We had the opportunity to speak with Bart Decrem, GM of Disney Mobile, about Where’s My Water?, a success on the iOS App Store, coming to the Android platform for the first time.

According to Decrem, Android has been part of the plan since the development of Where’s My Water? for the iPhone crowd. In fact, the game was originally developed with C++, to make it easier to port to Android. The challenge, he said, is making sure the game is the same high quality experience across the myriad devices represented by Google’s hip operating system. Disney Mobile promised that Where’s My Water? can be played on over 700 different Android devices, which basically amounts to all devices that have been released in the past two years, excluding budget devices.

What makes the game such a hit, says, Decrem, is not just the well-tuned puzzles, but the original character, Swampy the Alligator – a Disney style character that players get water for to help him take a bath.

Disney also announced that Swampy will make his debut online in a 12 episode web series called, Where’s My Water?, the Adventures of Swampy. The 3-4 minute weekly episodes are slated to launch on Disney Online in January. Whether this drives purchases of the game remains to be seen, though taking Angry Birds as an example, a transmedia approach can work well.

Where’s My Water? is available now in the Android Market for $0.99.

Nov 25, 2011

Editor’s Note: Do the Black Friday crowds have you down? Want to remember why this is a holiday weekend in the first place? Then enjoy this week’s Theme Thursday on a Friday. Freaky Friday will return next week at its scheduled time and place! Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all!

This week’s Theme Thursday is another double-feature, each with a Thanksgiving theme to help you celebrate the holiday. The first ADW Launcher theme to be featured is called, aptly enough, Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving comes with a cornucopia of 150 custom icons, each featuring a different app icon within its very own horn of plenty. As you can also see, the custom wallpaper depicts a scene of the Android decked out in Pilgrim’s attire as he hunts the wild turkey for the feast.

This theme, which runs on ADW Launcher is only US$1.25. You can find it here on the Android Market.

The second half of our double-feature is Forever Thankful from MommaDeuce.

This theme depicts several decorative Autumnal scenes and items inspired by the season. It contains 35 wallpapers in addition to assorted custom icons, docks and other elements to give your Android device the look and feel of a Fall harvest time scene.

You can find Forever Thankful on the Android Market for US$1.49.

Each of these themes will require ADW Launcher, a home replacement utility. ADW Launcher allows you customize several different elements of your Android’s graphical user interface all at once simply by switch themes or customizing existing themes to use any icon, wallpaper, dock or other element already installed on your Android device. Even the way the app drawer behaves can be customized to your liking, making it an extremely versatile utility that allows for a truly unique experience. ADW Launcher is available for free on the Android Market. However, to use custom docks, you will need ADW Launcher EX, available on the Android Market for US$3.32.

From all of us here at Android Rundown to everyone out there, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

The third APPNATION conference will be held November 30-December 1 at the Concourse at the SF Design Center and AndroidRundown and the 148Apps Network are proud media sponsors. The agenda is shaping up to be yet another great one this time around. Some of the great speakers and panel members lined up include:

Doug Purdy, Director of Developer Relations, Facebook
Baudouin Corman, VP Publishing Americas, GAMELOFT
Gibu Thomas, SVP Mobile and Digital, Walmart
Ben Keighran, CEO, Chomp
Brandon Watson, Senior Director, Windows Phone, Microsoft
Dave Castelnuovo, Founder & CEO, Bolt Creative (PocketGod)

And many more.

Want to attend AppNation III? 148Apps network readers can get a 30% discount on the registration fee by using code 148APPS on the registration page.

More About APPNATION

APPNATION is an ambitious and bold thought leadership conference and exposition focusing exclusively on the burgeoning consumer applications revolution and global app economy.  The third annual APPNATION event will feature speakers and exhibitors from leading companies from across the app economy. DEVELOPERS: Submit your app and have a chance to pitch at the AppCircus@Appnation! Isobar is sponsoring an NFC Hackathon and check out the AppNation Bootcamp.

148Apps Network readers receive 30% off full conference registration by using code 148APPS!

Nov 22, 2011

Square Enix has made their first major push on to Android for gaming, with the announcement that their Android store will launch on December 1st, in Japan. While they’ve released Crystal Defenders and digital interactive comic Imaginary Range to Android, the former has been released on every other modern platform, and the latter is hardly a major release. This is Square Enix finally meaning business about Android. Initially launching to one carrier before expanding to others in Japan, Square Enix will offer their titles as exclusives on this store, the Square Enix Market. This is similar to how EA and Gameloft distribute some of their Android titles – by selling through their own marketplaces as well as through the Android Market.

What’s interesting is not just that previously-announced Chrono Trigger will be launching in the store soon. Many other games will be making the leap from iOS to Android, including the original Final Fantasy, Chaos Rings, the previously-released Crystal Defenders, new title Dragon Quest Monsters Most Wanted, and Itadaki Street, a title based on a previous DS and PS2 release.

The obvious question for western Android users is this: how will we get to play these games? Will Square Enix launch localized versions of the Square Enix Market? Or will they just choose to offer the games through the Android Market or other similar marketplaces? As well, how much of a delay will exist with the translation of these games into English? Many of these announced titles already have English versions, so any delay hypothetically should not be a long one.

This is another notable step for the Android gaming market. While Android may never get the kind of exclusives and initial launches that iOS often gets, the chance of it catching up and being equal to iOS is only steadily increasing with each major publisher and major release that is announced.

Nov 21, 2011

INC is the latest game from OrangePixel, continuing their run of retro-styled action-platformers. This goal in each level is to try and activate three boosters in order to open up the level gate. The game has a light storyline about futuristic mega-corporations taking over the world and replacing people with robots. As such, most enemies are either random goons dressed and armed to kill, or deadly robots of all shapes and sizes. Players can get stars for killing all enemies, activating all the boosters in underneath the time limit, and for finishing with extra health. Players also can earn experience from killing enemies that can be used to power up their main weapon.

INC is great for short pick up and play sessions; OrangePixel seems to have the pacing of their games down pat. The game features cloud-based saving through OpenFeint, so stars and experience can transfer between devices. I don’t just mean between iOS devices, either; even the Android version of the game can load up cloud saves. The OrangePixel pixel art style is well in effect here, and the balance of monochromatic characters and backgrounds works really well to give the game a distinct look. Remote controls are supported, from Joypad and iCade on iOS, to keyboard and Xperia Play support on Android.

The level-up system is very annoying, in that gaining points to level up is extremely slow, then a huge amount is lost on dying. Pretty much the only way to level up is to replay the early levels over and over again, so that dying in new levels won’t reduce the meter that much. It’s just an extremely poorly implemented and user-unfriendly element that should have been revised or scrapped entirely. A lot of boosters are hidden in the environment, and thus require the shooting of random blocks in order to discover them, which doesn’t feel all that fair.

INC is not perfect, but it’s another solid action-platformer from OrangePixel. Fans of games with cloud-based saves and remote control support will want to check this one out.

Nov 21, 2011

The beauty of freemium is that it’s hypothetically immune to software piracy. After all, how can one ‘steal’ what is already free? By instead trying to make money through in-app purchases, developers can not only increase exposure, but can minimize lost revenue from people who would pirate their app instead of buying it legitimately. After all, pirating in-app purchases isn’t possible, right?

Apparently, wrong. According to a report on PG.biz, at least one developer of free to play games has noted that iOS users have been hacking their app to get in-app purchase items for free. In fact, their top in-app purchase was being pirated at an almost 14:1 ratio of hacked ‘purchases’ to regular. Note that the overall ratio was 1.16:1 hacked to legitimate purchases, though, so it’s not a huge issue at this point, but it is something on the horizon to consider as more games and apps move to this business model.

It’s interesting that this started on iOS, the more closed platform, rather than Android. While it is conceivably more difficult, it might show that iOS gamers are more dedicated than Android ones. It just doesn’t show up in positive ways, apparently! Of couorse, given the more open nature of Android, this could be a practice that starts up before too long. However, all the hackers on Android may be too busy getting their devices to run on the newest versions of android rather than trying to modify the apps on there.

Of course, the thing to remember is that software piracy may be more a sign of people who want to consume more content, rather than people who solely wish to steal from developers and get everything for free. Those people do exist, but as research in the music industry has shown, there’s evidence that the people who download music illegitimately tend to actually buy more music legally. My hypothesis is that there are people who are massive content consumers – they do not have the means to buy all the content they want to consume legally, but will occasionally spend money on the content they wish to spend money on. The same is likely true for mobile gamers as it is for music fans and TV/movie fans. The latter audience also has DRM to deal with on purchased items. In a way, this is why I discount piracy as a major drain on sales – it’s not that they want to actually steal content, it’s just that given a zero-cost option, that’s what they often take.

I wrote an article about freemium for another site recently, and the comments were largely along the line of dreading when the games started to ‘require’ money being spent. People just don’t want to spend the money if they can avoid it. That often supersedes any potential moral quandaries that may be arisen by undergoing the act. I understand why people pirate, and I can understand why people would pirate IAP. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

I personally choose not to pirate apps because I know that if I did pirate apps instead of buying them, then I am threatening the business prospects of small developers by my actions. For many pirates, they potentially affect people barely making a living by offering these apps and games. While I understand that piracy is inevitable and impossible to stop entirely, I can only hope that mobile pirates taeke into consideration just who they may be affecting, and that this trend of pirating in-app purchases does not spread. While thankfully, it appears that it may be easier to ban users who pirate IAP than it is to stop people who pirate paid apps, and maybe the pirates never planned on spending a dime anyway, but still, I hope users consider the morality of what they’re doing before they do it.

It seems that these days we are living in a health-and-fitness awareness boom. You can get microchips in your sneakers to track your running for goodness sake! But not all of us have the money to throw into robot shoes, especially if we’ve already put the bulk of our money toward a smartphone. So it’s pretty natural then to assume that our phones would be willing to assist us in our fitness tracking, and we are not wrong. Endomondo is the second fitness tracker I’ve tried using, and I can say it’s a pretty tough act to beat.

I had been signed up with and using RunKeeper for a while, and while it’s nice to fall back on the familiar, I was also ready to take a look at the new. Signing up for an account was easy, and the app didn’t take long to download, although for the sake of testing it out I did hesitate for a moment over the $4.18CAD price. But since I’ve started using it I’ve been in love, and have even renounced RunKeeper all together.

The app’s main screen gives you your most basic options: Type of Workout, Music On/Off (with the option of some songs provided by the app, or of playing your own podcasts/music library), and the immediate Start or 10 Seconds Countdown options. GPS, unless disabled, automatically begins plotting out the route you’re taking and uploading it to your profile on the website. Further settings options give you an Audio Coach (giving you your time and distance values at set intervals), and even the option to allow your friends to send you Pep Talks if they see that you are actively exercising. Great for people training for marathons. There is also a secondary screen you can flip over to with a map showing your current location. Helpful to track yourself but also (if you get lost easily like me) to keep yourself on target.

Basic Workout gives you another host of options. You can set a goal to reach, set a goal against that of a friend’s time or a previous time of your own, or enter a route that you want to follow. During warm weather I’m an outdoor runner but during chillier times I resort to a treadmill/elliptical combo at the gym. GPS isn’t a viable tracking option then, so the final option of Manual Entry is essential for me. You can plug in Type of activity, Duration, and Distance Covered and it will all be added into your calendar of completed activities. Sweet and simple and covers all the bases.

It’s hard to praise the app without mentioning its parents site, so let me just say that Endomondo itself is wonderful. It has a very clear and intuitive display for your workout stats, as well as a constantly updating display of all of the other users who are currently out for their own workouts. It’s like Twitter, but for jogging. As well the option of sporting activities that you can chose from when embarking is stunning. Everything from the standard Walking, Running and Cycling, all the way to Pilates and Star Climbing to Yoga and Martial Arts. Plug in the time you spent on the activity and it will generate for you an approximate value for the calories you’ve spent. Those calories are then awesomely added up to give you values for Trips Around The World or To The Moon you’ve virtually completed, or more realistically how many Hamburgers Burned off. These stats are only viewable on the main site, but all of those sporting activities are options within the app itself.

In terms of cons, I feel a little silly reporting that my biggest complaint is that Elliptical (as I know it) is labelled as Cross-Training in the app and on the site. That term means something else to me, and so only the tiny icon of a person on an elliptical clued me in that it was the option I was looking for. otherwise it’s been smooth sailing. Which is, by the way, an activity option!

Nov 18, 2011

For several weeks, Tiny Tower on iOS had a rock-solid grip on my life. I couldn’t do anything without checking in on my bitizens, making sure they were getting their work done while I ignored my own. I was simply engrossed in the steady stream of activity — someone is constantly moving in, stocking items, building new floors or just looking to get a ride in the elevator. It never ends, and even the most mundane, insignificant minutia — such as moving the elevator up and down — requires your assistance.

Extremely easy to play, your main job is to fill your building with bitizens who work in the shops to make you money so you can build additional floors for more bitizens to work and live on. That’s it. There’s no real goal in Tiny Tower. You just keep building, higher and higher. That could be a turn-off if you get bored easily, but that’s why the game includes achievements and social features, allowing you to show off and compare your tower with your friends’ towers.

I do have a few complaints about Tiny Tower on Android. For example, this version isn’t as fully-featured as its iOS cousin. While the Android version features nicer menus and sorting options that allow you to quickly move through tasks, it lacks a few social features and the “bitizen builder” feature included in the iOS version. Of course, it also lacks Game Center compatibility. Mobage uses their own social network to keep you connected with friends, but only as long as they are playing the Android version as well. Also, forget transferring your existing game from one platform to another.

My biggest criticism about Tiny Tower is that notifications are either broken or don’t exist. Because tasks can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, you’ll want to close the app to use your phone for other tasks while you wait for them to finish. But the game never notifies you when the task is complete like it does in the iOS version. This means your stores are sitting empty while stock waits to be put on the shelf, new additions remain closed until you open them or a store has sold out while no one is there to order more stock. One of the best things Android had going for it was its notification system; it’s a shame to see that Tiny Tower, apparently, makes no use of it.

Like the iOS version, Tiny Tower on Android requires a network connection in order to play. This is fine if you’re at home on WiFi or your phone has a data plan, but you’re out of luck if you don’t.

I could easily see myself getting drawn right back into Tiny Tower, if I’m not careful. The cute graphics, smooth music and constant activity easily make this game range from fun to tedious to overwhelming, depending on how into it you get. But otherwise, it’s just a good game that can keep you occupied for hours, if not weeks.

Nov 18, 2011

When I heard about an app called Sick Videos, I immediately grew worried. What is wrong with these videos? Why are they so sick? Why is there an app showing them off? Why won’t they get the treatment they need instead of being bandied about in Android app for our own twisted amusement? It was then I realized that “Sick” didn’t mean the videos were ill, it meant that they were sick as in “crazy, twisted, totally wicked brah.”

Sick Videos is a curated list of videos found on the YouTube, and brought together in one app. Want to see a man wearing an elongated dragon in a compromising position? It’s here! Want to see a sandstorm instantly turn day into night? It’s here! Want to see a judge of what I can only assume is a kumite knock out one of the competitors with his foot? Sure, that’s here too! Want to see a clip from some random Japanese TV show with a woman who has a machine gun in her pants? I don’t know why, but it’s here too!

The best part was a random video compilation of people suffering from random accidents, like falling down, or hitting themselves in the groin with a baseball they hit off of a chain link fence. It’s so meta, a collection of random accident videos in an app dedicated to collect these types of videos! What’s next, a video that is a collection of collection of videos? It’s like typing Google into Google. It would cause the universe to explode.

Of course, the problem with collecting all these videos in one spot is that these videos are often more fun to watch when not looking for them, when trying to find something else. After all, an app called Sick Videos has me expecting the sickest, most twisted videos in need of hospitalization, and some of these videos seemed to be very much skirting the definition of “sick”. I mean, people falling down isn’t “sick” – that’s just what YouTube was made for! Why do I need an app for that? Heck, I could entertain myself for hours just by searching for “people falling down” on YouTube, and I think I’m gonna go do that.

Nov 18, 2011

PapayaMobile and Tapjoy are coming together to expand the reach of both of their products, through what they are calling a Social Marketplace.

How it will work is by leveraging an important part of each’s services to improve the other. Tapjoy’s service incentivizes app downloads in games by offering in-game rewards for downloads. What the Social Marketplace will do is utilize recommendations based on Papaya friends, so games that are more in line with the user’s tastes and with what their friends are playing will be prominently featured. The companies claim that this will allow consumers to see more relevant ads that are targeted for them, and developers will see better engagement and monetization from these users.

According to Mihir Shah, CEO of Tapjoy, “Our entire business is built around delivering as much value to consumers as possible, and clearly there’s considerable value in helping them discover new games based on what their friends are playing. PapayaMobile’s social network has the scale and reach, particularly across the U.S. and China, to help make our ads further targeted and more engaging for users.”

Si Shen, CEO of PapayaMobile had similar favorable things to say about Tapjoy. ““Tapjoy is the industry leader when it comes to ad networks that deliver proven, effective distribution and monetization. By teaming with Tapjoy for a Social Marketplace, we’ll be able to offer game developers the very best advertising solution.”

The push for advertisement monetization on Android will likely be important for Tapjoy, especially as opportunities are reduced on iOS. Their service of incentivized app installs was shut down by Apple a while back, and recently, Temple Run was removed from the App Store by Apple for their incentivized video ads. Google is far less restrictive on these policies, and thus this could allow the platform to thrive as an alternate source of monetization for free apps.

Nov 17, 2011

Ask anyone who’s ever tried to learn an instrument and they’ll likely tell you that the part they hate most is practicing scales. It’s boring! Up and down, up and down… repeating the same notes, over and over. It’s tedious, mind-numbing and seems to go on for hours. But, if you want to learn the basic fundamentals of music while building dexterity and muscle memory, practicing scales is the only way it’ll come to you.

Part of what makes practicing scales so dull is that it doesn’t seem practical when taken out of context. You want to learn an instrument so you can play music and have fun, but scales aren’t fun; they’re just a bunch of notes! That’s where Guitar BTX comes in. Guitar BTX turns practice time into fun time by laying down a groove and getting you into a rhythm. But that’s not the only benefit.

Practicing scales with a backing track also makes sure you’re learning correctly. When you’re playing the notes by themselves, it’s not always easy to hear where they fit in. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the right note from a wrong note, and it’s easy to learn incorrectly. But if you have some context to guide you, it’s much easier to hear where the notes go.

To use the app, you simply tap on the scale and key you want to practice. After a moment, a rocking guitar strums out appropriate chords while bass and drums lay down the rhythm. For reference, the app includes an image of the scale and neck position so that you can look up any notes you’re unsure of. Guitar BTX works exactly as it should, but there is room for improvement.

To save on space, none of the 35 mp3 backing tracks are included with the app — they stream to you when you choose a scale. This means that Guitar BTX will not work without an internet connection. While this may not be a huge problem, it would certainly be an inconvenience if the server went down or a connection wasn’t available. Would it have been wiser, or even possible, to use General MIDI tracks, instead? They would sound a lot different, but the tiny size of MIDI files means that they wouldn’t take up a lot of space and could be included with the app — no internet connection required.

There’s a much worse problem, however. I really don’t like that the app stops playing the backing track when you tap on the tablature to see the notes in the scale. It stops the learning process and adds frustration to have to go back and forth to hear the music and see the notes. I’m sure there’s a simple solution, but as is, it’s a major annoyance.

As for the rest of app, I think Guitar BTX is incredibly useful. Even as someone who’s been playing guitar for 16 years, it’s always helpful to go back and brush up on those scales. Guitar BTX does a great job of turning a dull, tedious chore into a fun way to learn.

Nov 17, 2011

The theme chosen for this week’s Theme Thursday, MIUI Cartoon Mob, is an interesting one, no doubt. For one thing, I find it to be fun and visually appealing. The cartoony, hand-drawn style of the icons, backgrounds and other elements all look great. For another thing, it comes to Android and ADW Launcher by way of the very popular MIUI ROM.

I admit that I’m not quite brave enough to install a custom ROM on my phone. For whatever reason, I just don’t want to do it. As I said, I understand that this is kind of a weird hang-up, but it’s my hang-up and I don’t really want to go into it. Even so, to get this theme on my phone, I’d almost consider taking a risk and going through the process of installing MIUI. Well, thankfully, I don’t have to go through that process, I can just purchase MIUI Cartoon Mob and set it as the current theme in ADW Launcher. It’s that easy!

Of course, it’s easy because ADW Launcher makes it easy. The custom home replacement utility allows you to customize your Android’s user interface in a number of amazing ways. From custom backgrounds to completely new icon sets, everything is customizable — even the way the app drawer displays and behaves. It’s very powerful.

So, if you’re like me and want to install a cheerful looking theme without getting your hands dirty dealing with custom ROMs, buying MIUI Cartoon Mob and installing it in ADW Launcher seems like the easiest way to go. You can even mix and match it with other themes for a truly unique user interface. Just another one of the great things about Android; the sky’s the limit when it comes to customization.

You can find MIUI Cartoon Mob on the Android Market for US$1.49.