Hasta La Gadget!

We’re not certain this is the “ground-breaking new product” Logitech was hiring Android engineers for, but Squeezebox fans packing an Android tablet or phone have something new to download now that an official remote app is available. It gives full control over WiFi to all the Squeezeboxes you can fit in your home and brings the usual controls, metadata and album artwork from player to your mobile’s screen. While we’re still keeping our fingers crossed for a Vizio-style Android music box in the future if you have a 2.1 or later device in hand and a Squeezebox Touch, Boom, Duet or similar on the end table, you’ll want to head directly to that Market link below or check out the full description on Logitech’s site.

Logitech launches Squeezebox Controller app for Android phones and tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Contrary to reports floating about the web, the Motorola Xoom isn’t getting Adobe Flash Player 10.2 today — rather, the tablet is getting updated to support Flash, which will actually arrive in one week. Adobe now says that Flash Player 10.2 will be ready to download from the Android Market on March 18th, supporting only Honeycomb tablets (in other words, just the Xoom) to start, and will eventually be available for Android 2.2 smartphones — again, contrary to what we’d been told, but we can’t really complain on that count supporting Android 2.2 (Froyo), Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a beta version for Android 3.0.1 (Honeycomb) at release. Froyo devices won’t get the full battery-friendly Stage Video rendering pipeline and deep browser integration like their Honeycomb tablet brethren, but dual-core phones will reportedly see a performance improvement nonetheless, and there’s a new tweak that’ll let Flash web apps pull up a virtual keyboard if needed for full functionality. PR after the break.

Update: Adobe contacted us to clarify that Flash 10.2 is, in fact, headed to all three of the most recent versions of Android on March 18th — the Honeycomb tablet version will simply sport a beta label, and the smartphone builds will lack full functionality as described above.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Flash 10.2 beta hits Android Market on March 18th, supports Honeycomb, Gingerbread and Froyo (update)

Flash 10.2 beta hits Android Market on March 18th, supports Honeycomb, Gingerbread and Froyo (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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When 21 rogue apps started siphoning off identifying information from Android phones and installing security holes, Google yanked the lot from Android Market, and called the authorities to boot. But what of the 50,000 copies already downloaded by unwitting users? That’s what Google’s dealing with this week, by utilizing Android’s remote kill switch to delete them over the air. But that’s not all, because this time the company isn’t just removing offending packages, but also installing new code. The “Android Market Security Tool March 2011” will be remotely added to affected handsets to undo the exploit and keep it from sending your data out, as well as make you wonder just how much remote control Google has over our phones. Yes, we welcome our new Search Engine overlords and all that, so long as they’ve got our best interests at heart, but there’s a certain irony in Google removing a backdoor exploit by using a backdoor of its own — even one that (in this case) will email you to report what it’s done.

Update: TechCrunch says there were 58 malicious apps and 260,000 affected phones in total.

Google flips Android kill switch, destroys a batch of malicious apps (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A dude making a living writing Android apps — who, by all appearances, is an upstanding guy with actual quality software in the Android Market — is taking Google to task this week for what he calls “unacceptable” treatment. His beef seems to originate from the unexplained pulling of one of his titles — Rapid Download — a fact that he discovered not through any sort of communication from Google, it seems, but by the fact that he noticed was no longer making any coin from it. He goes on to say that he was unable to get anyone in Mountain View to explain the situation until his third attempt, at which point he received some unhelpful “generic information” plus a threat tacked on that if he violated the rules again, he’d have all of his titles pulled. For someone whose Market apps are breadwinners, we can imagine that would be a little scary.

Long story short, this particular developer decided he wasn’t going to take it — not after paying “over $14,000 in ‘service fees'” — and started a site to get his story public and enlist fellow devs unhappy with the way Google’s been treating them. Now, we can’t vouch for the accuracy of the guy’s story, but if this movement and ones like it gather enough steam, it puts Google in a precarious position; the Market, after all, is the crown jewel in the company’s strategy of allowing only approved devices to be the most relevant to consumers. Take away the absolute importance of the Market — like, say, Amazon is trying to do — and the power structure starts to shift.

Update: If you look at the legacy Market posting for Rapid Download on AndroLib, we can immediately spot at least one thing that’s wrong here — the guy is encouraging users to infringe copyrights right in the product description. Whoops! Sure, Google should be more proactive in letting developers know where they went wrong… but if you don’t see the problem in this, you probably have no business being a professional developer — at least, not one that’s claiming ethics on their side. Thanks, everyone!

Disgruntled Android developer sounds battle cry, rallies troops, demands Market tweaks from Google (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Mar 2011 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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