Episode 9 – Dial 201-2-WENECA

By | September 8, 2010
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In which we unveil some new features and talk the good talk.

Show Notes

  • Android 2.2/Froyo now accounts for 28.7% of total devices accessing the market, with 2.1/Eclair at 41.7% as of September 1st. That means that less than 30% are running legacy versions of the operating system.
  • Reports are that Verizon is about to launch a separate Android App Market. The store will be curated, like Apple’s App Store, and support direct carrier billing.
  • Paid apps being tested in India.
  • Nielsen reports that Android users respond to ads more than users of other platforms, at 33%. iPhone is at 26. This is likely due to more free ad-supported apps on Android.
  • Google Apps accounts are transitioning to support the same services now limited to Google Accounts. Thus, as part of this…
  • Android Buffet announces it’s new Google Voice number for you to leave voicemail messages for us. The number is (201) 2-WENECA(293-6322).
  • Enhanced Podcasts – Chapter markers, images, URLs, etc embedded in the file. Researched this and unless there is a lot of demand for it, the fact that the most rugged support for it appears limited to iTunes makes it currently a less attractive option.
  • AppBrain goes Social – Offers better options to browse the apps of friends and noted personalities.
  • The Google Voice update with Widgets Came in – Offers two new widgets, an inbox and a settings widget. Aside, Voice now supports missed call notifications to its inbox.
  • Update to Google Maps, includes Navigation for Walking, which will offer vibrate to turn instead of voice commands. Street view is also now on Google Maps. That will require the separate Street View add-on(Install via AppBrain)
  • Radio
  • Hurricane Apps
  • Video
    • RockPlayer Universal(Install via AppBrain) – Replaces previous processor-specific versions of the app
    • Last week, a listener asked about video streaming. He responds with more details, “I am running Windows server 2003 hosting around 2 TB of video files. The formats are MP4 and M4V each about 800 MB. I have sent up a network share so I can watch them from my desktop (windows 7) over WIFI using VLC. I would like to do something similar with my DROID.  I am able to navigate to the share using ES File Explorer(which might have been recommending by you guys), but when I try to play the file it wants to download it first. I was thinking about setting up a streaming client on the server, but if I do that I won’t have control over which video plays from the phone or am I wrong?“
    • While there are a lot of programs that make an Android act like a media server, media client is much harder to find. DLNA clients are built into several phones, but not downloadable. However, the Android OS natively does support streaming. You’ll need a streaming server, however.
    • Core Formats Android Supports – Even though your files might be in the right format, their bitrate might be too high for effective streaming if you want to do this over the net instead of in-house.
    • Few more questions to answer. This may require us to do a feature to put the steps together on the server side.
  • News Readers
  • Battery Left Widget(Install via AppBrain)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:09 — 47.0MB)