This week, on Android Buffet, special guest Pat Archibald, Guru experiments with GO, and more.
- GO Dev Team has a tremendous collection of free products
- GO Launcher Ex (Market Link)
- GO Launcher Ex Notifications – show number of missed calls, unread SMS and Gmail. (Market Link)
- GO Weather (Market Link)
- GO Contacts Ex (Market Link) – Dialer and Contacts
- Go SMS Pro (Market Link)
- Non Android related news – Bubba Smith passes away
- Platform News
- Google acknowledges Android developers getting stiffed – Google’s Android Market support forums are full of devs stating that there are discrepancies with the orders being charged and the payout they’ve received each month.
- Why Critics Claim Android OS Really isn’t Open – While Google does encourage external code contribution, very few are actually committed to the main codebase. All code submissions are reviewed and approved by Google employees, which is an open source no-no, despite this, it is one of the most successful open-source projects.
- Better Android suspended from market, creator of Better Keyboard and other apps.
- Google and Microsoft fight over patents. Microsoft claims Google had opportunity to join with it on patent purchase, Google claims such a move would have had the opposite effect than desired.
- comScore: Android now holds 40% of the US Smartphone Market
- HTC reveals how to unlock your bootloader with upcoming webtool
- Ads in Android’s Notifications Panes – Companies like AirPush and SlingLabs are offering cash-strapped developers high payouts to put intrusive ads in their apps. These ads pop up in the notification area like any other notification. They can even appear when you aren’t using the originating app.
- Is the Amazon Appstore Free App of the Day a bum deal for Developers? The developers of PocketCast blog comment that despite claiming to pay 20%, they were offered 0%. Amazon gave away 101,491 copies of their app, and they made nothing, and pulled out of the Amazon App Store. TechCrunch comments, You’ll Make Nothing and Like It.
- Retrevo: Android users are more ignorant about Smartphone Security than iOS, Blackberry Users – Only 49% of Android users say their phones are password protected.
- App News
- How Plan B found the Droid I was Looking For (Market Link)
- AirPush Detector – finds apps that use AirPush (Market Link)
- Turn Your Computers on Automatically When Your Phone Connects to Wifi – Amusing idea
- Hearing Saver automatically adjusts Android volume when headphones are plugged in. (Market Link)
- Changelog Droid lets you see latest changelogs for all your installed apps (Market Link)
- LifeHacker Releases its Annual List of the Best Apps
- Productivity – Evernote, Springpad, Astrid, Mint
- Communication – Dolphin Browser, Google Voice, Twitter for Android, Google+
- Location – Google Maps/Navigation, ReQall
- Utilities – Titanium Backup, Dropbox, Swype, Tasker, Voice Search, File Expert
- Media – Google Music Beta, Pandora, Kindle, MoboPlayer, Doggcatcher, Spotify
- Food and Entertainment – FourSquare, Netflix, Yelp
- Art and Photography – PicPlz, Magic Hour, Camera360
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:28:47 — 40.6MB)