Project Pitfalls: 10 Business Risks of Android Development

Android is an exciting new platform to develop for, but there are a number of risks associated with Android projects which should not be overlooked. Here’s a short list of what we see as the project pitfalls of Android development at this time. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

Android Needs Google For Now

Today, we’re seeing two types of Android devices on the market: those with a basic, “vanilla” installation of Android and those with Android and Google services. This means developers and manufacturers have choices as to whether or not to integrate tightly with Google services. This decision requires some serious thought. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

Key Questions Any Good Mobile Application Business Plan Should Answer

Coming up with the right business model for your mobile application can be tricky. Here are some of the key questions any good mobile application business plan should answer. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

19 Ways to Make "Free" Mobile Application Pricing Profitable

In terms of app pricing, one of the first questions to ask yourself is: are you going to charge users or give the app away for “free”? But can you give away your app and still make money? Here are 19 ways you can try. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

Chapter Excerpt: The Mobile Software Development Process

A free chapter excerpt of our Android book is available online at Network World.

The mobile development process is much like the traditional desktop software process with a couple of distinct differences. Understanding how differences affect your development team is critical to running a successful mobile development project. This information and insight into the mobile development process is invaluable to veterans and those new to mobile development, to those in management and planning and the developers and testers in the trenches. In this chapter, we take a look at each step in the mobile software development process and discuss some of the peculiarities of mobile development.

Check out the full excerpt: http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/google/110109-chapter18-android-wireless.html.

Tip: Dealing With Expired Debug Certificates

If you've been developing on Android for a while, you'll eventually see this error (or something like it):

Error generating final archive: Debug certificate expired on 11/3/09 8:59 AM!

This will happen once a year. The default debug certificate is set to have just a one year expiry. The easy solution is to simply delete the debug.keystore file and let the SDK generate a new one the next time you build.

Why not create one that won't expire after a year, though? This command will do just that:

keytool -genkey -keypass android -keystore debug.keystore -alias androiddebugkey -storepass android -validity 10000 -dname "CN=Android Debug,O=Android,C=US"

Run this from wherever the debug.keystore file needs to be generated and you'll get 10,000 days before needing to deal with this again, instead of merely 365.

Some Thoughts on Mobile Application Business Plans

Mobile developers are struggling to determine the appropriate business plans for their applications. Over the past few weeks, we've been talking to a lot of mobile business professionals--some veterans of the mobile marketplace and many just getting started. With easy and accessible mobile platforms like Android, writing a mobile application is often the easy part, but monetizing your application can be a real challenge. We're going to be talking a lot about different mobile application business strategies this month, but we thought we'd kick this topic off with a few high level thoughts. With so many new players in this field, we're seeing many developers and development companies struggle to figure out how to make money with applications. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

Six Hot Android Topics at DroidCamp

We're currently in Berlin attending droidcamp and droidcon conferences. Droidcamp, primarily for Android developers, was quite a success today, with many great sessions. We listened to the developer buzz and went to a bunch of sessions. Here is our take on the hot topics simmering within the Android community here in Germany. Read more...

[Note: We're blogging over at Network World all this month. Head on over to register to win a free copy of our book!]

Busy in Berlin

We had a great day at droidcamp today in Berlin. We presented two sessions, attended others, wrote a little about it over on Network World, and even had time to enjoy a beer with many of the droidcamp gang at a local pub.

Read about some of the hot topics discussed in our article, Six Hot Android Topics at DroidCamp. We had slides for one of our presentations, too. They're available here:

Finally, over at Network World, you can win a free copy of our book! See here for details.

Android 2.0 & Droidcon!

It seems like we were justing about Android 1.6. Oh, wait, we were! Well, we have to admit: Android 2.0 is a little underwhelming from the developer point of view. It seems more like Android 1.7. Still, it's great progress and items like the account manager for using multiple accounts across the handset will be great for users and developers alike.

One item we liked, especially since we're on the road this month attending conferences and checking out the Android phones available in Europe, is the built-in update abilities that simply add support for Android 2.0 instead of require a completely new installation and configuration. All we had to do was run the SDK and AVK manager, update to the latest and run the Eclipse updates to get the newest plugin and we were good to go with 2.0!

On code we've tested, we haven't noticed any new issues with 2.0. However, if you run across any issues with our book code, please let us know! Once we've returned from our travels, we'll do a more thorough evaluation--with one of the new Android 2.0 handsets.

We're on the road? That's right! We're just days away from Droidcon in Berlin! See you there!