Sony Ericsson is properly aware of the Android modding community and as opposed to other OEM&rsquos who try and squash it, they&rsquore performing their part to support support it. No matter whether it&rsquos developing a custom ROM or modifying the kernel, the Sony Ericsson Developer program is aimed at helping these devs cook up good and stable custom ROMs and they&rsquore beginning with a group of devs named &ldquoFreeXperia.&rdquo These are the guys responsible for creating custom ROMs based on CyanognenMod and porting/modifying them to various Xperia devices lke the Play and Arc.
Sony Ericsson was one of &mdash if not the first Android OEM to announce they would present the selection to unlock the bootloaders in their 2011 Xperia lineup. Karl-Johan Dahlström, Head of Developer Relations for Sony Ericsson and all about nice guy (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at E3 this year), has been performing a great job at keeping Sony Ericsson devices open thanks to his close perform with developers. According to Mr. Dahlström,
&ldquoWe firmly believe in the openness of Android and we are actually impressed by the massive activity shown in our items. By getting supportive and open, we hope to both learn from the open community, and also share expertise when that is feasible.
When it came to Sony Ericsson&rsquos involvement with the FreeXperia developers,
We were impressed by the passion shown and decided to assist out with some bits and pieces. A couple of proprietary solutions needed to be explained and we helped them with that. We also supported the group with approximately 20 devices, to make their work simpler.
Sony Ericsson would also like to remind you that unlocking the bootloader and loading a custom ROM on their devices will more than most likely void your warranty. A risk we&rsquove been willing to take given that rooting our G1&primes back in the day. For your standard, typical Joe Schmoe consumer, keeping your device is 100% stock is usually the wisest choice. Either way, it&rsquos refreshing to see the actions Sony Ericsson has taken to support the Android modding community and something other Android OEM&rsquos can definitely learn a thing or two from.
Guess who’s going to be giving 1 of the sessions at BlackBerry DevCon this year? I AM!! While it is not up in the session catalog just yet (need to be there by the end of the week), I’ll be on stage for a breakout session giving guidelines and tricks to BlackBerry developers in attendance on how to function with bloggers and the media to maximize the exposure of their app efforts. Here’s the overview:
Session Title:Working with Bloggers and Media Technical Level: General (Appropriate for ALL devs, whether or not beginner or advanced!) Type: Breakout Session
Abstract: Developers need to have to realize how they can leverage bloggers and social media to improve their good results with extremely small expense. Find out from one of the best professionals in the field, Kevin Michaluk, founder of CrackBerry.com on what the best guidelines and tricks are for engaging in this space.
Key Takeaways:
Learn what to do (and a lot more importantly, what NOT to do) in order to get a blogger’s attention and make positive your app gets the no cost publicity it deserves.
Learn how to engage with the BlackBerry enthusiast community to construct greater apps and a following of loyal users.
Discover what to do next. Acquiring your app announced and reviewed is only the beginning of the promotional procedure.
So if you are hitting up DevCon this year, be sure to checkout my session! You can maintain your eyes on the BlackBerry DevCon site for far more particulars as they emerge. And if you’re not heading to San Francisco for BlackBerry DevCon 2011, what are you waiting for? Register Now!! Hope to see you there!
That’s a lot of Froyo! The official Android OS version breakdown has been updated. While Froyo still continues to be the dominating version of Android with 59.4% of the pie, there are a few other interesting points that can be taken from this chart.
First of all, Gingerbread is growing. Looking back at March, Gingerbread only accounted for a measly 1% of the entire Android family of OS’, whereas now, it has 18.6%. We can only expect this number to grow, much like Froyo did late last year, with carriers and manufacturers pushing out new devices with 2.3 or updating current devices to 2.3. We should hopefully see 2.3 and 2.2 even out as the year progresses, as well as 2.1 disintegrate.
The saddening conclusion that can be taken from this chart is that Honeycomb is failing to sell. Back in March, with only the XOOM out, it barely made a presence with only 0.2%. Now, with quite a few Honeycomb tablets out, it still has just under 1% of the Android OS family. Hopefully, Android 3.2 will spark more interesting in Honeycomb.
HTC is launching HTCdev which is a program designed to support mobile developers. Along with that they have announced the HTC OpenSense SDK which will allow developers to create apps specifically for Sense 3.0. The framework will also provide APIs and sample code for 3D displays and the tablet pen.
HTCdev and HTC OpenSense SDK will launch together this summer.
Whether you are a fan or not of Sense, you have to give HTC credit for creating a very popular UI. In a world in which the manufacturers are fighting for differentiation, HTC clearly knows what they are doing. HTC feels very strongly about their creation and this is a good move that will make Sense even stronger in the Android world. The real question is if mainstream consumers are buying HTC phones because of Sense?
It’s not really the usual thing to do on a news site, but I feel that we should get more involved in development aspect of the community via apps, UI integrations, device ports, yeah you get the picture.
Which comes back to the reason for this post. If you have any of these things, meaning it can be an app, games, widgets or anything else. Actual ROMS are a little iffy seeing as Im limited to 2 devices I can’t really try them out (not saying if I didn’t get enough relevant input from the author and users that try it out that I couldn’t do a post), but anything I can physically try on my phone, even I have to flash it, I will try myself and give a quick look review on it. As everyone knows the key to development is trial and error, and you don’t always catch all the errors yourself, so why not take advantage of massive numbers of people troubleshooting for you.
Submissions need to follow a couple guidelines.
I’d prefer if it were your app, game, widget, etc.
Formatted as follows:
Name or Username you want credited
A credit link
A download link to the app in question, or attachment but it must be zipped
A brief description of what it is
To submit your apps email applicationsubmission [at] androidspin.com with [Review] as the subject. I’m only one person so you’ll have to bare with me if I get bogged down and it takes some time to get the review out.
It’s Unofficial – the Samsung Fascinate is finally running Froyo, albeit from the bright minds over at XDA-Developers. User “punk.kaos” managed to compile together the latest leaked Froyo ROM (DL30) for the Fascinate and has it available for download. It’s pre-rooted, and has all the normal Verizon/Samsung bloatware included so you can get the full experience of removing it as soon as the system loads!
Keep in mind that installing your own ROM can brick your phone if done improperly, so tinker at your own risk – especially since this dev is offering absolutely no support (or even requests for that matter) – so mod with caution! Head on over to the xda-developers forum to grab it and let us know how it works out for you in the comments!
A poll (pdf), conducted two weeks ago by Appcelerator and research firm IDC, polled more than 2,200 developers and found that 92% said that they were “very interested” in creating apps for the iPhone, while 87% answered the same for Android-based smartphones, a five point jump since the last poll three months ago.
“Android tablet development picked up 12 points, with 74% saying they were very interested,” said Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing at Appcelerator. Apple’s iPad, meanwhile, gained just three percentage points to 87% of the developers.
The quick climb by Android tablets in the survey, is largely based on the scores of companies saying at the Consumer Electronics Show last month that they would launch such devices this year.
With so many Android tablets slated to ship this year — by Schwarzhoff’s count, 85 were announced at CES earlier this month — so prices are expected to be lower than Apple’s iPad. That, reports ComputerWorld, translates into market share.
A couple of developers have tweeted on their Twitter accounts that they’re currently working on an official Froyo build for Samsung’s Fascinate. However, it’s not ready for you just yet, so please do forgive me for the teaser. But be patient folks, you’ve been waiting this long! Either one should be around the corner soon. The reason we’re even running with this post is because we find it interesting to note, which will come first? The official update from Samsung themselves? Or, the @punkkaos and friends’ build? The race is on. It should be “Fascinating”, get it? Alright, alright, geez. Tough crowd. Will you take the build if it comes before the official Samsung/Verizon update? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Yesterday we mentioned the Google Developer Day event that took place in Germany, but we didn’t come across this cool little bit of Android awesomeness until today. Looks like a group of 72 Android developers got together to set a blinkenlights world record using the Blinkendroid app. What exactly does that entail? Blinkendroid allows a singular image or animation to be displayed across many screens, turning each small display into part of a much larger one. But why should I attempt to explain it? See for yourself below:
The Mac App Store has launched with over 1,000 OS X applications. Our sister site Gadget Lab has more details on what that means for Apple fans.
One thousand apps for the launch is impressive, but what’s in it for web developers? Here’s a quick roundup of a few apps that Mac-loving web developers might want to check out (URLs point to the Mac App Store so you’ll need OS X 10.6.6 for the links to work).
iSlice (free) — This slick little app opens PhotoShop documents and slices them up. ISlice retains all the layer info in the Photoshop file so it’s easy to hide background layers and focus on what you need to extract. If you already own Photoshop there’s no point to this one, but if you frequently need to slice comps and don’t want to pay Photoshop’s hefty price tag, iSlice fits the bill.
OAuth for Mac ($3) — OAuth is pain if all you want to do is pull a bit of data out of say, the Twitter API. OAuth for Mac handles the OAuth calls for you and quickly generates a token. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it looks like it would be handy for testing and developing quick scripts.
Colorbender ($2) — A nice looking color-scheme generator with hex and RGB values. There are tons of free color-scheme generators on the web, but if you’d like a Mac-native version, Colorbender looks like it would fit the bill.
mColorMeter ($3) — Ever wanted to know what color your favorite website is using in its menubar? With mColorMeter you can just hover over any pixel on your screen and the app will tell you the value in RGB, Hex and Munsell colors.
Base ($17) — Base is nice-looking graphical interface for working with SQLite databases. It’s not cheap, but $17 seems a small price to pay if it means never having to work the sqlite3 command line again.
Gitbox ($40) — Hardly a day goes by without someone claiming there are no good Git GUIs. We haven’t tried Gitbox so we’re not endorsing it, especially at $40, but it does offer a very nice-looking graphical UI for Git. And the app comes bundled with the official Git binaries so there’s nothing extra to install — just download the app and start using Git. Great for the command-line-phobic, but seasoned Git users will likely turn up their noses at the price. (See this thread on Hacker News for some more thoughts on Gitbox.)
Honorable Mentions — There are quite a few apps in the new store that have been around forever. We love the all-in-one development tool Coda ($100), Text Wrangler (free), BBEdit ($125 currently on sale for $99) and Pixelmator ($30).
The biggest downside to Apple’s new App Store for Mac is that there are no trial versions of the software. For that, you’ll have to head to the developers’ site and (assuming there’s a trial version available) download a good ol’ .dmg file.
Over the on the BlackBerry Developer Blog, Prosanta just posted a video look at the BlackBerry PlayBook SDK and walks through porting apps over to the BlackBerry Tablet OS. Watch the video above for more info and check out this post for more info.
Let’s get on it devs… we know the browser on the BlackBerry PlayBook is going to kick butt, but we want to see a ton of apps at launch too!
I’ll admit that I have some mixed feelings about the new Android Market that is being slowly pushed, but it seems that some developers are also unhappy with the changes. One of the biggest complaints right now is the Developer Console, which seems to be very buggy and not properly displaying apps. Here are some examples:
I’m sure as the new Market hits more and more devices, we may start seeing some additional complaints from both users and developers alike. Are you a developer and are having issues with the new Android Market? Leave us a comment below and share your thoughts and experiences.
Android app developers are going to love this character limit increase because it actually gives them enough space to properly describe their app in the Market. What once was 325 characters is now 4000, and after the “Recent Changes” was added to the market, this allowed more space reserved for actual descriptions rather than update/bug fix information when new versions were published to the Android Market. This may be so much space that the Developers of the Twitter app may not know what to do with more than 140 characters! Kidding.
Yes, that’s 10 times more space, and for the effect, you’d have to Tweet 28.5 times to hit that many characters. Cool hey?
French software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru, a developer on the Android Open-Source Project tweeted earlier this morning that Gingerbread will be in AOSP shortly after shipping to the masses. What does this mean to you? It means Pure Android on your device! Nothing against HTC’s Sense UI or Samsung’s TouchWiz, but sometimes you just want some plain ol’ stock (aka – Vanilla) Android. If Sense and Wiz aren’t your forte, then this just might be down your alley. It’s a real treat to see Gingerbread following Vanilla, Cupcake, Eclair, and Froyo, being codded off of the AOSP platform. Developers and users alike will certainly not be complaining. What’s your skin of choice? Sense? TouchWiz? MotorBlur? Does one trump over another? Or perhaps just AOSP? Let us know in the comments below.
In the slew of new things to be included in Android 2.3 Gingerbread, here’s one that the devs will love. It’s a new feature called “StrictMode”, and is designed to monitor an app as it works and watch for calls, commands, or other app functions that could end up slowing things down on your device. According to the Android Developers Blog, it is made to:
detect disk writes
detect disk reads
detect network usage
on a violation: log
on a violation: crash
on a violation: dropbox
on a violation: show an annoying dialog
So what does this mean, specifically? It means that developers will now be able to find out what causes slowdowns and bottlenecks in their apps that would ultimately cause an app to crash or force close. This means a better app experience, and more stable apps in general for the end user. Looks like Google is all about the apps, and they plan to stay that way. Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments!
OpenFeint, a social platform for iOS games, has announced OFX, a new service that allows developers to sell additional content within a game without having to submit an update to Apple.
I had the opportunity to spend Thursday at DIG 2010, the Digital Interactive Gaming conference, held in my home town of London, Ontario (Canada). While it’s always interesting to hang out with gamers and the people who design, build and publish games, it’s even cooler when an event of this caliber is only a fifteen minute drive from my house. After dropping the kids off at school on Thursday morning, it was time to head downtown and get my game on.
DIG 2010 (Photo by Brad Moon)
This conference has been held in London for several years now, recognizing the fact that the city is developing into a recognized video game development hub, thanks to a growing number of local studios like Big Blue Bubble (Thumpies, I Spy Universe) and Digital Extremes (Unreal Tournament, Dark Sector, Bioshock for PS3, Bioshock 2), not to mention a well respected game development program at the University of Western Ontario. Actually, one of the cooler aspects of DIG was the level of student involvement in the conference. Sure, there were plenty of opportunities to sit down and play new titles on big screens, but the conference organizers intentionally make the event accessible to students through discounted passes and many of the panels are on topics that would be of considerable interest to someone considering a career in the video game industry. This approach benefits the students by helping them to tailor their education and training to meet what developers need, while the local industry benefits through the availability of skilled talent. I was impressed by the questions students were asking during sessions and by the candor offered by the panelists.
A number of industry trends were reviewed, which is not surpassing considering the tumultuous year video gaming has had. One in particular that hit close to home was the reliance of digital download games (primarily casual titles for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) on blogs for promotion since, under the current publishing model, digital download titles don’t typically have a significant marketing budget. We get a ton of review requests from App Store developers, so this makes sense. For those of you who might be considering a career in gaming or who have kids who are looking in that direction for a career, there was plenty of advice. While a solid education from a recognized educational program is high on some developers’ lists (and some I spoke to pretty much take degree-bearing applicants only), enthusiasm and a portfolio are important too. And despite highly publicized layoffs at studios this year, industry analysts are shrugging those off as being minor in the grand scheme of things, with industry growth rate projected to be 5% or higher per year for the next decade. Cities are scrambling to land video games studios, governments are offering generous tax incentives to studios and salaries are pretty decent. Seems like a good field to go into- just don’t expect to take shortcuts or land a dream job after a 3 month course run out of a strip mall.
Unfortunately, I was sick on Thursday night (falling ill suspiciously quickly, unexpectedly and less than a day after having my flu shot- not going there, but the timing does make one wonder), so I missed the second day of DIG. I leave you with a quote from Frozen North’s Julian Spillane on the concept of starting up one’s own video game development studio: “Don’t listen to people who call you stupid or crazy -unless you are.”
Those waiting for iOS 4.2’s public release may have to sit tight just a little longer: in a surprising move, Apple on Thursday released to the developer community a Golden Master (GM) build of 4.2.1.
Last night I ventured into New York City to check out an event being held for the BlackBerry Developers Challenge. There they announced all the regional winners (four in total) that will be moving on. The participants competed for over $1.5 in prizes. The regional winners are:
North America: Poynt
Latin America: Vlingo Plus
Asia Pacific: Love Indonesia
EMEA: UbiNav EU
You can check out a video from the event above. All in all some great stuff from all of these super apps. Congrats to all the winners! Keep reading for the full press release.
As we mentioned a little while back, Research In Motion is starting up their series of five webcasts to help get developers started on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The first of the five “Develop for the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR” webcasts will actually be held tomorrow and will guide you through the process of installing, setting up BlackBerry PlayBook SDK and get you started on building applications. Research In Motion experts will be there as well as Adobe experts to answer any questions you may have throughout the process.
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010 Time: 2:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST Presenters: Prosanta Bhattacherjee, Application Development Consultant, Research In Motion Limited and Renaun Erickson, Adobe Developer Evangelist, Adobe Systems Incorporated
We’ve already got to see a ton of great PlayBook apps from developers around the world and this, is just the beginning. Be sure to sign up for the webcast series if you’re interested in learning more about developing PlayBook apps.
Following up the live demo of the BlackBerry PlayBook yesterday at the Adobe MAX conference and the news from RIM’s Co-CEO about developers making PlayBook apps getting a free PlayBook, RIM has followed up with some more information on their BlackBerry DevBlog to help clarify things:
There has been a lot of excitement about the BlackBerry PlayBook developer promotion announced by Mike Lazaridis at Adobe MAX this week. Further details about the promotion will be posted on our developer site as soon as possible, but the plan is to provide one free BlackBerry PlayBook to every registered vendor with a BlackBerry App World-approved AIR application that is available for the BlackBerry PlayBook prior to launch. The applications will need to meet the BlackBerry App World Vendor Guidelines and there will of course be some terms and conditions that are principally designed to prevent abuse of the promotion, but the intent is to reward developers who are working on apps in advance of the product launch. We’ll keep you posted. Now get building those apps!
So there you have it. Developers get your AIR applications on!! It would be great to see a BIG catalog of apps be available at launch, and this is definitely a nice incentive offered by RIM. Also nice to see from RIM… CrackBerry quotes on their BlackBerry PlayBook page. Keep it coming RIM… the future is looking bright.
Google TV is out and the search giant behind it is giveaway happy. To promote development on the platform Google is handing out TV devices to any web developer even remotely interested, starting with a whopping 3,000 Logitech Revue units passed out at today’s AdobeMAX event. The rest of the Google TV devices will be passed out to developers plucked from the Google Code community. Yeah, they are looking for just about anyone who even mentions Google TV.
If you are a developer who missed MAX and isn’t active on Google Code, you can simply submit an entry to the Google TV Web Developer Promotion and chances are you will be Googling on your TV (and hopefully making some enticing web services) in no time.
Due to popular demand from advertisers and publishers, Google has announced that they are introducing interactive video and interstitial (ads displayed before or after content is viewed) ad units on the Android platform.
Google states that this will give advertisers the chance to reach a much larger audience, and for publishers to maximize their earning potential. From the post on the Google Mobile Ads blog:
“AdMob interstitial ads are reserved for developers of the most popular and engaging iOS and Android apps. These high value ad units can be placed at app-open or in-app and provide an additional option for premium publishers to effectively monetize their user base.”
Google has cited CBS Mobile as an early adopter of Android that is excited about these new ads, and is expecting them to be very popular among publishers and advertisers.
Developers for Android discuss some of their pros and cons in developing applications for Android vs. Apple’s devices in a recent article found in The New York Times.
Some of the biggest cons are different form factors and manufacturer devices available running Android, which make it a challenge to ensure bugs don’t show up between devices. Another concern is the method of check-out, where users must enter credit info (which Google check-out remembers mind you) to purchase an app from the Market. Also, paid apps are not available in all the areas the Android Market is either, which makes for a less attractive launch for a paid app in regards to revenue potential and sales.
It’s not really the usual thing to do on a news site, but I feel that we should get more involved in development aspect of the community via apps, UI integrations, device ports, yeah you get the picture.
OpenFeint, a social platform for iOS games, has announced OFX, a new service that allows developers to sell additional content within a game without having to submit an update to Apple.
Those waiting for iOS 4.2’s public release may have to sit tight just a little longer: in a surprising move, Apple on Thursday released to the developer community a Golden Master (GM) build of 4.2.1.
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