Microsoft patents tech to bring Android apps to Windows Phone

A patent filed by Microsoft in 2010 could help the software company’s flagging mobile platform bridge the app gap between it and Android by helping users find Windows alternatives to the Android apps they already enjoy.


According to a story from GigaOM, Microsoft’s patent is for a technology that would actually have two capabilities. The first would be to analyze another device, like an Android smartphone, and find out which apps it already has on it. Then, Microsoft’s tech would search through the Windows Phone app store, find the apps’ Windows equivalent, and make them available to purchase. It seems likely that in places where the app didn’t have a direct, official Windows version, Microsoft would probably suggest a well-reviewed third-party alternative.


So one part of the service would be like an app search engine, allowing Android users to find Windows alternatives, should they want them. But the patent also suggests that it would be able to transfer Android apps and their data from the original device to a Windows device. If that’s possible, it could be something of a game-changer.


Right now, Android enjoys a very comfortable lead over Windows Phone, as does Apple’s iOS, because Microsoft is having a tough time expanding its app offerings for its platform. In the very simplest terms, Android has just thousands of apps more than Windows does. It’s an easy selling point for Android and a large part of what keeps Windows Phone holding down a percentage of the smartphone market that’s in the single digits, while Android entertains a huge portion of smartphones around the world and in the U.S.


But if Microsoft can bring apps from Android devices to its own, that would significantly change the conversation about which platform is better. It wouldn’t be the first platform to be able to do that, either. BlackBerry maker RIM’s PlayBook tablet was capable of supporting Android apps with an emulated version of Google’s operating system.


Of course, that’s a big “if.” Android, like iOS, doesn’t allow apps to access the data of other apps, and neither allows its apps on other operating systems. But if Microsoft finds a way around those restrictions, perhaps with an emulated version of Google’s open-source OS, it might still be able to support Android apps, even if it can’t actually transfer your app data from one device to the other. But that possibility might help to make Android’s lead over Windows Phone a little less comfortable.


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Android: Can an app improve social skills?

Undergraduate students at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science at University of California, Irvine, have built an Android app to help students through social awkwardness.


The app is called AwkTalk developed by students for AppJam, a competition to build the best mobile app in one week. The theme for the competition was self improvement and the team "Socially Awkward Anteaters" won the $1,000 first prize in the competition with the app.


"We were all aware that many of our colleagues in the fields of computer science and engineering (ourselves included) lack excellent socials skills," the overview of the project says.


The app helps students find a place to meet face to face where they'll participate in a timed discussion and then rate the other person's social skills. Find more information about the app on the team's website: http://appjam.roboteater.com/team10.php.


Source: CSMonitor.com

Android fragmentation also a challenge for Web developers

Fragmentation remains an issue  for third-party Android application developers. The wide spread and slow rate of adoption for new versions of the operating system prevent developers from being able to use the latest APIs. But native application developers aren't the only ones who are feeling the pain. A prominent Web developer has recently drawn attention to the challenges that Android version fragmentation poses for mobile Web development.


As we explained in some of our recent Android browser coverage, the platform's default Web browser has historically not been very good at handling the most intensive application-like Web experiences. It lacks support for many modern Web standards and has difficulty handling things like animated transitions. Google is finally correcting the problem by bringing a full port of its excellent Chrome Web browser to the Android platform.


Unfortunately, Chrome for Android is only available for Android 4 devices, which represent only about 1.5 percent of the total Android ecosystem. A majority  of Android users are still running version 2.3 and 2.2. The handset manufacturers are often slow to provide updates and in many cases don't update old handsets past a certain point. This means that it will take some time for Android 4.x to become ubiquitous.


Web developers who want to support Android users will have to contend with a range of different browser versions that have different levels of support for modern Web standards. The apparent lack of consistency in browser performance and stability from one device to another makes matters worse. A blog entry  by Dion Almaer, a well-known Web developer who is currently part of Walmart's mobile engineering team, discussed the issue.


As he explained in his blog post, one of his recent Web development projects hit a snag when he found it was crashing the Android browser on some devices but not others. Aside from the version fragmentation issues, it seems that the actual WebKit builds are also simply bad on some devices. When conventional Web content can consistently crash a browser, the situation is bad.


"I shouldn't be able to dump your core. From looking online I was shocked at the number of people complaining about some of these devices. To them, their browser crashes all the darn time," he wrote. "As I went through the myriad of devices to test things, I started to cry as I thought about the amount of effort it would take to get massively broad coverage that doesn't crash some users."


Google and Mozilla have transitioned their desktop browsers to a rapid release model with very short development cycles. Coupled with good automatic update systems, this approach has helped to ensure that users always have access to the latest standards and the best possible performance. By comparison, Android users are lucky to get one major update during the two-year lifespan of their phone.


Google could potentially improve the situation considerably by making it possible for the platform's browser and built-in HTML rendering engine to receive updates independently from the rest of the operating system. Because Chrome for Android is currently being distributed through the Android Market, it seems like there is a very good chance that the company will adopt that approach in the future when Chrome becomes the operating system's default browser.


Modern Web standards provide an incredibly rich feature set and are paving the way for a future where mobile Web experiences are fully competitive with native applications. The lack of consistency between mobile Web browsers, even ones with the same rendering engine, is a roadblock that will have to be overcome in order for the mobile Web to continue advancing.


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Android 4.0 for Tablets Still Needs Work

GoogleIn (GOOG) October, Google launched Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, for tablets and smartphones. The platform has two purposes: unify the software for use on both devices and make the tablet experience better. Prior to Android 4.0, large Google tablets ran on version 3 of Android, called Honeycomb, but the overall effort seemed rushed and incomplete.

Longtime Android user Jason Perlow has run Android 4.0 on his Motorola (MMI) tablet for the past two weeks. He shared his impressions on Tuesday. Although I don’t currently have Android 4.0 on a tablet here, I’ve used Google’s platform for about as long as Perlow has, and we both use Galaxy Nexus phones that run the Ice Cream Sandwich software. I’m concerned because Perlow is already finding usability issues with an Android 4.0 tablet: “Is it better than Honeycomb? Yes. But it’s not without its own share of problems,” he writes. “It’s going to take some time for apps to catch up to it, and you might want to consider using hardware that is actually up to the task of providing an optimal experience with the new OS.”

Perlow points out some of the same positives I’ve seen when using my new handset: The user interface is more consistent—elegant by comparison to prior versions—and more responsive overall. I see this on my Galaxy Nexus on a daily basis. Even if Perlow hadn’t pointed it out to readers, it’s clear to me that there are still inconsistencies within Android 4.0 on different devices.

Read complete at BusinessWeek.com

Google announces Android Design style guide for apps

The new style guidelines for Android - which Google has released on its new Android Design website - are supposed to help developers working on apps for Ice Cream Sandwich create software with a common Google look. With summaries of Google's design principles, user interface capabilities and overarching creative vision available for perusal, Google looks to be tightening the reins a little on the previously free-from Android Market, at least where aesthetics are concerned.


Speaking to The Verge at CES, director of Android user experience Matias Duarte said that Google's mission with Ice Cream Sandwich was "to make it beautiful, to make it powerful" and that the framework of ICS made it "much easier for people to create beautiful, simple apps". In that spirit, the new Android Design site covers topics from themes to colour matching to typography to touch feedback - every visual element an app developer could care to name. "If you want to be serious about design, you have to do this stuff." Says Duarte. "Ice Cream Sandwich is Android getting serious about design."


The Android Design site is now live, and while some of the claims it makes about the design of Ice Cream Sandwich might raise a few eyebrows ("app icons are works of art in their own right" - yeah, we're sure your installation in the Tate will open any day now), pretty-fying and streamlining a mobile OS that has in the past been seen as something of a geeky younger brother to Apple's iOS is no bad thing in our books. Check out the full 35 minute interview at the link below.


Source: The Verge and T3


Link: Android Design