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Discovering new apps in the Android market, which now has over 100,000 titles, has become increasingly difficult. So an independent app store is using social networking to help you find what you really want.

AndSpot has introduced social networking features such as activity feed, profiles and recommendations so its customers can find new apps based on what their friends like, instead of trying to find apps by category.

The site is now in private beta and will be launching publicly next month.

“The current paradigm of how marketplaces work isn’t in the favor of users or developers,” says Ash Kheradmand, one of the co-founders of AndSpot. “It works in the favor of apps like Facebook, Twitter and Pandora but not anyone else.”

An average user sees less than 99 percent of the apps in the Google Market, says AndSpot. And when users do find apps, they have little beyond basic comments and average ratings to go by.

Users are tired of scrolling through lists of apps to get ones that may be useful to them, says Kheradmand. Bringing social networking to an app store could help solve some of those problems, he says.

Unlike Apple, which has a tightly controlled official distribution for iPhone apps, multiple app stores can exist on the Android phone alongside the official Android app store, which is called Android Market.

For now, Android Market is pre-loaded on all Android phones. Independent app stores such as AndSpot can be downloaded from the Android Market or a browser. These independent app stores could in theory ink distribution deals with handset makers to get on devices, although they have yet to do so. Meanwhile, the number of apps in the Android market continues to grow making it difficult for users to find apps and for developers to market their programs.

That’s where AndSpot comes in, says Kheradmand, who has applied for a patent on the idea. On AndSpot, users first create a profile with an avatar and add friends. As with Facebook, there is an activity feed that highlights what the apps your friends are downloading. The activity feed also integrates with a recommendation engine, which AndSpot says suggests apps based on what you and your friends are using.

AndSpot also has a discussion board so its users can discuss apps. It will also have privacy settings so that users can choose to share apps, or not share them, depending on which category they’re in.

“You can set it so that you show games apps but not productivity apps,” says Faisal Abid, chief technology officer for AndSpot.

AndSpot says it will let developers keep 80 percent of the revenue from their apps sold through its app store and developers don’t have to do anything additional to publish their apps on AndSpot.

It’s an interesting idea and one where I can see social networking helping the process of discovery of apps. The key to its success as with any social networking site is scale. Unless you can get friends in there, you won’t have enough activity in your feeds to make it worth visiting.

Check out screenshots from the new AndSpot market below.

The discuss feature on AndSpot lets users talk about apps.

A friend's profile on the AndSpot Market

Here's how the app will be displayed in the AndSpot market.

Screenshots: Andspot

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Don’t type when you can talk, says Google. The search giant has strengthened its existing voice command feature on Android and introduced a new application called Chrome-to-Phone, for syncing with Chrome browsers.

Voice Search, despite its name, now lets you do more than just search: It will let users send texts, compose e-mails, call businesses, navigate, jot notes, and set the alarm on their phone by just speaking into the device.

The voice commands, called “voice actions,” are part of Google’s effort to improve the user interface on Android and let consumers go beyond the traditional keyboard and touchscreen interface on their phones.

The Voice Search application is currently available only for phones running version 2.2 of the Android OS — which means HTC Evo, Droid X and Droid 2 users can get it on their phones immediately.

Google also launched a mobile sync app to link its Chrome browser to Android 2.2 devices. The tool, called Chrome-to-Phone, lets users on Google’s Chrome browser click an icon to send a web page or a map to their phone. The page or map is then almost immediately available on the phone.

“This is a low-latency, super-fast app for pushing data to the phone,” says Dave Burke, engineering manager for Google.

Google debuted its voice search application in the U.S. about two years ago when it introduced Android. Now one out of every four queries, or 25 percent of queries, on devices running Android 2.0 OS and higher comes through the voice interface, says Google.

The earlier version of the voice command allowed users to do just three things: web search, call a specific contact and navigate to an address.

The new voice search app goes beyond that. For instance, you can speak the name of a song or a band into the phone and the app will go online, find the music and show a list of apps such as Pandora and last.fm that can play the music you want.

For more details, check out Google’s list of voice commands available through the app.

But when it comes to the Chrome-to-Phone app, the service is more limited. It is currently available to only Chrome users, though some Firefox users are also using it. The sync feature is also only available for Android devices, though Google says it will work to bring the feature to iPhone users as an app.

Image: Screenshots of Voice Search courtesy Google.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Shazam, an amazing app that lets you identify any song by just holding your phone up to it, has turned off the tap for its free users.

It has introduced a premium version of its app called Shazam Encore for $5 on the Android Market. The paid version of the app went live Tuesday evening.

That means Android users who now download the free version will get a seven-day premium trial, and if they don’t upgrade at the end of that they will be limited to identifying and tagging just five songs a month.

Shazam hit prime time when it launched its app on the Apple App store in 2008. Since then it has gained 15 million users on the iPhone aone and has 75 million users overall.

In November 2009, Shazam introduced the paid version of its app for iPhone users. The premium version offers unlimited tagging of music and recommendations that suggest other music similar to the track thats been tagged.

Users who downloaded and used the free app before the introduction of the paid version will continue to get all the features they had, including unlimited access. It’s a smart move on Shazam’s part to keep its existing users happy, while trying to make money off its product.

Photo: (Htwo/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Google’s open source Android operating system ranks fourth in terms of market share among smartphone platforms in the U.S. but is growing at a faster pace than its rivals.

About 13 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers used an Android phone in the quarter that ended May, up 4 percent from the previous quarter, according to comScore’s Mobilens service.

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone platform with 41.7 percent share among consumers.

Apple ranked number two with 24.4 percent share and Microsoft third with 13.2 percent, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent.

Android’s growth should come as no surprise to mobile enthusiasts. More than 20 Android phones are available in the U.S. currently. Handset makers such as LG and Samsung that have been slower than rivals Motorola and HTC in adopting Android are now planning to launch new Android devices.

Earlier this week, LG said it will have two Android smartphones and an Android-based tablet available by the end of the year. Samsung has already announced that its first 4G Android phone on Sprint will be available this summer.

This focus on Android has taken its toll on other mobile operating systems. Almost all platforms, with the exception of Android, lost some market share in the quarter. BlackBerry market share was down 0.4 percent, while Apple lost about 1 percent. The data does not include the iPhone 4, which launched in June.

Android’s growth doesn’t mean other smartphone systems are losing ground, says comScore. The number of people who own a smartphone in the U.S. grew 8.1 percent last quarter to 9.1 million people, which indicates that the overall pie is growing.

Photo: (bump/Flickr)

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Motorola’s Droid is the most popular phone among Android users, followed by HTC Hero, while Google’s Nexus One ranks tenth on the list, according to a monthly metrics report from mobile advertising firm AdMob. AdMob has ranked the top ten Android smartphones by market share.

The data is based on 12.7 million Android phones in the AdMob network in May. It’s also why the HTC Evo, released in the first week of June, is missing from the mix.

About 21 percent Android users have the Droid, while 16 percent users own the HTC Hero. Just 2 percent of Android phone users have Google’s Nexus One phone, says AdMob.

Motorola launched the Droid in November 2009 and made it available exclusively on Verizon Wireless. And despite the gaggle of Android phones launched every month, the Droid has been holding strong.

The only Android phone that could challenge the Droid’s position is the HTC Evo, which is available exclusively on Sprint. It will be interesting to see if the Evo can beat the Droid, though Sprint has a smaller marketing budget and fewer subscribers than Verizon.

Here’s a chart that shows the popularity of different Android smarpthones.

About 67 percent of Android users are in North America while China is the second largest market for Android with 13 percent of Android users coming from the country, says AdMob.

Combined HTC and Motorola have 83 percent share among Android devices. Since the Android OS debuted in 2008, the two companies have been on a roll, churning out phones faster than consumers can keep up with.

Last week, Motorola introduced its eleventh Android phone, the Droid X. It was also a big month for HTC, whose Evo phone is the first and only 4G device available currently.

Data: AdMob

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews