The breakout app from SXSW this year may be Highlight, or it may be Pinwheel. But the most exciting news? It’s about Instagram, which is finally sort-of showing off a beta of its Android app.
Google has just rolled out Google Play, an integrated service designed to store all your apps, music, movies and books in the cloud. However, until it starts offering options other than apps or books to Australian accounts, the initiative doesn’t amount to much more than a new look for the browser-based version of the Android market.
In recognition of higher data speeds and caps, Google’s upped the limit on apps to a whopping 4GB, although not quite all at once; you’ll be able to download them as a starter 50MB app and then via 2GB expansion files.
Just like with the iPad, the OnLive Desktop service — which provides remote access to a server-powered version of Windows 7 — is now available for Android tablets for the same five bucks a month.
There are plenty of things iOS can do that Android can’t — Siri and Facetime, for example. However, Andorid may soon be getting its own exclusive feature: P2P file sharing courtesy of uTorrent, the most-used torrent client in the Western world.
Android is poised to take over the world — at least according to new numbers from Google. The number of Android apps has exploded to 450,000 up from 150,000 just a year ago. And that’s just the beginning.
Apple’s AirPlay lets people watch movies, looking at photos, and of course listening to music wirelessly, zapping the content from their iPhones, iPod touches or iPads to their televisions and home speaker systems with a variety of popular iOS music apps.
Google’s Chrome browser has been chewing up market share on desktops and laptops for a while now, and now it’s going mobile. If you’ve got an Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) phone or tablet you can download it now. If you don’t — and that should be most of you — time to get jealous.
Android apps such as Jetpack Joyride, Madden NFL 12, Pinterest and Batman Arkham City Lockdown are rife with malware. But these aren’t the official apps. No, they’re merely impostor apps that have snuck past the security gates of the Android Market.
Google’s adding a new feature to the Android Market called Bouncer, which will scan available apps for malware without hassling developers or interfering with user experience at all. It’s one of the first signs that Google’s taking Android malware seriously, and it’s about time.
