Notes From The Cave

I have observed over the last couple of weeks an uptick in the number of new applications added to the Android Market, which has me thinking that is related to the new release of the operating systems. No doubt some of these developers have integrated some of the Cupcake enhancements into their product, which wouldn’t make sense to release until the new operating system was released.

A couple of notable applications that I have downloaded are the USA Today application, which does a nice job of presenting news articles from the USA Today newspaper, and the NBA Game Time application that presents updates from the NBA schedule and playoffis. Both are nicely done applications and the NBA app makes me wish the NHL and MLB were as equally mobile savy to release such applications. No doubt the NBA’s advertising relationship with T-Mobile has something to do with the development and release of this application.

Google has also made a few subtle changes to their web sites optimized for Android. When you open the default Home page in the Android Brower you will notice a new Location option under the Google Search button. That feature integrates with the location awareness features of Android to support local searches. In reality this doesn’t add something new to Android because this has always been part of the Google Maps app that comes with Android, but I think the integration makes sense.

Perhaps even more interesting is an enhancement to the Google Shopping site on Android that now has a Scan Barcode button below the Search Products button. When I click the button I am presented with two options to either use the Browser to scan or to use ShopSavy, which I have had on my G1. When you select Browser you are presented the option to install the Barcode Scanner from ZWing, free from the Android Market.