Adobe to deliver Flash for mobile 10.2 next week

Adobe Systems, working furiously to disprove Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs' belief that the Flash Player is a bad match for mobile devices, will deliver its second version of the software for Android devices on March 18. 

The software will be available in final form through the Android Market for Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) devices and in beta form for Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablets after Google's 3.0.1 system update, Adobe said in a blog post. 

However, it's not for any Android device. People can check Adobe's list of Flash-capable Android devices to see if theirs made the cut. 

Flash Player runs cross-platform software, notably games, and is widely used to stream video to personal computers. Adobe hopes to extend its cross-platform promise to mobile devices, but it's been hard given the different user interfaces and lesser hardware abilities compared to PCs. 

Flash Player 10.2 for mobile brings several changes, though. One is hardware-accelerated video presentation on Honeycomb 3.0.1 devices, something that could help preserve battery power and increase frame rates for smoother video. 

The new version also can take advantage of better hardware in some devices with graphics chips and dual-core processors--Motorola's Atrix smartphone and Xoom browser and LG's Optimus 2X, for example. 

The new software also is better integrated with the stock Android browser and with screen keyboards, Adobe said.

To keep competitive on the desktop, Adobe also is working on improving Flash with versions 10.3 and 11 under development.

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Blogger Releases Android Smartphone App

The Google-owned Blogger network has released a free app designed to enable people who have built their blogs on the Blogger platform to easily update them from their Android smartphones.

Unveiled this week, the program lets people bang out copy, and take photos with their phones, from directly inside the app--and then either publish their words and images straightaway or save a draft for later. Posts and drafts can be viewed directly in the app or, by way of a quickly accessible menu, in a browser.

Users can also select their location and include that information with their post, switch between different accounts and blogs, and select photos from their gallery for uploading.
Blogger said it's working on bringing the app to non-Android gadgets as well, but for now the program is available only for Android devices, through the Android Market, which is newly accessible directly on the Web.

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Google Shopper App Hits the iPhone

  (Credit: Google)

iPhone users can now rely on Google for a helping hand the next time they go shopping.

The search giant yesterday launched a version of its free Google Shopper app for the iPhone. The app, which has been available for Android users the past year, is essentially a mobile search engine for products, letting you compare prices and read reviews before you open your wallet.

The app offers several ways to search for products. You can type the name of the item in the search field. You can snap a photo of a book, CD, DVD, or video game or of a product's barcode. Or you can speak the name of the product.

In return, Google Shopper reveals a list of stores, both online and offline, that sell your chosen item along with their respective prices.

Tapping on a particular store drills down further where you can read product details, check out customer reviews, and bounce between a list of local retailers and online merchants who offer the item. Drilling down even further to certain retailers, such as Best Buy, the app can check on inventory at your local stores to tell you where you can find the item.

The app keeps a history list so you can always return to any past search. You can also mark your favorite products with a gold star, putting them into their own easily accessible category. Finally, you can share the details of any product you find with other people via Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader, the company's online RSS feeder.

Google's description says the app requires iOS 4.0 and is compatible only with the iPhone and the fourth generation iPod Touch.

I tried Google Shopper with a variety of products, using text, voice, and photos, and the app performed nicely. It did have trouble at times picking up product barcodes through my iPod Touch 4G, but no problem zeroing in on the front cover of CDs, books, and similar items. Once it found the product, it typically showed me a lengthy list of retail outlets where I could buy it, even tapping into auctions from eBay.

Google Shopper is part of a growing list of similar mobile apps that deliver prices, names of retailers, and other details on a wide array of products.

Amazon released a Price Check app in November, which like Google Shopper, lets you find products by text, voice, or scanning the front of a product or its barcode. Another app called Scandit helps you track down products by scanning their barcodes. eBay also lets you search for products by scanning their barcodes, both through its own iPhone app and RedLaser, an app it acquired last year.

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Google Announces Web-based Android Market

Google has announced a new Web-based Android Market online store that will make it easier for people to get to new applications for their smartphones and tablets.

The announcement was made today at an event where Google is showing off the new Android 3.0 software known as Honeycomb, which is designed specifically for tablets. Google also used the event, held at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to take the wraps off the new Web-based Android Market. Up to this point, Android users could only discover and download apps from the Android Market client installed on their devices. Now, users will be able to get to the apps from any Web browser.

Google demonstrated the new Web-based Android Market, and the page itself shows a lot more detail than the Android Market client. It offers better pictures for promoting applications as well as ways to promote other applications alongside the one the user selected. Screenshots and user reviews are prominent.

The Web-based store also adds a social-networking element to the app store experience. It allows friends to recommend cool apps to each other. The store is also connected to Twitter, which allows people to tweet application purchases or recommendations to their Twitter followers. The tweet contains a link that will take followers directly to the Web store. The phone experience is slightly different: when you click on the link from the phone, it opens the same page but in the Android Market client on the phone instead of the Web store.

Google also showed how it has improved search within the Android Market. You can search within the Web store for applications, and Google has added some new refinements to the search experience to sort by device type, popularity, or reviews. Free apps can be accessed with one click. Searching apps based on compatible devices should help address problems with fragmentation within the Android application community.
The Web site is live here.

Google also announced that it will offer in-app purchasing for app developers. This will allow developers to sell virtual goods inside Android apps. Apple's iOS devices have had this capability for a few years now.

Adding in-app purchasing should be easy for developers, Google executives explained. The company brought up Bart DeCrem from Disney Mobile to show off some new applications the company is bringing to Android. DeCrem demonstrated playing the game Tap Tap Revenge on a Nexus S, which runs on Android 2.1 or higher. He showed how you can play and purchase a Bruno Mars song from within the Tap Tap Revenge application. Once the transaction is done, the user can move into the game part.

Disney had worked on this application for several months, but it added the in-app purchasing code only five days ago. This demonstrates how quickly and easily developers can add the in-app purchasing to their applications. Google will release developer documentation today as well as sample code for in-app purchasing.

Honeycomb
While the big news of the day had to do with the Android Market, Google also showed off its tablet-oriented Honeycomb software. While many of the features have already been made public by Google and its hardware partners, the company took the opportunity to show off how the tablet-optimized software will work.

As CNET's tablet reviewer Donald Bell has said previously the Android Honeycomb OS "charts exciting new ground for tablets, bringing some dearly needed differentiation from the Android smartphone experience."

The first device to use the new software will be Motorola's Xoom tablet, expected to debut later this month. Motorola's tablet won CNET's Best of Show award at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month.

Google's overall vision is that services and apps will be tied together among all Google Android phones, tablets, and Google TV in the future, according to Google Android leader Andy Rubin. One of the biggest problems that Android has faced over its short lifetime is fragmentation. The open-source software is used by different hardware makers and software developers can add bits and pieces of their own special sauce to the software.

What this has meant for consumers is different applications that work on different devices.
Google's cloud-based services, including the new Web-based Google Market, will help fulfill this vision. But Honeycomb will also play a role. One of the things that Honeycomb is supposed to do is to make it easier to develop applications that work both on tablets as well as smartphones.

To demonstrate this point, Hugo Barra, director of mobile products for Google, showed how the game Fruit Ninja could be played on the Honeycomb tablet without any modification to the app. Fruit Ninja is a game built and released for Android smartphones before Honeycomb was built.
 
But Bell wasn't entirely impressed.

"Kinda skirted the legacy app compatibility question by demoing Fruit Ninja," he wrote during the live blog. "Scaling a game isn't the same thing as scaling an app designed for a 4-inch screen."

Indeed, scaling apps designed for smaller screens to tablets and vice versa is a challenge, especially when the hardware and other software enhancements among devices differ greatly. But Honeycomb is clearly a step forward when it comes to ushering in Android tablets that will compete with Apple's iPad.

Google's Android Market for the Web 

(Credit: CNET )

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Android Overtakes iPhone in U.S.A

As we told you in our post last year regarding Android overtakes iPhone by 2013, It seems that we were correct that time and now it seems that Android overtakes iPhone in early 2011. 61.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in November 2010, up 10 percent from the preceding three-month period. For the first time, more Americans are using phones running Google's Android operating system than Apple's iPhone, but RIM's BlackBerry is still in first place, according to comScore.

RIM fell from 37.6 percent to 33.5 percent market share of smartphones, Google captured second place among smartphone platforms by moving from 19.6 percent to 26.0 percent of US smartphone subscribers, and Apple slipped to third despite its growth from 24.2 percent to 25.0 percent of the market. Microsoft, in fourth place, fell into single digits from 10.8 percent to 9.0 percent while Palm was still last and further slipped from 4.6 percent to 3.9 percent.

What you have to say about this? Speak in comments!

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Windows Phone 7 Grew Faster Than Android Marketplace

 

After the launched of Windows Phone 7 people were really expecting that new version of Windows Phone 7 will surely hit and get successful coverage in market amongst Android, iPhone and other popular devices. Now the latest research report from IDC, remarked that the Windows Phone 7 marketplace grew faster than Android's did at launch. The report noted that Microsoft added 4,000 applications in just two months, a milestone that took Android's marketplace over five months to achieve.

There are a number of factors as to why the Windows Phone 7 has grown as fast as it did. As Engadget.com points out, there are already thousands of developers who know the programming language, which means they can quickly turn code into an app without much trial and error.

The same can't be said for Android, which required Java programmers to learn new libraries and constructs. You also need to include the fact that there are more programmers looking to cash in on the rapidly expanding mobile app market. Programmers are also porting over their apps from iOS and the Android market to Windows Phone 7, expanding their portfolio to multiple platforms.

Microsoft could easily become the third largest mobile app market by the middle of next year, which doesn't face very much competition in terms of WebOS, BlackBerry OS and Symbian.

Despite all of that, this is a major accomplishment for Microsoft and its consumers. With a larger marketplace for consumers to download applications and games, more consumers will begin to migrate to Windows Phone 7.

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