Hasta La Gadget!

Discovering new apps in the Android market, which now has over 100,000 titles, has become increasingly difficult. So an independent app store is using social networking to help you find what you really want.

AndSpot has introduced social networking features such as activity feed, profiles and recommendations so its customers can find new apps based on what their friends like, instead of trying to find apps by category.

The site is now in private beta and will be launching publicly next month.

“The current paradigm of how marketplaces work isn’t in the favor of users or developers,” says Ash Kheradmand, one of the co-founders of AndSpot. “It works in the favor of apps like Facebook, Twitter and Pandora but not anyone else.”

An average user sees less than 99 percent of the apps in the Google Market, says AndSpot. And when users do find apps, they have little beyond basic comments and average ratings to go by.

Users are tired of scrolling through lists of apps to get ones that may be useful to them, says Kheradmand. Bringing social networking to an app store could help solve some of those problems, he says.

Unlike Apple, which has a tightly controlled official distribution for iPhone apps, multiple app stores can exist on the Android phone alongside the official Android app store, which is called Android Market.

For now, Android Market is pre-loaded on all Android phones. Independent app stores such as AndSpot can be downloaded from the Android Market or a browser. These independent app stores could in theory ink distribution deals with handset makers to get on devices, although they have yet to do so. Meanwhile, the number of apps in the Android market continues to grow making it difficult for users to find apps and for developers to market their programs.

That’s where AndSpot comes in, says Kheradmand, who has applied for a patent on the idea. On AndSpot, users first create a profile with an avatar and add friends. As with Facebook, there is an activity feed that highlights what the apps your friends are downloading. The activity feed also integrates with a recommendation engine, which AndSpot says suggests apps based on what you and your friends are using.

AndSpot also has a discussion board so its users can discuss apps. It will also have privacy settings so that users can choose to share apps, or not share them, depending on which category they’re in.

“You can set it so that you show games apps but not productivity apps,” says Faisal Abid, chief technology officer for AndSpot.

AndSpot says it will let developers keep 80 percent of the revenue from their apps sold through its app store and developers don’t have to do anything additional to publish their apps on AndSpot.

It’s an interesting idea and one where I can see social networking helping the process of discovery of apps. The key to its success as with any social networking site is scale. Unless you can get friends in there, you won’t have enough activity in your feeds to make it worth visiting.

Check out screenshots from the new AndSpot market below.

The discuss feature on AndSpot lets users talk about apps.

A friend's profile on the AndSpot Market

Here's how the app will be displayed in the AndSpot market.

See Also:

• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market
• iPhone Developers Go From Rags to Riches
• Google: 200000 Android Phones Sold Every Day
• Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones

Screenshots: Andspot

It’s been less than a full day since Verizon’s Droid 2 hit shelves (or two, if you count Sam’s Club) but the fine folks at iFixit have already managed to make their phone explode into… 24 pieces, if we’re counting right. Amazingly enough, the internal construction is almost exactly the same despite Motorola’s near-doubling of the horsepower (and addition of 802.11n) inside. You’ll find a nigh-identical logic board, speaker, camera and LCD screen — not to mention the exact same battery, which means original Droid owners will have a handy swap — and what looks like the exact same steps (but Torx screwdrivers required) to take the clever puzzle of plastic and metal apart. Not that you’d necessarily want to do the same to your new handset — It’s days like this we’re glad iFixit is here to take that bullet for us.

Motorola Droid 2 ripped to shreds, where’s an astromech when you need one? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like the faucet’s starting to turn wide open on Thunder leaks, seeing how this would be the second we’ve seen in a single day — and we suppose you could even count this one twice since the source appears to have two units at his disposal. AndroidSPIN doesn’t have any new details to report with this round of shots, but needless to say, talk of a 4.1-inch AMOLED display looks as real as ever, and it looks like all of these test units are running stock Android 2.1. Sadly, considering how long the Mini 5 / Streak was in the leak pipeline prior to release, we can’t promise that we’re going to see a retail launch on this one any time soon — but it certainly gives you pause before pulling the trigger on an AT&T-locked version of the Streak now, doesn’t it?

Dell Thunder spied again, still looking awesome originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t type when you can talk, says Google. The search giant has strengthened its existing voice-command feature on Android and introduced a new application called Chrome-to-Phone, for syncing with Chrome browsers.

Voice Search, despite its name, now lets you do more than just search: It will let users send texts, compose e-mails, call businesses, navigate, jot notes, and set the alarm on their phone by just speaking into the device.

The voice commands, called “voice actions,” are part of Google’s effort to improve the user interface on Android and let consumers go beyond the traditional keyboard and touchscreen interface on their phones.

The Voice Search application is currently available only for phones running version 2.2 of the Android OS — which means HTC Evo, Nexus One and Droid 2 users can get it on their phones immediately.

Google also launched a mobile sync app to link its Chrome browser to Android 2.2 devices. The tool lets users on Google’s Chrome browser click an icon to send a webpage or a map to their phone. The page or map is then almost immediately available on the phone.

“This is a low-latency, super-fast app for pushing data to the phone,” says Dave Burke, engineering manager for Google.

Google debuted voice search for Android phones in the United States about two years ago. But voice recognition built as a feature into the operating system was limited. Still one out of every four queries, or 25 percent of queries, on devices running Android 2.0 OS and higher comes through the voice interface, says Google.

That earlier version of the voice command allowed users to do just three things: web search, call a specific contact and navigate to an address.

The new voice search app goes beyond that. For instance, you can speak the name of a song or a band into the phone and the app will go online, find the music and show a list of apps such as Pandora and last.fm that can play the music you want. About 12 voice commands are now available to Android 2.2 users.

For more details, check out Google’s list of voice commands available through the app.

But when it comes to the Chrome-to-Phone app, the service is more limited. It is currently available to only Chrome users, though some Firefox users are also using it. The sync feature is also only available for Android devices, though Google says it will work to bring the feature to iPhone users as an app.

To get a more detailed look at Google’s Voice Search app, check out their video:

See Also:

• Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
• Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones
• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market
• Google Maps Finally Adds Bike Routes

Image: Screenshots of Voice Search courtesy Google.

Here’s the first of two promised announcements from Google Mobile’s little get-together in San Francisco today: voice actions. In a nutshell, it’s a more expansive API similar to iPhone voice control. There are 12 actions in total plus search (so… 13). So far we’ve seen a couple applications for it: “send message to [person] [message],” or — if voice calling is more your cup of tea — “call Millennium Knightsbridge in London” for a location-specific phone call. You can also set alarms, go straight to a website (“go to Wikipedia”), or speak addresses or locations for directions. “Find music” is particularly interesting and works across multiple apps, looking for tunes across the web, too. In this example, “find music by The Decemberists” brought up the option to create a Pandora station. Speaking “Note to self,” however cliche, creates a message reminder for you later. Blue words in a spoken message highlight potential errors that you can fix via more standard input mechanisms. It’ll come pre-installed on Droid 2 and should be available via the Android Market for 2.2 devices — just look for “voice search.” Video demonstration after the break. And if you haven’t been keeping up with the language capabilities, Android now additionally supports Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese for voice search… but right now actions are English-only. Désolé.

Continue reading Google Voice Actions for mobile announced: write messages, find music, and more

Google Voice Actions for mobile announced: write messages, find music, and more originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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