Google completely caught us off guard today when they announced the rebranding of the Android Market and the consolidation of all their digital media into the new Android Play media hub. Apparently Google has decided it’s better to have a single Google Play branding versus the multitude of names including Android Market, Google Music, Google Books, etc. Everything will now fall under the Google Play umbrella and other than the name change, everything looks to be the same.
Hit iOS game Temple Run caused quite a shockwave in the mobile ecosystem when it was released in August of 2011 and seems to be all the rage these days. Android users have been feeling left out as they eagerly await its release onto the Android Market. There hasn’t been much news up until now, but we finally have a release date to look forward to and that date is March 27th.
“We are excited to finally share the Android release date with our fans who have been so enthusiastic and supportive of Temple Run,” said Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi Studios. “By expanding to more mobile devices, we hope to provide the same addictive and fast-paced gameplay to an entirely new group of players.”
The patent saga continues with U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruling that Motorola and Google must provide Apple with information regarding Android development as well as information about the impending merger. It’s unclear exactly what specific “information” must be provided and while everyone goes ahead and assumes it’s some sort of top secret documentation, I’m betting it’s nothing of the sort and Apple won’t be gaining any trade secrets out of this. It’s all ridiculous and will only end as all of these patent suits have ended, with nothing more than a software update.
Every month Google puts out a platform distribution chart to give us a better idea of what OS version Android devices are running. Not much has changed since last month which is quite disheartening considering it’s been a few months since Android 4.0 was released. Ice Cream Sandwich is Google’s latest and greatest Android version and yet less than 2% of devices are running it. It really is a shame and it’s too bad OEM’s and carriers are taking so long because Android 4.0 is such a great improvement to the user experience.
Android and iOS users will now be able to quickly access the places they have searched for on Google thanks to Google’s new “Recent” icon on their mobile search page. Any user who has Web History enabled and is logged into Google when searching for a place will have that search saved and accessible via the “Recent” icon. Searches will be saved for approximately 24-hours and will give users the convenience of starting searches from their desktop and later pulling up that information while mobile.
