Android and Me » Eric Weiss

Android app review: MLB.com at Bat 2010

Eric Weiss — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:54:16 +0000

After last years successful beta test during the World Series, Major League Baseball has released the Android version of their award winning MLB.com At Bat 2010 app. The price tag may startle some but there really is a lot of bang for the buck.

I am a baseball fanatic. When Major League Baseball released the MLB.com At Bat 2009 app for the iPhone last year I was very jealous. I considered getting an iPod Touch just to be able to get the app. Then during the postseason the app came out for Android during the postseason as a beta test and we all knew Android would be getting it’s own app for the 2010 season.

Last week MLB.com At Bat 2010 showed up on the Market and I grabbed it immediately. The $15 price-tag may startle some but this is one app that is definitely worth it for any baseball fan.

When you open the app you are presented with a list of games scheduled for that day. You can scroll through the days left and right. Tapping a game brings up details such as starting pitchers and a list of television and radio stations covering the game. If the game is being played you can watch pitch by pitch data of the game though it is unclear if MLB.tv subscribers ($200 a year) will be able to watch the actual game pitch by pitch through the Android app like out iPod/iPhone brethern.

Clicking the Menu from the schedule screen brings up a host of options, and this is where things get good. You have your standard news and standings which do exactly what you would think (although I have had problems with the news not always loading but a quick tap of the back button and loading it again has solved it). The video highlight section is great. The highlight videos come quickly over 3G and are pretty good quality. But where this app shines and gives you your value is the Audio.

Clicking Audio gives you your choice of listening to either teams local radio coverage (when available). But it does have it’s problems. I listened to three games and switched between the two feeds. One third of the time it worked perfectly, one third of the time the audio was so soft it was inaudible, and one third of the time it was so full of static I could deal with it. I expect these problems to be ironed out by the time first pitch is thrown on April 4th.

MLB has stated that they are working on all their mobile apps constantly and have already updated the Android app once. There is an email address within the app to email for feedback or support which is something more developers should do. One thing I have not been able to find out about is blackout dates. Major League Baseball has the most complicated blackout rules for viewing and listening to the game. I do not know if these rules carry over to their mobile app.

One thing lacking from the app is any sort of notifications. I expected a least to be able to set some sort of alarm before my favorite team was going to start a game but there’s nothing of the sort. Also it should be noted, MLB.tv (where this app gets its info from) is notorious for being 5-20 minutes behind live games so if you are hoping to augment your television viewing with your Android device it might be a bit frustrating.

Even with the problems I mentioned (most of which I do expect MLB to fix by opening day) this is the app for the hardcore MLB fan despite the premium price.

Developing For Android… In Gaza

Eric Weiss — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:41:06 +0000

Computer programming is hard enough. Imagine having to use an alphabet completely different from your native one. Imagine doing it from, what is essentially, a war zone. Imagine you have never even seen the device you are programming for first-hand, nevermind tested your programs on one. This is the story of Mohammed, a 22 year old Palestinian living in Gaza and programming for Android.

The city of Gaza is one of the oldest cities in the world, with a history that can be traced back 5000 years. Located on the Mediterranean Sea where the African and Asian continents meet, it was an important stopover for spice traders as well as a key military point in the past. It is no wonder then that the city has been attacked and conquered by many different civilizations in it’s long history including the Egyptians, Romans, Ottomans and even for a short while the French Army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Jump to modern times. Since 1967, when Israel defeated the Egyptian army in the Six Day War, Gaza has been under an Israeli embargo. The embargo only intensified in 2007 when Hamas, a group classified by the United States, European Union, and several other countries as a terrorist organization, won local elections. Under the tightened embargo, only very basic items are allowed in and “virtually no exports permitted, paralyzing the economy” according to the BBC. Despite all this, the people of Gaza live, work, and learn as best they can.

Mohammad Yahya Al Musaddar is 22 and is set to graduate soon from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Computer Engineering. His interest is in the Android platform despite never having seen or held an Android device in person. He says in Gaza there are mostly Symbian phones and a few iPhones, but no Android devices. Because of this he works 100% in the emulator, learning from examples and books. One added challenge Mohammed faced was the fact that programming for Android is done using the English alphabet and his native language is Arabic. That’s like you or I learning to program in Cyrillic. Despite all this, he has managed to create a small, simple and clean currency converter while studying for his degree.

I talked to Mohammad through email while he prepared for his Senior Graduation Project Presentation this coming Saturday. While he has every right to complain and be bitter about his situation, he is upbeat and hopeful about the future: “…you may think life here is dark as night but also we have joy and hope and good people. We challenge our life to be happy.”

There is an irony that someone so closed in and contained would learn to program for what is essentially one of the most open and free platforms. Or maybe it is just fitting for someone so optimistic.

Mohammad is eager to meet and talk with other Android developers. You can reach him via email, Twitter or Facebook. His website is mussadar.com. We all here at Android And Me wish him the best of luck this Saturday during his Senior Graduation Project Presentation.

Evernote for Android: Organize Your Life

Eric Weiss — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:20:26 +0000

I have been using Evernote as part of my daily life for about four months now. After reading about it on such sites as Lifehacker and 43 Folders and hearing of an Android app in the works, I decided to make the plunge.

Evernote allows you to store and organize your notes in the cloud so you can retrieve them later anywhere easily. A note can be any bit of text, audio, a screenshot, etc. You enter these into Evernote through the use of a computer application, web browser plug-in or mobile app. Evernote then indexes the information automatically (or you can do it yourself) so you can find it when you need it. One neat feature is that it will even figure out text in a photo and use that information.

Obviously, in order to be be able to recall the information when and where you want, a mobile app is key. Last December Evernote unveiled their Android app and it is a beast (in a good way). This is no scaled down version of the PC/Mac client. This is a fully functional application to create, save, and recall the information you want. In addition, every note you make can be tagged with your location so you can search your notes for ones written near a location. One thing lacking from this app (and the Android platform in general) is the ability to take screenshots of your phone. Not a huge loss but obviously missing when compared to the PC versions.

It is a free service, up to a point. You are limited to 40MB of uploads per month and you are limited to images, audio, text, and PDF file types (and the text of the PDF is not indexed). By going for the $45 subscription for a year you get up to 500MB of uploads a month, any file types (including Microsoft Office files) and text of PDFs are indexed. I have been happy with my free account. I only use it for quick text notes and lists and an occassional audio recording.

Since the release of the Android app I notice I no longer deal with a pocket full of scribbled notes at the end of the day (or leaving them in my pockets at the end of the day and having them go through the wash) or losing a good idea I had but didn’t have a pen to write it down. Storing all your little notes in the cloud makes perfect sense. Is this app going to make you an organizational maven? Probably not. But it is yet another tool (and a truly geeky one at that) that you can use to get organized.

Nexus One firmware upgrade leaked, fixes 3G Issues

Eric Weiss — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:08:34 +0000

According to Gizmodo and the fine people over at XDA Forums a leaked firmware upgrade for the Nexus One seems to address the 3G issues many users have been complaining about. The firmware is obviously not ready to be pushed out as it seems to be an old ROM with a revised radio.img . People have been able to hack it into CyanogenMod and report a much steadier 3G signal. This shows that the problems many users have experienced are software based and thankfully not hardware related as many have speculated. It also shows that someone out there is on the case and a solution is coming soon.

Editors note: I own a Nexus One and I have experienced zero 3G problems since day one.

Apples To Apples: Craigslist Apps

Eric Weiss — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:46:04 +0000

Craigslist is a notoriously mobile unfriendly site. That’s a shame since it is so useful. In 15 years it has become the go-to source for all things local; jobs, housing, discussions, etc. Craigslist has made the local paper classifieds seem as antiquated as the telegraph and the Pony Express. Fortunately, several developers have created apps that make Craigslist easier to handle on your Android device.

Craigsphone

Craigsphone was originally for iPhone and has been brought over to Android without any added functionality. If you like to browse or post to Craigslist this is the app for you. If you want to search or get notifications, choose one of the other two here. The iPhone doesn’t support background processes and neither does this app. One major bug I noticed is that you can set the local Craigslist you want to browse, but if you close the app, it forgets and you have to reset it when you start it back up. People seem to love this app for the iPhone, for Android it’s a dud. This is the only one here that can post but even that can’t save it from the obvious void of search and notifications.

CraigsAlert

CraigsAlert is a very powerful front end for Craigslist. You can search for any keyword in any Craigslist location. All the standard Craigslist options are there; price, only search titles, has image, etc. Searches work perfectly though the result screen always has three empty listings at the top of the list. Clicking on a search result brings you to the Craigslist page reformatted to fit your screen within the app. A big positive is that each search can be for a different location. If you want to search for jobs in different cities, no problem. The time between updates (and thus notifications) is set at 15 minutes and is not adjustable. Depending on what your search is for, this could be good or this could be too often or not often enough. As for the app, the only option available is whether you want the sound for the notification on or off. The free version, CraigsAlert-free, is limited to one search/notification at a time and is worth a look. All-in-all a very good app that just needs a little polish.

Craigsnotifica

Yes, it looks like name of the app was only half-hearted but this app is fully baked through and through. You are able to select multiple regions (though all your searches will search all the regions you choose). Notifications include options for LED, sound, and/or vibrate. You can tell it save images to your phone when you aren’t using it (as well as set it to download only when on WiFi). You can save templates for responding to ads via email or SMS. You can mark search results as a “favorite” to review later. Click on a search result shows just the text of the post within the app. Buttons at the bottom can open the page in the web-browser, mark as a favorite or email a response. This app is well thought out and is updated frequently to fix bugs and improve performance. The best of the bunch.

Editor’s Note As you may have noticed, Apples to Apples is a new series from Eric where multiple apps are pit against each other in search of a winner. Sound off in the comments or suggest other app categories ripe for an app battle.

Celebrity Android User: Gina Trapani

Eric Weiss — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:05:35 +0000

Where does one begin when introducing Gina Trapani? She is the founding editor of and contributor to Lifehacker.com and has authored two books based on the site, “Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks To Turbocharge Your Day” and “Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide To Working Smarter, Faster, Better”. Her writing has also appeared in Macworld, PC World, Popular Science, Wired and Women’s Health magazines. She is also a software developer. Some of her works include the Better Firefox Extensions and Twitalytic, a Twitter data crawler. She also blogs about tech stuff at her site, Smarterware as well as co-hosts the podcast “This Week In Google” with Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis. Her latest creation is “The Complete Guide To Google Wave”, but more on that later. Most importantly to our audience, Gina is an Android proselytizer. I asked Gina some questions about her ever growing list of accomplishments and the future of Android as she sees it.

Androidandme: You are an author, blogger, podcaster, tech expert, and programmer. You have learned to fly a plane, appeared on Fox News, and have been named one of Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women In Technology.” It’s no wonder you are also a productivity expert. Is there anything you want to do or accomplish that you haven’t been able to at least try yet?

Gina Trapani: Space travel! Got a spare $200k laying around so I can get myself a Virgin Galactic ticket on SpaceShipTwo?

Androidandme: Lifehacker’s motto is “tips and tricks for getting things done” with ”getting things done” in lowercase. The site was obviously influenced by “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, yet GTD has an anti-tech, anti-gadget approach. Was starting Lifehacker sort of your tech-centric answer to “Getting Things Done”?

Gina Trapani: Definitely. Getting Things Done is a fantastic book I recommend to anyone interested in a solid personal productivity system. But, it feels written for executives who wear suits to a big office and have administrative assistants. My original conception of Lifehacker was that it would cover GTD techniques for t-shirt wearing, tech-savvy internet junkies who wanted to re-engineer the way they worked on a computer for maximum efficiency.

Gina in Wired

Androidandme: Do you still have the cloud comforter from your iconic Wired profile?

Gina Trapani: It’s my sister’s comforter, and yes! She still has it at her apartment in New York. I was just cuddled up under it when I stayed with her over the holidays.

Androidandme: One of your latest endeavors is ”The Complete Guide To Google Wave”. Can you tell our readers a bit about it?

Gina Trapani: The Complete Guide to Google Wave is a book that comes in three forms: a web site at completewaveguide.com, an e-book, and in March of this year, a print book. All the contents of the book are free to read and share at the web site (which happens to be run by wiki software; all its contents are licensed under Creative Commons). The PDF is available for purchase for $6, and the print book will also be
available to purchase.

Androidandme: People seem to be really excited about Google Wave… until they actually try it. Do you think it is going to become the new paradigm that Google is pushing it as or is it going to be the next amazing technology no one uses (ie: Segway)?

Gina Trapani: I think Wave is similar to Android in that it holds a deep appeal to a certain kind of savvy user who appreciates what it can do once he or she spends some time using it. I don’t think Google Wave will upend email any time soon; but I don’t think it’s the Segway of webapps either. If all goes well with Wave (i.e., the team makes it fast, reliable, available to all, and fills in some holes in its feature set) I believe it will capture a very desirable, knowledgeable segment of the market who collaborate on the web. It’s a power tool for power users who work together remotely.

Androidandme: Do you think we will eventually see Google Wave go mobile?

Gina Trapani: No doubt.

Androidandme: Google seems to be slowly getting the public used to cloud computing. Do you think cloud computing will gain acceptance among the general public?

Gina Trapani: Definitely. Between smartphones, ubiquitous broadband, and three/four/five computer households, it will only make sense to even the most average user to store information in web applications, and access it from anywhere.

Androidandme: Google’s “theme” for 2009 was speed. What do you think they will focus on for 2010? What do you think they should focus on?

Gina Trapani: I’m not sure what they plan to focus on, but in my opinion they need to focus on trust. In order to push their cloud business ahead, Google has to earn and keep their users’ trust. They have to prove that trusting them with your information is a smart move with more benefits than drawbacks. To do this, I think Google has to focus on customer service, transparency, and openness about what exactly they do with the information they store and what the implications of that is.

Androidandme: What is your current phone?

Gina Trapani: I am currently very much enjoying the Nexus One.

Androidandme: Can you tell our readers what Android devices you have used and what you have thought about them?

Gina Trapani: I’ve only had the G1 and the Nexus One. The only thing I liked about the G1 was the keyboard and the trackball (well, and Android itself). I didn’t like the form factor, the lack of a true headphone jack, the battery life.

The Nexus One is fantastic; slim, huge screen, really fast, great battery life, and I’m really digging Android 2.1. I’m using the trackball less than I did on the G1. I think the trackball and the flipout keyboard on the G1 worked well together, but now, without a physical keyboard on the N1, I could take the trackball or leave it (even though it lights up).

Androidandme: You have praised Cyanogen and his ROM on both Lifehacker and TWiG. How important do you think 3rd party ROMs are for the success of Android?

Gina Trapani: Third party ROMs are very important to Android in a few ways. First, they encourage a loyalty and sense of ownership amongst “superusers” who will evangelize the platform and its openness. Attracting developers is a critical component to Android’s success, both for the OS itself and in the Android Market. Secondly, third-party ROMs encourage innovation and push the boundaries of what’s possible. ROMs give a small but key group of Android users options, privileges, and possibilities they don’t get out of the box; they demonstrate the true value of an open OS.

Androidandme: The Nexus One: Smart move by Google to gain market-share or will it backfire and alienate other hardware manufacturers?

Gina Trapani: Smart move, I think. From the get-go Google’s strategy has been to get Android on many different devices, and the N1 is a great phone but it’s just one of many. Hopefully hardware manufacturers are out there trying to build an even better one, rather than spend their time being offended.

Androidandme: What gadgets/technology can you not live without?

Gina Trapani: The N1 is my constant companion. Other than that, I’ve got a Fisher Space pen and spiral notebook I hardly go anywhere without. (Typing on my phone just isn’t the same as the amazing feeling of pen on paper.) Other than that, I’ve got the standard-issue MacBook Pro, a PC I built from parts, and the first-gen Kindle which I also enjoy very much.

Androidandme: What can we look forward to you doing in the near future?

Gina Trapani: I’m a bit of a Twitter addict so I’ve been working on an open source web application that archives and organize your status updates and the replies you get to them on Twitter, which is called ThinkTank. Other than that, I’m working on expanding “The Complete Guide to Google Wave”; the first edition (a step up from the preview edition) will be out in March. And every week you can hear Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and myself chat about Google and cloud-related tech news on This Week in Google.

Androidandme: Any chance of a Gina Trapani authored Android app any time soon?

Gina Trapani: Maybe someday! But not soon. My dance card is pretty full these days. Then again, if I wake up in the middle of the night with an app idea that won’t let me rest until I code it….

A big thanks to Gina Trapani for taking time out of her busy schedule to answer our questions.

Do you know of a Celebrity Android User and would like to have us interview them? Let us know.

Article photo by Dan Tentler.

Celebrity Android User: MC Frontalot

Eric Weiss — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:43:55 +0000

His image: unmistakable. His beats: infectious. His rhymes: a celebration of nerdom. And his phone? A G1! Ladies and gentlemen, Androidandme are proud to present our first Celebrity Android User: MC Frontalot!

MC Frontalot (nee Damian Hess) has been releasing music for a little over ten years now. In that time he has built a cult following, created a hip-hop subgenre, released 3 albums, and been the subject of an acclaimed documentary. When we noticed @mc_frontalot tweeting via Twidroid we asked if he would answer some questions for our readers about himself and his experiences with Android.

Androidandme: Can you tell our readers about yourself and how you came to be the (self-proclaimed) 579th best rapper in the world?

MC Frontalot: That number was very carefully, very scientifically determined. The fact that it hasn’t changed in 9 years speaks only to the fact that all other rappers have been improving at precisely the same rate as I have.

Anyway, yes. I’m a rapper. I became a rapper through wanting to be one, having a web page, and being lucky.

Androidandme: You have been labeled as the inventor of the term “Nerdcore”. What defines “Nerdcore” music? Does it extend to other mediums?

MC Frontalot: Nerdcore is about converting shame into bravado. It is not difficult, when compared to other branches of alchemy. All you have to do is take your feelings of inadequacy and express them through smugness. I sort of open-sourced the word, so really people should feel free to apply it to anything.

MC Frontalot holdin' it down

Androidandme: You were the subject of a documentary, “Nerdcore Rising“. What was it like having a film crew following your exploits on your first real tour?

MC Frontalot: I wish I’d realized at the time that the movie was going to get such a great response. I wouldn’t have been so grouchy about all the times (Executive Producer and Director) Negin Farsad wanted us to pretend to load our equipment back into the club because there was a tape problem the first time.

Androidandme: Have you noticed an increased following since “Nerdcore Rising” was made available on Netflix streaming?

MC Frontalot: Netflix streaming is clearly the thing that people like to look at instead of television these days. I think there are a lot of folks watching the movie out of curiosity there, folks who might have flipped right past it on cable. I see them on twitter and on their blogs, talking about discovering it, trying to share their discovery with the rest of internet. It’s perfect.

Androidandme: You attempted to quit smoking by treating it as a Dungeons & Dragons game. Was Breathorr Inflatagon able to survive the constant poisoning attempts?

MC Frontalot: There was a major problem with the system that I came up with. Every time I made my save vs poison and did not smoke a cigarette, I just had to suffer through nic fits until the next roll. The unpredictable punishment schedule was awful. Also, I revealed myself as a particularly bad DM, who, after several drinks, was willing to re-roll quite steadily until a poisoning landed. The solution is: save vs poison, you HAVE to chew a nicotine gum. Then your fiending doesn’t build up by random amounts all day.

Frontalot at PAX

Androidandme: To add to your nerd resume, you have two songs (“Living At the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe” and “Origin of Species”) available for download for the video game Rock Band. The band Rush have publicly failed at playing their own songs in Rock Band. How does the rapper in question fair against his own music in Rock Band?

MC Frontalot: I can do the vocals on Expert. The instruments, I’m more of a Medium type of guy. Hard for bass sometimes.

Androidandme: How long have you been using the Android platform? What is your primary Android device?

MC Frontalot: I picked up my G1 on tour in December of 2008. I’m typing this interview on it in my neighborhood coffee shop.

Androidandme: Are you using a third party ROM (such as CyanogenMod)?

MC Frontalot: I have to run stock, alas. It’s because of this great program called Merchant that lets me run credit cards at shows. I guess none of the bought apps with the basic encryption on them will run on the hax0r builds. If that thing weren’t mission critical, I’d be trying to figure out how to get Android 2 on here. I’m still holding out hope that someone will write a tethering app that doesn’t require root.

Androidandme: Why Android? Why not an iPhone?

MC Frontalot: I can’t type on an iPhone. It gives me the feeling of big meat fingers. I really hope they keep developing Android devices with physical keyboards. That’s my biggest feature need.

Androidandme: What are your favorite Android apps?

MC Frontalot: Google Voice is amazing. Goggles is pretty impressive. Shazam still kind of makes me feel like I’m living in a sci-fi movie. I run Twidroid and the stock Gmail and SMS clients all the time. Phonalyzer helps keep my T-Mobile bill low. ScummVM and Twisty and Nesoid for emulation. ACV for comic book reading.

Androidandme: What other tech/gadgets could you not live without?

MC Frontalot: My Thinkpad is a dear friend. I just upped the ram and put Win7×64 on there, so it’s like a whole new creature. All the rest of my gadgetry is audio equipment. I recently got a V-Studio 100, which works as a field recorder, as a control surface to remote-engineer myself from my vocal booth, and as a karaoke DJ for when I have to do a show without my band. It is the sexiest toy I own.

Androidandme: Since you are a musician, I have to ask: What do you use for your ringtones? Which MC Frontalot songs would you suggest our readers use as ringtones?

MC Frontalot: I use an antique phone ring that has a weird pattern so I can tell it apart from all the other faux analog rings that everyone in Brooklyn seems to favor. Maybe This Old Man would make a nice ringtone? I don’t understand why people use songs for ringtones. If you like a song, why would you want to hear it out of your shitty phone speaker five times a day?

Androidandme: What is in the future for MC Frontalot?

MC Frontalot: The new album is underway. It’s called Zero Day and it will be out at the beginning of April along with a national tour. Updates on that kind of thing are always at frontalot.com.

A big thanks to MC Frontalot for taking time out to answer our questions. Do you know of a Celebrity Android User? Let us know.

He does impressions, too

Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile: Why did they bother?

Eric Weiss — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:51:31 +0000

Photoshop is a very powerful graphic editing tool. So powerful and universally used in fact that we now have the verb “photoshopped”. This app, though, is not Photoshop as many in the press have called it. It is Photoshop.com Mobile and that distinction is important. Photoshop is amazing. Photoshop.com is horrible. And now with Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile you can take that horridness with you!

Photoshop.com is Adobe’s answer to Flickr and Picasa. It’s a place to upload, organize and share your photos. It also offers some basic editing of photos but nothing like what Photoshop offers.

As an image editor Photoshop.com drives me nuts. For something that is supposed to be aimed at the average user it is not intuitive, doesn’t offer a lot in terms of editing (which is imprecise at best) and with it being online, is slow.

Unfortunately, the mobile app is all that and less.

The editing tools are limited to orientation (crop, straighten, rotate and flip), some color adjustments (exposure, saturation, tint, and convert to black & white), and a soft focus effect. I would have liked some simple effects that people would want and need like a red-eye remover or being able to add text, captions or metadata to the photos.

The ability to upload photos to Photoshop.com is great for those with limited space on their phone. A big oversight though is not being able to download your online photos to your device for offline viewing, especially when you consider that there is an option to set online photos as your wallpaper.

And at this point you are probably wondering “Okay, what else is there.” Well, that’s it. Oh wait, it runs in the background constantly. Does that count as a feature?

If you use Photoshop.com (Please let me know why you are using it) this is the best (only?) app to send your camera-phone pictures to your account. If you aren’t a Photoshop.com user there is nothing here to entice you to start (and probably a few more reasons to avoid it).

Google Voice 0.2.5 doesn’t play nice with CyanogenROM

Eric Weiss — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:22:57 +0000

Update (10/27 18:30): Got a response from Steve: Umm.. No conspiracy. I just am missing an entry in my build.prop file. I’m releasing an update right now that fixes it.

Before everyone yells “Conspiracy!” we have messages into both parties to find out exactly what’s going on but so far we have not received an official comment from either party.

The story so far: Yesterday afternoon Google released Google Voice 0.2.5 on the Android Market. Numerous people have reported that this version does not work under CyanogenROM 4.2.1 but works perfectly under standard Android 1.6.

As most of you know it was a little more than a month ago that Google lawyers sent Steve Kondik (aka Cyanogen) a cease-and-desist letter on the basis that he was distributing Google’s copyrighted materials (the Google apps). Steve was able to figure out a work-around with the help of Google and release a new version that backs up the applications in question, installs the ROM then copies the applications back over, or at least that’s the overly simplified version.

What has the intertubes buzzing today is whether this is a bug in the CyanogenROM and/or if Google intentionally built an app that won’t work on CyanogenROM.

Google has certainly pulled the big-brother act more than a couple of times recently (the above cease-and-desist, being very secretive with developers about Android 2.0, undermining bloggers with Sidewiki, and all sorts of craziness over Google Books) and a lot of people are speculating that this is the next violation of their “Don’t be evil” policy.

What do you think? Is it a bug or is it intentional?

Prototype of Intelligent Home Screen shows signs of what’s to come

Eric Weiss — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:55:48 +0000

Though it is still classified as a prototype, when it was revealed two weeks ago, the Intelligent Home Screen from Larva Labs really caught our collective eye here at Android and Me HQ. It’s retro-futuristic styling looks like the love-child of HAL (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the Starship Enterprise (from the original Star Trek) updated for the 21st century. Once you get past the unique style and design though you realize that you have all your data available to you on one screen. No need to open separate apps to check your email, appointments, Twitter, etc. Could this be the idea that pushes the Android platform to the forefront? I talked to John Watkinson of Larva Labs to find out more.

Android and Me: Can you give a little info on Larva Labs?

John Watkinson: Larva Labs is a privately-held company based in New York. It was founded by me (John Watkinson) and Matt Hall in 2005. We both have backgrounds in computer science and programming, especially in Java. Initially we focused on the Sidekick platform but have since moved in to iPhone and Android. Our company is small, Matt and I are the only full-timers, but we employ contract talent as needed.

AAM: What was the thinking behind the Intelligent Home Screen prototype? What criticisms do you have with the Android home screen setup now that you want to fix/change?

John: The default Android home screen seems, in our view, to be based in spirit on a desktop computer. There are icons and widgets that can be spread around it, and customizability is the top priority. That’s fine for some users, particularly those that are tech-savvy. However, there are other approaches to the home screen possible and Android is the first platform that allows 3rd party developers to easily replace this core component of the system. We wanted to take advantage of that opportunity. We went for something that had a professional, understated design and put the user’s most vital information right up front. Rather than launching applications, the user takes actions on various messages, appointments, news items, tweets, etc. right from the home screen.

AAM: Is it just mock up images and video at this point or is there
actual development going into it?

John: Yes, it is a fully-functional prototype. It works on all existing Android hardware (that we are aware of) but as a prototype it still lacks a lot of polish. So, it isn’t ready for release, and still needs some effort to make it a finished product. We are hoping to get an opportunity to finish it, but we have other obligations in the near term. In short, we can’t say for sure when we will finish the project, but we sure hope that it will be soon.

AAM: Is it something that would have to be a Home replacement or could it be modified as an app or even a 4×4 widget?

John: It is definitely a homes screen replacement– it would not be feasible as an app or a 4×4 widget, in our opinion.

AAM: Where did the clean modern look of the Intelligent Home Screen come from?

John: The credit for the style goes to our design partner, Ideas on Purpose. They took our terrible sketches and turned them in to a really beautiful, clean design; especially considering the amount of information that is packed in to it.

AAM: As a company that makes apps for iPhone, Sidekick and Android, can you run down the pluses and minuses for each platform in terms of development?

John: Android is definitely our favorite platform for development. The SDK is very powerful and straightforward. That said, Sidekick is a solid platform as well, especially considering how much longer it has been around than the others. It has some commonalities with Android, as some of the Android developers worked previously on the Sidekick OS. The Sidekick is probably the best at enforcing user interface conventions across apps, making the apps feel very “native” to the phone and comfortable for the users. The iPhone is a very different kind of development experience. It is much more challenging and “to the metal”. The developer has a lot of low-level power, but can easily get in to trouble with cryptic errors and memory leak issues. However, that low-level power (combined with fairly uniform hardware) is what results in console-like performance. Unfortunately, Apple’s SDK for the iPhone sandboxes the developer, preventing apps such as home screen replacements. So, they all have their strengths and weaknesses, but Android is our favorite.

We are all very excited to see this prototype come to fruition and want to thank John Watkinson for taking the time to talk to us.

Android and Me » Eric Weiss

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