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You might have heard, Google's offering $10 million in total prizes for savvy programmers willing and able to make kickass apps for the Android platform. Why so much when other dev communities are getting into the groove for free? A Google rep told me, "We wanted to provide a big enough pool to reward and recognize as many developers who do interesting things as we could." How's that for appreciation? Here's a summary of the Android Developer Challenge.

•Programs, built by using Android's SDK, can be submitted January 2nd through March 3rd 2008.
•The top 50 programs earn $25K to continue development.
•Those in the top 50 are entered into a final round where ten $275k prizes and ten $100k prizes will be awarded.
•A second round of the contest starts in the second half of the year, when handsets running Android launch.
•"We believe that developers will be drawn to, and flourish in, the open and collaborative environment offered by the Android platform. The Android Developer Challenge is designed simply to catalyze that reaction."

Andy Rubin, who spearheaded the project, writes on the Google blog:

The first handsets are likely to be available in the second half of 2008, the company said. Other partners in the alliance include Sprint Nextel (S), Telecom Italia, NTT DoCoMo, Broadcom (BRCM), and a slew of other technology companies.

Who is missing? Quite a few large carriers, including Vodafone (VOD), Orange, SK Telecom, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). Nokia (NOK), Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are among the handset makers not part of this alliance.

My Take: This is one massive PR move, with nothing to show for it right now, and it seems like there are other unknown reasons (Facebook ad platform launch perhaps) for the motivation here. No phones till second half of 2008 — in our ADD culture that is a lifetime. The partners — with the exception of HTC and T-Mobile — are companies who are, in cricketing parlance, on the backfoot. Motorola, for instance is not exactly a bastion of handset excellence. Sprint — we know how well they are doing.

MyTake #2: Following the press call, I actually have more questions than answers. They completely dodged my question about how does it reconcile with other mobile linux efforts which are backed by none other than partners like Motorola. Andy Rubin replied that all the software is available for the developers in a week, which is non-answer if there is any. Funny - no phones till second half of 2008 and they want developers to shift their attention from iPhone, Symbian, other Mobile Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Even more convinced that this is a PR move. Not clear how this helps Google from a fiscal sense and its business implications for the company. Oh well, time to hound their press department.

What Others Say:

Chetan Sharma of Chetan Sharma Consulting: Google definitely assembled an impressive list of partners for this initiative. On a fundamental level, it still remains to be seen if this move is going to be transform the industry. Of course, everyone wants to be seen supporting openness, proof will be in the implementation and the business models that support this vision, otherwise this is just yet another initiative.

The initiative does help lower the cost of the handset due to cheap licenses for the stack and if this proves successful, some device manufacturers might give up their own efforts to minimize cost and focus more on hardware features that integrate well with Android. This is more an answer to Microsoft than to the carrier fragmentation Google has talked about. Is this going to be a successful Trojan horse strategy for Google remains to be seen.

Forrester Research wireless analyst Charles Golvin: The impact is broad across all players in the mobile environment, driving innovative developers to craft new applications that leverage both the mobile networks and the Internet, and helping to change the way consumers behave when on the go. Google is far from the only beneficiary, as competitors like Yahoo (YHOO) and even Microsoft (MSFT) stand to benefit should they embrace this approach; the impact will build slowly over time as initially the devices using this platform will form a very small percentage of the market.

Version m3-rc20a

For more information on the SDK:

• Development Requirements
• Guide to Installing the SDK

Using Eclipse? Install the plugin

Android provides an Eclipse plugin to help make programming and debugging easier.

OK, you've downloaded the SDK and are now ready to build the next killer app for mobile (and maybe win some $$$ in the process ;)

API Demos

A 'kitchen sink' application that covers the most useful aspects and components of the Android APIs. You'll see different implementations of Activities, Services, Notifications, Layouts, as well as methods for working with graphics and text. This application provides a good source of templates for your projects as well as a reference to 'How do I do this?'-type questions.

Lunar Lander

A game which demonstrates how to load and draw graphics, animation techniques, taking user input, saving state when the user pauses the game, and more. Coding shouldn't be this fun!

Note Pad

You'll learn how to use Intents to open a new screen, access a local database, and more. This sample is a good introduction to application flow and life cycle management, which are vital in developing more complex applications.

• Read through each application's manifest file (AndroidManifest.xml) to learn about the typical structures in an Android application.
  
• Modify the code to familiarize yourself with the building and testing process.
  
• Use a particular code snippet as either a base template or to get some needed functionality for your own project (why reinvent the wheel?)

My second article based on Norbert Möhring's HelloWidget tutorial, but i think it's easier. :) It will look like this:

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Would you like to disable a button on an appwidget?
As far as I know it can not be done, since the appwiget UI manipulation is limited by the methods of the RemoteViews class.

But if you insist to do that there is a way to make it look like the button were disabled!

RemoteViews can't manipulate a buttons enabled/disabled state, but it can modify its visibility. So the trick is to have two buttons, the real one, and an other which is designed to look like the real one in disabled state, and change witch one is visible.

Lets see a simple example:
We want to have two buttons on the widget, a stop and a start button in order to stop and start some kind of functionality. Once we have started it, we can not start it agin, until we stopped it and vica versa, so we want to disable the button which can not be used right now.

The XML definition of the buttons can be like this:

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Data Storage Methods


• Preferences
Preferences is a lightweight mechanism to store and retrieve key-value pairs of primitive data types.
 

• Files
You can store your data in files on your mobile phone, or in a removable storage medium.
 

• Databases
Android Api supports SQLite databases. All databases, SQLite and others, are stored on the device in /data/data/package_name/databases.
 

• Network
You can also use the Internet to store and receive data, whether it's an SQLite database, or just a simple textfile.

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You can create multiple AVDs with different parameters:

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Recently I had a chance to try out my first Android device. It's called the "T-Mobile Pulse / Huawei U8220 ". Previously I tried an HTC Diamond, which was running on Windows Mobile, both platforms have a very nice UI.

At first, when the boot-up screen showed up, I thought to myself that these devices are just like PC-s from now on, rather than mobile-phones. Not to speak about those very high DPI values. It is also very comfortable and useful that you can rotate the mobile by 90 degrees both direction, the display is going to be rearranged. 

The Pulse has a version 1.5 of Android, and it features aGPS, 3.2mp camera, g-sensor, Wifi, etc...

About Andoid

just take a quick look at this chart...

android (blue) | windows mobile (red) | symbian (orange)

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In my first tutorial i will show you how to set up Eclipse 3.5 with Android Development Tools (ADT) on Ubuntu 9.04.

Before we can install the Android SDK, we must install Java. First we open a new terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal).

To install Java, type:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin 

If you are on a x86_64 system, you also must install ia32-libs:
 

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

For Ubuntu 9.10 users:

Install eclipse from apt-sources, so open a terminal, then:

sudo apt-get install eclipse

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At last I found a companion for my Fallout3 BobbleHead that sits on my desk. He is so lonely, being alone all the time. He was very happy as my kids started to play with him but after a while it did hurt him.

Now he will get some friends. I hope that he won't have any problem with the fact that the friends will be non-biological. In any case they are more friendly then super mutants

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If you were ever wondering, how you could see if someone is using Google Talk from an Android device, here is the solution. In your Google Mail web interface go to Settings, select the Labs tab, and turn on the "Green Robot" extension: this will display a robot icon for the users from an Android device, while the coloring indicates the availability of the person.

It really makes sense: your friends can see, that you are logged in from your phone, so they know if you are available and do not answer, this is maybe because you do not have a free hand at the moment.

To be honest, there is still some room for improvements. The robots only appear on the web interface, and not in the Windows standalone chat client. On the other hand if you are an Android device owner, you have to notify every friend of yours, that they should enable this extension if they want to see whether you are sitting in a front of a PC, or you are on the go. This should happen somehow the other way round: you enable that your friends can see if you are on Android, and then everyone should see the Droid icon...

The long rumored Google phone is now officially announced, it's name is Nexus One. The hardware is manufactured by HTC, and it contains everything a smartphone of today can have:

• Qualcomm 1 GHz processor
• 512MB Flash, 512MB RAM, Micro SD Card slot
• 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen with 800 x 480 pixel resolution
• UMTS Band 1/4/8, HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 2Mbps GSM/EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, A2DP stereo Bluetooth
• AGPS
• 5 megapixels & LED Flash
• Digital compass, Accelerometer

To operate all the underlying hardvare and to interact with the user Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 is in charge.

Official page

You have two options if you would like to set the location on the emulator. For both options, you start with starting the emulator first.

Option 1: using DDMS

• go to your android/tools directory, and launch the DDMS tool
• select the Emulator Control Tab
• fill the Location Controls fields with the longitude and latitude values
• press the Send button

Option 2: using telnet

• open a command shell
• conect to the emulator with the command: telnet localhost <port>
• to enter a fixed location execute the command:
  geo fix <longitude> <latitude> [<altitude>]
  

For more information visit Location and Maps on the Android Developers page.

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Google Labs Release Gesture Search App For Android

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

AT&T Motorola Backflip To Include Yahoo! As Default Search Engine

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Google Nexus One Launch Postponed In China

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Google Nexus One Sold Just 20,000 Units In Opening Week?

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Verizon OTA Update For Droid Eris – Sadly Not Android 2.1

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Android 2.1 SDK Now Available

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Motorola Europe Confirm Motorola Dext & Milestone Android 2.1 Upgrades

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

LG GT450 Android Phone Announced

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

Motorola Droid Running Flash Player 10.1 Video

For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides

T-Mobile UK and 3 In Talks To Offer The Google Nexus One