A Visual Symphony of Droid Activations

Recently, the Android Developers YouTube chan published a visual representation of Android activations around the world. Each activation is represented geographically as a point of light. The visualization runs from Oct. 2008, Android launch day, forever known as D-Day in Apple camps, and runs through January 2011. Things start out slowly but get interesting as the Motorola Droid launch is counted down and again when the Samsung Galaxy S hits.
It wasn't long ago that research firm Nielsen released its year-end data for 2010. This data (presented in a much less visually striking but altogether easier to read and process line graph) showed the big three -- Android, iPhone and BlackBerry -- at near parity. Android's meteoric rise to 27% share of new smartphone activations, RIM's unpleasant plummet from the only game in town to the same 27% market share and Apple with its singular iPhone holding steady on the year at 28%.



Minecraft Coming to Android

Games on Android have been, let's face it, somewhat lacking. In among the about 140,000 apps in the Market, games make up a very small portion. Narrow it down to "good" games and the pickings get slimmer still.
Minecraft, the geek game phenom, is coming to Android. We'd say if you haven't heard of it you've been living under a rock... but if you're as enthralled by this game on Mac and PC as I am, you'd have been living under about a mile of rock. The cliche falls apart.
Minecraft is a game with no purpose per se. Craft tools, gear and even electronic circuits, build a homestead, tunnel deep into the earth to find ever more rare and valuable ores. Build a furnace to smelt ore, discover underground caverns brimming with raw materials. When you've got all the diamonds and gold you can carry, fall into a lava pit, lose it all and start again... or is that just me?
The only release data we have for an official Android version of Minecraft is later this year. We'll be watching.
It's coming to iOS too.

Android and Facebook at odds over syncing

It seems that with the release of Gingerbread, Facebook and Android are no longer BFFs. It's complicated.
Android is open; that's part of the reason we love it. Apparently Facebook doesn't want to be in an open relationship. The 800 pound gorilla Facebook was given a special exemption and was allowed to sync contact info to the Android address book. However, when users switched computers or devices, Android contacts would come along for the ride seamlessly while Facebook contacts wouldn't. This is because Facebook was allowed to one-way sync.
Now, unless Facebook uses the publicly available API to two-way sync contacts, they (and some users) are S.O.L.
It's a case of Android, with its impressive market share, fighting a battle for openness with Facebook... a social media site not exactly well known for having a pro-user privacy stance.
We'll see what happens with this one. As it stands, new devices running Android 2.3 will have the Facebook contact pulling feature disabled.

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