Hasta La Gadget!

Back in 2009, we wrote a story on crack mobile developer Larva Labs lamenting its inability to make a living off top-rated games in the Android Market. Well, to put it lightly, it ain’t 2009 anymore: the Android ecosystem has expanded exponentially in every conceivable direction, the Market has taken on tens of thousands of additional apps, and — according to one research firm, anyway — Android has now overtaken BlackBerry to become the most prolific smartphone platform in the US.

To that end, Spacetime Studios — the company behind mobile MMORPG Pocket Legends, which brings in revenue through in-app purchases — was shocked to discover that it’s making some 30 to 50 percent more from its Android users than its iOS ones. Furthermore, they’re spending more time playing and downloading the app with far greater frequency, which might be a testament to the fact that really great apps still stand out in the Market better than they do in the more mature (and more populated) App Store. The in-app purchase disparity is a little more difficult to explain, though — especially since iOS has a slick, integrated purchase mechanism that Google won’t be rolling out in Android for a little while yet. At any rate, the online mobile economy — regardless of platform — clearly still has some growing, maturing, and stabilizing to do.

[Thanks, Michael]

Profit shocker! Android brings home more bacon than iOS for Pocket Legends developer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 03:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The smart folks over at ComptonSoft are looking to provide a GPS receiver to your mobile device in a rather unconventional way. TetherGPS links up your Android phone’s GPS to the Nook Color by means of WiFi — either on the same network or via a WiFi tether — because the Nook Color is lacking in the standard usable Bluetooth department. After connecting the two devices, it makes a second link by running a TGPS server on the phone and a TGPS client on the Nook. The two devices are then intertwined in a blissful, all-you-can-GPS buffet of routes and roads. For the most part, the Nook’s location-aware Android applications, such as Google Maps, will draw from this connection for location data and use it as if there were a GPS receiver on board. TetherGPS is up for grabs for $2.99 on the Android Market, and there’s also a free “Lite” version for those who only need GPS for five minutes at a time — we’ll assume you know who you are.

[Thanks, Red]

TetherGPS brings GPS navigation to Nook Color, in a manner of speaking originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Spring is near! The sun is shining, the weather is warming and holy what the mothercakes, gas is four dollars a gallon right now?! And what mister newscaster? It’s going to get more expensive? Geez! This is getting out of hand. We all would appreciate saving some money on gas. Here’s how. More »

About a month ago, we told you about Immersion’s MOTIV dev platform to design Android apps with tactile feedback, and today its release has finally arrived. The SDK comes with predesigned haptic effects, sample code, and the ability to tweak the duration and intensity of the feedback — allowing developers to perfectly tailor the amount of shake in your groove thang. Interested parties can hit up the source link for the SDK download and start indulging in the haptic dark arts immediately.

Continue reading Immersion releases SDK to put haptics in Android, helps smartphones move what their makers gave them

Immersion releases SDK to put haptics in Android, helps smartphones move what their makers gave them originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 09:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Those who are familiar with Android Honeycomb might have already come across its music player’s cloud syncing feature, though previous attempts to port said app to phones hadn’t been successful. Whatever it was that kept crashing the app back then, it seems to have fixed itself — after xda-developers member WhiteWidows slapped the leaked app onto his rooted EVO 4G, the phone started to automagically sync his tunes to his Google account. The modder then swapped in an empty SD card, but he was still able to stream music straight from the cloud after checking the “Stream music” option in the app. Pretty neat, eh? That said, we do wonder if Google will be able to handle the exabytes worth of high-quality Justin Bieber and Spice Girl tracks.

Android Honeycomb’s music app extracted, brings cloud sync and streaming to phones originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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