Amazon has launches its Android Appstore – but much of the talk has been about Apple suing the online retailer over the name rather than the arrival of Angry Birds Rio. According to US sources, the Appstore is now available, although TechRadar has found links to the store are redirecting back to the Amazon.com homepage at the current time.
Rovio has announced through Twitter and its blog that it will be launching its Angry Birds spin-off, Angry Birds Rio , exclusively through the Amazon Appstore. Like it did with GetJar , Rovio has decided to sell another Angry Birds game not through the official Android Market but a third-party site. The Amazon Appstore has yet to launch but the Angry Birds Rio UK release date is 22 March, so it’s a given that Amazon will open up its app shop before this.
Use of webmail is in decline, with mobile mail sky rocketing in the past year, according to the latest figures. ComScore’s study of online behaviours in the US suggests a trend away from the internet for our mail, with a 6 per cent drop in usage year on year. These figures include the likes of Gmail and Hotmail but not traditional email through programs like Outlook
Google’s much admired 20 per cent time – where engineers are allowed to spend a portion of their time on their own projects instead of their day jobs – has not been eroded by the company’s explosive growth. Product manager Aparna Chennapragada, who is moving from Google Labs to work on video search at the company, insisted that the concept of engineers taking on their own side-projects for a fifth of their working week has not diminished. “The culture is still pervasive although the company has grown along with the range of people,” she told TechRadar “But it’s very much present and the 20 per cent task gives people a chance to take a break from their day jobs.” Android gesture search Although many of the projects gather big teams, like Google Goggles for instance, some or the projects arrive on Google Labs and even as final products due to a single person
Opera Mini users used the mobile browser to read one billion internet pages in a single day, a significant landmark for the Norwegian company. Opera has revealed that the billion mark was hit on July 25 2010, just over two years on from hitting the 100 million mark for the first time. “Each day is different in the fast-growing mobile Web. Every day more people around the world choose Opera Mini and view more pages through this browser,” said Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder, Opera Software.