It you want access to all of the apps on the Android platform (including all of Google’s great apps) on your Kindle, you’ll want to get the Android Market on there. Once rooted, it is a pretty straightforward process as outlined in the steps below. Is the Kindle going to replace the Nook as the go-to cheap hacking Android Tablet?
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At a meeting with investors yesterday, Logitech’s CEO Guerrino De Luca didn’t hold back while talking about how Google TV has affected their business. Luca said that Google TV ‘cost us dearly’, and that developing the set-top box was a mistake. He also dropped the bomb that Logitech will be letting their supply of Revues run out this quarter and won’t develop any more or be manufacturing a follow-up device either. Ouch.
Luca does believe, however, Google TV has a chance sometime in the future, but said it needs some work. He went as far as saying Google TV is currently like a beta.
Even with the recent 3.1 update, we’re going to have to side with Luca on this one. Google TV is still missing many key features to disrupt the television industry. It’s going to take more innovation, content deals, and devices to get the ball rolling. (via The Verge)
Atari has released their “Greatest Hits” collection to the Android Market. The app is available for $.99 and includes a nice selection of titles available to play. Titles include Missle Command, Asteroids, Battlefield, and Centipedes. And if you’re a huge Atari fan, you can download all 100 games for $9.99.
Check out the trailer after the break:
The new Android Market version 3.3.11 has begun being pushed to Android handsets. The new update adds a ton of welcomed features, and what seems to be the most welcomed feature is the auto-updating of apps over Wi-Fi — which rids away of having to go back into the Market every time a new update is pushed. 3.3.11 also allows you to select the app being downloaded to automatically set an icon on your homescreen. Other tweaks include voice search inside of the market and a new app drawer.
While you’re waiting for the update to be pushed to your device, you can go ahead and give it a try by downloading it here. We must worn you, though, that the manual install doesn’t work well on tablets and has a few bugs on handsets. Let us know in the comments down south if you’re seeing the update. (via Android Police)
Head on past the break for a full gallery:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y7pE9UTTfy4]
GoogleTV updates should be happening any second now. We’ve just got the following email from Google:
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Spotted by TechCrunch, music.google.com begins to confirm rumors of Google’s new Music store that will drop in a few weeks. The webpage loaded on an Android device drops a hint at purchasing music through the Android market. As you can see in the image above, the webpage says, “Get songs from your favorite artists in Android market, or hundreds of free tracks.”
Currently, Music Beta is only available on the Android Market to those in the beta. The beta currently only features uploading of songs and not actually purchasing them . Purchasing is a rumored feature that is rumored to come out in the next two weeks with Google Plus integration.
According to a study by research2guidance, the Android Market has exceeded 500,000 apps submitted and successfully published. The study shows with over 500,000 apps published in September 2011, the Android Market is not too far behind Apple’s App Store which has surpassed just over 600,000 apps. Research2guidane also discovered that Android developers on average publish more apps than iOS developers — a 3:2 ratio.
Interestingly, the Android Market has more removed apps after they’ve been published reports research2guidance. 37% of apps published to the Android Market were removed for various reasons, while 27% were removed from the iTunes App Store in September.
At any rate, Android is certainly gaining on iOS. But does any of this really matter? Isn’t about who has the apps that people actually need most, rather than the fart apps?
Over the past 60 hours, Chinese officials have begun blocking Gmail and the Android Market running on Android devices reports Penn Olson. In the report, Penn Olson says that Gmail can’t send a single email and the Market is incredibly slow, making it utterly useless. The ban is currently taking place across many ISPs and mobile carriers around the country.
As the report mentions, this ban won’t affect that many Android users in China. Many use other email providers and other app markets that have been made available. But at any rate, why would China begin to make this move? Now there’s no confirming this.. but what if it was a possibility:
Come to think of it, it might be related to how Google+ this weekend enabled the Dalai Lama to chat with the Archbishop Desmond Tutu – a virtual equivalent of the planned face-to-face birthday meeting in South Africa that Chinese authorities were so utterly desperate to stop.
..just a little something to think about.
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The season is almost over, but Amazon’s Appstore has MLB ’11 for free today only. If you want to catch the home stretch of the season, make sure to get in on this deal. Only the devices belo will be able to stream video…
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Google has posted more information on their Android Developers Blog this afternoon shedding more light on prepping Honeycomb apps for the release of Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich is due out in the coming months, as confirmed by Eric Schmidt. Google outlines the main problem that needs to be addressed is that Honeycomb apps are set to be on a larger screen, and since Ice Cream Sandwich will be on smaller screens there needs to be changes.
So, if you’ve developed a tablet app on Honeycomb, it’s important that your app do one of two things: prevent installation on smaller screens or (preferably) support smaller screens with the same APK.
Obviously, you could choose to only have your app run on a larger screen, but in most cases we’d imagine you’d want it compatible on both a small or big screen. We’ll save you from getting the code from us, so we’ll direct you to Google’s full post.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-VARh15ZJE&feature=player_embedded”]
LinkedIn has announced a new HTML 5 optimized page for mobile browsers and updated iPhone and Android apps with 2-10X speed increases.
The new app is now focused around four key areas: Updates, Inbox, You, and Groups & More.
The Inbox will allow you to view your messages and invitations in one centralized location. The You area presents your profile, connections, and to share updates. Lastly, LinkedIn is now introducing their most requested feature Groups, into the app.
Interestingly, LinkedIn also announced their mobile platform is growing 400 percent year-over-year. Check it out in your mobile browser, or hit the download links below:
CBROnline relays a new Strategy Analytics report that spells another victory for Google as its mobile bazaar is projected to become bigger than Apple’s App Store in terms of items available before the end of the next year:
According to Strategy Analytics’ new application storefront forecast the Android Market is poised to overtake the Apple App Store in quarterly volume by the end of 2012.
This shouldn’t be a problem considering that Google’s Android Market is getting additional assistance from third-party app stores such as the Amazon Appstore for Android, GetJar, Nook and others. Apple as of July 7 reported 425,000 apps on the App Store that have been downloaded 15 billion times on 200 million iOS devices, generating $3.6 billion in revenues. A week later Google said Android Market saw six billion downloads across the 130 million Android devices sold to date and more than 500,000 device activations per each day.
Paid downloads on mobile app stores should drive nearly $2 billion per quarter by the end of next year, the research firm said. “Applications are a multi-billion dollar industry on their own and are playing an increasingly important role in the phone purchase process, and play a key role in augmenting platform stickiness, after the operating decision has been made”, says the report.
To cope with fragmentation of their Android OS, Google has revealed on the Android Developers Blog they are now allowing multiple APK support. Historically, Google only allowed one APK file that would in some cases work on only a number of phones.
With multiple APKs, Developers can now build their apps for different screen sizes, processors, and other hardware capabilities. When a user downloads an app from the Market, they will be automatically assigned the APK that best matches their phone. On the Market all of the versions of the app will be aggregated into one for ratings, reviews, and listing. Google notes what devs need to know:
To support this new capability, we’ve updated the Developer Console to include controls for uploading and managing APKs in a product listing — we encourage you to take a look. If you’d like to learn more about how multiple APK support works, please read the developer documentation. As always, please feel free to give us feedback on the feature through the Market Help Center.
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Engadget is reporting that Dell has pulled the 5-inch Android tablet/phone Dell Streak in order to perform updates. Dell’s PR crew wouldn’t say anything, but a customer support agent was happy to declare that the Streak hasn’t been killed — just receiving an update. The agent also told Engadget it’s an issue in the Android OS. While you can’t order it now, the Dell Streak should be back on shelves early August.
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You probably remember Google Video, the search giant’s free video sharing site? It launched on January 25, 2005, but Google discontinued the ability to upload videos four years later following the YouTube acquisition on October 9, 2006. The company has re-branded the service as Google Videos and made it a search silo. It looks Google is now prepping a dedicated smartphone app dubbed Google Videos, reports the Android Central blog. This one has nothing to do with user-created videos – for that purpose, Google provides YouTube apps for various smartphone flavors.
According to tipsters who spotted the Google Videos app briefly in Android Market (it’s gone now), the software is basically a pretty front-end to Google’s upcoming movie rental service which was announced back in May at Google I/O 2011. Google said movie rentals would first roll out on the Xoom tablet and promised support for more devices, including Android 2.2 smartphones. Movies can be rented on Android Market starting at $1.99 and are available for offline viewing and across all Android devices and computers tied to the same Google Account. Check out the Google Videos app running on a Nexus S in the below clip.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaOhLpsoCA0]
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Fortune has a great Android article up from the magazine today called 100 million Android fans can’t be wrong. It is good to see the Android news going mainstream.
Finally, Google is adding device compatibility checks to its mobile bazaar. This much-needed feature checks system requirements of an app you want to download against your device hardware and software information. As a result, you can tell whether that latest game or entertainment app supports your device before you download. This should also help eradicate problems with non-techies downloading programs that are not designed for their device or don’t run very well. The enhancement is being rolled out as we speak, AndroidCentral claims.
We’re not going to prognosticate on what a $100 price drop means for the Logitech GoogleTV. We’ve been hearing mighty nice things about the Honeycomb update that is in the works for this summer in fact. But we thought you should know that Amazon has lopped of $100 which makes this Intel-based 1080P machine a pretty good bargain.
Update: Best Buy has matched the $200 price and Sony also offers the Sony BluRay GoogleTV for $260.
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If you missed big announcements from today’s Google I/O 2011 keynote, don’t sweat – here’s your recap of key takeaways. Google executives first touted 100 million Android activations so far and about 400,000 new devices being activated each day. Other mind-boggling stats include 200,000 free and paid applications on Android Market and 4.5 billion downloads since Android’s launch less than three years ago. That was just a warm-up for big announcements, though…