Posts tagged with: "android"

Mashable is one of the world's largest blogs focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news, with more than 15 million monthly pageviews. We were very excited to develop an application just for them, specific to the Android platform. Not too long ago, we announced that we developed their iPad application. Now, we're excited to announce that Mashable! for Android (mobile specific link) is available in the Android Marketplace.

The Android platform is such a great platform to develop for. There are unique challenges that make development more exciting, such as different hardware and software versions to support. What is most exciting is the end result: a clean and intuitive application that offers the best way for any Android user to read the latest news from Mashable.

Reading the latest news from Mashable is just one thing you can do with the application. With Mashable! for Android, you can also share what you're reading in several different ways. You can e-mail the article to a friend, share it on Twitter or Facebook, and you can also save it to Read Later on Instapaper. You can read comments for each article and even join the discussion by posting your own comments.

Mashable! for Android is now available for free in the Android Marketplace. Also, you can expect some exciting new features for Mashable! for Android soon. There are some great new features that are in the works. Intridea offers services for application development on all major mobile platforms, which include iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and Palm webOS. If you need help with your mobile application feel free to contact us for a quote.

Google’s Android has seen an incredible rise in popularity since its first handset was launched less than two years ago. Google has worked hard to earn that popularity, regularly releasing fantastic new improvements to the platform in the form of Donut, Eclaire, and now Froyo. Unfortunately, many users of the Android ecosystem won’t see these improvements for years, if at all. The reason? Manufacturers of Android handsets are building custom versions of the OS to add eye-candy and make the UI seem more attractive, at the expense of upgradeability.

HTC has its Sense UI and Motorola has MOTOBLUR. Samsung and Sony have also thrown their hats into the “heavily modified UI” ring. While these packages may serve to help differentiate from the competition, they are hammering the Android ecosystem by causing fragmentation (and yes, I do think that’s the right word). But it isn’t all their fault. One can certainly understand how, when competing against the likes of the iPhone, manufacturers would want to “pretty up” the Android experience. So I’ve got a few words for these OEMs, and Google as well.

Dear Google

I’m really happy that you’re ‘laser focused’ on the user experience for the next release. Now that you’ve got it humming at lightning speed with Froyo, it’s time to add some polish. Fantastic. But making a better stock UI isn’t the only thing that needs to happen to prevent this fragmentation.

You should be doing everything you can to prevent version fragmentation because it’s hurting developers and consumers. When people with G1s see “official Android Twitter client released” but can’t download it, they’ll get frustrated. They don’t know or care about the fact that the G1’s limited internal storage means that it can’t get the next upgrade, they only care that they’re supposed to have an Android but they can’t get the software they want.

Here’s my advice: take the feature lists of Sense and MOTOBLUR et al as a laundry list of areas where your API needs more robustness. If the capabilities of Sense and MOTOBLUR were exposed at an application level, this problem would simply disappear. You’ve built your platform to be backwards-compatible; if HTC wants to build a “Sense UI” app that changes the appearance of the UI and adds a bunch of widgets, and they want to make that only available on their handsets, more power to them. When the next version of Android comes out, it’ll all work seamlessly because they’ve simply built an app, like any other developer.

So keep up the good work on Gingerbread, I’m looking forward to the UI improvements. But also make your UI reachable by applications, provide hooks into the very guts of Android so that manufacturers and developers alike can really “make it their own” without building a custom ROM.

Dear HTC/Motorola/Samsung/Etc.

Thank you for making Android handsets. I’m a huge supporter of the platform, and the level of competition and innovation on Android phones has been amazing. Keep it up! But you’re doing yourselves a disservice by building these custom UIs that inhibit the Android version upgrade process.

Google has huge teams of people working to continuously upgrade the Android experience. You get the fruits of this labor 100% for free. I understand that as a handset manufacturer the idea of upgradeable phones isn’t necessarily the most appealing: if people can upgrade the software on their phones, maybe they won’t want a new one in 2 years! But trust me, you’ve shown that you’ll make the hardware good enough that people will want new phones.

Instead of locking down a handset to a specific Android version, create an unbeatable suite of applications that comes pre-loaded on your phone. Work on top of, instead of within, the Android operating system. Then you can leverage all of Google’s work and all of your own work to provide customers with a great experience. Work with Google to add pieces of API that will help you provide all of the value you want to provide; I’m sure Google would be happy to help as best it can.

Also, while I’m at it, can one of you please create a 4.3" handset running the stock Froyo UI sometime before November? I’d love to get a big-screen phone when my contract’s up, but I don’t know that I can handle dealing with these custom UI jobs. It’s just not for me.

Unicorns and Rainbows

I think that Android is a very important project that came along at just the right time. It has applications far beyond mobile handsets and we’ll begin seeing Android in cars, tablets, and more in the very near future. This will mean even more work will be poured into the Android ecosystem creating greater and greater benefits for everyone from consumers to handset manufacturers. All that needs to happen to take advantage of those benefits is for Google to help handset manufacturers free themselves of the idea that they need to “make it their own”.

I’m looking forward to the next 40 Android phones, and the 100 after that. I truly think that Android is going to dominate the mobile market five years from now (Apple will still have about the same piece of the pie, but Android will have displaced RIM and Microsoft entirely). So keep up the good work, but how about we all just get along in the meantime.

Today we are excited to officially launch Grub.it, a location-based web and mobile application that enables people to find or review individual dishes at restaurants wherever they may be. Grub.it exists to help you find top notch meals wherever you are and aims to connect you with local specialties, hidden gems and exquisite dishes in general.

Unlike traditional food review sites, Grub.it focuses on individual dishes instead of restaurants as a whole. Now people can see what dishes are the most popular at a given restaurant and ratings for restaurants will solely be based on dishes that have been tried - which is far more accurate. Also, since people can see the ratings for each dish, never will anybody need to guess what would be the best dish to order off of the menu. Grub.it is also a very powerful tool for business owners, since they can find out why certain dishes are more popular than others at each individual location.

Grub.it's mobile integration plays a very important role. From the Grub.it iPhone application, you can 'grub a dish' (rate, add photo, and attach a review) at nearby restaurants. When you grub a dish, you also have the option of sharing what you've just eaten and the rating to all of your friends on Twitter or Facebook automagically. You can also view dishes that have been reviewed that are close to you, your network activity, nearby restaurants, your reviews, and much more.

The mobile version of Grub.it is currently available for iPhone and iPod Touch in the App Store. We are currently working on bringing Grub.it to Android and Palm webOS in the near future. The current version of the mobile application was developed using Appcelerator's (www.appcelerator.com) Titanium Mobile platform.

All of us at Intridea hope that you and your friends enjoy Grub.it and find it to be very valuable and fun. We'll be adding many new features within the next few weeks. So, the next time you go out to eat, make sure to grub it!

On the heels of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's Net Freedom speech, Intridea was delighted to receive notification Apple had approved the official iPhone application we developed for Voice of America's (VOA) Persian News Network (PNN).

This new application gives Iranians a unique opportunity to get the latest news on their mobile devices and to share with the world the news as it happens in their country," said Acting PNN Director Alex Belida. "It is a groundbreaking way to expand our reach inside Iran and deepen our relationship with a key VOA audience."

Following Iran's troubling elections in the Summer of 2009, the Senate aptly passed the Victims of Iranian Censorship (VOICE) Act, which provided much needed funding and support to the Broadcasting Board of Governors to expand Farsi language broadcasting into Iran by the Voice of America's Persian News Network.

This application empowers Iranians at a time when the government is staging a crackdown against opposition protesters, Mr. Belida said. As with the disputed elections [last] year, VOA's Persian service continues to be a leading source of news and information for Iranians.

In this video, Hamed Behravan, Sr. VOA Correspondent showcases the newly released mobile application to millions of Iranian television and web-based viewers, on his weekly Technology Roundup segment.

Built under the technical leadership of Brendan Lim, Intridea's Director of Mobile Solutions, the application is designed for iPhone and Android Devices, and features the ability to read the latest VOA News Stories and share them through Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. Users can also keep up-to-date with the VOA PNN's Twitter feed (@voapnn). Additionally, "the application allows users to anonymously report news accompanied with either an image or video captured directly from their mobile device" says Lim; "enabling a new wave of citizen journalism."

Intridea is dedicated to supporting Gov 2.0 projects and programs that promote human rights, uphold democratic principles, and strengthen civil institutions. In the case of the VOA PNN App, we have been given an opportunity to create a platform that extends the Iranian people the freedom of speech --- in real-time.

Many important security measures were considered to operationally defeat or circumvent censorship and/or surveillance of content created, shared or stored by users. And with future guidance from the VOA & US State Department, Intridea plans to develop other sophisticated transmission techniques to counter the Iranian government's use of filtering systems, and general stranglehold of internet & mobile transmissions.

The VOA PNN application was built using Appcelerator's Titanium Mobile platform. Using Titanium Mobile, we were able to create an application for both, iPhone and Android, using just a single codebase. Also, Titanium Mobile allowed us to develop these native applications using only HTML, CSS, and JavsScript, which greatly reduced the amount of development time.

Here's how to get it:

On iPhone or iPod Touch
You can download it directly from the App Store. You can also find it by searching for 'VOA PNN'.

On jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch
If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can find the application through Cydia or Rock. The application is listed under the BigBoss source, which is included by default on both of these applications. Just do a search for 'VOA PNN' to install the application.

On Android
The application is listed under News & Media in the Android Marketplace. You can also search for 'VOA PNN' to install it.

The Android version features the same functionality as the iPhone version. However, since Google doesn't officially support the Farsi language, users who wish to use the app on their Android devices will have to add Farsi character support on their own. To install Farsi on your Android device, check the links below.

• arabicandroid - http://code.google.com/p/arabicandroid/
• XDA Developers - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=616384

Stay tuned for more.