A native application development kit has been released for Android developers, offering a way to create certain kinds of high-performing applications for handsets running the Google platform.
Android applications run through the Dalvik virtual machine, which emulates a Java virtual machine. On Thursday, the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) was released, allowing coders to create parts of their Android 1.5 applications outside Dalvik, using native-code languages such as C and C++.
This approach would not ordinarily produce a massive performance boost, but it does allow developers to reuse existing C and C++ code for Android applications.
Android engineer David Turner wrote in a blog post that the NDK, which is an adjunct to the standard Android software development kit (SDK), could be used for writing higher-performing applications, but also had its drawbacks.
"Your application will be more complicated, have reduced compatibility, have no access to framework APIs, and be harder to debug," Turner wrote. "That said, some applications that have self-contained, CPU-intensive operations that don't allocate much memory may still benefit from increased performance and the ability to reuse existing code. Some examples are signal processing, intensive physics simulations, and some kinds of data processing."
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.
Perhaps because the Google Android operating system is already a year old, because the Android Developer's Challenge will be kicked off after Google's I/O developer conference instead of before, or because the platform differences between Android 1.0 and Android 1.5 aren't as dramatic as those between iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3.0, Android apps and the 1.5 Cupcake update failed to produce as much excitement this year compared to last.
However, that didn't stop a couple dozen publishers from showcasing their applications developed for Android 1.5, and it didn't stop us from picking out six favorites. Some of the apps implement newer technologies and solutions that further push what you can do on a mobile phone, while others demonstrated the seamlessness of their service between the desktop and device. With more Android phones expected to arrive on the market, like the HTC Ion Google given away to conference attendees, independent software developers will have greater opportunity to distribute their applications to a greater audience.
Updated 2/11/09 at 6:50 P.M. PT to add more context to the licensing debate and to correct Amnon Sarig's title.
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TuneWiki)
Back in October, we took a look at close look at TuneWiki, a media enhancement application for Google Android that scrolls through a song's lyrics as you play a song or YouTube music video. The company announced this week an update to its free Android application that will let you also stream Internet radio on your phone. The update, which will be submitted to the Android Market this Saturday, will give streaming songs TuneWiki's lyrical capabilities, as well as its social networking enhancements. As a moral perk, many of the lyrics will be legally licensed. We'll lay out the program's highs and lows, general availability, and some legal particulars.
We mostly liked TuneWiki when it first came out--certainly the idea of it, and in general the application's performance. It is also the first application of this type that I've seen for mobile phones. (The free-to-try application MiniLyrics has been around for a while on the desktop.) TuneWiki wasn't always as stable as we'd have liked, and syncing wasn't always on-point. We looked forward to the media application's next steps. Lyrics precision and a few stability issues were still present in our preview version of TuneWiki; hopefully the latter will be addressed by the time TuneWiki 1.0 reaches the Android Market.
Streaming Internet radio
Providing Internet lyrics, and legal ones at that, are the two biggest points of interest in this update. First let's tackle the streaming Internet feature. Like Pandora, Last.FM, and Slacker Radio, TuneWiki's Internet radio feature (designated by a microphone icon on the application's navigation menu) lets you choose stations by genre and popularity, and save favorite stations. In addition, TuneWiki can display a music map showing you where else the song is playing at that moment, and can stream lyrics that users have uploaded into TuneWiki's database from its Web site--the 'wiki' element of TuneWiki's service.
TuneWiki's streaming lyrics component only works for some stations, and then the lyrics are only as good as the user-generated database itself. If you're lucky enough to get a station compatible with TuneWiki's lyrics software, making them sync with the streaming song is your next challenge.
TuneWiki tasks you with finding your place and then tapping on it, after which the software takes over and highlights the lines for you. This TuneWiki did, but on a song with a quick tempo, the feature didn't kick in until two more lines had played. This is by far the application's biggest drawback. In addition, artist credits were only present on stations that could stream TuneWiki's lyrics. For many stations, we were left in the dark.
Of legalities and lyrics
In addition to streaming Internet radio, TuneWiki is announcing a partnership with a major music publishers association that grants TuneWiki the rights to stream lyrics for almost 2 million songs. Music law is complicated stuff, but as TuneWiki's President, Amnon Sarig, explains it, the licenses let TuneWiki legitimately give the green light to many user-submitted lyrics. Those that fall outside the licensing scope are protected under the 'safe harbor' provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Wikipedia). TuneWiki isn't breaking any laws--for now--by streaming any unlicensed lyrics its users upload, unless the rights-owner asks for a take-down. (Sarig told CNET in an interview that his company complies with publishers' requests to block song lyrics.) This is interesting stuff, especially in light of Warner Music Group's lawsuit against Seeqpod for its role in corralling copyrighted MP3s for users to play. Perhaps TuneWiki's show of good faith and latest licensing gains will shield it from similar lawsuits.
Availability
TuneWiki plans to submit the free version 1.0 of its lyrics application to Google's Android Market. By March or April, the company expects to release TuneWiki for BlackBerry, J2ME, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. These versions are currently being tested in a closed beta program. It is also possible to download TuneWiki onto jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches, though there is currently no listing in the iTunes App Store.
With the economy in continuing decline, keeping tight control over your money is no longer just for obsessives. These financial apps for Google Android help you count every penny.
Personal Budget Droid is a simple budget- and bills-tracker that lets you create multiple monthly budgets for groceries, housing costs, and so on. You enter every budget name and transaction by hand, but the app keeps a transaction history and calculates how much you have left for each category.
The more sophisticated FireWallet works with budgets inside various accounts and protects your information behind a four-digit pin you change from the all-zero default. It's a bit trickier to navigate, but also shoehorns in more options. In addition to a more refined interface, FireWallet has graphs and charts to help visualize your spending, and a rudimentary tool to alert you of upcoming bills. Both it and Personal Budget Droid are missing templates and more powerful features to optionally suck in real-time data from your checking, savings, and stock portfolios. Time for a mobile version of Mint?
Flick to either side for a calc that rounds up; up or down gets you a breakdown of numbers to pass around.
(Credit: TouchTip)TouchTip is our current favorite tip calculator for Google Android. Flick a finger left or right to slide between a simple tip calculator that rounds up to the nearest dollar or ten dollars, and one featuring a ten-digit keypad. Both views use the bill total, tax, and number of diners to calculate your total payment. Flicking up or down produces a breakdown of what you owe that you can pass around the table to friends.
Personal Tip Jar hails from the same developer as Personal Budget Droid, and shares a few visual characteristics, including a useless "news" tab. Yet Tip Jar is a great niche nod to those whose incomes are built substantially on tips. While a fuller budgeting app could easily accommodate gains from tipping, this application provides a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly summary at a glance.
Stock apps on Android are extremely mediocre, but the simply named Stock App is better than other skeletal tickers. This one opens with Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, Yahoo, and Google presets. You can add your own by pressing the menu key, and can browse frequently traded stocks. Stock App displays the value and percentage change up front; double-tap an entry to see more stats. While it's functional, Android is sorely missing the completeness of a stock-tracker like Bloomberg for iPhone. Get to it, developers.
Quickpedia isn't the only Wikipedia-scouring app for Google Android, but it's the best we've seen so far.
The free application makes it easy to search and browse Wikipedia for articles, throwing in a few tiny twists along the way to make navigating, reading, and learning interesting tidbits a breeze.
You can see it all unfold in this First Look video.
Veveo, a company that aims to provide "video anywhere" solutions through its Vtap online video service, announced Thursday that it has launched a free app called WikiTap for the iPhone and for Android-based devices that's intended to help users quickly find the most relevant Wikipedia search results.
At first glance, having another Wikipedia app doesn't sound too thrilling, but WikiTap goes beyond accessing the popular online encyclopedia. According to the company, WikiTap will allow users to use improve the experience already offered by other Wikipedia iPhone apps by uploading photos and videos to the article. That ability makes WikiTap the first app of its kind on the iPhone and Android that allows users to not only read articles, but contribute multimedia while on-the-go. All the uploaded media will also be searchable by others using WikiTap.
"Built on vtap technology, which delivers over 250 million media search queries per month, the iPhone and Android community now have the ability to easily search through millions of Wikipedia documents, and micro-contribute by uploading videos on any topic, from anywhere, making it an even more powerful knowledgebase for other users," Murali Aravamudan, CEO of Veveo, said in a statement.
In order to upload relevant videos to Wikipedia, WikiTap will automatically "mash in" relevant videos from Vtap's video search index and allow users to rate its relevance to the article through a "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down" voting mechanism.
Veveo's WikiTap application is available now in the Android Store and on the iTunes App Store.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Meebo for Google Android is not a terrible instant-messaging application. But it isn't a very good representation of what IM clients for the Android platform can do, or even a good representation of what Meebo itself can do.
In this first release, the free Meebo mobile application lets you chat with friends on the major IM networks--Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, AOL, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. It also runs in the background while you work on other applications and scrolls message notifications across the status tray. So far, so good.
However, that about plays out Meebo's feature set on Google Android--a disappointment for a product making its world debut of a native application and a disappointment for a company that has recruited 40 million unique users into its Web-messaging niche.
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Meebo)
Is it fair for me to hold Meebo to loftier standards? Absolutely. There are certain features common to competitive chat applications on any platform. Having an IM application save your log-in information is a must, and that goes double for a chat app that otherwise asks you to sign into six services every time you talk.
Notifications, simultaneous chats, emoticon support, and options are also must-haves. Of these, Meebo for Google Android has only notifications, and they're easily missed if you glance away from the screen. Though also limited, Meebo's iPhone-optimized site saves log-ins, supports some emoticons, and makes it easy to flip back to the buddy list.
Specific to this Androidized Meebo, I'd like to pick whether I get a buzz, a ding, or a text scroll to signal an incoming message. The organization of the buddy list should also be customizable, so I don't have to wear off the pad of my thumb scrolling through online and offline buddies from each service.
Meebo's team says the Android platform isn't holding back these features. They're just not ready yet. Of course, Meebo says, emoticons and log-in recall are coming 'round the bend. The company just wanted to get the application into users' hands quickly.
Meebo should have waited until there was more to offer.
As it is now, Meebo IM serves a purpose, but it isn't the only multinetwork IM application in the Android Market. Also free is IM+ All-in-One Instant Messenger, which provides a better multinetwork chatting experience on all counts--remembered log-ins, emoticon support, and incoming IM text that appears on the chat window.
Some users have complained about getting forced out of IM+ All-in-One Messenger, though that defect didn't plague my tests. Meebo's next attempt will hopefully bring it in line with this more competitive player.
What makes Ringdroid a must-have for Google Android phones? It's a fast, free, and all-around-good ringtone maker that will only get better in future releases.
Ringdroid doesn't stop at creating ringtones. You can also turn any edited song into an alarm or notification. Hopefully the publisher won't quit with the Android platform, either. I know an iPhone, a Nokia, and a BlackBerry phone that could sure use some homegrown ringtones.
Related stories:
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First Look video: TuneWiki
-Gmote gets Mac and PC music going
Given that TuneWiki was one of the 10 top winners in Google's Android Challenge, it's no surprise we're taken by its originality and ambition.
The free music application for Google Android not only plays your media, but it also helps build your library with songs and YouTube music videos. An additional search for streaming lyrics attempts to get you singing the right words at the right time.
TuneWiki doesn't ace everything it sets out to do, but if you're willing to give it some leeway, you won't be disappointed. Check out the First Look video here for more details and an up-close view of TuneWiki in action.
Related:
Ringdroid: Awesome Android ringtone-maker
Gmote for Android gets Mac and PC music going
Full Google Android coverage
If you want to hear songs on your Google Android phone, open up the default player or pull up TuneWiki. If you want to hear songs play on your computer without ever putting down the Google Android phone, get Gmote.
Gmote is a free application that turns your Google Android phone into a remote control to pick, play, and pause music and videos on your Mac or PC. Not to be confused with the Firefox extension gMote ("g" as in "gesture"), this version works in tandem with the Gmote server you install on your computer. When both apps are buzzing on the same WiFi connection, you've got yourself a network that gives you access to your media files from your phone.
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Gmote)
Gmote achieves this with two somewhat awkward, but still functional interfaces. The main interface groups the Play, Stop, Skip, and Volume buttons in the center. In the top left there's a button to browse your entire file system for media, and on the top right is a power button that kills the player you've remotely opened.
When you click Browse, Gmote will show you the file path you laid out during setup that will lead to your media. You'll save yourself headache if you create paths to your most-visited folders rather than to the entire C drive.
If you select Touchpad from the context menu, Gmote converts into a remote mouse you control by dragging your finger around the screen. You can use it to open folders and launch your videos and music. Unlike the browsing feature, which presumably is as sensitive to distance as your Wi-Fi is strong, using the touch pad is something clearly done best within visual range. Unlike other remote cursor applications I've seen (I'm thinking specifically of Air Mouse for iPhone,) Gmote's touch-pad movements are slow and jerky, and you can't adjust the sensitivity and speed to your personal style.
There's certainly room for improvement, but Gmote can stand on its own as an app that combines cool factor and utility.
Note: Gmote and other remote apps that rely on Wi-Fi connections to form "networks" between the computer and mobile phone are usually crafted with private Wi-Fi networks in mind. Workarounds to create ad-hoc computer-to-computer networks can be successful, but aren't always.
