01
Feb
2013-02-01_16h59_19

OpenFeint Co-Founder's OpenKit Launches In Private Beta Today, Promises Ubiquitous Game Save And Backup Services

Posted by in Applications, Games, News

If you've spent any time gaming on Android, you probably remember OpenFeint. Nearly every major game integrated it in some way, usually allowing players to log in with a single username, collect achievements, and post scores to a global leaderboard. It was handy for what it did, but if you didn't care about competing, it felt a lot like obnoxious spamware. Unsurprisingly, it closed down in December of last year. Today, however, it's being sort of reborn as OpenKit, a project headed by one of the co-founders of the original service. Only this time, the idea is much cooler.

For starters, OpenKit will provide one of the most desperately needed features in mobile gaming: cloud backup of game state and save data.

09
Nov
image

For Android Developers: Next Version Of Eclipse ADT To Include Auto Formatting Of XML

Posted by in Development, Gingerbread 2.3, News

I was browsing the Android commit tree, as I like to do at 3:20am sometimes, and I just saw a new commit by Tor Norbye with the following description that made my heart skip a beat: "Add autoformatting of XML." This little update may not mean much to the regular folks, but to Android developers, like myself, this has been a long requested feature.

About a year ago, I wrote this article: Auto Formatting Android XML Files With Eclipse, which described how easy it is to achieve uniform, formatted XML files in Eclipse while doing Android development. Since XML files comprise a very large portion of an average Android project (the whole app layout is XML based), keeping XML files tidy becomes a very important, but mundane task.

25
Aug
image

Deal Alert: Move Over, Vibrant - AT&T Samsung Captivate Now Also A Penny On Amazon.com For New Customers

Posted by in AT&T, Captivate, News, Samsung

Remember the $0.01 Samsung Vibrant deal Amazon put up last week in response to T-Mobile's $99.99 sale? After running for a few days, the promotion ran out (the Vibrant is now $69.99), only to be replaced by another one, this time for AT&T customers.

That's right, the Samsung Captivate now costs a cool 1 penny for new accounts and comes with a free activation and 2-day shipping. This is the best deal on this phone to date, and it will probably last only a few days, judging by how long it took the Vibrant deal to vaporize.

Hit up the AT&T Samsung Captivate AmazonWireless page to feed Amazon that penny and pick one of these bad boys up.

18
Aug
image

Deal Alert: T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant Free (OK, Fine - $0.01) On Amazon.com For New Customers

Posted by in News, Samsung, T-Mobile, Vibrant

Earlier today, T-Mobile ran a "huge" promotion, lowering the price of the Samsung Vibrant to $99.99 in an exclusive online deal. Since Amazon.com, Wirefly.com, and others have had the $99.99 price tag for ages now, we didn't give T-Mobile's deal much coverage (well, any coverage really). Many other sites did, however.

Seeing this, Amazon.com had a quick huddle this afternoon and came back with an even better offer of just $0.01 for new activations. That's 1 penny short of being absolutely free.

Sadly, upgrades are still $149.99 but those of you looking for that extra kick in the butt to switch over to T-Mo may have just run into the right boot.

12
Jun
EVO 4G DamageControl v3.0 - Fast, Improved Battery Life, Tweaks

[EVO 4G ROM] DamageControl v3.0 - Fast, Improved Battery Life, Tweaks

Posted by in Development, Eclair 2.1, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

What a day for EVO 4G ROMs! Hot on the heels of the release of Fresh ROM for EVO, another former HTC Hero ROM developer damageless, notorious for his DamageControl Hero ROM, announced his version for the EVO.

DamageControl v3.0 is damageless' and his partner TrevE's first crack at customizing the EVO and making it both faster and much more battery efficient. First, a little introduction:

I am proud to present the first DamageControl ROM for the HTC Evo!

The ROMs I release are always focused on stability, speed, and ease of use.

My partner, TrevE and I, continue to present ROMs that are easy to update through an application that is bundled with the ROM, DCUpdater (based upon cm-updater).

12
Jun
Fresh Evo 0.1d - Better, Faster, More Battery Efficient, With Bloatware Apps Removed

Updated: [EVO 4G ROM] Fresh Evo 0.2 - Better, Faster, More Battery Efficient, With Bloatware Apps Removed

Posted by in Development, Eclair 2.1, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

EVO 4G users, listen up! Flipz, the creator of one of the best custom ROMs for CDMA HTC Hero - Fresh ROM, has dropped his first version of a custom ROM for the EVO 4G a few hours ago.

The ROM is faster and more efficient than the stock ROM due to optimizations and bloatware removal (yup, the bloated apps provided by Sprint and some HTC ones are moved to the SD card and disabled!). It also comes with some visual changes.

Android 2.1 Eclair for now but will be updated to 2.2 Froyo as soon as humanly possible.

Of course, if you know Flipz, this is all just the beginning.