Android Atlas

With an ongoing parade of changes, Google has been steadily bringing its mobile site closer in line with Google.com's desktop experience.

Last week the search giant refurbished image search and added "Place pages" for iPhones and Android phones accessing Google from the browser. On Wednesday, Google made over its general search results page--this time for both the desktop and smartphone.

On the desktop, a Google search will soon show a column of extra options that help you narrow your search. This additional helper menu appeared almost exactly a year ago, in May 2009, as an … Read more

Dropbox is getting more serious about its efforts to bring its cloud storage solution to mobile devices. On Tuesday the company is announcing a mobile API for developers to build ties to Dropbox's servers into their own apps, as well as formally launching first-party applications for the iPad and Android and BlackBerry devices.

The new mobile API is something Dropbox is calling "Dropbox Anywhere." The company has worked with a number of developers to integrate their apps into the new data pipeline. These include Fuze's FuzeMeeting app, Dictamus, Air Sharing, GoodReader, QuickOffice and Sprite Mobile's … Read more

It's been about a month since Twitter began contributing its official apps to the BlackBerry marketplace, rather than sitting back and letting third-party developers take the reins. We checked out Twitter's new, free, official in-house Android app over the weekend and for the most part, we've been liking what we see.

While there's no shortage of third-party Twitter apps in the Android Market, Twitter's has an edge that the others don't--integrating contacts with the Android address book. That means you'll be able to view your buddy's Twitter photo and most recent update … Read more

Article updated 5/3/2010 at 1:28 pm with new details about operating system compatibility.

About a year and a half after releasing a mobile version of its personal-finance service for the iPhone, Mint.com is bringing its free credit-card and budget tracker to Android phones.

As with the iPhone app, passcode-protected Mint.com on Android has you monitoring credit card, bank, and investment accounts; your budget; and your cash ebb and flow. The app presents your money matters in summary form, with the ability to drill down to the item level of a purchase. Follow the trail to … Read more

Native Flash support for Android phones may be only a month away, but in the meantime, mobile browser-maker Skyfire presents a workaround in its brand-new beta app for Android phones.

Skyfire 2.0 beta for Android looks and acts like your typical souped-up WebKit browser for Android phones, with the exception of a tool that lets you stream Flash video--and soon Silverlight. WebKit doesn't currently support either technology.

When Skyfire detects a broken embedded video on a Web page, it signals Skyfire's servers to fetch the video and transcode it from its original format to HTML 5 video. … Read more

Google's mobile development team has had a busy couple days fine-tuning what it likes to call its "iterative mobile Web," a phrase that, in plain English, extends to all the Google sites you can access from some iPhones and Android smartphones.

Earlier, it migrated a better search result for business listings from Google.com for the desktop to Google.com from the phones. On Wednesday, the team rolled out changes to the way it shows image results when you search from some of those two smartphones.

The redesign's objective is to squeeze more thumbnail images onto … Read more

A useful feature that Google rolled out for the Web last September has just made its way to U.S. Android phones and iPhones.

You might have noticed Place Pages as a newish type of search result that pops up on Google.com, often as the first nonsponsored listing. Connected to Google Maps (and Local search results), a Place Page gathers together key information about a location: the Web site, map, phone number, link to directions, and user reviews.

The mobile version, accessed through Google.com, similarly puts useful info for local businesses at your fingertips. "Local" is … Read more

Android users who relish being on the cutting bleeding edge of mobile software are going to love getting their peepers and fingers on Mozilla's latest foray into Firefox for mobile phones.

Late Tuesday, the open-source browsermaker released a prealpha version of Firefox for Android. If beta builds are for testing and feedback with minimal instability for the tester in question, alphas are far less stable elements, and prealphas--well, you get the picture. You should only consider downloading it if you have a high tolerance for crashes and forcing reboots on your Android smartphone--like us! 

Mozilla issues a heap … Read more

This is a true story: Two weeks ago I'm zipping along in southern England in the back seat of a silver VW Golf, listening for the better part of an hour and a half while my sister reads aloud directions to the car's driver from the screen of an HTC Touch.

The instructions are specific ("Turn left in 100 feet") but fruitless; we flip a U on the muddy one-track road and head back toward the village to blindly pick our way to our obscure destination, a farmhouse that brews traditional cider, using just wits and … Read more