How does it feel to be an ADC2 $50,000 winner?

Florian Heft knows. Florian is the developer of Graviturn, a game that just won 2nd place and $50,000 in the Games: Arcade/Action category of Google’s ADC2 awards. Florian is also a 21 year old college student from Mühlacker, Germany, a small city of 26,000 people in the southwest portion of the country. He currently majors in computer science, and is in his fifth semester at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. I found out about his story by reading this post on Google’s “Android Discuss” forum:

“Oh my god … I can’t believe it. This must be some kinda fake mail or anything … AM I REALLY ON THE SECOND PLACE AND WON 50.000$ ?!?!

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED!!! =)

I’m totally freaked out .. i’m just a poor student who never had more than like 2.000$ … thank you google!!”

As you can tell, Florian is pretty excited about his windfall, and his friends and family are as well. (Apparently winning $50,000 from Google has that effect.) He never expected to see his game make it past the second round, and the notification letter from Google was in his GMail Spam folder: “Results from ADC 2 are in: Congratulations!”

Maybe it’s time to check my own Spam folder again.

Amazingly, Florian didn’t even plan his game for ADC2, but was just intrigued with writing an application that would use the tilting sensor in some way. When ADC2 rolled around, he submitted it just for fun. He estimates that it took about 100 hours to develop the game, with the last 20 hours of extremely careful bug fixing being the most challenging part of the project. He had an insightful tip on this subject that may help some other aspiring Android developers:

“Many of the apps you can find in the market have a lot of bugs and come off badly from the very first day on. This is very discouraging for the developers, because even if they fix the problems, most users won’t download a 3-star app.”

At this point, Graviturn has been downloaded over 50,000 times, and there are 1,500 active users each day.

Florian’s big reward has inspired him to consider creating new Android applications, but he has nothing specific planned yet. While he is still considering what he will do with the money, he knows that at least part of the prize will be applied to finishing his degree. The rest, he says, will be a healthy “stimulation for further Android development.”

Read More!

Android Apps Alert 8: a closer look at a few ADC2 apps [Dec. 6]

Looking for the best Android apps? Good luck finding them on your own. But if you do stumble across apps people will love, let the world know. Androinica.com encourages users to tweet great apps with the #androidapps tag on Twitter, and we plan to incorporate that into our weekly notifications of new, updated, or recommended apps. Get to downloading and keep telling us about those exciting #androidapps.

In the eighth edition of Android Apps Alert, we’re focused on the Android Developer’s Challenge 2. All of the apps featured this week are ADC2 winners or runners-up in Google’s recent app contest. While I couldn’t find or profile every app, we can look at a file sharer, an app for phone protection/location, a photo effects studio, multiplayer guessing game, and a multiplayer photo game. The video previews of these apps are below, along with text explanations and QR codes for those who want to focus on words.

Hoccer

Sharing data wirelessly with other phones just got a bit easier thanks to Hoccer, an Android app that allows ad-hoc sharing. We’ve seen a similar function in Bump, but Hoccer has more sharing options like bookmarks and text as well as photos and contacts. The app even supports sharing functions from note-taking apps like AK Notepad. Hoccer is a polished, quick, and fun way to share data. It is also available for iPhone users and there is a web client to use if someone has neither operating system.

Possible Alternative: Bump

FxCamera

Everyone thinks he is a professional photographer, so why not pretend a little more with this great cameras effects app? FxCamera is a camera replacement app that provides several shooting modes to alter each photo taken with an Android phone. I love this app because of the Toy Camera effect, but there are also settings for symmetry, Warhol, fisheye lens, Polaroid, and color settings like sepia, black and white, or negatives. Each shooting mode is configurable to fine-tune every photo to your desires. Though your phone’s camera may not be the greatest, FxCamera can liven up snapshots with a few choice effects.

What The Doodle

Pictionary is the scorn or lifeline of many dinner parties and couples gatherings. A digital version of the game can be played with What The Doodle, a multiplayer game that connects users in a guessing game played on Android phones. Players join private or public games and take turns illustrating a word, without words or numbers, that others must guess. A successful guess provides a point to both the illustrator and person who answers correctly. It’s always nice to see a classic become modernized in such a successful manner.

A World of Photo

Android phones have proliferated to users across the globe, and A World of Photo takes advantage of that fact with a photo-based interactive game. A World of Photo is a global social game that requires users to snap photos that are then shared with random users. Recipients then rate the photos for creativity and quality, which gives points to the sender. The game pairs players based on geographic location and “threads” that start and end with the individual user. Users are not allowed to share adult or inappropriate content.

WaveSecure

Losing your phone is one of the worst non-tragic feelings a person can experience. Never have that feeling again with WaveSecure, an Android app that can locate your stolen or lost phone. When a phone is misplaced or taken, log-on to the WaveSecure website and track, remotely lock, remotely wipe, or backup phone data, and then restore data once the device is recovered. WaveSecure can also be used as a backup for call logs or SMS messages, uploaded media, and manually locking a phone while it’s still in your possession.

Possible Alternative: Mobile Defense Click here to see a video of how easy it is to set-up and use WaveSecure

Other App News

Be sure to try out SpeedForge 3D, an ADC2 winner that we reviewed previously.
Note: The previous critiques about sluggishness have been addressed and the game is great.

Facebook app “Bloo” is once again a free application

Clear Channel’s iheartradio app is on the way to Android

Dolphin Browser supports multitouch browsing

When you’re in New York City, find the nearest subway with Wayfinder

Layar has been updated once again to support 3D objects in augmented reality

Read More!

Review: A World of Photo (ADC2 “Entertainment” Co-winner)

In case you didn’t know, A World of Photo recently won one of the top prizes in the ADC2 “Entertainment” category. The concept is simple: You see a big map of the world, you spin your phone, a random user is picked in the direction your phone is pointing, and that user has to send you a photo. In time, someone will spin their phone, and you will be selected to send a picture to that person. Then you get to spin again.

A World of Photo runs in the background, so it alerts you whenever you have been selected. And right now, you get selected a lot. I ended up uninstalling it at work, because it kept asking me to make a photo for a random user every 5 minutes despite the fact that I kept selecting the “I’m busy” option in the app. I reinstalled the app at home the next morning to test it out. I thought it might be cool to share pictures of my neighborhood with people around the world, and I’m sure A World of Photo won its ADC2 award with this potential in mind.

I sent someone in Texas a picture of a lake near my house, and someone in Germany sent me a busy street scene. Each user gets to rate the pictures they receive and send a comment. Pretty neat. I took my phone downstairs to show the kids. When I spun my phone the next time, with my children watching, the phone found a user in Florida named “bisexual man–I love XXXX,” who thankfully declined to send a photo. Maybe he was asleep–it was 7AM, after all. The app then picked some other user named “OK–Ladies show me what you got.” I picked up my phone and closed the app while my kids protested. “I don’t think it’s working right now,” I said.

The app does have a way to report inappropriate photos, but I don’t think that is going to dissuade the folks who consider this the ultimate adult social networking game. If the developer wants this to remain G-rated for most users, there needs to be a way to reject connections based on usernames. There are some other improvements that I would suggest. The selection process should exclude users that have already sent you a photo within the last few hours. And the app needs to respect the “I’m busy” selection until the user decides to reopen the app. Finally, the huge marker on the map that says, “Welcome! This is you.” should disappear after you start the game. It gets in the way, and I assume most people know where they are on a world map.

All in all, this is a pretty neat idea, and it is fun to send and receive photos from random folks around the world. It’s a free app (there is a donation version), and people seem to love it: 4.68/5 stars after 416 ratings. Just keep your kids away until you get a photo you like from a user that you have previously screened. Read More!