Android and Me » android and me

Have a favorite Android shirt? Show it to us for a chance to win one of ours!

Clark Wimberly — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:41:55 +0000

Update: Congrats to our winners Amaurys and Mark!

You know that old saying Show me yours and I’ll show you mine? Well, we’ve shown you ours. Now we want to see your favorite Android t-shirt, and we’re giving you a chance to win a spankin’ new tee just for doing so.

To enter to win, simply post a photo of yourself in an Android t-shirt. Any Android shirt. You can post the photo on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Flickr- wherever you stash your pictures online. Just make sure you come back here to post a comment to enter.

We’ll have two winners, one that takes the best picture (as judged by staff) and one winner drawn at random (as long as there is a qualifying picture attached). Get creative, be funny, or strike a handsome pose. We just want to see you guys decked out in your Android finest.

We’ll leave entries open for 24 hours, at which point we’ll update this post with winners. Make sure to keep an eye on the comments, I’m sure there will be some awesome photos surfacing.

Of course, if you don’t have a tee yet, I’d like to suggest either of the following, which are only on sale for one more day at get.androidandme.com:

New Android wallpapers: CyanogenMod mascot and a crowd of Androids

Clark Wimberly — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:21:19 +0000

To celebrate the release of our new shirt series, and because a few of you have asked for them, we’re happy to release our newest set of free Android wallpapers.

Based on the latest shirts by Ray Frenden, we’ve got four wallpapers, each available in two resolutions. Nowdays there are too many screen sizes to even begin to keep track of, so we just went with generic ‘Huge’ and ‘Normal’ sizes. Crop to your heart’s content.

Throwback

Huge - Normal

This CyanogenMod mascot might be retired, but in our hearts he skates on in all his glory. Now that glory has been captured and put into a wallpaper. Enjoy it.

Communitee

Huge - Normal

Communitee is a multi-headed beast. We had the community submit ideas and we voted, selecting a concept we thought would look rad Frendened-up. Nailed it.

Of course, to download any of the above wallpapers, simply click the ‘Huge’ or ‘Normal’ link under the thumbnail, depending on the resolution of your device.

If you love any of this art, especially if you think it would look good slathered across your chest, don’t forget that these tees are still available for a limited time. We’re doing a special pre-order-only sales period, after which we won’t be selling them again.

You can head on over to get.androidandme.com for more information, or check out the announcement post from this morning.

New shirts: CyanogenMod Throwback and Android Communitee available now!

Clark Wimberly — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:20:43 +0000

Story time! Back in October, at the Big Android BBQ, we dropped a box of tees featuring a re-imagined CyanogenMod mascot at the feet of Steve Kondik. Let me rephrase that. We attempted to drop a box of tees, but I’m not sure it actually hit the ground before it was snatched empty. Immediately we were met with reprint requests. That day has finally arrived.

Even longer ago, back in September, we asked our community to submit tee ideas as part of a contest. The winner not only scored a free Galaxy Tab, but would have his winning concept knocked out by illustrator-to-the-stars Ray Frenden. The result is Communitee, a badass full-chest print featuring a crowd of familiar robots.

As always, these designs are discharge printed on American Apparel tees. Discharge is a type of screen printing where the ink actually replaces the tee’s color, rather than sit on top of it. The result is a ridiculously soft print, perfect for maximum comfort and durability (no cracking graphic after too many washes!).

These tees are available during a two-day pre-sale only period. The day after the sale, the tees will go into production in the exact numbers sold, creating a sealed edition. If you want to make absolutely sure you score either of these tees, you should buy them right now. You won’t be seeing them again anytime soon.

If you tweeted yesterday, you received a $1 off coupon code. If you didn’t get a chance to yet, you can still do so with the tweetbox below. Simply post a tweet to unlock your $1 coupon code:

In our old lives, before we were full-time phone nerds, we spent our time playing hip designer printing weird tees and trying to make cool products. We really wanted to thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to dip back into our old love of making actual things.

Get the tees now at get.androidandme.com

Contest closed: New Android shirts coming soon, win them now before they go on sale

Clark Wimberly — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:17:24 +0000

Once in a blue moon, we like to release limited edition tees. We’re nearing one of those times. Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 24, we’re going to release a special pair of shirts at get.androidandme.com, but before that, we’re giving you a chance to win them.

Update: We’ve announced winners. Thanks for playing!

To win, send us a tweet using the tweetbox below. Feel free to change up the message, just make sure you include @androidandme and the hashtag #Android, since that’s how we’ll be tracking the entries.

In addition to a chance to win, everyone that tweets will receive a coupon code for $1 off any tee order. It’s not much, but we figured it might be a fun way to soften the sting of losing yet another online contest.

The Shirts

Each design has a unique story. The Android crowd shirt, titled Communitee, came from a contest we did waaaay back in September. We had readers submit loose concepts and this tee is the final outcome. It’s an all-over chest print, covering the entire front of the tee with a crowd of robot characters.

The other tee, Throwback, is a nod to the recently-replaced-but-not-forgotten CyanongenMod mascot. We first printed this tee in ultra-limited numbers (like a few dozen) for the man himself, Steve Kondik, at the Big Android BBQ. Of course the shirts were gone in seconds and folks have been asking for a reprint ever since. This time around we went with a retro treatment since this skater is now officially retired.

Like always, these are discharge printed on American Apparel tees. Discharge is a type of screen printing where the ink actually replaces the tee’s color, rather than sit on top of it. The result is a ridiculously soft print, perfect for maximum comfort and durability (no cracking graphic after too many washes!).

The art might also look familiar, as it’s done by long-time, friend-of-the-site Ray Frenden. He’s done a few tees for us in the past and he certainly didn’t disappoint this time around.

Details

To enter to win, simply tweet with a mention to @androidandme and the hashtag #Android. We’ll be tracking tweets with RowFeeder using those specific flags. If you use the tweetbox in this very post, you’ll receive a $1 coupon code good on any get.androidandme.com purchase. Tomorrow at 10am, we’ll announce four winners and open the store. This contest is open to all users.

Threads are finally here. Join the league.

Clark Wimberly — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:06:28 +0000

If you’ve been paying attention around here lately, you know that big changes are afoot. A few months back we rolled out tweaks to our scoring system. More recently, we launched new user profile pages. When we deployed those changes, astute users noticed an extra tab, not yet live.

That tab was for Threads and we’re happy to announce that they’re finally here. Threads aim to be a lot of things, but at the core I guess you’d call it our version of a forum (just don’t let it hear you call it that). We’ve spent a lot of time on boards over the years, and recently even more time blogging, and Threads are a mashup of the two.

Threads do a lot of things differently than some forums, most notably costing you points to start a new thread. While anyone can participate in the comments (just like on a regular blog post), starting a new thread is a privilege reserved for users with enough points to previously prove themselves trustworthy. We hope that restricting posting new threads even a little bit will help with the traditional noise ratio you find on some forums.

Starting a thread won’t just cost you points, because you’ll actually earn points back for each comment your thread gets. We hope this light competition will foster a creative and thoughtful environment, not unlike our real blogging practices. Speaking of which, exemplary threads are actually eligible to get promoted up to a real article on Android and Me.

If you’d like to learn more about how threads will function, you can check the documentation in our new Docs section or just dive into Threads now.

Some recent threads

To get things rolling, I thought it’d be fun to post some of the active threads we’ve had over the past week of beta testing.

#thenextinstall Help us pick the next apps in the rough – Taylor is using this thread to source apps for his weekly column where he reviews little-known yet awesome applications and games.

Review your Galaxy Note for a free case – Besides points, sometimes a thread can earn you real prizes, as was the case with this challenge. Three lucky users scored a new case from @SpeckProducts.

The future of tablets – Pontificating on the future of tablets, and why they aren’t more utilized as text books and the like.

Best looking Android device? A quest to find the best looking Android device, from a strictly hardware standpoint.

What’s your favorite Twitter app? – The age old question: which Twitter client reigns supreme?

In addition to always being located at /threads, you’ll be able to find the most recent threads in the sidebar, visible on almost any page on the site. We hope that you guys enjoy this tool as much as we did building it. Join us in Threads and let us know what you’re up to in the world of Android!

Oh, and if you somehow still don’t have an And Me Account, it’s never too late to join!

Site Updates: New look for And Me Account pages, now with full activity stream

Clark Wimberly — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:35:21 +0000

The latest step in our continuing quest to develop the most unique Android community is finally ready for public consumption. Over the weekend we rolled out our refreshed profile pages for all And Me Accounts. If you want to see yours, just log in. If you’d like to see a sample, check out my profile or Taylor’s.

If you want the short changelist, it goes like this: user activity stream, mobile profiles, big updates to follow. If you’d like the complete details, join me below for a rundown of all that’s going on in the world of And Me Accounts.

Activity streams for all users

A few weeks ago when you visited a user’s profile, you’d get the ten most recent comments. And that was all. And it was even weirder when you visited an author’s page, where’d you get a full post list on top of the comments.

In our new build, everything a user does on the site has been digested into a single, easy to follow stream. Comments, articles, and threads all show up in a single timeline, pageable and filterable (browse 3 pages back viewing just comments, for instance). Astute readers among the crowd probably just noticed that ‘threads’ is new to this list, but we’ll have more about that later in this post.

We think these streams will give a much greater insight into who a user is and what sort of things they’ve been doing around the site to earn the influence their rank reflects. And they are just cool. While building them I lost myself many times just clicking around deep inside a user archive.

Full mobile support

One thing that had been missing since we rolled our Account pages back in October was proper mobile support. The pages existed, but in a lame, barebones state. With this update we’ve corrected that injustice with a full-on mobile rebuild.

The new mobile profile pages have all the same info as their big brother desktop versions, including activity filtering and all your profile info.

What’s next?

As much as I like this update as it stands now, it’s really just a building block towards some other big plans we’ve got for your And Me Account. Pretty soon users will be able to create their own content and track app installs on Android and Me.

As mentioned above, we’re soon going to be launching Threads for certain And Me Accounts. Threads will be different from a normal forum in a couple of ways. Only users with a high enough rank will be able to start a new thread and doing so will actually charge points. While anyone can still join the discussion by posting a comment, we only want trusted members of the Android community actually starting discussions here.

It’s not just going to zap your points, though, as thread authors will earn points for each comment his or her thread receives. On top of that, we’ll have the ability to convert a thread into a full-blooded article on the front page, giving you a shot at becoming a citizen-turned-blogger.

Also in the coming weeks we’ll be launching a partnership with AppAware, our favorite social app tracking service. Once you’ve got AppAware installed, you’ll be able to link your accounts and display a list of your installed applications right here on your And Me Account page. If you don’t already have AppAware installed on your devices, now might be a good time to check it out:

AppAware Find the Best Apps 42matters AG - AppAware PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Today’s updates and these future plans are still only a portion of what we’ve got planned for And Me Accounts. I’d love to just spill the beans right now but I think we’ve covered enough for one day. If you’re interested in these sort of things, you might want to check out our new changelist, which is pretty stark at the moment but should be rather tasty as time passes.

As always, before I sign off, I want to say thanks to you, the loyal reader. You guys repeatedly make building all these tools totally worth it. We hope you enjoy the new updates and can’t wait to show you what else we have planned!

Planning to attend CES? Come party with Android and Me

Taylor Wimberly — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:12:01 +0000

Planning to attend CES next month? If so, we have some exciting news to share. Android and Me would like to officially invite our readers and CES badge holders to join us at an exclusive private party SAY Media (an Android and Me partner) is throwing at the brand new nightclub 1Oak at The Mirage.

Be one of the first people to check out the brand new 1Oak venue (it opens for the first time on NYE 2012), and enjoy a live private performance by awesome indie band GIVERS, cocktails, tech giveaways and the chance to hang out with us.

Here’s how you can make it happen: RSVP to CESParty@saymedia.com with the code “ANDROID VIP” to make sure you are on the list. This is a private event so you must be on the list AND have a CES delegate badge to get in. Hope to see you in Vegas!

Contact Taylor if you have any problems with the RSVP.

Add Android and Me to your Google Currents library

Clark Wimberly — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:07:38 +0000

Filed under news we should’ve posted yesterday, we’re happy to announce that Android and Me is now available through Google Currents. You can find us by searching “Android and Me” or by directing your mobile browser to this link. I spent the extra day digging around inside the Currents Producer so I’ve got a few extra features to share with you.

And Me Current Edition

When you first launch Android and Me from your Currents Library, you’ll be greeted by a table of contents, cleverly titled Current Edition.

Inside Current Edition, you’ll find a large trending post along with a bunch of channels, like Latest News, Devices, Apps, Reviews, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and tweets from @androidandme. You’ll also find custom Currents that will change frequently, like Taylor’s Posts, The 25 Days of Tegra, and Galaxy Nexus Updates. Would you like to see another author? Or some different topics? Leave us a comment below, we’ll try to use your feedback when planning our channels!

The loyal reader will notice that we’ve styled Current Edition to look a lot like its older brother, the Android and Me mobile site. We still believe that our mobile site is the best way to interact on the go and we wanted to make sure everything felt familiar. You’ll notice the header bar made the transfer, along with touches of the new ICS typeface, Roboto.

Full length articles

If you’ll notice the number of dots at the bottom of this screenshot, you can rest assured that we haven’t trimmed or limited the length of our articles inside Google Currents. We like reading the full copy as much as the next guy and wanted to make sure nothing was left out. Along with the full copy, you’ll find all the post images and videos from the posts right inside Currents.

One thing we did notice was missing, though, was user comments. At this point, there’s no way to view or add them from the app. So we’ve added in a custom “View on Androidandme.com” button that will open the article in your browser, where you can comment and upvote to your heart’s content. Discussion has always been a cornerstone of our community here and we wanted to make sure everyone can easily jump into the fray.

Related Posts

After a bit of tinkering with the Producer markup, I was able to get a list of related posts with each article. At the end of each post, you’ll find a list of other posts that Google Currents thinks you’ll enjoy. At this point, I’m not exactly sure what the match criteria is (topic, author, date, etc) but the articles seem to be relevant so we’re rolling with it.

On that topic, we’re going to be attempting to add a lot more features soon. We wanted everyone to have a chance to subscribe to Current Edition now, even though things might continue to change. If you’ve got any ideas or if you’ve spotted another particularly sexy Current, let me know, I’m knee deep in Current code and hungry for suggestions.

Current Edition for Tablets

Not that it’s a feature of our Edition, per se, but I wanted to show you guys a screenshot on a tablet. Google Currents has full Android and iOS support, for both phones and tablets. It also syncs with your Google Account, meaning when you subscribe in one place, the content will follow you to all your other devices. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you haven’t downloaded Google Currents yet, you’ve got some explaining to do.

Google Currents Google Inc. PLAY QR POWERED BY APPAWARE

Once you’ve got Currents installed, you can add us by searching “Android and Me” or by clicking this link with your mobile device. Once you’ve got us added, have a look around, take some notes, then come tell us what you think. If you’re really committed to the cause, we totally wouldn’t mind a celebratory tweet or three:

PS: For the webmasters/developers in the crowd, I wrote a longer, more technical summary of my Google Currents findings, including importing WordPress feeds, creating a custom header, and all the other stuff I’ve described here. Enjoy!

More site updates: Tweaked scoring, improved login, link a Twitter account

Clark Wimberly — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:49:07 +0000

Last week we rolled out a a major update to our scoring system. Along with the points that we’ve had for months, we introduced a 1-100 scale that ranks your account in relation to other And Me Accounts on the site. After a week of close monitoring, we’re back with some exciting new scoring updates.

During our last update, we tweaked the level of points that users received for an upvoted comment. Today, we’re rolling out the ability for high ranking users to downvote a comment and have that vote actually affect the permanent user score. Just how many points depends on how high ranking the user is, but we’ve now got a few tiers in place where saying something stupid or rude might actually cost you your account points.

The ultimate goal here is to raise the overall discussion quality on the site and to hopefully highlight some of the most influential users. To that end, we now mark all anonymous comments as guest. We’ve also disabled Gravatars for guests, so if you’d like a proper user picture, you’ll need to sign up for an And Me Account. Registering is free and takes about ten seconds (really).

For those of you with an account already (or who have freshly signed up), you’ll notice our login area has moved to the top right of the site. There you’ll find your user picture and percentile rank, along with links to edit your profile or logout. If you’re not logged in, you’ll see a Log In button (of course).

If you’re an especially keen user, you’ll notice that the Edit Profile page is all new. We’ve restyled everything and added a few fancy new options, like the ability to link a Twitter account. Soon, having a Twitter account linked will unlock some awesome new features around the site (plus we’ll absolutely NEVER tweet without your permission). For now though, linking your Twitter account will just display a handy link on your And Me profile page.

Along with improvements for the And Me Accounts, we’re also happy to be starting with a new advertising partner today. More details will soon follow.

If you haven’t caught our drift here yet, we’ve got a lot of exciting things in store for this site. We’ve got a handful of new scoring and community features still to be unleashed, and we can’t wait to share them with you guys.

The Age of Influence, or: We’re rolling out some scoring tweaks

Clark Wimberly — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:45:36 +0000

A few months back, we launched our long-awaited (to us, anyway) scoring system here on Android and Me. In that time, you guys have racked up thousands of points leaving comments and getting upvoted. Today we’re ready to unleash another bit of the puzzle: a percentile rank for all And Me Accounts.

So how does this work?

I’ll be honest. I had to look up some math help websites to remember exactly how to calculate a percentile, but it works pretty much like it did back in high school. Each account is ranked by the order it landed in the pack, sorted by points. We measure the number of accounts below your account, then divide by the total number of account ranks. The result is a true percentile score that shows your account’s position in relation to all other accounts. Still with me? Good.

This new rank is displayed throughout the site, mainly coming into play in our comment threads. Any time a logged in user leaves a comment, this new score will be present. Where you used to see an arbitrary point total, we now display a simple 1-100 score ranking the influence of that user.

What happened to all my points?!

Your points are still completely intact; they are just no longer displayed with every comment. They’ve found a new home over at our revamped profile pages. All And Me Accounts now have a profile page that will display the user’s rank and point total along with a user picture (source from Gravatar) and a few account details. We’ve got a few more big changes coming to the profile page, but we think this version should hold us over nicely.

Points will still play a major role (they are what the rank is based on, after all); they will just no longer be displayed with every comment. Soon points will unlock various features on the site and even score you some real-life freebies, but we’ll get to that shortly.

Tracking influence

In addition to changing the way we display your score, we’re also changing the way we track points. For the time being, an account can earn points in just two ways: leaving a comment or having a comment upvoted by another logged in user.

To refine our signal to noise ratio, we’ve cut the number of points in half for simply leaving a comment, but tripled the points earned for a vote of confidence. This will give more points to accounts leaving worthy comments and will eventually lead to a more accurate picture of influence across the site.

So what comes next?

As we move forward, we will continue to refine our algorithm and the way it hands out points. We’ll be exploring new signals for which to award points and add them in over time. We also plan on using the scores for Perks, a new section of our site we’re building where influential users can claim prizes, real and digital (pro features unlocked for the site).

We also know that influence can’t be measured by one site, so we’re going to add social authentication for Twitter, Facebook and Google+. We’re even going to give you a way to cash in Klout for And Me Points with a digital currency converter of sorts.

One of my favorite things about running a tech blog is that our users are advanced enough to keep up with our crazy incremental builds and feature releases. Our scoring system is totally a work in progress, but we know you guys are smooth enough to handle it. If you’ve got any questions or ideas though, we’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below or use the contact form and we’ll do our best to make sure we respond to everyone.