Tira Wireless announced today the support of Android Platform for its Jump 2008 Go Mobile solution. Jump 2008 is an innovative solution to reduce the cost of porting of Java-based mobile application across all mobile handsets. The Tira Wireless device knowledgebase includes 1,253 devices supported representing 44 handset manufacturers, 14,943 unique device/operator combinations, 2,643 devices in physical inventory, and 201 channels (mobile operators, content portals, etc.).

By supporting Android, Tira Wireless partners will be able to convert their applications from JavaME to Android easily. Another porting solution from JavaME to Android is now available after Esmertec and ME4Android. Tira Wireless solution will fit very well for organizations with limited internal development resources or those that require the scalability that Tira Wireless provides.

“Tira Wireless’ move to support Android is in line with our vision to support the major platforms and manage all elements of the mobile content lifecycle, regardless of the device or mobile operator,” said Juan Dewar, CEO of Tira Wireless. “Supporting the Android platform is also a natural extension of the work we have been doing with Java ME applications. Because of our years of experience in this market, we are very well positioned to understand the challenges of developing mobile content in a similar environment, and as a result, can maximize Android’s unique capabilities.”

Tira Wireless customers include Content publishers such Airbone Entertainment, Disney Mobile, Dwango Wireless, I-Play, Warner Bros, Pixiem, THQ Wireless, Dwango Wireless, Hudson Soft, ifone, Jumbuck, Mforma, Mobile Scope, Mobliss, Namco, Sega, SkyZone Entertainment, Sonic Branding Solutions, Sony Pictures Mobile, and Summus; Engineering Services Providers such Babel Media, Mahindra British Telecom, and Absolute Quality; and finally Mobile Operators : Telus, T-Mobile, and Helio.

The GoMobile Edition of the Jump Developer Desktop can be used to commercially deploy a single application on up to 12 handsets. For non-commercial purposes, it is free.

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We are starting this week with a new selection of new Android applications. This week highlighted an RPN Calculator, Crossword game, Android VNC, City Audioguides, and a Social rating system for your contacts and locations.

Android RPN Calculator

Android RPN Calculator is an experimental application which aims to implement an RPN-based calculator. Read the definition of RPN before using the calculator if you don’t it, otherwise you might find it very confusing to use. Currently many buttons still not implemented but many already working. So you can get the apk and give it a try.

Website : http://code.google.com/p/android-rpn-calculator/

Android Crossword game

Arensus Crossword Player is the name of a new fun game which let you solve crosswords on Android. You can download crosswords from the internet using simply Android browser, then you use Crossword Player for the game itself. There are options to reveal a letter, word, or the entire crossword, and player can save Scale factor, Top/left position of view, Played time, Current crossword field, Current direction, All letters for each field, All checked status of each field, and All revealed status of each field. Arensus Crossword Player is one of the applications that are participating in the Android Challenge.

Website : http://oxonom.com/node/10

KudoStar, social rating system

KudoStar is a mobile social rating system that connects your contacts and favorite locations. People and places accumulate positive and negative Kudostars (KudoScore), with relevant sound, images, and video while keeping the user interface intuitive and simple to use. KudoStar then uses this information and ties it in with not only other Android phones but also your social networking sites. KudoStar will also utilize Facebook’s F8 and Google’s opensocial platforms to virally spread the collected data to a multitude of users. Tying Google Maps, and v:social’s media platforms KudoStar will allow a vast array of viewing options for the data that is collected.

Website : http://www.kudostar.com/

Android VNC

The aim of this project is to make testing of Android platform more easy on real handsets with full screen VNC client running. The current test framework is ideally suited for Windows Mobile based handsets running .NET VNC Viewer. So if you see somewhere a windows mobile phone using Android, you are probably seeing the VNC client running in fullscreen !

Website : http://code.google.com/p/android-vnc/

Android City Audioguides

City Audioguides is aiming to use android framework positioning and other technologies to improve your travelling experiences delivering audio content relative to your current physical location. Bringing museum-like audioguides to a larger scope. The application is built on top of the android-rss project and licenced under GNU General Public License v2.

Website : http://sourceforge.net/projects/pounamu/

Popularity: 53%

While Android aims to be an Open Platform for mobile handsets, it remain closed at different levels, even for bug reporting ! After SDK launch many developers started reporting bugs in the discussion group, which is not really useful. Android team were tracking issues internally, but it’s also very interesting for developers to know different issues. Today the issues list finally goes live and everyone is able to report bugs, and we started believing that it was an open source project. The next Android SDK release is going to be BIG according to Dan :

We’ve been improving that “early look” and are preparing for the next big SDK release, so it’s time to take the whole thing up a notch. As we move toward the first handsets, it’s time to formalize the process, and the first step in that is to enable an issue tracker for developers to submit feedback.

Issue Tracker is available at this address : http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list, everyone is welcomed to submit any issues encountered with Android SDK, but always be sure to check if the issue have not been submitted before by someone else.

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Google is offering $10 millions to create amazing new applications for its new Android mobile platform, and today is the first day to submit your application for the challenge. So if you decided to develop an excellent application for Android, here is where you have to go next : ADC submission page. Pick one of the three available forms based on whether you’re working alone, in a team, or for an organized company. Then attach your .apk application file, add documentation file in PDF or text format, and everything should be in english even if you are planning to develop for other languages.

Be sure to read carefully the terms and conditions for the challenge, which explain also how the challenge is going to happen. There are some important details in the terms and conditions concerning the qualifications, four important points that you have to focus on while creating your application :

1. Originality of Concept - Does the application introduce a great new idea; for example, a new angle on social applications?
2. Effective Use of the Android Platform - Does the application take advantage of Android’s unique and compelling features, such as built-in location-based services, accelerometer, and always-on networking?
3. Polish and Appeal - Is the application easy to use and aesthetically appealing?
4. Indispensability - Is the application compelling and essential, such as a game the user just can’t put down or a utility she can’t live without?

So let’s the game begin and good luck for everyone.

Popularity: 22%

McObject announced today that Perst, its all-Java object-oriented, open source embedded database, has been verified as compatible with the Android mobile device platform backed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.

McObject is offering the Android-ready Perst, as well as TestIndex, a demo application showing Perst and Android’s bundled SQLite database performing the same tasks side by side. Both are available as free downloads, with complete source code, from http://www.mcobject.com/android.

With Perst, users of Android-based phones will benefit from responsive, richly-featured embedded software made possible by a database system that delivers high performance and a small footprint, and by the efficiency that results from true Java developer-oriented features.

Perst stores data directly in Java objects. This eliminates the need for data-packing or unpacking code to map between the application’s data model and the database’s data model, as is required by relational and object-relational databases. The Perst API is flexible, easy-to-use and very fast compared to alternative commercial Java OODBMSs.

Perst is a very compact embedded database, with a core consisting of only five thousand lines of code. This small footprint imposes little demand on system resources. Moreover, Perst does not require administration. Perst supports transactions with the ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable) properties, and expands developers’ coding efficiency by making Java objects as easy to use as possible.

For example, for access to objects, Perst implements specialized collection classes optimized for different data layouts and access patterns, including:

• Classic B-Tree implementation;
• R-tree indexes for spatially-oriented applications such as GIS and navigation;
• Main-memory database containers, based on T-Tree indexes, optimized for real-time memory-only access;
• Patricia Trie index, which speeds searches in networking and telephony applications;
• TimeSeries class to efficiently deal with small fixed-size objects;
• Specialized versions of collections for thick indices (indices with many duplicates), and bit indices (keys with a restricted number of possible values).

In addition to its core functionality, Perst provides optional features such as garbage collection, detection of hanging references, automatic schema evolution, XML import/export utilities, master-slave replication support (with the option to run read-only queries on slave nodes), an SQL subset to filter elements of any collection, and integration with the AspectJ and JAssist AOP tools.

To read McObject’s complete announcement of Perst and TestIndex for Android, see http://www.mcobject.com/pressroom.php?step=3&article=91.

Popularity: 43%