In a case study, the Android Developer Relations team today detailed recent improvements and optimizations made to TikTok for Android.
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After Rap Genius rebranded to just plain ‘Genius’, their mission expanded beyond one genre of music to annotating every piece of text in the world. However, they still maintain a vast and up-to-date collection of music lyrics. An update to their Android app recently added the ability to know what song is playing on your phone and display the accompanying lyrics.
Update: Google is holding an “Ask the Experts” session today, June 3rd, at 2PM PDT where Sebastian Thrun, Peter Lubbers, and Jocelyn Becker from Udacity and Google will be answering user-submitted questions about the Android Nanodegree program. The Q&A session will be live-streamed on YouTube and there’s also a form where you can submit any questions you may have.
Yesterday Google’s Sundar Pichai said on stage at the company’s I/O conference that 8 out of every 10 phones that shipped worldwide last year were running Android, and that 600 million new smartphone users came online over the past year. That’s a lot of devices running the company’s smartphone OS, and they really want developers to realize the potential of their apps reaching that many people. So much so that they spent over $4 million developing an extensive Android development course in partnership with Udacity.
Today, Facebook is announcing a major overhaul to its Android SDK with the release of Facebook SDK 3.0 Beta for Android. As it recently did for iOS developers, it is also launching a new Android Dev Center with resources and tools for integrating Facebook into mobile apps. In a blog post on the company’s Developer Blog, Facebook’s Michael Marucheck said the new SDK “makes it easier to build more immersive social experiences, as well as better distribute and promote your app.”
With this update, our SDK provides advanced functionality that makes it easier to build more immersive social experiences, as well as better distribute and promote your app. With our SDK and Open Graph, now it’s even easier to get more people to install and use your apps regularly.
Some of the new features in the Beta include: new native UI controls, simplified session management with new tools for authorization and authentication, and better Facebook API support with batch SDK requests, enhanced Mobile install measurement to “measure clicks and installs for mobile app install ads,” and other improvements.
Facebook highlighted some of the new native UI controls included in SDK 3.0 that are “more efficient and responsive” for web developers than web dialogs:
The Register is reporting that Google has shut down the Android developer forums, a place where Android developers could once get support on the apps they were building — in a public manner. The one downfall to the forums was the fact there was no official help from Google, but this new way will certainly remedy that. Developers who need help will now be required to email Google directly for support.
The Register points out this move could have been made by Google in order to save face. One example they give is when developers were complaining on the forums for not receiving payments owed to them. Google eventually resolved the issue, but the complaints would remain there forever. At any rate, Google’s new way will probably suffice.