A FAQ to get you up to speed on the Android mobile platform

The first Android devices are still months away, but we are starting to see the first Android applications and the capabilities they will bring to Android devices. And the signs are good. A startup company in California, USA, has launched a beta version of a local search engine for Android devices.It enables you to [...]

CallFreq is an Android telephony application that analyses your calls and makes available to you the most dialed contacts. Created by Sadko Mobile, a russian-based company formed specifically to develop Android applications, CallFreq gives the Android user an instant dial “button” to the most-called contacts.

The goal of Location Authentication is to make it possible for Android device users to securely share their location with others as well as securely request the location of others.
The two main components of such a system would be:
- A public key infrastructure with a certificate authority (C.A.) that links phone numbers and other [...]

WiFi Army is a real life first player shooter game for Android. It is being developed by W2Pi Studio, a subsidiary of W2Pi Entertainment. Peter Whatanitch, President of W2Pi Entertainment, and lead game developer of Wifi Army has had an introductory video of Wifi Army on YouTube, which is been made available for [...]

Ribbit, a company based in Mountain View, California, has released videos of two applications that are truly amazing. The applications are the AIR iPhone and the Chalkboard Phone. Like Android, the Ribbit platform is based on Linux, and it makes you wish that something similar be written for the Android platform. Perhaps this could inspire [...]

Qualcomm, Inc., a member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and developer of advanced wireless and data solutions, has announced the acquisition of Softmax, Inc., a San Diego-based developer of noise reduction solutions for mobile devices. According to the news release, the acquisition of SoftMax will bring “leading-edge, multi-microphone noise suppression and echo cancellation expertise [...]

OpenIntents is an umbrella project that seeks to “develop and implement open intents for the Android platform to make different mobile applications work together more closely”.
This project’s goal is to collect ideas for tasks that are very likely to be needed in more than one project (and may have been already programmed independently [...]

Brendan Burns just released a tutorial on how to use the DroidDraw GUI builder. This tutorial assumes a familiarity with the Java programming language and an understanding of GUI design concepts. Here is a screenshot from the tutorial.

The TAT Cascades User Interface (UI) framework has been licensed by Motorola for use in select mobile devices. The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a swedish company with headquarters in Malmö, Sweden, specializes in mobile interface designs and software solutions, and is the developer of TAT Cascades UI. TAT Cascades features a set of [...]

Verizon Wireless has said it intends to participate in the Android mobile platform. Speaking to BusinessWeek, Lowell McAdam, the CEO of Verizon Wireless, said that “We are planning on using Android”. He further stated that “Android is an enabler of what we do”.
By my count, this brings the number of vendors in the Open Handset [...]