After years of hounding from me, Noel (@noelportugal) made the jump to Android usage and development about a year ago. He started with a Nexus 7, the first generation one, but it wasn’t until he got a phone, the Moto X, that the transformation was complete.
So now, Noel is mixed ecosystem guy.
We’ve had Chromecasts since they were announced last year (they’re awesome), and with the recent release of the Google Cast SDK, Noel has been kicking the tires and experimenting with the $35 streaming dongle.
All his tinkering lead to his very first app in the Play Store, Newcaster. Newscaster uses voice search to find and read news headlines on your TV via Chromecast. That’s it.
It’s not very functional, more just a proof of concept, but it’s noteworthy, given how long Noel has been an iOS guy. Plus, now that he has some experience with the Google Cast SDK, Noel’s creative juices will start to flow. I hope to see some interesting Chromecast features soon. Stay tuned.
While I’m talking about Android apps, I should mention the other apps published by our team members. Tony has a privacy-conscious web browser, Naked Browser, with lots of configurable features, e.g. JavaScript white-listing.
Every time I see him, he manages to work that feature into casual conversation at least once. Unfortunate naming aside, Tony knows his users; his app has a rating of 4.9 stars from 463 reviews, not too shabby.
Anthony’s (@anthonyslai) Moovy has been in the Play Store for nearly four years, since it was called the Android Market. Originally called Happy Feet, this app won the Move Your App! Developer Challenge at Health 2.0 in 2010.
So, there you have it, the collected Android apps of our humble team, at least the ones I can talk about on the intertubes. Stay tuned and maybe someday you’ll read about the others.
Find the comments.
Update: Turns out I missed our most prolific app developer, Raymond. My bad. Check out his three apps.
This one has a story. Raymond’s daughter was asking Santa for a Magic 8 Ball for Christmas, and she got one. Raymond and his son decided to make an app for her.
His son created the 3D ball with center carved out, put light/shade effect, and created background graphics. Raymond created the database to hold standard answers and user-entered answers, and added animation to roll the ball.
Then Raymond’s son did the I18N to include Chinese and Japanese, knowing that Chinese and Japanese speakers do not download apps from English-version of Play Store.
Raymond liked building Android apps so he went ahead and built two more, because, why not?
He and a group of Taleo guys went out for lunch every day, and they got tired of picking a place. So, he made an app for that, i.e. for making choices.
A colleague at Taleo complained to Raymond about always losing receipts when traveling. So we built an expense and receipts app to help people record their expenses and receipts.
So yeah, Raymond is the guy who builds apps to make you stop complaining about first world problems. Helpful dude 🙂
I got a ChromeCast for Christmas… All I wanted was to be able to watch The Daily Show on my TV without paying for cable. It kind of works but I have to keep my laptop running. At which point, why watch on a TV anyway?
@bex: Because the TV is much bigger and has better speakers?