For those who are unfamiliar with Peek: it’s a small BlackBerry-style gadget that’s built for text messaging and email, and nothing else. The single-purpose Peek was sold for less than $100 and used cheap service without contracts as a hook for those who needed to stay connected without the use of a phone. The hardware is pretty bare-bones, but includes a full QWERTY keyboard, GSM connection, side-mounted scroll wheel and 2.5-inch 320×240 display – not that much smaller than a lot of cheap Android phones, though it’s unfortunately not touch-enabled. Peek worked with a variety of email services, including POP3, IMAP and Exchange.

Can any of the Peek devices run Android? It’s hard to say. Getting the hardware itself to boot a different operating system wouldn’t be that difficult, but according to the Wikipedia page, the Peek’s processor is a mere 100mHz and the storage space is a measly 8 megabytes. It would be a challenge for even the most talented Android ROM developer to get Android to fit on the device, to say nothing of it running properly. The Peek has no expandable storage, so getting it to hold more data would require some hardware modifications. Still, if anyone can do it, Android modders can. If you’re up to the challenge, contact CEO Amol Sarva at amol@peek.ly to get in touch with one of the company’s developers.

Alec Saunders, RIM’s Vice President of Developer relations, broke the plan on his personal Twitter account. It works like this: Take an existing Android application, run it through RIM’s supplied tools, submit it to BlackBerry App World (their version of the Android Market/iOS App Store) and do all of this before February 13th. In addition to the coding requirements, apps on BlackBerry App World need to be devoid of mentions of Android and the Android Market, and list “Blackberry PlayBook” under requirements.  Saunders didn’t elaborate on any giveaways or contests, but directs converted developers to email “developeroutreachprogram@rim.com ” with the name of your app to collect your prize. Subsequent Twitter conversations with excited developers seem to indicate that he’s very serious. And why not – there’s got to be thousands of PlayBooks gathering dust in RIM storage.

All joking aside, it’s a pretty smart way to get developers excited about your platform. And RIM needs to do so quickly if they hope to keep the PlayBook, and by extension BlackBerry itself, alive in the mobile market. Early developer reports indicate that the porting process is indeed easy. So, Android devs, why not give it a try? If free hardware and the thrill of a new platform don’t sway you, consider that BlackBerry App World is metaphorical small pond at the moment – getting in now before the influx of 2.0 apps could make you the big fish. And not to be disloyal or anything, but BlackBerry does have some exciting things on the horizon…

SlashGear’s Shane McGlaun said it best this morning by saying, “Somewhere, an RIAA supporter is crying right now.” And we’d have to agree with him. After a conference this week Rovio CEO Mikael Hed had a few interesting comments regarding piracy and their Angry Birds brand. Here are a couple of quotes:

We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy.”

Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day,”

Rovio admits they’ve had their share of problems with piracy, but most of which was in regards to their Angry Birds merchandise and not games themselves. There is no doubt in my mind the Rovio owners would rather users buy their games, apps, and merchandise — but they way they make it sound it doesn’t appear like they are the slightest bit concerned. For a hugely successful company such as Rovio I can understand where they are coming from, but for the average Android developer that builds an awesome game and sees lackluster sales thanks to sneaky black market app stores this could be a very different story.

I personally feel that if you like a game, you should buy it. Support developers and game creators so they can continue to impress and develop for Android, or any other platform. That is why free versions and paid versions have been so successful thus far for Android because we can try before we buy. Not everyone has the luxury of Century Fox making movies of their games, or millions of bird pillows to boost sales.

What do you guys think? Obviously piracy hurts Android developers, but can it also be a good thing?

This will be a great place for new and experienced developers to meet and share ideas. Not to mention a great place for learning and information. They’ll be sharing neat tips and all sorts of other things for the developer world here. If you’ve been looking for an area to expand your Android developer knowledge this is a good place to start.

Launching just a few hours ago they already have almost 7000 followers that have circled them on Google’s new social network site, and we can only expect that number to continue to grow. This will largely be successful based on the developer community as a whole. If they take this opportunity the page should really blow up. If you’ve been eager to learn more, or just want to follow along feel free to add them to your circles today via the link below.

[via +Android Developers]

Motorola’s regular range of consumer handsets come locked-down, a precaution by the company and its carrier partners to avoid modifications and tweaks to the core user-experience. However, Motorola says, the new Developer device “allows us to continue meeting our carrier and regulatory obligations, but also meets the needs being expressed by our developer community.”

There are some compromises involved if you’re interested in the Developer Edition, however. The new RAZR is sold without a warranty, which means if you brick the device during your play you can’t expect much in the way of help from Motorola to get it working again. There are plenty of warnings – along with other information on unlocking and modifying the phone – at Motorola’s developer site.

The European RAZR Developer Edition is up for pre-order now, priced at €499 ($657), though there’s no indication of when it will ship. The US version will go on sale “in the coming months” Motorola claims.

Ice Cream Sandwich removes the ubiquitous Android Menu bottom from its comfy place below the screen and casts it adrift on the sea of interface, where it floats around the screen like Tom Hanks and a volleyball. This change has given grief to a lot of developers (not to mention users): Is the Menu section hiding out in the navigation bar? Slumming it up top near search buttons and titles? Fret not, devs: the latest post to the Android Developer Blog gives some guidance on exactly how to handle the new system.

First of all, it’s not a “Menu button’ anymore. It’s an action overflow: functions should only be placed in a menu if hey can’t be reasonably handled elsewhere in the interface. Depending upon your app, what it’s designed to do and what device you intend it to be used on, that could cover a whole lot or not very much at all. Take a look at Google’s example: for every app that needs a search function, a search bar is present on the top. Don’t need search, or any of the other standard bar functions? The action bar disappears - in which case, the menu button action overflow reverts to its position in the navigation bar. Unless you’re using a tablet, when it slides on over to the notification area. Unless you just build a button into the app itself. Or not.

Herein lies the problem with radical interface  changes: you have to retain people to use something that they’re already comfortable using. I’m not saying that removing the menu button was a mistake – on my custom Galaxy Nexus ROM, I have the option of a permanent menu button and leave it disabled. But users need time to acclimate to the new system. A lot of time, thanks to the multiple versions of Android still being sold on devices at retail. (Deleting the Search button was a mistake.) Developers, if you’re having trouble adjusting to the new system, not to mention making sure that your Ice Cream Sandwich apps are backwards-compatible, be sure to give Google’s blog post a gander.

If you haven’t heard of Tapjoy themselves, you’ve almost certainly heard of a few of their affiliated titles. The Android port of Duke Nukem 3D, Gun Bros, Santa’s Village and more all use funds and services from Tapjoy. In addition to initial funding, the company provides platform sorting tools, marketing advice and a spot in their proprietary app market. The company also publishes a handful of games under its own label. Then they sell advertising in the (mostly free) games, matching vendors with the target audience for each title to maximize revenue.

The fund was initially set up with $5,000,000 to split between worthy applicants, and Tapjoy is still accepting applications. Developers, if you’d like to be a part of the Android fund, head over to www.tapjoy.com/androidfund to apply. And in the interest of informing ambitious devs, I’ll add that the company offers its services for iOS and Windows Phone 7 as well.

While most developers are still working on the iOS platform, the rapid decline of Windows Mobile, Blackberry and PalmOS/WebOS has opened up time and commitment space, which is being filled almost exclusively with Android development. That isn’t all that surprising, since Android has grabbed 52% of the smartphone market across all of Asia. Though smartphone adoption is trailing outside of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (less than 30% of mobile phones sold in Asia are smartphones) the sheer size of the market makes it a worldwide stage for nearly every hardware and software vendor.

iOS remains much more profitable on an app-by-app basis, but the gap in both apps and income is shrinking. The Android Market is expected to meet and exceed the iOS app store in the total number of available apps later this year, and total downloads have already exceeded the 11 billion mark. Between November and January, more than 50 million Android devices were sold worldwide, bringing the total up to 250 million. Android’s growth doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon, and the development community is taking notice.

[via Business Standard]

While Google lagged behind Apple when it came to hitting the 200,000 apps point in the Android Market – taking 31 months versus Apple’s 22 – subsequent milestones were racked up more quickly. Android apps reached the 300,000 mark in a further four months, then 400,000 in four after that. In contrast, it took iOS developers eight months to go from 200k to 300k, and seven months beyond that to get to 400k.

Nonetheless, iOS users still have more choice in titles, but if the pace of submissions continues then that may not be the case for much longer. Google also nears the 100,000 active developer milestone, with each submitting 4.1 apps on average.

[via SlashGear]

Schmidt’s precise words were, “In the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.” Note, dear reader, that this is not a confirmation on a Nexus Tablet, but Google has specifically promoted devices which stayed within the pure Google experience before. The Nexus One, Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus have all been given web advertising campaigns spearheaded by Google, and the Motorola XOOM (the developer device for Android Honeycomb) continues to receive timely updates, Nexus-style. Whether a new Ice Cream Sandwich tablet would join the Nexus ranks as a developer device, or simply enjoy more informal Google support like the original DROID, is up in the air.

Android Community reccomended an expanded Nexus program last week, but this doesn’t appear to be it. Since Ice Cream Sandwich works for both smartphones and tablets (as demonstrated by the tablet interface hiding just under the surface of the Galaxy Nexus’ software) it follows that Google might want a reference device for both form factors. With the iPad 3 expected early next year, a Nexus-style Ice Cream Sandwich tablet might be just the thing to propel Android past its current quarter share of the tablet market.

[via SlashGear]

Soon we’ll be saying hello to Android 4.0.3 as it should rollout in the coming weeks. Along with the changes are plenty of API updates and tweaks for developers to take advantage of. Some of those include access to social integration like how Google+ and Gtalk have now and more. Here is the list right from the Android Developer Blog.

— Social stream API in Contacts provider: Applications that use social stream data such as status updates and check-ins can now sync that data with each of the user’s contacts, providing items in a stream along with photos for each. This new API lets apps show users what the people they know are doing or saying, in addition to their photos and contact information.

— Calendar provider enhancements. Apps can now add color to events, for easier tracking, and new attendee types and states are now available.

— New camera capabilities. Apps can now check and manage video stabilization and use QVGA resolution profiles where needed.

— Accessibility refinements. Improved content access for screen readers and new status and error reporting for text-to-speech engines.

— Incremental improvements in graphics, database, spell-checking, Bluetooth, and more.

It looks like the API changes will give developers and applications more access to the camera and calendar, improve tons of access for screen readers and text-to-speech engines and more. Then at the end it mentions improvements to graphics and even spell-checking — I’m excited to see what more they bring to that area as it’s already quite excellent.

Bring on the Ice Cream Sandwiches Google, we’ll take them all.

[via Android Developer Blog]

In a series of metrics, Google’s Android scored just 23% “open”, comparing poorly to the likes of Linux, Symbian and Meego. The running wasn’t limited to operating systems – Mozilla’s various open source tools, the Webkit browser framework and the QT user interface toolkit were also included. VisionMobile based their ratings on a variety of factors, such as the licenses used, the strictness by which the community is enforced, and the level of access that developers are given to the development process. For a more technical breakdown, head over to the source link above.

There’s no denying that Google keeps a pretty tight lid on Android, at least until the source code is released. In the case of the G1, original DROID, Nexus One, XOOM, Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, only Google’s software engineers and its hardware partners had access to the software until well after a flagship device was released. On the other hand, Google’s aggressive promotion of Android has allowed it to become one of the most widely-used pieces of open source  software in history, giving manufacturers, developers and tinkerers a complete and free ecosystem – eventually. VisionMobile concludes that Google’s promotional machine is a double-edged sword for Android, broadening its horizons while keeping its core interest well within the commercial spectrum.

[via BGR]

WebOS started as a new operating system, built from the ground up by Palm to compete with the iPhone. When the first two generations of the Palm Pre failed to impress and its former PalmOS and Windows Mobile Treo phones kept losing ground in the market, PC manufacturer HP bought the company in April 2010 and moved its employees to their largely stagnant mobile division. The company released  a low-end WebOS phone, the Veer, and the HP Touchpad tablet. Neither managed to gain a foothold in the market, and HP decided to discontinue production on both devices, and completely shelved its plan for the Pre 3. The announcement came less than two months after the Touchpad was released.

That’s where things started to get interesting. Once HP had decided to kill the Touchpad, they liquidated remaining stock in a firesale, pricing the $500 16GB version at just $100. They sold hundreds of thousands of tablets overnight. Immediately Android developers set to work on a version of Android Gingerbread for the 10-inch tablet, spurred on by renewed interest and a few small monetary prizes raised for the purpose. The CyanogenMod team was the one to finally release a stable, reliable version of Android for the Touchpad, which is still being updated. A version of the recently open-sourced Android Ice Cream Sandwich is already in the works.

So what does this mean for Android users? Soon you may have yet another choice for your device’s operating system, if there’s a developer willing to modify WebOS’ open source code to run on your hardware. If you’re skilled in that area you’ll be able to try yourself. You can expect versions of WebOS for the most popular devices, like the Galaxy S II and the various Nexus phones, and at least a few tablet versions should be available as well. Whether or not it’s something you’d want to use depends on your personal taste and the skill of the developers. I hope that some of WebOS’ more unique features, like the card multitasking system and edge gestures. HP said that it will continue to add to the project.

On a personal note, I’d like to say goodbye to Palm, Inc. Now that HP is basically throwing the last Palm project to the wind, it’s truly the end of an era for a company that helped define mobile computing for decades. So long, Palm – it was great while it lasted.

The processor and other upgrades bring the development board in line with more recent high-end smartphones. For example, the OMAP 4460 is the same processor used in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, with dual-core architecture and a base clock speed of 1.2Ghz. PandaBoard claims that the new model should be able to hands 1080p video for both playback and recording, and the upgrade brings a low-power Bluetooth module on as well. The PandaBoard ES is shipping worldwide today for an economical $182.

So, what can you do with a PandaBoard? Unless you live and breathe command lines and Bash scripts, not much. But creative developers and tinkerers have been putting the hardware to good use, including some pretty impressive Android utilization. One intrepid developer got Ice Cream Sandwich running on a PandaBoard just one day after the source code was made available.

In practice, it works kind of like a tiny secondary monitor. Connect your Android phone to your computer using ADB, then start the tool on your computer. Move the preview window to the editing app of your choice (make sure it’s scaled at 100%) and you’ll see the screen appear on your phone. It refreshes automatically, so you can preview multiple screens or elements, or just watch your phone while you edit. You don’t need a corresponding app for Android – everything is handled over the ADB connection. Developer Roman Nurik has released the program as a free Java app, so it should play nice with Windows, Mac and Linux.

Check it out in action below:

So why is this better than a remote access tool, like VNC or SplashTop? Specifically, the pixel-perfect preview size makes it ideal for designers. There’s not a lot of utility elsewhere, since it doesn’t actually extend your computer screen, but designers with a little technical know-how should be able to preview their creations much faster – not to mention wow a few of their less savvy clients.

[via XDA]

This update should spawn many others within the Android Market, as developers may want to perfect their code to this new toolkit’s heightened standards. Taking advantage at optimizing applications to ARM’s processors will supposedly help speed them up too. Take a look at the installation procedure below:

The main difference between the ARM DS-5 and the already released SDK and NDK is simply that the Development Studio is oriented on energy efficiency through proper code execution. And who knows, we may even see some better batter life on our devices when using applications put through DS-5. That would definitely follow suit with ARM’s specific DS-5 motto towards producing “Android apps that stand out from the crowd”. Rapid battery drain problems have been a major issue in so many of the Androids released today.

More information can be found at ARM’s Official Website.

[via SlashGear]

Apkudo is set to launch a new free testing service that will help devs to see how the application will run on nearly 300 different Android devices. The product will be launched at AnDevCom in San Francisco on November 6. Apkudo has 289 devices specifically including tablets and smartphones that account for just about every Android device sold so far.

The apps a dev creates are uploaded to Apkudo and then the lab runs the apps on the APK using each device. The full test takes less than a minute and then bugs and issues are reported back. There are cameras in the lab that record the video of the app running on the app devices and the devs can slow the video down to catch specific errors. This sounds interesting, I wonder if it will change to a paid service later.

[via Gigaom]

Google showed off some of these feature in its Hong Kong event, and boy are they plentiful. As far as API calls go, phones sporting NFC chips can share almost anything automatically with the Android Beam feature. Developers can integrate Beam into their own apps. The new contacts view, “People,” will pull together information from any social network that supports it. And the new notification system will allow users to instantly access apps from the homescreen or dismiss the notifications with a swipe.

We spotted some exciting new sensor capabilities in the 4.0 SDK release: temperature and humidity sensors. These should be a godsend for weather apps, which will no longer need to rely on remote thermometers or barometers to display local weather info. The unified code of Ice Cream Sandwich should make developing cross-compatible apps for tablets and smartphones easier than ever.

The download is available now from the Android Developers website.

Check out our hands-on looks at the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich below:

Galaxy Nexus Hands-on

Ice Cream Sandwich Hands-on

Details are still a bit scant and we have no idea what to expect this early, although we learned of Ice Cream Sandwich last time, which is finally being revealed tomorrow. No details were given regarding when registration or ticket sales will get started but like I mentioned above, they sold out fast last year and I’m assuming will only go quicker next year. We were live at I/O this year and indeed will be again next. You can expect to see plenty of awesome news from the teams at Google. Here is our I/O 2011 Keynote 1 recap.

From Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Google Music BETA, the new Chromebooks and more, last time around Google had an awesome event and I’m just as excited for next year. If you’d like to see ALL of our coverage from the past then head to our Google I/O portal, then check out that awesome Ice Cream Sandwich logo.

Google gave a Chromebook to all 5000 developer attendee’s at I/O 2011, what will they give everyone next year? Don’t forget to save the dates and set your alarms, we sure wont.

[via Google]

HTC has plenty of positions available for Android and mobile and are looking for a few developers to head to Seattle, Washington. “Design your future with HTC” is the tagline they are using here, sounds nice huh? HTC is the worlds leader in Android and Windows mobile phones and the #2 smartphone maker in the entire US. Some of the positions available in Seattle are:

-Android Development Engineer
-Software Development Engineer
-Software Development Engineer in Test
-Product Manager & Business Intelligence Program Manager

Sound like a deal to any of you developers out there? All those custom kernels and tweaks you’ve contributed to the Android community could come even more in handy working with the likes of HTC. For full details, instructions and to register for the event feel free to click here. Samsung recently hired CyanogenMod leader Steve Kondik, could we see something similar in the coming weeks from HTC? Sure would be interesting so stay tuned.

[via Eventbrite]