12
Jul
Google App Inventor Promises App Creation For Android Without Programming Knowledge

Google App Inventor Promises App Creation For Android Without Programming Knowledge

Posted by in Applications, News

Google’s push for developer support knows no bounds. While they have previously used free phones to encourage developers to work with Android, they are now using an entirely different tactic – making everyone a developer.

App Inventor

How will they go about this? Through the just-announced App Inventor. Already in beta form, the program is designed to allow anyone to create fully functional apps for Android, without any programming whatsoever. Instead of using code, App Inventor allows you to choose from a set of blocks, which includes all the actions you are used to seeing in Android apps. In fact, the description is quick to point out all the things you can do with it:

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor.

02
Jul
image

New Yelp For Android v2.0 Arrives, Brings Mobile Check-Ins, “Monocle” Augmented Reality, Review Drafting, And A Bag Of Force Closes

Posted by in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews
Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

A notification about the new version of Yelp just popped up on my EVO, and without thinking much about it, I gave it a whirl. Ohh, version 2.0 - it must be bringing new features, I thought. Indeed, it was. And I'm in love with them.

New In Yelp 2.0

Here's the list of the most interesting stuff:

  • Mobile check-ins
  • "Monocle"
  • Review drafting (though not posting)
  • Adding photos, tips, and bookmarks
  • A brand new look
  • A bunch of force closes, which I hope would be fixed soon.

snap20100702_210911

As you can see the last part mentions force closes which happened to me when I didn't have a GPS signal, but once you see the new features, I'm sure you will forgive Yelp developers for the time being, until they roll out some fixes.

10
Jun
PSA: Reddit.com Mobile Site Revamped - Looks Great On Android

PSA: Reddit.com Mobile Site Revamped - Looks Great On Android

Posted by in Applications, News

Yesterday, Reddit (one of my most favorite community news sites on the web) launched an updated and completely revamped mobile site, supporting most of the functionality of the main website.

I checked it out in the Dolphin HD browser on my EVO 4G and found very pleasant to use. Here are some features that I saw present and a few comments:

  • there are larger, mobile friendly upvote/downvote buttons
  • messages, including compose, reply, and context functionality
  • viewing of your own profile and links related to each comment/submission (reply, collapse, permalink, parent, edit)
  • submission is there
  • search too
  • lots of space saved via context menus provided by little boxes with 2 down arrows
  • the view should autoscroll when you reach the bottom, though it currently doesn't work for me on Dolphin HD
  • full commenting works, including the little useful "help" link

You can access the mobile site via this shortcut: http://i.reddit.com or by appending .compact to any reddit url.

28
May
image

Amazon Kindle App For Android Demoed, Integrated Store Rumors Debunked [Post Google I/O Coverage]

Posted by in Applications, News

A few weeks ago we reported that the official Amazon Kindle app would be coming to Android, most likely this summer, with direct access to all your Kindle books and buying books from within the app using a special Android optimized store with wireless auto-delivery, which would set the app apart from its equivalents on some other devices.

App Demo At Google I/O

At Google I/O, I got to demo the app that Amazon was showing off, and managed to snap a few photos describing pretty much all of its functionality. Unfortunately, Amazon's rep was quite adamant about keeping the release date private, even when I offered them the EVO 4G I got in return (yeah, right!), and only quoted the already known "this summer".

25
May
tweetdeck1

Tweetdeck For Android, Privately Demoed At Google I/O, Is Coming "In The Next Few Weeks" - Will It Be The Best Twitter/Social App For Android? [Post Google I/O Coverage]

Posted by in Applications, News

Across from the Plaxo booth at Google I/O, where I was spending most of my time demoing our Gmail<->Plaxo contact sync, stood the Tweetdeck booth.

I absolutely love, love, love Tweetdeck, especially after the 0.34 update (which was announced during the I/O), so I took advantage of the opportunity to chat with the CEO and one of the engineers about Tweetdeck, some bugs I've run into, and future plans.

tweetdeck2 

It turned out that the next project in the pipeline, kept under wraps for now, was Tweetdeck for Android. And the CEO was happy to demo it for me, albeit not on camera.

18
May
Official Amazon Kindle Application Coming "Soon" To Android, Has Us Excited

Official Amazon Kindle Application Coming "Soon" To Android, Has Us Excited

Posted by in Applications, News

May 18th is starting with some great news for book lovers. Amazon has just announced that it would be releasing the official Kindle application for Android, available "soon".

The Kindle app is already available on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, PC, Mac, and BlackBerry, so Android is quite late to the party. Better late than never though - there is no WinMo app anywhere in sight.

Official Amazon Kindle Application Coming "Soon" To Android, Has Us Excited

Main Features

The Android application is, surprisingly, not going to be shy on features. In fact, some of them will one-up its counterparts on other platforms:

  • access all of your Kindle books without your Kindle
  • buy books right from within the Kindle app from a special Android optimized store and get them auto-delivered wirelessly - a feature that is not available on all devices
  • synchronize last page read and annotations between all devices using Amazon's "Whispersync" technology
  • preview books by reading their beginnings for free before buying

In order to use the app, you will need to use Android 1.6+ and have an SD card (Droid Incredible users, take note - your phone doesn't come with an SD card by default).

15
May
Google Voice Invites Now Available For Students

Free Google Voice Invites Now Available To Students With .edu Emails

Posted by in Applications, News

If you've been trying to get a Google Voice invite, you know how scarce these bad boys are. However, if you are a student with an .edu email address, you are in luck. Though it may not be the most well-timed release (exclusively for students near the end of the school year), this is still a huge plus for them.

To receive the service, all you have to do is sign up here with an e-mail address ending in ".edu", and wait for Google to send the free invitation "within 24 hours." 

What is Google Voice?

For those unfamiliar, Google Voice is a service that assigns you a phone number, provided by Google, to control and forward calls made to this number to your own multiple phone numbers.

14
Apr
Twitter Android app, image courtesy of neurosoftware.ro

Twitter Confirms Official Twitter App Coming To Android

Posted by in Applications, News

After last week's acquisition of Tweetie by Twitter itself, we've been kind of expecting this, and now it's official: Twitter is going to have an official Android application.

@ev, Evan Williams, Twitter's CEO made the announcement today at the company's first ever developer conference, called Chirp. He didn't specify whether the official app would be a ported version of Tweetie or a brand new application, or whether Tweetie developers would be involved in its development.

Tweetie produced clients for Mac and iPhone before getting acquired by Twitter on April 9th.

More details to come as new information trickles through.

02
Apr
Digg Android app

Digg Diggs Android!

Posted by in News

Social news sites are all the rage nowadays, and Digg.com is pretty much the one to beat.

A few minutes ago they graced us with an official Android app, hot on the heels of their iPhone app release.

The fact that Digg was working on an app wasn't much of a secret, due in part to the fact that a few beta testers also installed AppAware, which reported users installing something called "com.functional.digg.app".

I've gone ahead and attached a few screenshots I took for those that like to look before you touch, but the app is available now, in the Android Market, for free.

18
Nov
IMG_5082

Sprint And HTC Release The First HTC Hero Firmware Update 1.56: Fixes Major Bugs, Adds Small Tweaks

Posted by in Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, News, Sprint

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

Only 2 days after I posted the list of problems with my HTC Hero (The Not So Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: My List Of 20+ Problems With HTC Hero) Sprint and HTC released the first firmware update.

The Update

To update your Hero, go to Settings->About phone->System updates->Firmware update.

The update took about 10 minutes to install, weighed 3.7MB or so, and rebooted the phone twice - once to install and once to reboot after the installation, so make sure you don't need to make any important phone calls during that time.

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