Android UK News, Reviews and Allsorts » Developer

OpenFeint coming to Android, taking games to a whole new level

Togsy — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:20:57 +0000

One if the one of the major criticisms of Android is the comparably smaller choice of games when compared to the iPhone. This looks set to change as Openfeint, who have nearly 10,000 developers with several thousand iOS games such as Fruit Ninja, Ninja Chicken and iCopter are planning to bring their games to Android by the end of the summer. They look set to provide an Android SDK( software development kit) which will allow developers to rollout apps to both platforms very quickly.

This is great news for Android as hopefully this will encourage more iOS developers to join the open-source community to develop even more great games for Android. I don’t know about you, but I would love to see more addicting games like Angry Birds to really bring the Android gaming to the same level as iPhone.

With more games on the horizon, this will hopefully encourage Google to make the Market more user friendly and easier to search, after all there is no point having the best games in the world if you can’t find them.

Only time will tell to see how much of an impact this has on Android- we are sure that it will be a win!

Transport for London gets smart and frees its data

Android UK — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:57:53 +0000

Transport for London( TFL) has taken the fantastic first steps in opening up its data to developers to incorporate into their apps which they sought keen to let the world know via the London Metro Newspaper. Its great to see a large government organisation taking things to the next stage and by releasing its data, will allow developers to build useful, relevant and reliable apps that will better serve its customers, the London commuters (and me!)

Data currently available without seeking extra permissions include various live data and geolocation feeds including

Tube – this weekend
Licensed private hire operators – Find-a-ride- for Find a taxi applications
Live traffic camera images-
Station locations-
Tube – this weekend
Pier locations
Oyster Ticket Stop locations

This will be extended to include forthcoming bicycle scheme and eventually include bus timetables into the equation too.

Plinkart becomes first UK Google Mobile acquisition

Android UK — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:02:57 +0000

One major result from last year’s Android developer challenge was it allowed Google to tease out some great android products into the market. So far Google appears to have liked one UK originated idea so much they have bought the whole company.

Plinkart was founded by two guys, equipped with a Google- friendly PhDs, who decided to take visual search to the next level. Founded on a business model of linking their image database to allposters.com, they were hardly going to become rich off the back of flogging art.

What was of interest to the Goog was their implementation of visual search which hopefully when scaled into Google’s secret sauce could produce benefits for future android imaging products (like Google Goggles) They also were in the process of launching an api which if allowed to come to fruition could be built into a future iteration of android. Hopefully- Google’s aquisition, means that we are one more step closer to having a mobile phone that can understand the images that it is processing- and produce relevant data.

I was fortunate to be at one of the initial pre- ADC Plinkart presentations, where they described that the core algorithms that make up Plinkart could identify pretty much anything as long as it had a database. If this technology is eventually rolled into Google- proper it could produce powerful improvements with Google images and picasaweb.

Google’s core founding goal is to organise the worlds information and using plinkart, will produce some interesting theoretical results particularly when applied to a large image database such as google streetview. A future iteration of Google could be used to find and understand brands such as Tescos and Macdonalds and give an even more accurate classified listing. Add in character recognition and you could potentially build a database of Mexican restaurants in the UK, just by asking the right visual search question.

Traditionally us Brits have always been world leaders when it comes to generating new ideas and inventions. With weather like ours -what else could we do indoors when we aren’t at the pub? In fact you might not even be reading this if our Sir Tim wouldn’t have decided one day to invent the internet.The UK has always been passionate about technology and forerunners in mobile innovation- I think its about time UK government to start paying attention and encouraging the growth of these companies.

Hopefully the PlinkArt purchase will be the first of the next generation of winning UK based mobile companies who can show their worth on the world stage and flourish.

( Via Techcrunch)

Motorola sets up Appshop in China

Android UK — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:08:08 +0000

Looks like Motorola is rolling out its next phase in helping developers by launching its first Motorola App store in China. It is inviting submissions from app developers who are looking to cash in on the 1.3 billion populace country.

Motorola has one of the best Developer programs for Android in the form of the Motorola’s App Accelerator Program ( Join it here). It includes help with

free Application Testing,
localisation/ translation
programming through its great Motodev studio for Android
And now listing on their own App store.

Motorola has an exciting and rapidly expanding set of handsets, so the future really looks bright when it comes to dealing with them. Their current phone range in the UK includes the Motorola Milestone ( Motorola Droid in the USA), and the amazing Motorola DEXT handset. Future promises include tablets and more!

If you would like to submit your applications to Moto for inclusion just follow the link below:

Announcing SHOP4APPS in China.

Android Fragmentation: a Developers Persepective

Android UK — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:31:24 +0000

One of the largest single criticisms of Android often mentioned by Iphoners is the fact that there are so many different combinations and interations of Android and handsets that it becomes almost impossible to develope applications that will work on all of them.

Thanks to a tweet from Google’s Reto Meier I have finally been able to find a sane, response to this courtesy of Chris, the developer of the Replica Island App.

In his post, he lauds the fact that thanks to Android he was able to get his app on 13 different types of devices, without physically having to test on each device.

I don’t have regular access to all this hardware to test on, so when a phone comes my way I jump on it, install the game, and try it out. Excepting basic support for multiple screen sizes and input systems, I don’t have any device-specific code.

There is always going to be some minor differences in the way that the applications run, with some giving a much faster video performance, differences in the way that the controls operate or the screen size. The fact that you can use the same code on so many new and upcoming handsets, demonstrates that having a great app now is going to pay off in ever increasing returns.

Obviously the issue of which Android operating system is running is also something that needs to be noted, and thanks to Google’s Device Dashboard, developers can fully understand what softwar their users are running. At the moment, its shows a virtual 3 way split, between 1.5, 1.6 and 2.01. From the news thats been around, most devices are intending or have already made the jump to 2.01, so I think that this will become a non issue within the next couple of months.

The future is bright, so developers what are you waiting for?

Market and Checkout are hurting us say developers

Android UK — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:31:00 +0000

Looks like the people over at Skyhook Wireless have been busy.

Not content with just focusing on making android apps location aware,-they have been running a survey on whether developers are making money on Android over the past few months.

They were kind enough to release a detailed report on their findings which has confirmed the sentiment that Android developers are not happy with the platform.

The fundamental causes of this are down to :

low download volumes
poor marketplace design and discovery
lack of an effective consumer billing system. (aka developers hating google checkout)
Platform fragmentation( ie multiple versions of android running concurrently)

Personally what I find most interesting about the report is the volume of downloads. Most of the developers surveyed had been downloaded only 10,000 times which considering the number of handsets sold is a staggeringly poor amount. The other key highlight is that 6 months after release the number of new downloads has virtually evaporated.

This report only covered 30 developers however having spoken to a lot of developers, and watched a lot of the twitter posts on #android, I can see these same sentiments echoed and I think that Skyhook have hit the nail on the head.

So what can be done? In order to grow the android platform, its important to have quality there. The only way that we are are going to see quality apps is if developers can make a reasonable return.

I would urge Google to continue to improve the market ( Android 1.6 was a good start) and focus on allowing other ways to allow people to pay for apps. ( Paypal integration would be a quick easy fix ?)

On the counterside of the argument- developers shouldn’t be frightened to use blogs, twitter and forums to market their products. It would be great to have an app go on the market and job done, however its important to realise that building a killer product is only the first step: User testing, Marketing, press releases are all going to become developers best friends in the next few years. The marketplace is getting crowded and developers need to learn to shout louder to get attention.

Take a look at the report below, and feel free to email or comment back to let me know what you think. If any developers or readers want to shout about their application to me, I would love to listen – feel free to contact me by clicking the link above!

View the Skyhook Developer Report via Skyhook Wireless

London Android Conference is Go!

Android UK — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:00 +0000

Attention developers- Time to pack your bags and head over to London for the Android party of the year.

After a great droid conference in Berlin, it looks like we are going to finish of the year with one in swinging London. The Conference will be made up of a Free Barcamp type meetup followed by a ticketed day conference. ( there will be a limited number of discounted tickets available- just checkout my twitter feed)

For those that are going to attend, you can look forward to rubbing shoulders with loads of fellow droiders with opportunities to network, learn new tricks and to hopefully try out some fancy hardware. Some of the highlights to meet up will be the Marketplace app gurus the Openintents people, Novoda, the UK conference organisers and of course the Zii labs, originators of the famous Zii- Egg, which will no doubt be taking the market by storm (Can I have one??)

Here are the links to the Skillsmatter websites, where you can register

Droidcamp – London Android Barcamp 1nd Dec
http://skillsmatter.com/event/os-mobile-server/droidcamp-london-2009
Droidcon – London Android Conference 2nd Dec
http://skillsmatter.com/event/os-mobile-server/droidcon-london-2009/wd-451

For those looking to find out more here is the initial planned line up:
09:30-10:00    Welcome!
10:00-11:00     Advanced Audio Development in Android – Andreas Reuterberg and Alex Shaw
11:05-11:50     Comparative Analysis of Object Orientead and Procedural Programming methodologies on the Android Platform – Akshay Dashrath
11:55-12:40     Zii Labs – "Zii Architecture" A presentation on OpenGL ES
12:40-13:40     LUNCH
13:45-14:30     Parkbench panel
14:30-15:15     Understanding Android bytecode with the Dedexer tool. Presented by Gabor Paller who writes the blog "My life with Android " and creator of Dedexter. – Gabor Paller
15:20-16:05     RJDJ – Martin Roth
16:10-16:55     Future of Mobile – Yan
17:00-17:45     Parkbench Panel
17:45-18:00     Thank you + prize raffle / competition results

Looking forward to having a pint with you all!

Win Free Android Training/ London Droid Conference

Android UK — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:08:35 +0000

After an amazing response to our survey, we are now down to our final few days before we draw the winner of the free Android Classroom Training and training books. We will be doing our final draw on Thursday 24th at 8.00pm so be sure to have filled out our survey before then by clicking the link below

Fill in the Great Android Developer Survey now to be eligible to win!

For those of you interested in finding out more information about the course, here is full details:

Developing Mobile Applications with Android – 3 days
This course provides a fast track to applications development with Android; the exciting new open source platform for mobile wireless devices. Extensive, hands-on practical exercises are included throughout. Developers first learn about Android fundamentals followed by the development tools and user interface that make this Linux based platform unique. Here you will see how easy it is to start developing and testing Android applications. The course is authored by Diego Torres-Milano, founder and CTO of COD Technologies Ltd., a company specializing in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) consultancy services, software development and Commercial Open Source, mainly in the areas of Mobility, Server-Based Computing and Thin Clients. He also maintains a popular android blog at http://dtmilano.blogspot.com/
Full details of the course can be found at http://skillsmatter.com/course/os-mobile-server/developing-mobile-applications-with-android/ng-219

I am also pleased to let you know that the first UK Android Conference will be happening right here in London in less than 3 months! Droidcon London, is currently looking for developers to submit papers and talks for the this first conference scheduled for December 3rd. In addition to talks, it will provide a great opportunity to meet other developers and people interested in Android and hopefully prop up some bars with your new buddies!

Visit the Droidcon London information page to find out more!

About Skills Matter:

Skills Matter provides europe’s largest selection of open source and agile training and events. We support the Android community in a number of ways including sponsorship of the London Android User Group which meets once per month at Skills Matter. We also deliver Android training and are co-organising droidcamp London on 1st December and droidcon London on 2nd December – two community focussed android developer events taking place in London. For more information on Skills Matter please visit http://skillsmatter.com/go/home/ng-219

Android Great Developer Survey- Win Free Training and other prizes!

Android UK — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:12:44 +0000

Now that Android has been out for nearly a year and it has reached the stage where we should be looking at what has been achieved over the last year. My particular goal is to determine the state of the developer ecosystem as it is now. When I meet developers and googlers (usually at one of the London Meetups) I always like to ask questions about who is developing for Android and what is being developed and no one is able to give me a comprehensive answer.

Now that we are approaching the release of Donut, I felt that it was time to take this discussion to the next level and roll it out as a full blown survey to try get a clearer picture. ( I still want to hear from individual developers- so if you have something to say or share, please feel free to email me via the contact form above)

To this end I have joined up with Skillsmatter ( The UK Training House) and Android Developer Directory ( a new listing service by launching in October) to put together a short survey that should take you no longer than 5 minutes to do. I personally hate spam and I will keep all your data strictly confidential and will not sell it or give it to 3rd parties.

To also thank you for participating and sharing you will be eligible to win :

A free place at an Android Developer Training course at the end of September ( Valued at £625.00) – Skills Matter are running a training course for developers with a Java background who wish to learn how to program apps for mobiles in Android.
2 prizes of 50gbp worth of android developer books ( provided by Androidbloke.co.uk!)
A free founders listing on the Android Developer Directory when it launches in October.

To participate in the survey please follow this link.

About SkillsMatter Android Training in September

LEARN HOW TO:

Understand the workings of the fundamental Android architecture, platform framework and emulator.
Know how to setup the development environment and run an application.
Know how to use the main components of Android APIs, the building blocks of the Android platform.
Know how to externalize and manage resources.
How to analyze and design an Android application.
How to use location based services for your application.
Know how to integrate the Google Maps interface into your application.
Know how to run and debug an application.
Know how build connection, exception management and security into an Android application.
Know how to develop Web Applications/Services.
Frequent Q&A sessions also take place during the course

Visit Skillsmatter to find out more

About Android Developer Directory

For clients who are looking to find the right developer for their application, turn to the new Android Developer Directory- launching in October 2009. Be one of the founding members and get a free listing on the directory, including a gold profile!

( more about ADD soon!)

Location, location, location-based with Skyhook

Android UK — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:14:20 +0000

Looks like Skyhook Wireless is doing some wonderful things in the lucrative location based apps secotr. They have just partnered up with aloqa to bring out some great functionality that allows users to be notified of places, events and friends in close proximity to where they are. The software is currently available in beta form over in the US and Germany, and hopefully will be launched in the UK soon.

Skyhook’s other partnerships include:

TIE- a finance app that tracks the locations of your financial transactions. Strangely my wife’s transactions all seem to be around shoe shops
Sherpa- the local search app pioneered by Tmobile and Geodelic. Come on guys launch Sherpa in the UK please!
Find Starbucks – This is the app I use the most after my trusty news reader- it has built up quite a following of fellow coffee addicts! Its available now to download from the android market

I am very excited to see who else Skyhook will partner up with, as they have quite a comprehensive feature list that their software can add to developers’ applications including interactive tours and social networking.

My personal favored choice would be astrid as the thought of a truly location aware to do list is too tempting an offer to turn down.

Developers who wish to add location based functionality to their apps can click the link below to find out more information.