Have you ever seen a MakerBot (digital fabricator) in action? It’s quite amazing how it can create essentially anything you design, and with amazing precision. Well Paint3D aims to bring 3D printing capabilities to your Android devices soon. It isn’t quite elaborate as programs used on your PC, but you’ve got to start somewhere right?
It isn’t available for the public yet, but the House 4 Hack team from Johannesburg have been working for the past few days on perfecting it. They are using a Samsung Galaxy Note to test it, and are primarily trying to make use of the included digitizer pen. They first plan to have users trace an uploaded picture, and then the program can add depth to the trace. Other shapes should then be able to be placed upon the primary layer.
It doesn’t allow wireless printing for now, but instead users will upload their creations onto a USB and plug them into the 3D printer. This project was primarily developed to enter into a science fair, in hopes to allow school kids a chance to experiment with the program. It is much more complicating than meets the eye, and one of the guys working on Paint3D described what’s in store for its future in great detail. This is definitely worth checking out!
[via TalkAndroid]
As many would agree, it’s best to have an unbiased opinion to help the public see the truth in your word. And taking that to heart, I went out and purchased an iPhone 4S to get a better feel for its differences and similarities to Android. Sure, we’ve all messed around with an iPhone at a retail store – and after taking the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for a spin it’s instantly hard to reason with its pricetag. But the iPhone does so well, and people love it. This is why I needed to test it out for myself.
First off, iOS 5 is smooth and doesn’t skip a beat. But then again – it’s completely absent of widgets; this alone was the hardest to cope with. Customization of the homescreen is one of Android’s finest perks, and is currently an area Apple’s iOS 5 can even touch. Next up is the absence of an app drawer. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been sold on ADW EX since its initial release. When maneuvering throughout iOS 5, out of habit I often swiped upwards thinking my apps would appear. From my personal experience, I do not like a crowded homescreen – and prefer having my most used applications taking up specific screen real estate. It helps avoid accidentally openings.
Next up, you guessed it: You’re going to miss the large, beautiful, Super AMOLED displays that we’ve grown to love in so many new devices. Don’t get me wrong, the Retina display used on the 4S is spectacular – but I have huge thumbs. What’s a guy to do? Siri can only help so much when trying to carry on a conversation or surf the net. However, the iPhone’s smaller display helps you retain solid battery life throughout the day. That was my only gripe about the Galaxy Nexus, without loading a custom ROM and kernel – it wouldn’t last me more than four hours.
The dismal battery life on the Galaxy Nexus could also be attributed to having a 4G LTE connection, but after using the iPhone 4S and being limited to 3G alone, poor battery life is much easier to swallow. Once you’ve experienced Verizon’s 4G LTE, nothing seems to fill its shoes. Again, this is a personal opinion; I have access to my computer’s USB port most of the day, and an outlet is usually close by. Thus charging up the Nexus was never an issue.
Build quality in the 4S easily surpasses that of the Galaxy Nexus, hands down. It feels extremely solid, and ditching the plastic chassis should be a future implementation for Android to work towards. Another area the iPhone wins over is camera quality. I’ve never been much of a photographer, but after using the iPhone 4S – taking pictures is a much better experience. Each device has its pros and cons, but after this iOS 5 test drive I’ve come to the realization Android suits my lifestyle better. I enjoy Google services way too much, particularly Google Navigation, and an OS that isn’t so locked down. I’ve yet to tweak my 4S via jailbreak, but that probably deserves a comparison towards custom Android ROMs and kernels anyways.
Yahoo, that search engine you used sometime back in the 90′s is apparently staying with the times and have just added an entirely new option to their search results. Updating and trying to stay relevant they’ve added an “Apps” tab right to their front page for search results. If you had a hard time finding apps before, this could be your solution.
All you really need to know is it will search and help you discover all things Android applications. Although they do support that other main competitor too — although WP7 seems to be missing. The new Apps portal went live this week giving users access to Android and iOS applications in an easy to use and navigate page. Complete with results, reviews, ratings, and even a gallery of large previews and more.
Users can browse Yahoo’s suggested apps or search and filter their results by operating system, price, and category to make things simple. The new portal only directs users to the actual Android Market so we don’t really have anything new here, just basically a page that will forward you to the already available market. However, they do add Yahoo reviews in with market reviews to give users a better selection to read from and help decide. Give it a try from the link below and let us know if it’s useful, or pointless.
[via Android Central]
Got a BlackBerry Playbook? If the ales figures are anything to go by, probably not – but hey, maybe you’ve got a friend or a boss who was brought low by a Staples salesman. If that’s the case, be sure and tell him or her that the handful of apps huddling together for warmth in RIM’s app store will soon have some welcome company. The company’s Developer Relations team posted today that the long, long-awaited OS 2.0 update will hit in February, with the BlackBerry Runtime for Android included in the package. It’s almost as welcome as a real email client. The service has been in closed beta for some time now.
The deadline for submitting apps to RIM to be included in the launch database is February 6th, meaning that the update and app repository should be available shortly thereafter. It isn’t as easy as dropping an SDK onto the Playbook’s flash storage; a little work on the developer side of things is required. But compared to building an app from scratch it’s a breeze, thanks to tools provided by RIM itself to ease the porting process. In order to be considered by RIM, developers will need to remove all usage of the word “Android” from the app, refrain from referring to the Market, setting the requirement to “BlackBerry Playbook” (hah!) and signing the package digitally.
All this work to get Android apps on the PlayBook is fascinating, considering how much RIM is trying to distance themselves from everyone’s favorite green robot. Just last week their shiny new CEO (career expectancy: 8 months) said that they had no intention of releasing hardware that runs Android, claiming that “all Android phones are the same”. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.
(via Android Community)
For us in the world of Android we might not see or hear about some of the fun games over on that otherplatform, but occasionally they have some hugely popular games that haven’t quite made their way to Android yet. Take Temple Run for example. It’s been the top iOS game for a few months and has seen over 20 million downloads. I’m happy to report it will be landing on Android next month.
Temple Run is free but still currently the top grossing app on that other platform and has over 7 million players daily that are using in-app purchases or just playing for the sheer fun of it. With Android being the number one smartphone in the world this is a huge market that surely will love this game. It was originally $0.99 cents at launch but the in-app purchases have taken over. Most games like Angry Birds and many others have launched for free on Android and we expect the same to happen here.
With Temple Run you basically play an explorer running through the temples and being constantly chased by things like scary monkeys or other animals. It was designed with smartphones in mind and can be played with just one hand if needed — so this wont feel like a console port while playing and enjoying it. The entire story on how this team of a husband and wife made one of the biggest iOS games as of late, and that it will be landing on Android next month to rule our world is at the source below.
[via TechCrunch]
If you’re reading this on your Android phone, odds are pretty good that it’s running Gingerbread and has a screen four inches or larger with a resolution of 800×480. That’s the conclusion reached by Localytics, a research firm taking a long hard look at data supplied by apps that use the company’s proprietary analytic data. Localytics claims that a full 73% of Android devices (smartphone and tablets) run Gingerbread. That figure disagrees with the latest numbers from Google, now a month old, which claim that Gingerbread runs on just 55% of Android hardware.
Using the data collected, Localytics created a picture of an “average” Android smartphone. Based on their research, the most popular spec is a Gingerbread phone with a 4.3-inch screen and a resolution of 800×480. This description matches a handful of Samsung and HTC models currently being sold. 4.3-inch phones accounted for more than 40% of all devices, with 4.0 inches, 3.2 inches and 3.7 inches following at 22%, 11% and 9%, respectively. Screen resolutions are more dramatically divided, with 800×480 taking 62% of the pie, followed by 480×320 at 14%, 960×540 (qHD) at 6%, and 480×854 (a popular Motorola res) and 320×240 at 5% each.
The average tablet isn’t really surprising: it’s a 7-inch device with a 1024×600 screen. A whopping 74% of Android tablets use that size and resolution, first introduced with the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and Nook Color. Just 22% use the 10.1-inch ,1280×800 size popular among current Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and Asus tablets. 71% of tablets use Gingerbread, with just 21% using the various releases of Honeycomb. Clearly, small, cheap tablets are winning the game as far as Android sales are concerned.
These numbers shouldn’t be taken as gospel – Google will probably update its distribution statistics in the next few days.
Yes! Finally Google has updated their new Music Manager for Google Music to allow users to download right from their cloud. Originally you could upload all your music but that was it. Now instead of downloading them one at a time we can retrieve the entire library right out of the air and download it to your device or computer — including purchased tracks from the Android Market.
This was by far my biggest complaint when Google Music first officially launched and they added Music to the Android Market. Being able to now upload and download one by one, or all of my music from their cloud services is what was needed to make this complete. Between this, Adele, and all the George Carlin one could ask for all from Google Music I’m now completely safe to toss this old iPod of mine in the trash.
So now when you purchase a new song on your Android phone or tablet, you can easily get on your computer or laptop and download the entire file right to your PC. That music will still be accessible and remain in the cloud. Available from the wide array of supported devices for access from anywhere. Make sure to upload your entire library to Google Music’s cloud services. Then if you happen to have a computer crash you can easily download the entire library to your new system. Thanks Google!
For all the details, new information, or help guides head over to the official Google Music support page. That will answer any remaining questions you may have. Now enjoy that music and go buy some Indie Rock!
If you’re waiting for a wake-up call when it comes to Android malware, this might be it. Security software vendor Symantec has published a report claiming that anywhere from one to five million Android phones and tablets may be infected with the Android.Counterclank spyware. The infections spread from thirteen identified apps across three developers, some of which have already been removed from the Android Market, presumably by Google. Most were blatant copies of popular games or vaguely naughty apps.
The Android.Counterclank malware is technically a trojan: it can receive remote commands and send back personal information. It’s a serious risk for anyone who has it installed on their hardware. Exact download numbers aren’t known, but looking briefly at some of the estimated downloads in the web version of the Android Market, Symantec could very well be correct. This is the largest documented security breach for Android so far, and it doesn’t help that the apps are still available for download.
If you’ve downloaded any of the apps listed below, remove them immediately.You should also change any passwords you have stored on your Android device and check any vital accounts for illicit access.
- Counter Elite Force
- Counter Strike Ground Force
- CounterStrike Hit Enemy
- Heart Live Wallpaper
- Hit Counter Terrorist
- Stripper Touch girl
- Balloon Game
- Deal & Be Millionaire
- Wild Man
- Pretty women lingerie puzzle
- Sexy Girls Photo Game
- Sexy Girls Puzzle
- Sexy Women Puzzle
Calling this a huge problem is putting things mildly. Some of these apps have been available for months. As great a tool as the relatively open Android Market is, the continual discovery of spyware and malware in widely available apps is a black eye on the Market and Android as a whole. We await Google’s reesponse to Symantec’s findings with interest.
Android gaming is growing by leaps and bounds, due in no small part to the prevalent use of free games supplemented with advertising. Mobile application/advertising platform Tapjoy knows this: that’s why they set up a fund for aspiring developers, helping them publish their apps to both Tapjoy’s directory and the Android Market. The company announced that to date, they’ve helped publish a whopping 130 Android games. To be fair, the hits are few and far between, but that’s par for the course with indie developers.
If you haven’t heard of Tapjoy themselves, you’ve almost certainly heard of a few of their affiliated titles. The Android port of Duke Nukem 3D, Gun Bros, Santa’s Village and more all use funds and services from Tapjoy. In addition to initial funding, the company provides platform sorting tools, marketing advice and a spot in their proprietary app market. The company also publishes a handful of games under its own label. Then they sell advertising in the (mostly free) games, matching vendors with the target audience for each title to maximize revenue.
The fund was initially set up with $5,000,000 to split between worthy applicants, and Tapjoy is still accepting applications. Developers, if you’d like to be a part of the Android fund, head over to www.tapjoy.com/androidfund to apply. And in the interest of informing ambitious devs, I’ll add that the company offers its services for iOS and Windows Phone 7 as well.
Source: Android Community
Paperlinks, the popular business-friendly QC code scanner and generator has just landed on the Android Market. Starting today users can download this free app and have complete access to multiple types of QR code services. Another unique offering with Paperlinks is the inclusion of NFC support for Android.
With the new app for Android users can quickly and effectively create and scan QR codes. From there they offer a full history of created and scanned codes, and you can even share information using the NFC capabilities of Android. One of the main features of Paperlinks is the option to customize the QR codes and even add company logo’s and other designs into the code.
FEATURES:
• Instant Scan – no touching, tapping or clicking. Unlike other QR reader apps, you just open Paperlinks and scan!
• Fast – go from app to content in a split second.
• History – Access to a complete list of all previous scans.
• Full Paperlinks integration with QR codes generated through Paperlinks.com.
Looking through the Android market their new app doesn’t seem to be compatible with a wide array of devices yet but it was just launched today. It appears to only install on NFC equipped devices. Using Paperlinks as a simple QR scanner is also extremely quick and easy as it launches faster than any other app I’ve used thus far.
You can download the new Paperlinks app today from the market link below. Give it a test, then head to their official site to create your own free and custom QR codes.
| / Contact / Advertising / SiteMap / |
