Search Engine Marketing Blog | Tug » Android

Series of Fun Facts: Part ll

rainelda — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:42:47 +0000

I don’t know about you, but this was a crazy week for all people here at Tug. However, we managed it, as well as we won GOLD at the DMA Awards 2011 for Best Use of Search. Overall an exciting week.

But it is Friday – the best day to learn something new and fun. When you see a little, green robot, what is the first thing that comes up your mind? Personally my brain generates two words and connects them together – Android and Google. Once again I did a little research and here are my personal discoveries about this operating system:

Originally Android wasn’t Google’s product. Android Inc. was founded in October 2003 (Palo Alto, California) by four men – Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears and Chris White.
Andy Rubin was the co-founder of Danger (a company specializing in platforms, software, design and services for mobile computing devices), Rich Miner was the co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Nick Sears once was the VP at T-Mobile and Chris White was head of design and interface development at WebTV. So all four lads had a background on software engineering. At the beginning Android Inc. was operated secretly, revealing only that it was working on software for mobile phones.
In August 2005 Google acquired Android Inc. making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Not much was known about Android at the time of the acquisition, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile market with it.
A lot of you definitely noticed that all Android versions are named after desserts and go in an alphabetical order – Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich. I strongly believe that I’m not the only one asking the eternal question “Why?” After browsing around and searching, I came up to this CNN article, where the same question was asked. It appears that Google doesn’t want to explain the reason for these names. A spokesman from Google said to CNN that it is an internal thing and that Google prefer’s to be a little bit inscrutable in the matter. So here we are with The Mystery of Android version names.

But wait, there’s more. I made a little survey online and spammed a lot of people to fill it in. Here are the questions and results of the survey:

Question: Which of these (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, WordPress, Blogspot, Gmail) you use on a daily basis? (multiple answers were available) – No surprise that most of the respondents use Facebook (75%) and in second place it’s Gmail (45%) followed by Twitter (37%). WordPress and Flickr received 2% each – Yes, I use them both, but I didn’t complete the survey. Honest.
Question: Do you retweet offers of brands that you follow on Twitter? – 54% said that they do not retweet offers, while 16% said that sometimes they do. Only 2% said that they retweet offers of brands.
Question: Do you share offers, stories, music etc. on Facebook? – Now this question’s results surprised me a bit. Only 40% of the respondents said that they share things on Facebook and a whopping 32% said that they don’t share anything on Facebook. Why did this surprise me? To be honest, I was expecting that about 80% to 90% would say “Yes”, as every time I log into Facebook, it’s never empty and a new post comes up every 2 minutes (majority being video, news article, blog post etc. sharing).
Question: Which mobile OS you find visually attractive, convenient and quickly manageable? – People were offered 3 options: iOS, Windows Phone 7 and Android. 67% voted for Android, 19% voted for iOS and 5% voted for WP7.

Have great weekend all!

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Getting Arrested? There’s an App for that (no really there is!)

Faye — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:03:57 +0000

Inspired by a real Occupy Wall Street incident a new app has been developed that notifies, with 1 click no-less, your lawyer, loved ones etc that you are being arrested!

The ‘I’m getting arrested‘ app for Android makes it a timely one in light of recent protest movements and one that could be potentially used globally.

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Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II vs. iPhone 4

rainelda — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:39:43 +0000

Yes, this has become an old, but huge fight between Android and Apple. And the war between Samsung and iPhone is also a common thing going on at the moment. I have recently read that it takes approximately 20 – 30 minutes daily for an Android phone user to explain why he/she didn’t buy an iPhone – not sure how true or false is this hypothesis, though.

Although Apple has succeeded to successfully block the sales of selected Samsung devices in a couple countries around the globe, this hasn’t stopped the Samsung Galaxy series of phones from becoming an international success. The South Korean company Samsung announced yesterday that the sales of the Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Galaxy S II have got up to 30 million. That’s right, Samsung sold 30 million Galaxy S series units worldwide (between the S and S II devices). Thanks to the powerful phone and the Android platform it uses (which is also a huge hit these days) the first generation Samsung Galaxy S has reached nearly 20 million, while its sequel, the Samsung Galaxy S II recently passed the 10 million mark.

Samsung reports that the Galaxy S II is the fastest selling device to date in the company. It took the Samsung Galaxy S II only five months to break 10 million units sold. Adding to the success story of the device, the Samsung Galaxy S II received various accolades such as the “Mobile Choice” and “Consumer Award, 2011″ and the “Phone of the Year” title from the Gadget Awards 2011.

Congratulations to Samsung achieving this amazing success!

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Kindle goes Social with Android

rainelda — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:10:46 +0000

Either it’s on the tube while getting to work or sitting in the park, people are reading books all over the world. E-book readers are very popular these days and almost everyone is familiar with the Amazon Kindle.

Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader that uses the E-Ink electronic paper display that shows up to 16 shades of gray, minimizes power use and simulates reading on paper.

Recently Amazon announced that they will launch a tablet that most likely is going to be called “Kindle Fire”. The tablets are expected to sport a 7-inch backlit display. It has been designed by the same company that worked on BlackBerry’s PlayBook, Quanta. Being of the same form factor it’s possible that the two devices will look similar at first glance. The tablet is expected to be powered by a T1 dual-core OMAPchip and it could have a very limited on-board memory of up to 6 GB.

It is very clear that the “Kindle Fire” would be running Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The users of Android are expanding and they enjoy the Android Market, where it is easy to download different useful apps (and it’s for free), but it seems that users of the “Kindle Fire” would have to download and use applications directly from Amazon’s own AppStore istead of the Google Android Market. Amazon has gone into customizing the Android operating system for its tablets very deeply, so users won’t be able to make out whether their “Kindle Fire” is running on Gingerbread or Honeycomb.

Other features are planned for the “Kindle Fire” tablets as well. Initially there should be a WiFi version only and it looks like Amazon is negotiating with mobile carries, so it is possible that a 3G version will also be launched. Amazon is planning to work towards to integrate almost all of its services into the “Kindle Fire” tablets (including MP3 service, Kindle app for book reading and the Instant Video Player).

It is exciting to see how Amazon ties the Kindle reading app with extra social sharing capabilities on the “Kindle Fire” tablets, like it did for the web.

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Android 3.0 for Businesses

Carlos Rabanillo — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:58:40 +0000

Just a few hours after the official launch of Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets, we already had the first business applications optimized for tablets. Simple tools to increase productivity and performance of small and large businesses.

As Google said during the conference, the compatibility between Android 3.0 and older versions of the operating system is one of the pillars of its growth, so all the old business applications developed for older versions of Android will work just fine with Honeycomb. The difference is that the ones presented below have a more futuristic approach.

Fuze Meeting: video conferencing in high definition.

This new version of Meeting Fuze lets you video-conference with several people in high definition, 1080p resolution. It adds the possibility to initiate and maintain chats directly from the tablet, instead of the old versions that forces you to set up an appointment through the computer.

The application to set up meetings through the network will be the first one to be available for Android 3.0. Their competition will be WebEx and GoToMeeting, both only for iPad.

GoPayment: Payments on the Go

GoPayment is the version of Intuit’s credit card reader. The old version is available for all the platforms with IOS: Blackberry and iPhone, so the jump to Honeycomb is a natural step.

This version of GoPayment for Android 3.0 allows small businesses to sell their products and accept credit card payments directly from the tablet. The application also includes a website with a selling interface, shopping cart, which can upload photos taken with the tablet’s camera. Its biggest advantage is cost saving over other payment card systems.

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LinkedIn Launches Android Application

David — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:55:53 +0000

The largest business social network, LinkedIn have announced the launch of a new long awaited Android Application. The new app allows users to:

View updates from your professional network
Search for people to discover things you have in common and establish new connections
Respond to invitations sent from people in your professional life
Keep in touch with your own connections on LinkedIn

This is only the first beta of the application and LinkedIn have promised to continue to introduce new features including the “people you may know” feature. The app also uses Android’s unique search capabilities, offering the ability to search for contacts and people from the app. LinkedIn says that it is the fastest search experience it offers across all mobile platforms. Read more and find out how to download the app at the official LinkedIn Blog.

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Android Introduce App Market Update

David — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:41:47 +0000

The team over at Google Android have released a new update for the Android Market Application, this new application gives users a new nicely designed interface that works great on all resolutions (from the small xperia mini to a 10″ tablet) Along with a new design also comes a number of new features including streamlined application page which has all the content on 1 single page (so no need to change tabs at the top), new categories for widgets and wallpapers and a new related apps section on each app page. The new market will roll out to all Android devices running 1.6 and above in the coming weeks – if you are like me and would prefer to have it now, you can easily find the .apk online. Read more over at the Official Android Developers Blog.

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Andy Rubin Previews Motorola Android Tablet with Honeycomb

David — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:11:45 +0000

Last night at the D: Dive into Mobile event, Andy Rubin of the Google Android team previewed a tablet from Motorola which featured the most awaited tablet friendly Honeycomb version of Android. The Motorola Tablet has video chat support, an Nvidia Tegra processor and a duel core 3d processor. No idea on the size, but looking at the pictures it seems to be a 10″ tablet. Andy previewed a host of new features for Android, especially made for tablets including a new tablet optimised Gmail application, map application, tablet friendly widgets with a new home screen and a new lock sceen. They have also decided to opt out of physical buttons and have instead opted for on screen buttons. Expect to see this released mid 2011 with more information in the new year. View the Engadget Gallery or watch the video below:

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Google Release New Nexus S Developer Phone

David — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:20:23 +0000

Google have released the new product page for their latest in Google Android Developers phones, the Nexus S. The Nexus S is basically a remake of the Galaxy S series by Samsung, but with stock Google Android Gingerbread 2.3 (which is yet to be unveiled by the Android team at Google) It also features a new contour display which is said to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and side of your face. Go to the Official Product Page or Check out an introduction video of the new phone below:

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Opera Mobile 10.1 available for download on the Android Market

David — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 11:16:22 +0000

The new full version of Opera Mobile is now available to download on both the Android market and the Opera website. The new version gives users a host of new features including pinch to zoom, support for location services, desktop browser sync, a new visual tab management system and more. Opera is also known for it’s speedy page loading on mobile operating systems and is one of its key features. The browser is currently available in Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. Read more, watch videos and get the download link on the official Opera website.

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