market - 36/43 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Dec

Official Google Reader Android App Now In The Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Completely unexpectedly and without much fanfare, Google just dropped its official Google Reader app into the Market. I gave it a quick look and found that it's basically a great interface to the mobile version, lacking any advanced features (such as pre-caching) or settings.

The 3 great things about it are:

Google Reader login integration, which uses your phone's built-in Google auth, after you grant it permission. This means the app never asks for login credentials.
The app syncs everything with the web version very seamlessly.
It's fast and doesn't hang anywhere, unlike gReader.

Now the bad things:

As far as I can tell, there's no pre-caching or any kind of cache control at all.

Nov

[Editorial] Is Google Really Shooting Itself In The Foot With Android?

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Editorials, News

A few days ago, Harvard Business Review writer James Allworth posted on the HBR blog and argued that Google has effectively shot itself in the foot by making Android such an open system. To boil the 800 word post down, Mr. Allworth's argument is that the openness of the system has led to competitors taking the Google out of Android - namely, Baidu in China and Bing on Verizon. The issue is that Google's revenue comes from the ads on their services; consequently, a de-Googled Android would result in no income for Google. Further, there's another problem that he doesn't mention at all: Chinese carriers have replaced the Android Market with their own proprietary market.

Nov

AppBrain App Receives Major Update To v5

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, Apps/Games, Games, News

If you use AppBrain for all of your Android app downloads, then you'll want to update the app as soon as possible: the latest update to version five includes all of the following awesome new features:

Details page for every app
Related apps tab
Ability to share through any sharing app on your phone
Fast Web Installer now integrated
Fast Sync Widget

Unfortunately, the integration of the Fast Web Installer probably won't help thanks to the new Market update breaking it, but with plenty of other new features this update is still pretty substantial.

Source: AppBrain

Nov

Google's Latest Market Updates Nerf AppBrain’s Fast Web Installer

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, Games, News

The recent update to the Android Market had plenty of people excited about new features to be available in Gingerbread, but it seems like the update may have had some unpleasant side effects. The Appbrain Fast Web Installer feature, which allowed users to push application downloads to their phones straight from Appbrain.com, is now broken due to new security measures. Some naysayers may think that Google is going directly after Appbrain, but in reality, the reasons are much less nefarious. A security flaw that allowed one app to secretly install others was recently exposed by a security company, and the side effect of fixing it broke the Fast Web Installer.

Nov

NEC, Casio, And Hitachi To Jump Into The Android Game Next Year

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News

NEC, Casio, And Hitachi, known as NEC Casio Mobile Communications since their merger in 2009, have been pretty quiet about their Android plans so far. However, after seeing Panasonic take the plunge yesterday and announce its plans to enter the Android market in 2011, NEC Casio couldn't hold it anymore and spilled the beans today.

According to Keitai Watch, the company plans to begin selling Android devices starting with Japan in 2011, and the rest of the world in 2012. Out of the 12 million projected worldwide device sales, 50% or so would be smartphones, and 40% of them would be outside Japan.

Nov

[Updated] New Options In The Android Market App Publishing Interface: Promo Videos, High Res App Icon, Feature Graphics

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Apps/Games, Development, News

Whoa! Only a few hours after sending out a notification about a big Market maintenance, Google sneakily updated the Market publishing interface with a variety of new options, pointing to nothing less than an updated Market likely to launch very soon, probably together with Gingerbread. The presence of higher resolution graphics underscores Google's newly embraced support for tablets and TVs, and possibly suggests that Market web interface we've been waiting for since Google I/O is finally around the corner.

Here are all the new options available to developers publishing their apps, in addition to the 2 screenshots and the promotional graphic+text (I can't think of a place where the latter is used):

High Resolution Application Icon - 512w x 512h, 24 bit PNG or JPEG (no alpha).

Nov

Major 6-Hour Google Market Maintenance Coming This Thursday. What Could It Be For?

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Gingerbread 2.3, News

As a registered Android developer, today I, along with thousands of other devs, got the following email from the Android Market Support team. The email informed me that the developer console, which is the interface used for publishing new apps, will be unavailable this Thursday, November 18th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST. The customer-facing Market itself will continue working just fine (or so I hope at least), but no new applications or app updates will be allowed.

Now, what could this update be for? It could be as simple as the promised Market housekeeping that was announced 5 days ago, although it seemed far less serious, and I got the impression that it did not require any downtime.

Nov

Official Rhapsody App Drops On AppBrain, Sorta On The Market

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, News

Looks like the Rhapsody app has just dropped on the market, only... you can't find it by searching. However, barcode scanners work, so we're not really sure what's going on. The app itself seems to feature, well, just about what you'd expect:

*Download and offline playback of your playlists!
- Download playlists and manage your downloads through the My Playlists menu.
- New toolbar with download and other options on the playlist screen.
- Offline mode displaying unique UI and available menu items.
- Settings: Clear Pending Downloads from the My Playlists menu; Force Offline Mode or Remove All Downloads from the Settings screen.

Nov

Tim Bray Reveals Android Market Now Has Support For Developer "Draft Uploads," Recaps Previous Improvements

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Apps/Games, Development, News

Last night on the Android Developers blog, Tim Bray recapped a few improvements that have come to the Android Market since Froyo landed. Most of them (five out of the six) are old news by now, but the sixth is one we haven't heard about before:

Sixth, Market now has a “draft upload” feature; this removes a lot of the tension and strain from the app-update process. Get your screenshots and feature graphics and text and APK all squared away with as much editing as you need to, then update them all with one click.

Hardly a major improvement, but it illustrates the fact that they're still working on the market - particularly from the developers' side of things.

Nov

Verizon’s V CAST App Store Ripped Out Of The Latest Droid Incredible Update, Now Available For Download

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, News, Verizon Wireless

Verizon's announcement of a separate Big Red branded Android Market, called the V Cast App Store, sent shockwaves through the Androidosphere a month ago, with the general consensus being: "we don't want it." Of course, none of us could actually prevent Verizon from fragmenting our Market situation further (they've already done their part with the MOTOBLUR to help fragment the Android OS itself), so all we have to do is go with the flow and see what exactly Verizon's cooked up.

Rather than wait for the official release, the folks over at TalkAndroid have got their hands on the installable APK ripped out of the latest Droid Incredible OTA a few days ago.