TuneWiki for Android gets overhauled

(Credit: Screenshot by Joshua Goldman/CNET)

TuneWiki was already a favorite music player for Android, mainly for its timed, subtitled lyrics (available translated into more than 40 languages), displayed while keeping the album art on screen and not navigating away from the player controls. The application got a major update today, getting a new interface and enhanced social-networking and music-discovery features.

The interface is now broken into three sections: My Music, Discover, and Connected. My Music is exactly what it sounds like, the music living on your device. Discover houses all the social-networking options. Tapping the Map button, for example, brings up a Song Map to see what people near you or around the world are listening to with TuneWiki. Find someone with similar tastes and you can choose to follow them, making them a Muse. You can also add people from your Facebook and Twitter networks as Muses. Whatever a Muse listens to ends up in your Songbox where you're able to preview and purchase tracks. You can also discover more music from an artist by seeing the songs you own as well as those you don't, with the option to immediately sample, buy, or watch a music video for those songs.

The last section, Connected, is for accessing streaming radio apps such as Shoutcast, music videos, on-demand services like Rhapsody and TuneWiki's Lyric Legend game, which requires you to tap word-filled orbs in time with a song. There's lyric support for streaming audio and video, too.

Asphalt 6 by Gameloft now available on the Android Market.

It seems Gameloft is truly impressed with how Google is improving the Android Market, so much so that when we reported on Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus hitting the market, the rumor was that the next game would be Asphalt 6. Well that has come true as well as it is now available on the market.

Asphalt 6 is probably Gameloft's best racing game they have released so far and one of the top ones for Android in general when it comes to racing games. The best part about it all though aside from being able to receive updates through the Android Market is that if your device can play the game, then you'll see if available. If not then you won't thanks to the markets new feature that allows developers to exclude devices.

As with Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus, Asphalt 6 is available for a slightly higher price than what you would pay for on the Gameloft web-based store. Coming in at $6.99, the price is still worth it if you want a really solid 3D racing game for your Android device. In our review we gave Asphalt 6 a 4/5 rating and with a few tweaks to the game it could easily get a 5/5 score. If you've been waiting for this game but have been holding out due to it not being on the market, now you can go get it!

So what will be the next game from Gameloft to be released onto the Android Market? We don't know just yet but we are going to find out!

Developer Website: Gameloft

Android Market Link: Asphalt 6

Adobe releases Flash Player 10.3 update for Android

Adobe releases the 10.3 update for Flash Player, bringing a range of fixes, optimizations and new features to Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android platforms.

Adobe has released the latest update for Flash Player, version 10.3. The update works with all Flash-enabled platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android, with support for the most recent 3.1 update to Honeycomb. You can nab the download on the web at Adobe.com or through Android Market on your mobile device.

The latest Flash update is all about squashing bugs and making things work more smoothly. On the Android side, that means NEON optimizations for OMAP4-based devices (pretty much just the BlackBerry PlayBook for now), various fixes for the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC EVO and someMotorola devices and some optimizations for Android 3.0+. All of the fixes are detailed on Adobe’s Android patch notespage. There are a variety of fixes on the non-mobile side as well, along with a handful of new features.

In addition to some new developer tools for measuring video and acoustic echo cancellation, there are also now new controls for managing local storage that have been integrated directly into your browser’s privacy settings, with support for Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, Google Chrome 11 and “a future release ofApple Safari.” The update also adds a dedicated Flash Player Settings Manager to Control Panels/System Preferences on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, and auto-updated notifications for Mac OS

Netflix streaming now on few Android phones

Today, Netflix and Android scored more points in humanity's ongoing quest to be able to watch absolutely anything, anywhere, anytime--so long as you're using the right phone. Yes, the long-awaited Netflix app for Android finally showed up to the party today in the Android Market, but it apparently doesn't get along with everyone in attendance. In fact, Netflix says the app--which enables users to watch streaming movies--only runs on the following phones:

• HTC Incredible with Android 2.2 
• HTC Nexus One with Android 2.2, 2.3 
• HTC Evo 4G with Android 2.2 
• HTC G2 with Android 2.2 
• Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3.

There's also word that it won't work on the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets, which Google handed out to Google I/O attendees earlier this week. Major party foul. But for those with one of the phones on the list, download the app and Netflix promises much of the same functionality as the iOS version, like being able to resume watching a movie or show where you left off on your TV or computer.

Netflix was in the rare camp of apps that became available on Windows Phone 7 before Android, something Roma De from Netflix's product team blames on the much maligned phenomenon of Android fragmentation. In a post on the company blog, Roma De described some of the "challenges" they faced with Android:

"One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback."

Roma De added that Netflix is "aggressively qualifying phones" and hopes to have a much larger roster of compatible phones in the coming months. Hopefully that means Honeycomb tablets, too.

Copy your Angry Birds progress \ save game from one device to another without rooting for FREE

For those die-hard Angry Birds fans who do not want to buy a new phone or tablet because you are afraid that your Angry Birds progress will not transfer, fear no more. XDA forum user, OstrichSak, has come up with a simple tutorial on how to do it and it is Free.
There are free apps in the Android Market for each version of Angry Birds which you may know about, but apparently there are some additional steps that you need to do to make them work.

1) Install one (or more) of the following apps on both devices:
AngryBirds backup                             apps database / android market
AngryBirdsBackup(seasons)           apps database / android market
AngryBirds Rio backup                     apps database / android market
2) Complete ONE level on the new device (do NOT skip this step or you won’t be able to complete the process successfully) and then create a backup to your device using the app.
3) Install the same app on the old device and create a backup for the same game on the old device. Now you have backups of current progress of the same game on both devices and you need to get the old to the new.
4) Use a file explorer (I like ES File Explorer best out of all of them but some prefer Astro… either will work for this DIY) to locate the folder that was created on the new device which will be named the same as the backup app. Within that folder you will find two files which I think are .bkp or something similar. One is scores and one is something else. You want to delete those two files from the new phone and then copy the same two files from the old phone and place them in the same location on the new phone.
5) Back out, launch the backup app that you installed and select restore.

Google Maps gets updated to 5.4.0

Google Maps has been updated to 5.4.0 and brings the following changes:

1. View your Google Maps searches in Google Web History for your account.
2. See additional business details for each search result on the map
3. Report “destination not here” in Navigation (Beta)

If you enable web history in your account, you will now be able to see all of your Google Maps searches across all of your devices. Do this by logging into your gmail account in Chrome and click on your log in name (top right) and choose account settings, then web history. Within your web history there is a choice for maps and all of your searches will be saved there.
When you search for businesses you will now see a star rating within the main map view and when you tap on the business for more info, you will see a “details” section.
The “destination not here” option is for when Maps takes you to a destination that is not where it thinks it is. You can now report this error.

Only 4% of Android devices have Gingerbread

As of May 2nd, only 4 percent of Android users have Gingerbread. The break down is 3 percent for 2.3.3 and 1 percent for 2.3.
Gingerbread was released 5 months ago on the Nexus S. We are expecting Ice Cream Sandwich to be announced shortly.
This is not a good situation. I still believe that most mainstream consumers are not concerned with what version of Android they are running, but what about the hardcores? We knew that the custom UI’s (Sense, Blur, Touchwiz) that are being installed on top of Android were going to be a problem, but it seems like it is getting worse.

Taptu 1.4 android

Taptu — the “News DJ” application that lets you get your news the way you want it — that brought new customization options with version 1.3.  Well, they’re at it again, bringing three Android-exclusive features in the tablet-friendly version 1.4. The three new features that you will ONLY find on the Android platform are:

• A new theme, white text on a black background
• Full screen reading, for when you prefer to not use a tabbed look.
• Instapaper support: Don’t have time to read it now? Send it to your Instapaper account to read it later.

While on the surface this appears to just be a new version, as the look is very similar to what we’re used to with Taptu, it was actually rebuilt from the ground up to be tablet-friendly, while still keeping handset users in mind as well.  Full press release after the break, and you can grab it in the market today.

Death Worm For Android

Death Worm by Playcreek is a new game that has recently been ported from iOS to Android, where you play the part of a giant worm-ish creature set to wreak havoc on everything possible. CJ Lippstreu over at SmartKeitai has done an excellent video review, so I’ll let him take it from here:

You can snag this insane worm-on-human slaughterfest for $2.99 in the Android Market, which will get you 45 levels, 2 bonus games, 30 enemy types, and 3 different worms.

Android Market Link

Appbrain Link

Plants vs Zombies to Hit Android Soon

Acouple of months ago, it was announced that popular casual game developers PopCap Games would be porting their games over to Android. Today, they have announced via Twitter that smash-hit Plants vs. Zombies will be hitting Android in the next couple of months.

OM NOM NOM

A tweet by the popcap_games account said, “Ah, many requests for PvZ Android – it will be releasing soon folks! In the first half of 2011 – that’s within the next 2 months”. We think it’s quite safe to say Angry Birds has some competition, though just how many have not played PvZ on the absolute deluge of platforms it has already released for is a matter of contention.