Android Atlas

New music services are great at making me feel old.

Opening Spotify is like opening the door to some hip cafe where a mustached 20-year old barista takes my order with folded arms and a stamp on his hand from last night's secret show. I feel not just a little lame. But instead of running for the door like the curmudgeon that I am, yearning for the comfortable embrace of my iTunes collection, I stay.

I stay because even in these days of free apps, free video streams, and free e-books, I'm still totally enthralled by the idea … Read more

Preorders for Nvidia's Shield will begin today, May 17, at Newegg, GameStop, and Canada Computer. Preorders are also available on Nvidia's Shield site.

Earlier this week, Nvidia announced that preorders for Shield at the aforementioned retailers would begin on Monday, May 20, but now cites "growing buzz" as its reason for making the portable console available sooner.

The Nvidia Shield is an Android-based portable gaming console using the company's Tegra 4 processor. The device is scheduled to ship in June. You can check out my hands-on impressions here.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Engineers on the Google Android team say they are still working hard to ensure that Android updates are rolled out to new devices in a timely fashion.

During a fireside chat at the Google I/O developer conference here Thursday, 11 members of the Android development team fielded questions from the audience of developers. Android team members acknowledged the continuing issue of fragmentation within the Android ecosystem. But they also said they planned to continue a rapid pace of innovation.

"This is something we think about a lot," said Dave Burke, engineering director for the … Read more

Good assistants -- the kind you can't live without -- are hard to come by. For starters, they should always be on time; any lag simply won't do. They should also get things right the first time, because who has time for inaccuracies? And, last of all, the assistant should be so good, they're always a few steps ahead of their boss.

Those are pretty high expectations, but Google and Apple both think they've got the magic to meet all those requirements and more. The secret, it turns out, is to hand off the work to … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google and its partner The Catlin Seaview Survey need help from developers to document the world's coral reefs and save them from extinction.

During a session at the Google I/O developer conference, Richard Vevers of the Catlin Seaview Survey and Jenifer Austin Foulkes, a business product manager for Google Earth & Maps, talked up Google's efforts to bring underwater panoramic images to Google Maps.

Google first started virtually mapping the ocean floor four years ago, and in September the company launched its first 360 degree panoramic street views of the ocean. Google partnered with … Read more

One of the many announcements flooding out of Google I/O that may have gotten lost in the shuffle is Android's expected support for Bluetooth Smart technology.

This may seem like an odd development, especially if you know that many Android devices already feature Bluetooth 4.0, the version in which Bluetooth Smart (that is, Bluetooth Low Energy) first appeared. What's new here, though, is that the fresh flavor of Android, expected to hit in the next few months, will natively integrate all of Bluetooth 4.0's fancy tricks, including BLE, or BT Smart. Previous Android iterations … Read more

The Pebble smartwatch certainly took its sweet time getting off the ground, but today the people who created Pebble say they have enhanced its application capabilities. Now able to talk in detail between phone and watch, Pebble apps promise true two-way communication. … Read more

Android scooped up more than half of all ad impressions seen by Millennial Media last quarter, according to the ad network's new MobileMix report.

For the first quarter, Android won 52 percent of all impressions (the number of times a mobile ad is displayed), up from 49 percent in the year-ago quarter.

In second place, iOS accounted for 39 percent of all impressions, up from 33 percent. That left the third spot to the BlackBerry OS, which saw its slice of ad impressions cut in half to 7 percent from 14 percent. Microsoft's Windows Phone also witnessed a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google Wallet is growing up and it's not just about paying for stuff by tapping your phone anymore.

On Wednesday, the company made three announcements at its Google I/O developer conference with regard to Google Wallet that take the service well beyond specialized tap and go technology to make Google Wallet more usable on the Web.

"We are not pulling away from NFC," Peter Hazlehurst, director of product management for Google Wallet said in an interview. "We are simply making a much richer Wallet experience. There are still places where NFC can't be … Read more