Android and Me » android and me

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. MARKET 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!

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.

Adding a user picture to your And Me Account and other awesome things

Clark Wimberly — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:29:42 +0000

Each time we push an update here, we get a handful of questions from users asking about changes, where things have gone, etc. But there is one question we’ve been asked (and have answered) so repeatedly over the years that we figured it was finally time for a blog post.

Setting your And Me Account user picture

While we’ve got an amazingly awesome set of default Android icons, the best option is setting a custom user picture, an option we’ve made available through Gravatar. Why use a third party, you ask? Because we hate signing up for a new site each day and having to upload a picture. Not only is it an extra step at registration, but then you’re left with dozens of instances to update when you want to change your picture.

Sometimes I forget some folks might not be aware of Gravatar’s awesomeness. I’ve been building on WordPress for years, where it’s been the standard for universal user pictures. The process works like this:

you sign up at Gravatar.com
you upload a photo
blogs like Android and Me can automatically grab your picture

You’ve only got to sign up once, and it takes about 30 seconds. Then you’ll start seeing your face all over the place. You can even link extra email addresses to your Gravatar account to cover all your bases.

On the new site, we use Gravatar to source all user pictures. We use them in the comment threads. We use them for the author pictures. We use them in the sidebar with the top rated comments. And it’s not just us, setting your picture once at Gravatar will allow any blog you have an account with to automatically source the picture. Change it once? All sites updated.

A slight peak into the future

I mentioned it in our latest update post, but we’ve got big plans for our And Me Accounts. Right now we’re definitely in a transition phase, but we wanted to start rolling out features as we had them ready.

Currently, your And Me Account does little more than allow you to comment and keep score from a single account. Soon, you’ll be given a full user profile page that displays your name, picture, score, phone, carrier, recent comments, etc. Right now you can only score points from leaving a comment or someone up-voting one of your comments, but soon we’ll roll out all sorts of new point mechanics. We’ve got double point weekends, point-unlockable content, prizes reserved for user groups with certain point totals, etc. To get things started, any And Me Account that leaves a comment on this post will get double points.

We hope you guys will be happy with the user-centric features we’ll be pushing in the coming weeks. We feel we’ve finally got some of the kinks ironed out of this whole blogging thing and it’s time to focus on you, the loyal reader. If you’ve still not registered, you can do so here.

Welcome to the best Android and Me yet (for now)

Clark Wimberly — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 07:02:25 +0000

Greetings and salutations, kind sirs, for today you are looking at the newest build of Android and Me. While we’re in no way finished, we figured now would be a good time to roll out some of the changes we’ve been working on.

What’s changed, you ask? Lots of stuff.

Most exciting, we’ve taken our first steps towards deploying our user rating system. Now anyone with an Android and Me account can rack up points for leaving comments (and score extra points when other users up-vote your content). Along with the point system, you’ll find a user widget in the top right sidebar (when logged in) that displays your avatar, point total, last login, recently viewed articles and your most recent comments. We’ll be greatly expanding the user profile options in the next few weeks, but we wanted to go ahead and start letting you guys earn some points while we build out the rest of the system.

While the main masthead for the site remains mostly unchanged for now, we’ve added a bit of spice to hold us over to the next iteration. In an effort to make the entire section more timely, the popular posts now have a relative time stamp and the secondary navigation has been replaced with a list of trending tags. For now, these trending tags are built solely on our own content, but in the future I hope to plug these into the pulse of the internet.

In the sidebar, we’ve got new Hotly debated and Top commenters widgets. Hotly debated, as before, will show you the posts with the most comments in the past few weeks. Top commenters will highlight specific users from the past 5 days whose comments received the most up-votes. Moving forward, we’re going to try to feature more user content on the site. Posting solid comments and racking up a high score will soon come with perks.

When viewing a single entry, you’ll be followed by our new social buttons. We ditched the ShareThisAddAnythingEtc plugins and went 3rd party official buttons only. We think they’ll lead to more accurate counts and we encourage you to use them as much as your fellow social users can stand.

We’ve also built a new type of editorial post, which we’re calling the hero post, that should make its debut here any day now. You’ll know it when you see it; hero posts are full width and will center around an editorial illustration or typesetting from @angiedoes. We’ll use hero posts to draw attention to any content worth a daily feature.

We’ll also be bringing back our newsletter. Thousands of you have subscribed and we haven’t sent a thing in months. That’s changing. We’ll be back to our old trick of giving away prizes just for opening mail, so sign up while we’re still being lazy.

I also wanted to take this moment to thank the team that’s been working with me. This has been one of the most fun builds I’ve ever been a part of and everyone has played a huge role. Angie not only did most of the design here, she’s actually been in the CSS making edits. I’ve also been working (in my home, no less) with a new developer, Joseph, who you can now find listed in the sidebar. We’ve also taken on a slew of new authors in the past few months, and the Android and Me family is as tight as it’s ever been. And even though Taylor is officially out of the picture, we all still owe him a huge debt for all he’s done and is doing here.

Along with my staff I need to thank you, the loyal reader, for making all this possible. We keep growing because you guys keep showing up each day (for some reason). I speak for the entire Android and Me family when I say:

Thank you. We genuinely appreciate it.

We’re on Google+: You can now follow Android and Me on your favorite social network

Alberto Vildosola — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:10:53 +0000

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 48 hours, you already know Google has announced a new social network called Google+. Within just a few hours of unveiling this “Facebook-killer,” the initial reaction from most people ranges from “This is good” to “I’m deleting my Facebook account right now.”

Regardless of the popularity Google+ reaches, you can rest assured Android and Me will be there bringing you the latest Android news. That’s why I’m happy to announce you can now follow the official Android and Me Google+ account by going here. You can also keep up with following members of the Android and Me team:

Taylor Wimberly
Angie Strickland
Justin Shapcott
Anthony Domanico
Sean Riley
Nick Gray
Edgar Cervantes
Alberto Vildosola
Jessica Blanchard

So, what are you waiting for? Stop by and say hello. If you don’t have a Google+ account yet, we’ll be giving out invites to the first 20 people to request one in the comments. You might not want to put your email down there for the world to see, so make sure you use your Gmail account to comment and we’ll see it behind the scenes. Also, keep in mind that Google has closed invitations for now, and we’ll invite you as soon they open it up again. Lastly, keep this between us, as we’d like to invite loyal Android and Me readers. Not some guy who found out we’re giving them out on Twitter. That’s about it. Ready, set, GO.

UPDATE: That was fast. Thanks for playing guys, we’ll invite you as soon as Google will let us again. For those of you who didn’t make it, keep an eye out for another giveaway right after we invite the people that won today.

Android and Me and You (aka Where did Taylor go?)

Taylor Wimberly — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:17:54 +0000

Most of you have noticed by now that I stopped posting articles and there is a good reason for that. After two years of solid Android blogging, it is time for me to move on.

This week I began my new job as a product manager at NetShelter Technology Media. The name might be foreign to you, but NetShelter is the company responsible for serving our ads and they are a major reason we were able to grow this platform to the size that it reached.

I started this blog two years ago when there was just a single Android phone and only a handful of fan sites. From the moment I got my pre-ordered G1 in the mail, I recognized that Android was the future of mobile and I wanted to tell the world about it.

Fast forward to today and now there are thousands of Android devices available in every country and hundreds of blogs that report on them. Android became the leading smartphone platform and I accomplished everything I wanted to as a blogger.

Because I am leaving that does not mean Android and Me will fade away. In fact, I think the best is yet to come. I’m transferring complete control of the site to Clark and Angie, who have been working on a special project that will take Android and Me to the next level. Clark has already started to hire several new writers to keep up with the news and I hope you give them a warm welcome.

I’d like to thank everyone that contributed to the success of the site. I wish I could name every person, but I’m sure there would be some names I leave off (and I might get some people in trouble hah).

If you want to keep up with my journeys or get in touch with me, you can follow me on Twitter - @wimbet.

p.s. I know everyone loved my Android Insider rumor reports so I’ll leave you with one final tip. LG Nexus 3 with Tegra 3 by Christmas…

Team Android at SXSW, invading Lustre Pearl on March 13

Clark Wimberly — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:50:32 +0000

By this point I’m sure a lot of you have seen hints of this trickling out on Twitter, but we’re happy to finally officially announce Team Android at SXSW. We’re hosting a whole night of the latest Android devices, apps, games, and accessories at one of our favorite hangouts in Austin, Lustre Pearl. Full details after the jump.

Event sponsors

Come join us March 13 at 7PM

Lustre Pearl is located on Rainy St, just blocks from downtown Austin. It’s an easy walk or if you’re looking for adventure you could always take a pedicab. We’ll open the doors at 7 PM, with festivities starting at 7:30. What type of festivities? I’m glad you asked…

The Event: New devices, open bar, free food, more

We’ve got a lot planned for our event, some of which you can see on our SXSW page (a great place to watch for party updates and info!). We’ve got some great partners for the event including Samsung Mobile and NVIDIA, both of which will be bringing their latest goodies to demo and ogle. We’ve also got NetShelter providing some awesome support and gear to make sure the party is over the top.

More sponsors are to be announced, so stay tuned for updates.

One of the highlights of the evening will surely be our Team Android Choice Awards. Rapid-fire presentations will feature developers pitching their best apps and games, ending in a live crowd vote to name the best Android app of SXSW 2011.

Several developers have already expressed interest in participating, but we are still taking submissions for the next several weeks. If you are a developer attending SXSW and you have an Android app to show off, please fill out the Team Android Choice Awards application.

The ultimate house party, hula hoops and ping pong included.

Throughout the night we’re going to have an open bar and all the tacos you can eat. Yeah, tacos. Because out behind Lustre Pearl sits one of Austin’s most awesome food trucks - Bomb Tacos. We’re in the process of picking a second food truck, so if you’d like some choice in what you’ll be eating you can head over to AndroidVote to participate in the poll.

Art Vader will be painting a mural live. Photo credit: Mofoz Visualz

On top of the phones and food, we’ll have Art Vader on site for a live art show, painting a large mural over the course of the night. We’ve known him for a while now, and can say with confidence that you won’t want to miss his piece coming together.

Joining the party: Tickets are free but space is limited

While the entire event is completely free, you’ll need to RSVP to get in. You can do so on the Eventbrite page, at http://androidsxsw.eventbrite.com. We hope we’ll have enough room to fit everyone that wants to come, but your best bet at getting in is to RSVP, and RSVP early. While we booked a large venue, we’ve seen the popularity of Android absolutely explode this year and are expecting a packed house.

To help comfort the blow for those of you that can’t attend, we’ve made sure to partner up with some awesome media guests. Streamly.TV will be on hand to broadcast the event live, and NetbookNews and IntoMobile are both on board to help promote and cover the party.

You can also follow along or participate on Twitter with the official hashtag: #AndroidSXSW. We’ll be using it leading up to the event and all during SXSW, so make sure to follow the tag and include it in your tweets!

In Summary…

We’re having a huge Android party and want you to come. We’ve got Lustre Pearl for the whole night, and doors open at 7PM. You should RSVP if you want to come. We’ll see you there!

Android Gift Guide- win a phone of your choice! Plus dozens of other prizes!

Clark Wimberly — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:45:50 +0000

Just in time for the holidays, we’ve finally finished our second annual Holiday Gift Guide, which can now be viewed on AndroidGiftGuide.com. In traditional Android and Me fashion, we’re so late getting this done we almost missed our window, but we’ve got a ton of awesome prizes lined up to make it up to you guys.

It’s an #AndroidChristmas miracle!

While we’ve got a handful of contests and dozens of prizes, our main contest stands above the rest. We’re giving away ANY Android phone in the gift guide. That means you could score an Epic 4G. You could win an HTC G2. Or you can have a Droid X. Over the next 10 days we’ll be playing Santa, watching for your #AndroidChristmas tweets, making a list and checking it twice (actually the contest will be programatically tracked, there won’t be any manual checking, especially twice!).

To win, all you’ve gotta do is tweet with two key pieces of information, @androidandme (our Twitter handle) and #AndroidChristmas (special hashtag for this contest).

To make things easier, we’ve built a pre-loaded tweet box into every page of the Android Gift Guide site. Any time you’re viewing a phone or accessory, simply fire off a tweet for a chance to win! On the night of December 24th we’ll pick one random tweeter who will have his or her #AndroidChristmas wish come true!

Let me be clear about this: the winner will be randomly chosen and will receive whatever item he or she included in the winning tweet. We know that picking your own presents ahead of time is a bit in the face of the Christmas spirit, but we’re all adults here. We figured it best to let you guys pick your own prizes. The winning power is in your hands!

To our international readers

The main contest (the #AndroidChristmas tweet contest) is for our US readers only. It’s nothing personal, just legal/financial restrictions combined with the fact that we are more familiar with the US market (and all the phones in the guide are for US carriers) made for a domestic-only contest.

The good news is you’re more than welcome to participate in the satellite contests (like today’s Smartphone Coaster giveaway or tomorrow’s Midweek Madness). We hope you understand!

Let’s get it started!

Along the road to the main #AndroidChristmas wish, we’ll be handing out as many prizes as we can get our hands on. First up? Stainless steel Smartphone Coasters from NewPCgadgets!

These little dudes are stamped out of glossy stainless steel and come equipped with rubber coated feet for a no-slip grip. The stand rests your device (in portrait or landscape) at a perfect 75 degree viewing angle.

I actually purchased a six pack for myself and friends a couple weeks back, planning on giving them out around the holidays. But now, NewPCgadgets has been nice enough to send me a whole sack of these things to give out to you, the loyal reader.

To win, we’ll keep it simple: leave a comment on this post. We’ll pick TEN random comments to receive a shiny new Smartphone Coaster. And if you don’t win, take heart! We’ll have plenty more to give away later in the week. Or you could always buy one, they cost less than $4 and even come in a discounted six pack for holiday giving!

To summarize

We’re giving away stuff for ten days, win some of it! Send us a tweet along the lines of:

Dear @androidandme, all I really want for #AndroidChristmas is….Future phone winnersfrom Twitter

If you don’t do the Twitter thing, keep your eyes on the main site (and the Android Gift Guide) for more chances to win. You guys have stuck with us all year and this is our way of saying THANK YOU to all our loyal readers. We’ve had a blast with you this year and look forward to tackling the next!

Update: We’ve picked the random 5 winners that will receive a Smartphone Coaster. Jon, Remy, Tagon, Keith, and Juan: check your inboxes! And thanks to everyone for playing!

Update 2: Doh! As a few of you may have noticed, I was supposed to select 10 winners, not 5. To make up for it, I picked another full set of 10 winners, so no we’ve got 15 total! So, Brent, Eric, Riknos, Drew, Sky, Gabe, Kerri, Jake, Steve, and Tanner: check your inboxes.

Android and Me newsletter: stay informed, win stuff

Clark Wimberly — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:10:12 +0000

In today’s episode of Things We Should’ve Announced a Year Ago we’re happy to announce that the official Android and Me mailing list is finally open. Interested users can sign up below.

Best of all, signing up for the mailing list comes with all sorts of perks. Subscribed users will regularly have access to the following:

Weekly newsletter (it probably won’t be weekly, we are really just promising NOT to email you more than once a week)
Previews and early announcements about new site features
Event announcements (be the first to know about our meetups or parties)
Free stuff (in contests and randomly- starting today!)

We plan on using the newsletter to stay connected with our most hardcore readers. Need beta testers for the new site? Mailing list. Need power-users to contribute ideas? Mailing list. Spare tees left over from an event? Mailing list. If you’d like to more actively participate on this site, this newsletter is for you. Now, about the toys…

Win an Android Mini Collectible Figure

Each day this week we’ll be giving away select Android minifigs away to random newsletter subscribers. To win, all you’ve gotta do is sign up. Each day, we’ll tweet a photo of the toy up for grabs- some will be mystery-packed in box, some will be specific figures (read: we just had to open some).

Today, to get things started, and since we missed Monday, we’ve got two figures on the block- a random, in-box figure and a white/red “albino” variant. Both figures will go to one random subscriber at the end of the day. Winners will be notified via email.

And tomorrow we’ll be back with more- if you don’t win today, you don’t need to enter again tomorrow. We’ll pick from the entire list each time we do a giveaway (and signing up with multiple emails would be lame, aside from the prizes we are eventually going to deliver mail to all your addresses- who wants that?). If there’s a certain figure you’re looking for, leave a comment, maybe we’ve got one and can throw it into the mix.

You can always find the full subscribe form at: http://eepurl.com/w9L3

WEDNESDAY UPDATE

Today’s prize is a “Worker” Android figure and a Chevy OnStar wooden thumbdrive. I’ve got no idea how big it is, what’s on it (probably a press kit), and I’ve never used it. We get handed a lot of press trinkets and I figured we could pass some along to our readers.

Subscribe at the top of the page or through this link!

THURSDAY UPDATE – Yesterday someone asked for an Android bag as a prize and while I don’t specifically have one, this seemed pretty close. We’ve got a CopperBot riding inside a Sprint lunch tote. The lunch tote is insulated and seems to be made from recycled materials.

Next time you bring your lunch from home and your coworkers make fun of you as they head out for a big meal, you can at least take solace in the fact that you won the bag from an awesome blog. And it came with a toy. So forget them, man.

Subscribe at the top of the page or through this link!

FRIDAY UPDATE – With the weekend fast approaching it looks like our little green friend is ready to cut loose. Up for grabs today is a traditional green Android figure and an unopened mystery-packed figure. You’ll also get a Nerd Crest pin, because I found it on my desk minutes before taking the photo and thought it was appropriate.

Subscribe at the top of the page or through this link!

This is our last round of toys for the week, but keep an eye on the newsletter in the future (possibly over the weekend?) for more chances to win free swag.