Tag Archives | Google Android

3 Ways Google Can Fast-Track Android Gaming

Posted by Jared Newman on May 12, 2010 at 5:17 pm

Google’s not making a big deal of it yet, but there are signs the company is interested in video games. Last month, Google hired games industry veteran Mark DeLoura to be its “Developer Advocate” for games, and acquired game and widget developer LabPixies. On Tuesday, TechCrunch spotted a Google job posting for “Product Management Leader, Games.”

I can only speculate what Google is planning, but a push to make Android a more prominent gaming platform is long overdue. Here are a few ways Google can make it happen:

Copy Apple, straight-up: Games are the dominant type of app on the iPhone and iPad, and Apple has taken the hint. Come OS 4, the iPhone will unify its games with Game Center, a layer of social networking and matchmaking features akin to Xbox Live. That’s a good step for any games platform to take, so why not Google?

Forget “Developer Advocate,” hire a “Gamer Advocate”: As long as Google’s mimicking Apple, one way the folks in Mountain View can do better is to hire a community manager, someone who can put a public face on Google’s gaming efforts and organize special events and giveaways. These gamer-developer liaisons are all the rage among the big publishers and console makers, and given the culture in Cupertino, there’s no way Apple’s going to do this.

Make Flash Gaming a Priority: Whether you loved or hated Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash,” there’s no denying that Flash was not designed for the touch screen. That’s not such a problem for video or other content that uses simple clicking, but gamers are going to want access to Kongregate, Miniclip and other Flash game sites. Keyboard and rollover input figure prominently into Flash games, so Google would be wise to find a solution.

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Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Demos

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 11, 2010 at 9:34 pm

On Friday, Adobe evangelist Ryan Stewart demoed FlashPlayer 10.1 for Android at a Seattle conference. It crashed repeatedly and couldn’t deal with one site (Hulu) that an audience member asked to see. Given Flash’s already-shaky reputation at the moment, it wasn’t surprising that this led to some withering comments.

Stewart has published a sheepish blog post saying he was using an interim build of the software that wasn’t up to the stress test of a public demo. The post includes an embedded video of Stewart demoing several Flash sites on a Nexus One phone. And it…works. Quite well.

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Google/Verizon Tablet: A Quick Wish List

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 11, 2010 at 5:18 pm

Google and Verizon Wireless are working on an tablet together. That bit of scuttlebutt comes from a pretty well-connected source: Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam, who spilled the beans to the Wall Street Journal today. The device will run the Android OS, and that’s about all we know about it so far–but Verizon says it’ll have more details later this week. (And maybe Google will have something to say at its I|O conference next week.)

This gizmo will, of course, compete with Apple’s iPad. It joins the land rush of  would-be iPad killers that don’t actually exist yet (and, in some cases, may never exist). I’d like to see something emerge as the iPad’s most formidable archival–and here are a few features that would help Google and Verizon’s tablet get there.

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Sprint Nixes the Nexus One. Shocked?

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 10, 2010 at 2:53 pm

And one more bit of Android news: Sprint, which was going to let Google sell a Sprint-ready Nexus One phone, has changed its mind. Its rationale is perfectly reasonble: Its upcoming EVO 4G superphone is essentially a souped-up Nexus One, with more power in every department that matters. It’s not clear why the company is only coming to this conclusion now, almost two months after the Sprint Nexus One was announced. Or, really, why it announced the Nexus One at all, given that it unveiled the EVO a week later, largely rendering its version of the Nexus One obsolete before it ever shipped.

Sprint’s decision follows the lead of Verizon, which also announced a Nexus One and then killed it before release. That leaves the original T-Mobile Nexus One and an unlocked, AT&T-compatible version available in Google’s online store. If Google wants to have a future as a phone merchant, it’s going to need to replenish its lineup–Nexus Two, anybody?–and avoid the vaporous quality of two out of the four U.S. Nexus Ones that were announced.

Google may have been trying to reinvent the phone business with the Nexus One, but it fell victim to a pretty basic law of phone marketing: If you announce a phone in early January and don’t actually ship it on a given carrier for months, chances are high that said phone will start to look like an antique before it hits the market. Especially if it runs Android, an platform that’s still evolving in fast-forward mode.

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Helpful Infographic: Android Pricing vs. iPhone Pricing

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 10, 2010 at 2:29 pm

Here’s a further thought on the fact that Android phones are selling well in part because they’re often way cheaper than iPhones. When iPhone purveyor AT&T finally hopped on the Android bandwagon, its first handset was Motorola’s Backflip:

As of this moment, AT&T wants $99.99 for a Backflip on contract–which is ninety-nine cents more than the cost of a plain-jane iPhone 3G. But if the Backflip appeals to you, here’s a slightly better deal: Amazon has it for a penny. That’s 1/9900th the cost of the iPhone 3G. (Amazon, in case you didn’t know, doesn’t have penny iPhones–and neither does anyone else.)

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It Would Be Kind of Stunning if Android Phones Weren't Outselling iPhones

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 10, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Retail research kingpin the NPD Group is reporting that Android-based phones are now outselling iPhones. Or at least they did last quarter in terms of unit sales in the U.S. according to NPD’s study, which found that RIM’s BlackBerries held 36 percent of the market, phones running Google’s Android had 28 percent, and the iPhone was at 21 percent.

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Please, Google, No 3D Android Interface Just Yet

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 3, 2010 at 9:47 am

If you love a company and Google buys it, worry. That’s been my conclusion lately. And the latest evidence is the company’s acquisition of BumpTop, the company behind a cool 3D desktop interface. So far, the news for BumpTop fans is bad: The product is being discontinued and even people who have paid for it have to deal with that nasty concept “end-of-life support.”

I’m curious about Google’s intentions for the technology. It hasn’t said anything so far, but the most logical assumption is that it intends to use what it’s bought in Android and/or Chrome OS.

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Twitter Does Android, Winningly

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 30, 2010 at 11:43 pm

A couple of weeks ago, when Twitter announced that it would soon release an official Twitter app for Android phones, I fantasized that the company was going to port Loren Brichter’s miraculous Tweetie Twitter for IPhone to Android. It didn’t. But it’s done something pretty pleasing on its own terms: It’s released a really nice original (and fre) Twitter app for Android. For now, it’s replacing the very-respectable-but-not-spectacular Seesmic as my Android Twitter client of choice.

The best thing about Twitter for Android is the user interface. It’s arguably a little on the twee side: the Twitter bird is everywhere, there are animated clouds, and trending topics joggle up and down. But overall, it looks really attractive, it’s nicely intuitive, and everything’s legible–virtues which are never a given on the Android platform. (Twidroid Pro and TweetCaster are powerful Twitter clients for Android, but they make my eyeballs hurt.)

Twitter for Android’s most interesting feature is its contact syncing: You can meld your Twitterfriends with your Android contact list, merging photos and other information and putting links to tweets in Android’s contact list. (The program lets you choose between bringing all the people you’re following on Twitter into the Android contact list, or just syncing the people who are already there.) The client also supports geolocation and lists, has a widget, and is generally pretty full-featured with one notable exception: It doesn’t support multiple accounts.

I’m still getting my head around Twitter releasing its own client apps rather than leaving that challenge and opportunity to other folks. But this is a good one. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that existing third-party Android developers will respond not by giving up but by trying to beat Twitter at its own game.

A few screens after the jump.
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Skyfire: Flash Video on Android, Right Now

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 29, 2010 at 9:00 am

At some point in the second half of this year–assuming it isn’t delayed–Adobe is going to ship Flash Player 10.1 for Android phones, thereby unlocking gazillions of hours of Flash video on the Web for owners of Android handsets. Mobile browser company Skyfire intends to beat it to the punch. It’s released a beta of Skyfire 2.0 for Android, a free, ad-supported browser that can play Flash video–although not all of it by a long shot–on handsets running Android 1.5 and above.

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Firefox Arrives on Android

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 28, 2010 at 1:27 am

Are you a browser junkie with a phone running Android 2.0 or above? Mozilla has released a “pre-alpha” Android version of Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox.

When they say it’s pre-alpha, they’re not being self-effacing–it’s pretty rough. On my Droid, at least, I couldn’t even get the on-screen keyboard to pop up. But it’s in decent enough shape to whet the appetite. And it’ll be great if the browser race on Android is anywhere near as exuberantly competitive as it is on Windows and OS X. (I’m already a part-time user of Opera Mini for Android.)

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