This page provides data about the relative number of active devices running a given version of the Android platform. This can help you understand the landscape of device distribution and decide how to prioritize the development of your application features for the devices currently in the hands of users. For information about how to target your application to devices based on platform version, read about API levels.

2+ Year old Android 2.3 continues to be more than 50% of the Android user base.. sigh.. iOS anyone?

via Percolate

Apple’s release of Maps on iOS6 may have been the best inadvertent advertising for Nokia’s Maps.

But there are more than two horses in the race to create an index of the physical world. There’s a third company that’s invested billions of dollars, employs thousands of mapmakers, and even drives around its own version of Google’s mythic “Street View” cars. That company is Nokia, the still-giant but oft-maligned Finnish mobile phone maker, which acquired the geographic information systems company Navteq back in 2007….

via Percolate

I wonder what Google will do with Currents in the future/in it’s next rendition? There hasn’t been any updates to the app in over 2 months. They must be adding some Google+ integration to it, considering how much the company is pushing Google+. Perhaps a UI re-design. Or will they kill it like a Labs project and put all their weight behind Flipboard that they already gave access to their Google+ APIs?

Today is the day pregnant Marissa Mayer starts her first day as the new CEO of Yahoo, after a 13-year long career at rival Google. As widely reported, she was one of the first 20 people to join Google when it was started in the late nineties.

(via The First 20 Googlers: Where Are They Now? - Image source)

wtf-mobile-web:

“Designed for all your devices” — then cuts off content on the landing page.

Point -> and, haha

And here’s the punchline:

Although no one as far as we know is going to lose their home or job as a result of Google being sloppy with its privacy controls, or Facebook collecting every tiny detail of your social activity, the parallels between the tech industry in Silicon Valley now and the financial system which so catastrophically failed in recent years is startling. A small elite of gifted (largely male) super-wealthy masters of the universe are creating systems through their own brilliance which very few others in government, regulation or the general public can understand. The engineering of products which people like and use, and the startling creation of wealth which accompanies them, has a dampening effect on the criticisms and concerns of those who believe that the control of the few over the data of the many has potentially serious consequences.

Here is where the real threat to the open web lies. A series of decisions made by an elite of ferociously competitive business owners, whose consequences are unclear and whose methods are poorly understood by those who are increasingly dependent on the products and services of these opaque companies.

via Percolate

@chockenberry Every developer’s greatest fear

The app is removed from not one, but two of the biggest mobile app stores after a year+ of sales.

The reason? Arbitrary enforcement of “good old fashioned Christian values”.

via Percolate

Google gets the odd bad bit of publicity but by and large over the years they have been treated very favorably by the online and traditional press. Mostly because they had a great product, some admirable ethics and continuous growth. Things have changed in the last 6 months though.