Over the last 5 months I've worked on two different Android applications for the ADC, and finally one of them has been revealed! TuneWiki.com is a website that hosts thousands of song lyrics and then streams them to your media player on your PC or phone. It will then display the lyrics synced up to the song, or gives you the ability to sync them yourself if they haven't been synced yet. It's a community driven effort to sync all of the lyrics. There will be features to allow you to sync the lyrics with YouTube music videos also, but that isn't currently available in this SDK.

It's been wildly popular on the iPhone with hundreds of thousands of active users and myself and Chad Kouse have worked very hard to get it on to Android. The download is not available yet, but don't worry it will be available when the phones hit the streets.

Chad will walk you through the app in the video after the break.

THE PSYCHODROID

MAY 09 2008. EXT. MARY'S OFFICE - (DAY)

The Phone rings. Mary picks up the phone and listens. We see
Mary's face lighting up. Mary couldn't stop grinning. She had
heard some great news. She throws in some kisses on the phone,
pumps her fist and looks for something in her drawer. Mary takes
her bankbook out and gets out fast laughing. We can only feel
she has won the lottery. In fact she has won the Google Android Developer Challenge Phase I that was announced today. What poor Mary doesn't know is, how this would be fatal for her.

May 12, 2008. Monday.
Your android application is not in the top 50 ADC winners list.

Dear Android Developer Challenge losers,

I know you are drunk. I know you are hung over. I know you are feeling terrible. I know you are at your lows. I know life sucks. I know you can't get out of your bed. But wake up, will ya?

Your android application is not in the top 50 winners list. Cool. Take a deep breath. Look outside. Anything changed? Nah.. nothing changed. Your wife loves you as much as she did before. Your kids love you as much as they did before. Your friends love you just like before. You must do the same. You must do the same to your Android application. Give it the same love, will ya?

First thing first, Send out your congratulations to the top 50 winners. Yes, you heard me right. Do it now, and do it fast. Better? It felt good right? Yeah I know, It feels great. Wonderful.

Now that you are feeling better, let me tell you this:

Read more...

BREAKING - May 5 ADC winners announcement postponed, May 7 likely!

UPDATE: The ADC results might or might not happen today (May 7). So don't get your hopes up for today folks. The cut off date seems to be Friday, May 9. Good luck.

Here's quoting Google's Dan Morrill from the android-challenge forums:

Actually, if I recall correctly the judges are due to have their scores on the 100 back to us by Wednesday. Then we have to tabulate the scores, and I think the legal department has to finish their eligibility review (to make sure no submitters are known terrorists, and that sort of thing. ;)

So I don't think we'll be able to announce anything before Wednesday. But as far as I know we are still on track to announce sometime next week.

- Dan

Now go back to work, people!

Dan Morrill of Google set the records straight with the following ADC explanation in the Android Challenge forums:

Ahh -- we've not been rigorous in consistently naming these various rounds and phases. Let me try and adopt that terminology for this thread, and explain again.

ADC 1 == this $5,000,000 prize event going on now.
ADC 2 == the second $5,000,000 prize event that will begin later this year.
ADC 1 Round 1 == open participation with the deadline of 14 April, with 50 winners
ADC 1 Round 2 == participation limited to the winners of ADC 1 Round 1, with 20 "final" winners
ADC 1 Round 1 Phase 1 == reducing the original set of 1,788 submissions to 100 finalists
ADC 1 Round 1 Phase 2 == picking the 50 ADC 1 Round 1 winners from the 100 finalists

Okay, phew. :) With those definitions, here is where we are:

* We sent out the submissions to judging a few days after the submission deadline of 14 April, and judging began.
* Our 100 or so judges received the judging guidelines we provided, reviewed their assigned submissions, and reported data back to us.
* Late last week, we applied our outlier mitigation techniques, identified the top 100 results, and sent them on to the final, separate panel of 15 or so judges to score and produce the final 50 ADC 1 Round 1 award recipients.

So in other words, we are currently in ADC 1 Round 1 Phase 2 as defined above. Once data from the judges comes in, we will notify the 50 award recipients and ADC 1 Round 2 will begin.

It has not escaped my notice even on vacation that there have been a number of discussions on server hits and so on. Obviously we don't have access to everyone's server logs, and we can't monitor what the judges have actually been doing (nor would we snoop if we could, since that seems really sketchy.) We've tried to automate everything we possibly can about the judging process, but the one thing we can't automate is the actual act of assigning scores, since that requires a human's brain.

The judges were given fairly detailed guidance on how to calibrate their scores, and what to review. For instance, they are aware that they are supposed to read documentation and do their best to test all the features. In the end, though, each judge is going to test to his or her own satisfaction. I'm not sure how reliable it is to correlate judge reviews with observed server hits. Some apps might have sporadic bugs that prevent network accesses. Some judges may have decided they didn't need to see a particular feature. And before you cry foul, know that some people who have inquired about "missing" server hits have actually done quite well. Judges are just as likely to say "this is cool, I don't need to see any more" as they are to say "this is so uncool, I don't need to see any more." On the whole, our judges have been excited to participate, and I expect that they are being as conscientious as they can be.

The one thing I can tell you with certainty is that I have answered quite a few private inquiries, and in all but one case the judges responded with legitimate scores, rather than scores that say something went wrong or the review was incomplete. Our only data points are what the judges give us, because that's the only factor we can't automate. Since the judges are telling us that they reviewed to their satisfaction, we can only take their word for it.

We've tried really hard to make sure that the only thing that affects scoring is what you put in front of the judges. But the entire goal of the ADC is to leverage plain old human judgment.

- Dan
P.S. - watch for gory details on the nuts & bolts of all this in the near future.

50 out of 1788.. how about you against the world?

Google Android Developer Challenge attracted 1788 entries and soon probably on May 5, 50 winners are to be announced. There's a lot of speculation, desperation and frustration doing the rounds in the android developer forums. A few developers are worried that their applications got only 1 or 2 hits. A few more are worried that their applications were not tested right. A few of them are worried that their applications have not been started yet, since there's no trace of the server being hit until now.

Come May 5 this much is certain:

There'll be 1738 souls that would be shattered. There'll be 1738 dreams that would be broken. There'll be 1738 tears. And to those 1738 fellow android developers, here comes 5 little stories.

Read more...

Airtel India slashes STD, roaming tariffs - and lately Android is their Savior!

According to press release in India, leading mobile operator Bharti Airtel slashed STD(long distance) and roaming tariffs by 43 percent benefiting its 62 million customers.

Sanjay Kapoor, President Mobile Services of Bharti Airtel had this to say:

With 70 percent STD customers in India using less than 5 minutes a month on STD calls and 80 percent mobile customers not using their phones while roaming, we have a compelling customer proposition and this will drive growth and usage in the India telecom industry.

This is great news for India mobile users since this would trigger off a new round of price war in the roaming and STD segments for mobile telephony in India.

Indians care a lot about mobile price. The device needs to be affordable. The high end phone are popular, but there's only a small rich segment which will buy them. If as a device provider, you want to make inroads into the indian market you better sell cheap phones. It better be cheap and functional.

Lately I've been getting calls.

Read more...

Here's 10 tips for Android developers to become productive.

1. Accountability

- Break functionality into tasks.
For every functionality that you had been given, Break the given functionality into tasks that can be done in less than a 4 hr window. Don't get tasks assigned for example more than a 8 hr window. The reasoning is if you are not able to break your tasks into smaller pieces that can be done within a day, then you are not doing it right.

As a developer we should be looking at completing 2-3 tasks a day.

2. Commitment

- Estimate task development time:
As a developer tell yourself that you need to be completing this in X hours of time. The X might differ based on the experience. Even if you are wrong in estimation the first few times, don't worry. You'll get better at this and over time the estimation would be done right.

Never say I don't know to estimate. That's basically saying that you don't know how to write code.

Read more...

Is the iPhone poised to crush Android?

AndroidGuys published a rather controversial article titled
Why The iPhone Is Poised to Crush Android by Jamie Hunter recently. Jamie took on Robert Love, Google developer and Linux kernel contributor for saying the following:

There will also be no registration or certification requirements for Android development. No special permission from Google or the mobile carriers will be needed to make, deploy, or run applications for Android handsets.

Jamie obviously had some issue with the above statement and went on his tirade against Google Quality Control.

While fans of open source may be rejoicing at this news, others hoping that android would produce iPhone killers may be in for a rather rude awakening.

The Android developers were not amused by the article, and Jason from droidworks.com was quick to point out why Jamie is wrong in his latest blog article titled Understanding Android versus iPhone

My prediction: When the first Android phones make their debut, these same people are going to compare them to their slick/shiny iPhones and declare Android a failure.

And here's why they will be wrong..

Jason went on to clarify why Jamie was wrong and listed a few interesting points in support of Android. I tend to agree mostly with Jason and can also relate to the following question that he asked in his blog.

Seriously, how popular do you think the iPhone is going to be in China or India?

iPhone can be sleek and sexy for whatever it counts but there exists a hoard of masses who just don't care and are looking at a cheap mobile phone but still would enjoy a few mobile apps that can be delivered to them without any hassles.

And who can do this? Android, of course.

Android Developers Have Risen to the Challenge

Taken directly from Android developers blog, here you go!

Android Developers Have Risen to the Challenge
Posted by Azhar Hashem, Product Marketing Manager for Android, Google Developer Products Team on 17 April 2008 at 9:47 PM

I'm thrilled to share the news that developers from over 70 countries submitted 1,788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge!

Here are a few facts that I thought were interesting. When we announced the Android Developer Challenge back in January, developers started submitting entries right away but it wasn't until the April 14 deadline approached that the flood really began. The rate of submissions spiked in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, reaching as high as 170+ submissions per hour.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2008/04/android-developers-have-r...