Android Market update, Google Sites goes mobile and Hulu on Android

Android Market rips of Amazon
The Android Market seems to be working with the "release and iterate" mentality. When first the Android Market hit, it was on-device only. The only way to really search the Market was on your smartphone or tablet.

Ironically, Google, a company whose foundation is built on search, didn't seem to think that offering a way to search the Android Market on your computer was important enough to include in the first several iterations.

Since search finally hit market.android.com, we've seen a ton of incremental improvements trickle out. The ability to search in-browser then send an app straight to any Android device you own, a device compatibility check and others.

Now, Amazon is stepping on the Android Market's toes a little bringing its own Amazon Appstore for Android app store, now with over 3,500 apps present and accounted for.

Tit for tat, perhaps; the latest incremental improvement in the Market rips off Amazon's ratings breakdown chart. Instead of just seeing an aggregate star rating for apps, you can view the breakdown graph of the number of people that ranked an app. See how many people rated five stars and how many rated one and all steps in between along with an averaged score out of five.

It's not rocket science, but it's a helpful little improvement.

Google Sites Gone Mobile
Anyone remember Google Pages: Pages was useful online app that gave Google account holders 100MB of web space for free. Unlike free web hosts of old, Pages weren't even ad-laden and gaudy backgrounds and animated GIFs were optional.

Google Page Creator gave way to Google Sites and now, Google Sites is going mobile. If you have a Google Sites page (it's free so it's worth locking in) you now have a new option to create a mobile-friendly version of your page.

Log in to sites.google.com with your Google Account details, go to Manage Site settings and check the "automatically adjust site for mobile phones" box. Doesn't get much easier than that.

Your Sites pages will automatically be formatted down for mobile users, but all your content remains present and accounted for.

Hulu hits the Android Market
The butterscotch.com studios are out in the Great White North. In fact, I'm speaking to you from a particularly spacious and well appointed igloo right now.

It's great if you like universal healthcare and having more than two viable political parties to choose from, not so great if you want to use services like Hulu, which geofence socialists like us right out of the action.

If you're in the 'States, you subscribe to Hulu Plus and have one of a small handful of Android devices, here's some cause for celebration. Hulu is finally coming to Android... for all three of you.

Supported phones are the Nexus One, the Nexus S, Motorola's Droid X and Droid II and HTC's Inspire 4G. No tablets are supported which is pretty lame.

The Hulu Plus service goes for $8 per month and if you meet the other two bits of this rather exacting three-part criteria, it might be a worthwhile spend.

Review of the Day
Groupon for Android
Free