibly to the U.S. after, the Cloud Touch will be taking aim at text-crazy teenagers and insomniac Facebook users who spend the better halves of their days prowling the depths of the largest social network in the world.

Erick Schonfeld, the reporter who conducted the interview, touched on the music app (which was replaced by Spotify), Facebook, more Facebook, and some more Facebook, but failed to mention the story behind the keyboard in this upcoming social hub of a phone.

Feb

Android 2.3.3 Update To Gingerbread Brings New NFC Capabilities (Including Writing/Transmitting) And Other Enhancements

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Gingerbread 2.3, News

When Gingerbread was launched back in December of last year, we learned that one of its main selling points was Near Field Communication (NFC) support, which allowed for NFC-enabled devices to communicate when placed near each other.

Using your Android phone as a credit card or sharing information by bringing 2 devices close to each other seemed like a dream come true until we found that NFC support in Gingerbread was actually quite limited - writing/transmitting was not possible and only a limited subset of reading APIs was available.

Today, Google announced a new Gingerbread update bearing version number 2.3.3. The update is concentrated mostly around NFC, introducing writing/transmitting APIs and support for a wider range of NFC standards.

Feb

26 Best (And 7 WTF) New Android Apps, Games, And Live Wallpapers From Last Week (2/1/11 - 2/8/11)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

Last Updated: September 1st, 2011

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

After reading your comments from last week, I've raised the standards for apps that make it into the list and split them into 3 sections: Apps, Games, and Live Wallpapers. Remember, I don't make the apps, so if you don't like any of them, don't shoot the messenger (although feel free to leave a comment and tell us how you feel about that).

I've also modified the template to include both AppBrain and official web Market links.

Feb

American Airlines Lands The Official App In The Android Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

While looking through the recent app list tonight, I noticed that not less than 2 hours ago, American Airlines landed its very own app in the Android Market.

Following the other big players in the flying business, American Airlines is now letting you:

view your reservation info
check in
access your mobile boarding pass - this is excellent
view your place on upgrade and standby lists
take pictures of where you parked (there are better ways, you know... *cough* GPS *cough* ParkDroid *cough*)
view your Elite status and progress
book flights
check flight status and schedules
play Sudoku (what the?..)

Not bad at all for what seems to be a great tool with a pleasant interface and thoughtfully positioned menus.

Feb

Get Ready For Augmented Reality Awesomeness - Qualcomm To Reveal Winners Of The $200,000 Challenge At MWC [Sneak Preview Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Development, News, Videos

Back in June of 2010, Qualcomm issued a developer challenge to geniuses all over the world to create the best next-generation augmented reality applications using their Augmented Reality SDK for Android. With an impressive $200,000 total prize value, it's no surprise that developers have jumped into challenge head-first.

Qualcomm is planning on announcing the winners and showcasing their apps on February 15th at MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, but in the meantime provided a sneak peak at some of the submissions, which, I guarantee you, will get you excited. Let's take a look and start anxiously awaiting the 15th:

Source: Qualcomm

Feb

Angry Birds Seasons Valentine's Day Update Is Live

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

As promised, Rovio Mobile rolled out an update to the Angry Birds Seasons branch of its extremely popular game, this time with lots of pink, hearts, and love all around. The Valentine's Day edition features 18 new levels as well as some new carefully hidden golden eggs, and will surely knock down today's productivity levels with ripples felt all over the world.

This is getting a little too pink for my liking... oh, who am I kidding? /starts playing anyway.

Download

Grab Angry Birds Seasons from the Android Market by clicking or scanning the link below:

Web Market link | Appbrain link

Source: Angry Birds Seasons

Feb

[Updated: Sold Out] Google I/O Public Registration Now Open

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Google, News

The tickets for Google's upcoming developer conference called I/O are now for sale to the public. They will go fast, so you may want to grab that credit card and start mashing away at the keyboard pronto. Public registration comes after a week of early registration, which was capped at 1500 tickets and ran out very fast. A total of about 5,500 tickets are said to be available, all expected to melt away very fast. So, what are you waiting for? Cough up the $450 and go, go, go!

Update: Google's servers are currently crumbling under massive demand:

Update #2: Google is aware.

Feb

[Update: Aired During The Super Bowl] Sony Ericsson's Leaked Xperia Play Commercial Redefines "Creepy"

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Sony Ericsson, Videos, Xperia Play (Zeus, PlayStation Phone)

Update: We're still getting over the fact that Sony Ericsson just aired a slightly longer version of this ad in front of the millions of people watching the Super Bowl - check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4lxuoGgbxs

Sony Ericsson's upcoming "PlayStation phone," the Xperia Play, has been leaking left and right pretty much since its inception, and therefore it's no surprise that its first official commercial was also reveals via a leak.

Droidnytt.no, a Norwegian Android fan site, published the following video showing our little green friend getting thumbs attached to his hands for easier game controller handling, all in the creepiest way imaginable.