Android at the 2010 Game Developers Conference

2009 has been a great year for Android Market. With the support of developers like you, Android Market now has more than 20,000 applications. Of these applications, games have proven to be particularly popular with Android users. Seven of the ten most popular paid applications on Android Market are games, so there's a significant opportunity for game developers as the number of Android devices continues to grow at a rapid pace.

To better support this trend, we are increasing our support of Android game development. As a first step, we will be presenting a number of Android sessions at the Game Developers Conference on March 9th and 10th in San Francisco. The sessions will be technical and will include everything you need to know about Android game development in Java or C++. Engineers from the Android team will also be available to answer your questions. Whether you are new to the platform or already have games in development, we would love to meet you face-to-face, answer your questions, and see what you're working on. Be sure to keep checking the GDC site because we'll be adding more sessions.

But that's not all. Google and GDC will also be providing complimentary Android phones to attendees who register for All Access or Tutorials and Summits passes by the Early Bird deadline of February 4, 2010. Qualified attendees will receive either a Nexus One or a Verizon Droid by Motorola, so they can quickly apply what they learn from the various Android sessions. You can find more details about the Android phone offer on the GDC site.

Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to develop awesome games for Android, and this is a first step. Hope to see you at GDC!

IRC office hours update

You may recall that we announced IRC Office Hours for Android app developers back in December. We just want to provide a quick update that upcoming office hours will be held on Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. PST, instead of twice weekly. These will be held in the #android-dev channel on irc.freenode.net as before.



Please post your questions on Stack Overflow with "from-irc" tag in addition to "android" tag one day before office hours. We will follow up on those specific questions during office hours, and will also post answers after.



We hope to see you there!

Optimized Search Suggestions using your location

Typing a query into the search box on a phone can often be slow and difficult. For this reason, relevant search suggestions that match your intended query can meaningfully reduce the time and effort it takes to submit a search. Today in the US, we are happy to announce an improvement to Google.com search suggestions offered on Android powered devices and iPhone. Now, Google will offer suggestions based on the phone's current or last location, making the suggestions more relevant.

For example, when users in the Boston metro area begin typing "Muse", suggestions such as "museum of science boston" and "museum of fine arts boston" are provided because people near Boston frequently look for these very popular museums. On the other hand, users in San Francisco who begin their query with "Muse" will see suggestions for museums in the San Francisco area. By using the device's current or most recent location, Google is able to offer even better, more useful suggestions than ever before. To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone's browser and start typing a query to see the new location-optimized suggestions. Make sure you have turned on "Save recent locations" and "Allow use of device location" under the Settings link on the google.com home page.

Update @ 4:50 PM: Note that you may have to refresh google.com in your phone browser to see the new optimized suggestions.

Posted by Natalia Marmasse and Scott Huffman, Google Mobile Engineering Team

Search your BlackBerry email and contacts with Google Mobile App

If you have a BlackBerry and use the built-in Messages and Contacts apps, you can now search the email and contacts on your device using the new version of Google Mobile App.

Just type (or speak) your query - perhaps the name of the person who sent you the mail or a phrase from the text - and Google Mobile App will search through the emails and contacts on your device and return the results. You can quickly reply to an email or forward it on.



You can also quickly call, SMS, or email contacts by typing the first few letters of your contact's first or last name, and then pressing the corresponding button. Google Mobile App will suggest contacts as you type and you can scroll down to select one. Google Mobile App will promote the people you contact frequently to the top of the suggestions list.



To switch between on-device results (email and contacts) and web results (from Google), click on the link underneath the search box.

If you'd rather Google Mobile App not search your email and contacts, you can turn off Phone Search in the options screen. Google Mobile App does not send information about your contacts or content from your emails to Google. This data is only accessed on your device.

Searching email requires BlackBerry OS version 4.5 or higher. Searching contacts is available on BlackBerry OS 4.2 and higher.

The new version of Google Mobile App also includes other improvements, such as the ability to use your BlackBerry's Wi-Fi connection to access the Internet.

To download Google Mobile App to your BlackBerry, visit m.google.com. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Luca Zanolin, Software Engineer

Android 2.1 SDK

Today, we are releasing the SDK component for Android 2.1, so that developers can take advantage of the new features introduced in Android 2.1. Please read the Android 2.1 release notes for more details. You can download the Android 2.1 component through the SDK Manager.

In addition to the new SDK, a new USB driver that supports Nexus One is also available today through the SDK Manager. The USB driver page contains more information.

Finding places "Near me now" is easier and faster than ever on Google.com

Last month, Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, demonstrated at the Computer History Museum the ability to search by using your location as the query. Starting today, you can try this yourself by going to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and clicking on "Near me now" once your location has been provided by your phone.

"Near me now" was designed to address two user problems. First, we wanted to make it fast and easy to find out more about a place in your immediate vicinity, whether you're standing right in front of a business or if it's just a short walk away. For example, you may want to know what other customers think about a restaurant before you go inside (see quick video below) or what they have been raving about on the menu before you order. By selecting the "Explore right here" option, you can find out more about a place "right here" with just a few clicks.



Second, we wanted to make searching for popular categories of nearby places really simple. Imagine that you emerge from the subway station and you want to grab a coffee, but you don't see a coffee shop around you. You can simply search for all nearby coffee shops by using "Near me now". To search other categories of places not shown, "Browse more categories" provides access to our local search product with more category choices.

"Near me now" is currently available in the US for iPhone (OS 3.x) or Android-powered devices with version 2.0.1 or later. You must first enable location in order for "Near me now" to appear, and "Explore right here" works only if the phone provides location accuracy within approximately a city block.



Posted by John Eric Hoffman and Jussi Myllymaki, Google Mobile Engineering

Introducing Nexus One

We're very excited about today's launch of Nexus One, the newest Android-powered phone running the latest Android 2.1 software. Nexus One comes with all your favorite Google Mobile apps pre-installed: find the classics like Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Google Talk, with additional goodies like Maps Navigation and Google Voice. With its 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset, these apps are speedier than ever before.

Additionally, Nexus One has a few cool new features like a voice-enabled keyboard for any text field; this way, you can speak to your phone and it does the text messaging, email writing, or search querying for you. Try adding the new YouTube widget to one of the five customizable home screen panels to quickly access the videos you want with just a few clicks. Explore your Picasa Web Albums with the 3D interface of the new Cooliris Gallery application. With Nexus One's 3.7" AMOLED display, your videos, apps, and photos are larger, clearer, and sharper.

To learn more about Nexus One, visit google.com/phone.

Posted by Amit Sood, Senior Marketing Manager, Google