General Mobile to release its own app store with new phone

It seems like every couple of months, I’m hearing about another Android store seeking to be an alternative to the Android Market. I learned about SlideMe several months ago, followed by the AndAppStore, Handango, Mikandi, and then the upcoming shops from Motorola and Sony. Do we really need another app Market for Android?

Yes, according to General Mobile, makers of the first dual SIM Android phone (DSTL1). General Mobile just sent me a message that they are working on a sequel to the DSTL1 that will include their own app market – Storeoid. Naturally, I had to ask why they felt the need to create yet another market alternative and received the following response:

1. Google Market is not available in many countries because of the Google restrictions ( eg. many European countries)

2. We produce some specific products. For example our DSTL1 device has a dual SIM support, and it needs some special applications.

3. Some applications will be localized from country to country

4. There is no content filtering in Google Market but we have [it in Storeoid]

5. The Google Android Market search bar does not work very well, but our search bar will work better than the actual one

Here’s a gallery of what Storeoid will look like. Keep in mind that General Mobile does not say all of these apps will appear in the market.

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Update Crazy on the Android Market

Assuming that you pay attention to the notification bar on your Android phone, you’ve seen it. Apps on the Market are being updated constantly, and often the same app will be updated several times in a week. For folks like me with a rooted phone and lots of apps, this is becoming quite a burden. Since I have almost 150 applications on my G1, I regularly see notices like today’s “22 updates available.”

Why don’t I just uninstall a bunch of applications? Well first of all, I paid for them. I admit I have a problem with uninstalling things that I’ve paid for, no matter how rotten they are. Plus, I don’t think that the frustration is limited to folks with rooted phones and huge SD cards. I have a perfect test case in my wife, who has an unrooted phone and only a few things she has downloaded from the Market. The update process has turned her off to the point that she completely ignores update notifications. The only way she gets updates is when I happen to grab her phone and do it for her.

The update process itself is a bit clunky as it connects to the Market, and you can only have two active downloads going at any given time. Then, when the application finally moves from the “downloading” phase to the “installing” phase, the phone becomes unusable for a brief time. Adding to the annoyance is the fact that developer descriptions of what these updates are supposed to accomplish are extremely variable–from very clear to nonexistent.

Two main factors are causing these frequent updates. First and foremost is the release of the Droid, which forced developers to adapt their code that was working in 1.5 and 1.6 versions to incorporate Android 2.0 models. Second is that users are far more demanding than they were in the early days of Android, when a slapped together app with a “home-made” UI was fine. While all of this is a good thing, I am looking forward to a time when updates can be packaged together and downloaded in the background, much like an OS update for Windows or Mac.

It turns out that at least one such a project is in the works: Android-Omnipatcher on the Google code site hopes to be a “universal Android .apk patcher” that can “automatically download and apply patches/fixes for installed apps.” Let’s hope that someone makes it work, and soon. In the meantime I will mentally prepare myself for the next batch of updates.

UPDATE: Richard, the developer of Android-Omnipatcher, says that his application actually has a much narrower focus: “It is a tool for creating and applying user fixes to 3rd party closed source apps. I’ve started working on it cause of my “Google Maps Navigation outside USA fix” – I don’t want to distribute proprietary Google’s code, only fixes and it is what this tool is for.” My apologies to anyone that was misled or had their hopes up. Let me know if you hear of any other new or tools that promise to help fix the Market update madness!!

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Yelp comes to Android, now available in the Market

Yelp fans take note, your Android app is now available in the Market. The app, which was released yesterday afternoon is available for those in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland. And yes, it is a free download but it does appear to be missing a few features that you may be looking for.

That said, for those unfamiliar Yelp is the place to go if you are looking for restaurant and business reviews, ratings and more. There is a current location feature that will show you what is available in the area, and you can even call the business or restaurant, see photos and reed reviews with just an extra click or two.

• By leveraging location-aware technology, the Yelp for Android app determines your current location and then lets you search for nearby businesses, read reviews and access a moveable Google map that enables you to easily zoom in/out on a location and redefine your search based on that geographic area.
• In addition to searching nearby businesses, you can also filter reviews by “Price,” “Open Now,” “Special Offers” and browse “Hot on Yelp”

Getting back to the feature that was missing, the Yelp app for Android is read only at the moment. Which means that you will be able to check out all of the information that is available but you will not be able to add any new information yourself.

That aside, its still nice to see Yelp come available. Of course, for those already using Sherpa it may not be necessary because with the lack of ability to add your own reviews you already have the same content available.

[Yelp Blog via CNET]

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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.”

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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!