Android Hits 20,000 Apps; Doubles Output in Last Five Months

downloadrepartition-android

Yes, we’ve all heard the buzz about Android.  But time after time, consumers have reiterated: it’s the apps that have lead to Apple’s grip on the market. We know it’s not the service, because Apple has been outed again and again for their lackluster coverage, locked-in AT&T contracts, and app store handling. Sure, there’s a bit of marketing magic going on. Admittedly, I’ve been a Mac fan of sorts for years, and nothing they have produced is as slick and sultry as the iPhone.

With Android, though, there’s a certain sense of freshness, a feeling among many consumers that, even if this isn’t the be-all end-all for the iPhone, it’s certainly a monumental step in the right direction.

According to Mashable, Android has reportedly hit the 20,000 mark in the their app store. While still some paces behind Apple (by comparison, Apple just reached their 100,000 mark last month), and bolstered by the recent release of Droid, it’s still cause for celebration for Google. Not surprisingly, 14% of the apps for Android are games. But the pace is quickly growing throughout all apps. From the article:

30 percent of apps have been downloaded fewer than 50 times. Only a very small percentage of apps have been downloaded more than 250,000 times, which might indicate that creating a “hit” application for the Android Market requires more nuance than for the iPhone.

While this is well and good of course, not all of us have access to the Droid or, by extension, the applications. Including me. While there some decent reviews of apps online, I’d like to appeal to you, dear readers. I tend to trust geeks more, y’know?

Knowing virtually nothing about the apps myself (save fiddling with my sister’s G1 some months ago), let us know how the Android apps stack up against Apple. What must-have’s do you use every day? How much have you shelled out for an app and was it worth it? Have you built an app yourself? How was your experience with the app stores? Not to mention, are the apps generally iPhone mimics, or do you find they offer something else?

My hope is that we can start compiling some geeky, sexy apps to recommend to readers (with proper attribution, of course) over the coming months. While the Droid might not completely knock the iPhone out of the top spot, it certainly looks promising in the way of development and function.

Thanks in advance.

[Picture source: Androlib.com]

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Delivery disappointment: iMac pushed back

Christmas falls on December 25th every year.

That might seem obvious to you, but it appears the planners for some major corporations have been getting surprised by this. As you may remember, Barnes & Noble recently conceded that even orders for its “nook” e-reader placed before the Christmas delivery deadline November 20th might not make it in time for the big day.

Now Apple has acknowledged that its flagship 27 inch iMac may take two weeks to arrive, meaning anyone who was hoping to get one as a last-minute Christmas gift is out of luck. That delivery schedule compares with 24 hours for other models such as the next-largest 21.6 inch model.

The big question now is why the delays have arisen. Apple simply says “The new iMac has been a huge hit and we are working hard to fulfill orders as quickly as possible.” It certainly appears to be the case that the new model has been popular, with overall sales of Macs estimated to be up 74% across October and November (the 27 inch model having been released on October 20th.) While that would suggest inadequate planning and market research by the company, “excessive” demand is probably the least bad reason for shipping delays.

However, other sources suggest there may be a production problem with the model, with multiple reports of models having to be returned with a screen flickering problem (which is, of course, more of an issue with an all-in-one machine like a Mac.)

One website has put together statistics from nearly a thousand visitors who’ve bought Macs during the fall. Less than 25% were listed as being fault-free, though that can be discounted as people with a working machine have little incentive to go online to report the fact.

Of those with faults, the vast majority were the 27-inch model, and more than half suffered screen flicker. A week-by-week breakdown shows that models built in the last three weeks of November are considerably more likely to have experienced problems: one week had 156 problematic machines, compared with just one in the last week of September.

There are also reports that authorized resellers of Macs are experiencing significant delays in getting stock of the 27-inch model.

Teapot Blowing on BBC One’s Graham Norton Show

A few weeks ago, I told you guys our site would be featured for our teapot blowing article on a major British show. Well folks, the show aired yesterday, but I was kind of disappointed by the exposure the blog got. It looks like they saved the html file of the article locally, removed the blog’s header and most of the stuff around it, and only kept the pictures that interested them. I think that was inappropriate of them after asking us to get written permission for them from all people who sent in pictures for the post.

teapot blowing

Unfortunately for all our participants, only reader Keaton got his face exposed to the British masses. The usual viewership of the show is of around 4+ millions people, so here’s your 30 seconds of fame, Keaton!

Robot Guilt?

The robot courses across the battlefield, swiveling on sleek steel legs, turning its bullet-shaped head toward its prey. Its eyes flash red, then blue: signal received. Before the ensuing sound boom and the inevitable end of hundreds of lives, it pauses a moment to reflect. Death is never easy, even with a heart of circuits.

Battlestar GalacticaOkay, so maybe not quite like that, but you get the drift. To a demographic familiar with Cylons and Replicants, the concept of robot warfare might not seem so far fetched. But according to the New York Times, great strides are being made to program ethics, and even guilt, into robots designed for combat.

Believe it or not, there are already over 18,000 unmanned systems deployed in Iraq now, so the issue of robotic warfare is moot at this point. It’s here, whether or not we are comfortable with it. But Ronald Arkin of Georgia tech is out to change the way robotic warfare is conducted and to improve it: after a three year programming project working with the U.S. Army he believes that “in limited situations, like countersniper operations or storming buildings, the software will actually allow robots to outperform humans from an ethical perspective.”

Essentially he’s working to create a robot super brain, far out performing the average soldier in difficult situations. Arkin explains, “I believe these systems will have more information available to them than any human soldier could possibly process and manage at a given point in time and thus be able to make better informed decisions.”

And beyond logic and reason, beyond even ethics, Arkin wants to instill guilt in the programming to mimic “remorse, compassion, and shame”. According to the article, guilt allows to change outcomes and generate constructive change.

While fighting, his robots assess battlefield damage and then use algorithms to calculate the appropriate level of guilt. If the damage includes noncombatant casualties or harm to civilian property, for instance, their guilt level increases. As the level grows, the robots may choose weapons with less risk of collateral damage or may refuse to fight altogether.

Of course, this brings about a slew of questions. Can remorse really be programmed? Or, as I thought when I first read this piece, isn’t the point of robot warfare to make them inhuman? Or is it just a matter of being able to get into difficult places and minimize “true” loss of life? These are the questions that sci-fi has been exploring for years. It’s quite something else altogether to see it manifested.

All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Two tickets to Kobol, anyone?

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4G mobile broadband becomes a reality

Samsung 4g Dongle

A Swedish firm has become the first to offer 4G mobile broadband services for consumers. But the service has been described as a “killer user experience” rather than a “killer app”.

The service from TeliaSonera AB will debut in the next few months, initially in Stockholm, Sweden and Oslo, Norway, extending it across the two countries throughout the year. At launch there won’t be any compatible handsets: the service will instead be available for laptops via a dedicated USB dongle produced by Samsung.

In theory, 4G broadband could reach up to 100 megabits per second. That’s 12.5 MBps, which would be classed as a decent fixed-line broadband speed in most places in the world.

The main note of caution for would-be 4G users is that it there aren’t any imminent changes in what you can do with the technology compared with 3G, beyond simple increasing speed. With the 2G to 3G leap, several features became credible options, most notably streaming video and even video messaging. The change from 3G to 4G theoretically allows better resolution video to be streamed, but that’s going to make little noticeable difference on existing handset screens. Of course, on laptops it’s a different story and means watching live TV on the move without squinting could become viable.

The features most likely to benefit from 4G may include videoconferencing for multiple participants and better quality online gaming. However, the market is probably at the chicken-and-egg stage with developers hesitant to put too much effort into applications until there is a sizeable enough user base, and users unwilling to upgrade until there are more benefits to doing so.

Another important issue in the 4G market’s development is how networks manage demand. Getting data ten times as quickly isn’t much more attractive if customers are still subject to tight constraints on monthly data use. But without such limits, some users will inevitably push the network’s capacity to its limit.

Early adoption of the technology may also be limited by the fact that the 4G dongle doesn’t cover 3G reception, meaning that anyone who may leave the 4G coverage area will need two dongles. A dual-format dongle won’t be available until the middle of 2010.

To hook new customers, the firm is offering free modems for the first six months, along with a trial price of just 4 kroner (approximately 56 US cents) a month. In July, the price will then rise to its standard cost of 500 kroner ($70) a month. While that’s theoretically a great way of letting people become dependent on the service and paying up later rather than returning to the slower speeds, there is the possibility that the 4G network will become overloaded if too many people sign up for the offer.