Episode 30 – Me Want Honeycomb

Our big Honeycomb discussion show. Honeycomb is here and we’re going to talk about it.

Show Notes

• Latest Platform Numbers – 3.9% 1.5, 6.3% 1.6, 89.8% 2.1-2.3, 0.8% 2.3. The .4% increase on that is likely custom ROMS.
• Android 3.0 Honeycomb Platform Preview and UpdatedSDK Tools
  • UI Framework for larger screens/tablets
  • System bar at bottom of screen for notifications and soft navigation buttons, Action Bar at top of screen for contextual options and in app navigation…replaces hardware buttons
  • High Performance Graphics
  • Support for multicore architectures
  • Rich Multimedia(HTTP Live streaming support, DRM framework, easy media transfer)
  • Support for USB/Bluetooth keyboards and other USB devices such as cameras.
  • New APIs for Bluetooth A2DP and HSP for better audio streaming and headset control.
  • Enterprise enhancements, including encryption
  • Stabilized Video Chat using Google Talk
  • Less intrusive notifications
  • Application Fragments – reusable application pieces which will be backwards compatible to 1.6.
• Honeycomb emulator shows signs of smartphone support
• Platform News
  • The Daily released, an iPad only newspaper. Will such an endeavor come to Android?
  • Sprint changing upgrade plan as well. Will now need more expensive plan or longevity to get annual upgrade.
  • Verizon now will throttle top five percent of bandwidth users. Also will downres and transcode multimedia sent across the network.
• Market Watch
  • Introducing the Android Market website
  • Now supporting in-app payments and the ability to set prices in other currencies
  • Developers see Dollars in Android Improvements
  • AppBrain brings back Fast Web Installer
  • Interviewwith co-founder of AppBrain about the new Google web market – Unique features of AppBrain
    • daily and weekly hot apps
    • personalized app recommendations
    • more app details like change history, referring articles and blogs about the app
    • interesting browse and filter options, like top apps per country, per demographic (age, gender), move2sd enabled, price reduced, etc.
    • filtering of ~50% of apps that are spam or otherwise low-quality
    • sharing of your entire app list
    • connecting with Facebook and Twitter to see what apps your friends have
    • embeddable widgets for your own blog
    • uninstalling apps, setting of wallpapers and pushing URLs to your phone
• App News
  • Google brings official Blogger app (Market Link)
  • Google Body
  • Skifta for Android becomes first Android software to gain DLNA streaming certification.
  • Dropcam gets Android App (Market Link)
  • New Firefox Beta, still lacks Flash support and Motorola Droid support, still bloated.
  • Progress Update on VLC for Android
  • QQplayer (Market Link)
• Videocam Illusion, offers real-time special effects for video (Market Link)
• Android Interaction Patterns

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:10 — 19.6MB)