Mobile advertising network ZestADZ doesn’t want to miss the Android boat, hence they’ve launched the Android SDK Beta Program, allowing Android app developers to monetize their work by displaying ads.
Apparently the code ZestADZ is providing is super optimized and will take only a fraction of memory. Developers can request up to 5 ads at one time.
At the moment, SDK supports Android 1.5 only, but the updated version that includes Android 1.6 and 2.0 support is coming soon. Also coming soon is the full featured analytics feature, which is currently in beta… Additional details are available from a dedicated page on ZestADZ’ website, from where you can also sign-up and grab the SDK.
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) searches for movies on Android, iPhone, and webOS are about to get a little more helpful today. With a few taps, you can find showtimes, theatres, ratings, and category sorting. Throw in a dash of GPS integration to keep the results local, reviews, and streaming trailers, and you’ve got yourself quite the upgrade. Man, Google has been on a roll with the mobile news lately. Maps navigation in Android 1.6, web services facelift, Apps upgrades, and mobile coupons are all new this week. Here’s a video demonstrating the new movie search.
Fifty DKP minus for picking New Moon. Which are promptly earned back with the double-cross fist-bump at the end. If you’re in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand, go ahead and boot up google.com on your mobile browser to try out the updated movie search.
After a sneak peek, the LG GW880 OPhone has been announced by China Mobile (NYSE: CHL). The GW880 packs a 3.5-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen, Bluetooth, 5-megapixel camera, 256MB of RAM/512MB of ROM, CMMB mobile TV and running on Android over China’s TD-SCDMA network. Of course, the apps will all be approved by big daddy China Mobile before making it to the market, but it should still give the iPhone a bit of a fight over there. The Android scene is just getting started in China, too; Lenovo and Motorola are likely launching their own handsets also running on China Mobile’s Open Mobile Phone framework. No word on release date or price point for the GW880, but we’ll be keeping an ear open.
Some of you may have already been enjoying streaming video from your Android device to the big wide web thanks to the UStream Broadcaster app released in September, but for those who are more interested in watching something, UStream Viewer is now available. As you can see, you can keep tabs on what’s playing live (as well as chat with other viewers), see what’s been recorded, what’s coming up as well as review your own videos, all over 3G or Wi-Fi. Combined with the Broadcaster and a beefy data plan, you won’t be hurting for entertainment while on the go. The viewer hasn’t showed up on UStream’s mobile app page yet, but you can go ahead and download it from the Android Market right now – get it before 7 PM PST, and you can tune in to the Kiss concert live from your phone.
Bell’s inagural HSPA lineup had lots of new toys, but telus (NYSE: TU) was drawing a bit more attention with the HTC Hero. Luckily for Bell, Android will be one less leg-up the competition will have, as they’re getting the Samsung Galaxy I7500, according to this promotional poster. The Galaxy has been traipsing around Europe since launching over the summer, and boasts a 5 megapixel camera, 8GB of internal storage, 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, GPS, and Wi-Fi; no custom work on the user interface, it’s straight vanilla Android. Samsung has already provided the Impact and omnia II for Bell’s HSPA grand opening, but the Galaxy is really the icing on the cake. No word on a release date, but I think it’s safe to expect the I7500 in time for the holidays.
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has tweaked some of its mobile web apps for Android-powered smartphones and the iPhone. Affected services include GMail, Latitude, Calendar and Tasks. The whole point of the tweak is to make the services slightly user friendlier with a bit larger, darker buttons. The image above illustrates best what’s new, so I’ll stop there leaving you only with the URLs of the tweaked services:
Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Northeast Securities, is now the butt of all my “people who work in this industry who have no clue what they’re talking about” jokes. This time last month he told The Street that Google will be releasing their own Android device, only to be burned a few days later by the head of Android Porject, Andy Rubin, who said “we’re not making hardware, we’re enabling others to build hardware”. Kumar now has new information, and I’m being a total idiot for linking to it, but here it goes:
This handset will have a “large touchscreen display” and will have a processor “nearly twice as fast as the iPhone 3GS”
It will “probably” run a new version of Android called Flan
The device will “probably” be built by HTC and have a Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) processor inside
At this point in time you may proceed to slap your forehead.
If Google ever released their own mobile device, which they’re not going to, they would be alienating handset makers.
If Google ever released their own mobile device with unlimited free calls, which they’re not going to, they would be alienating handset makers and operators.
Will there be a version of Android called Flan? Absolutely, Andy Rubin already talked about, and he confirmed it will support advanced 3D graphics.
Will there be an Android device, built by HTC, with a processor from Qualcomm that is nearly twice as fast as the iPhone 3GS? Yes. Just take the HTC HD2, which has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside, compared to the 600 MHz processor inside the iPhone 3GS, slap the latest version of Android on it, and there is your mythical Google Phone.
What next Ashok Kumar? Are you going to tell people that the next version of Android, the one after Flan, will be called Gelato and it is going to power the new Google Phone? It’s going to be 4 times faster than the iPhone 3GS, has the ability to tell you where the nearest café serving a hot steaming cup of decaffeinated “shut the fuck up” is, and best of all adds the ability to purchase said cup of coffee with Google Checkout!
Taptu has grown up quite a lot since I last played with their service. In my September 2007 review I said:
“If you’re adapt at Google (NSDQ: GOOG) (NSDQ: GOOG) than Taptu may or may not be useful to you. Simply adding words such as “wiki” or “lyrics” after a search query usually makes Google get an idea of what it is you’re trying to find.”
With the release of their Android application today, things are looking mighty different from the original, almost laughable, user interface. They’ve put a filter on web results so you only see content optimized for mobile devices. Whether or not that is a good thing is debatable. Would you prefer more search results or fewer search results optimized for your screen? They’ve also integrated the “OneRiot” service which aggregates what people are talking about at this very second on Twitter, Digg, and other social networking sites, and present those terms to you as queries you may want to plug into the Taptu service. Chances are you open a search application to find an answer to a question in your mind, not to see what the world is talking about. Then again, there may be a few of you out there who are concerned with appearing to be “in the loop” as Malcolm Tucker from “The Thick of It” would say. If you’re one of those people, then Taptu rocks.
Look, is it smart for a company like Taptu to compete with Google? Yes and No. Yes, it’s nice to see something different than the usual list of 10 links Google’s mobile optimized search engine provides. No, it’s stupid to pour resources into what is nothing more than a fancy front end, which Google can copy, to a search engine that crawls a very small subset of the internet.
Give the Taptu application a go on your Android device and let me know in the comments what you think about it.
The iPhone is a data hog. Just ask AT&T (NYSE: T) and their strained 3G data network. Data-hungry iPhone users seemingly aren’t able to satisfy their thirst for online information. They’re so ravenous for the all things internet that, according to AdMob, the iPhone accounts for 50% of all smartphone web traffic around the globe. Here, in the US, the iPhone pulls down 55% of all smartphone traffic, mostly through AT&T’s 3G network. That’s a lot of data!
It’s not just the iPhone, either. The smartphone boom has raised Android awareness high enough to boost traffic from Android smartphones to 11% worldwide. In the US, the effect is even more pronounced – Android handsets are responsible for 20% of all smartphone traffic in America. Compelling new Android offerings like the Sprint HTC Hero and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) myTouch 3G (as well as their European variants) have helped drive up Android market share. Android is fast closing the gap between itself and the iPhone platform.
But, it’s not all roses and rainbows in the smartphone sector. Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has long led the mobile phone market in terms of market share, but has recently been losing share to the likes of iPhone and Android smartphones. The Finns (Nokia) are responsible for 24% of worldwide traffic, with the Symbian platform sending out 25% of all worldwide smartphone web requests. The BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) OS dropped to just 7% of global smartphone requests. Windows Mobile fared even worse, claiming just 3% of global requests. Palm (NSDQ: PALM)’s webOS, despite a European launch of the Palm Pre, dropped down to 2% of the world’s smartphone traffic.
The moral to this story? Smartphones are on the rise. But, it’s not enough to just run a smartphone operating system – consumers are flocking to intuitive touchscreen platforms with desktop-class web browsers. The iPhone and Android platforms obviously meet these criteria. Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm and Microsoft should be asking themselves why their offerings don’t.
The Motorola (NYSE: MOT) droid launched rolling large with Android 2.0, but for those with older Android devices, you can shelf away your jealousy; the biggest feature, voice-prompted driving directions in Google Maps, is now available on all Android 1.6 devices. Aside from a nice robot lady telling you when to turn, you can also set shortcuts for regular destinations, making it even easier to get to where you’re going. The update also includes Layers support, so you can keep an eye on specific points of interest, even when you’re on the way to your destination. The service is technically only available in the U.S, but there are workarounds. The Android 2.0 launch was hard enough on TomTom and Garmin, who make their business with premium versions of this service; I wonder how they’ll recover from this blow…
Mobile advertising network ZestADZ doesn’t want to miss the Android boat, hence they’ve launched the Android SDK Beta Program, allowing Android app developers to monetize their work by displaying ads.
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Bell’s inagural 
![taptudroidcropp Taptu releases an Android application, makes mobile search touch friendly [Verdict: Who cares?]](http://images.intomobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/taptudroidcropp.jpg "Taptu releases an Android application, makes mobile search touch friendly [Verdict: Who cares?]")
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