I decided to try out WordPress for the front page because Joomla updates were giving me a headache. I also want to find some software reviewers so having WordPress will be easier when I decide to add authors. The old posts might not look all that great but I only put them on for archive purposes. Please let me know if you find any bugs and I will see what I can do about getting them fixed.

If you are an Android lover and would like to do software reviews for this site, please let me know by emailing admin at android-dls.com with a sample review that I can check out.

I am about 85% sure that I have successfully removed the bridge and from what I can tell I have a working forum. If anyone is unable to login or has any other major forum issues please email me at admin AT android-dls DOT com or find me on irc.freenode.net in #android-downloads so I can look into it.

The forums *might* be going up and down today as I will be performing some maintenance. I have grown tired of the repeated errors caused by a stupid choice I made while this site was still new. While I was creating a download section (which was later made useless by the market) I wanted users to be able to login to it and the forums at once so I installed a Joomla <--> phpBB3 bridge. This bridge was supposed to make logins and other user information seamless across both platforms. While it did make them accessible, it was NOT seamless. There are numerous errors that get reported and with my very limited php knowledge I am only able to temporarily fix them. I will be attempting to remove the bridge by installing a fresh phpBB3 today and hopefully hooking it up to the old database. I started this project last night and was about 90% successful but I made a mistake which caused me to have to revert and start over. If you experience problems logging in today, please be patient and try again later. I will let you guys know when (I think) I am finished. Thanks in advance for the understanding.

If you are like me, you probably check the market for new apps at least once a day. I was excited when I first saw cyrket.com had setup an RSS feed for the latest items and immediately went and purchased the first Android RSS reader that supported notifications. This was then set to check cyrket every 5 minutes for new releases. While that was good while I was away, I did not want to have to pull out my phone to see the latest releases. I recently added the feeds to a bot I run on irc.freenode.net in #android-downloads so that I could see the latest submissions when I am on irc. If you frequent freenodes #android channel feel free to add my channel to your auto join and come idle. If you are looking for a good irc client for the G1, try out Android IRC by nyt. It is not free, but in my opinion it is the best, most full featured client that has been released and it was definately worth the $5 I spent on it.

Also note that I have placed the last 10 apps feed on the right side of the home page.

I did not know much about the process but the more I see other sites having a store on Amazon.com the more interesting it looked. I decided to check it out and before I knew it I was selecting G1 accessories to add to the store. I was surprised by some of the items and prices. The case that I purchased from some stand alone store for $7 (which I thought I was stealing from them at that price) can be purchased for about $2-3 on this amazon store. I have added it to a frame so you do not have to leave the site to view it, but if you wish it can be viewed in a seperate window at store.android-dls.com.

Per a suggestions in #android (on freenode) I went looking for a way to create something like Ubuntu’s brainstorm site. I found something and signed up for it. The idea behind this is to have a centralized location for requesting features (or even bug fixes) and having others vote for the ones they want the most to give developers (nudge nudge Google) a better idea of what the general public wants out of Android. I have added a subdomain and pointed it to this site (Might not be working yet due to propagation times) brainstorm.android-dls.com. If it does not work for you, just go here till the subdomain works (see below). Submit your ideas, and vote for ones you like the most. If this gets used seriously I am confident Google will check it out. They seem very good at getting users feedback about Android (hence all of the google staff that chat with us in #android).

I decided against the 3rd party service that I had initially setup and instead installed Pligg. It is basically a Digg site but without the need for a “story url”. I think this will work out better in the long run and have moved all of the submissions from everyone to the new site which is located at http://android-dls.com/brainstorm. I made some edits that hopefully let you use your forum/main site login on the pligg site. If you have problems, sign into the forum first then go to the pligg url and it should show you as logged in. I might disable the pligg login in favor of a forum login link soon, but I will see how things work for now.

NOTE: You do NOT have to create an account to post your request because the site lets you use your Gmail account to sign in. (No longer valid with new pligg site)

Brandorr has created and is hard at working on the new >Android FAQ. It is bursting with answers to the most common (and not so common) questions. Check it out and feel free to add to it (if you do not mind registering because I had to lock it down to prevent spam) or just add/fix existing content.

It has been requested a few time and now it is here! Stay updated on your latest Android downloads by subscribing to the forum RSS feed. For now this is forum wide and will show all new posts (which might start becoming a flood soon) but hopefully soon there will be separate feeds for each category. Check it out (top left of forum pages).

About 3 minutes ago we got our 50th member registering. Welcome xXJEDI007Xx, if we had prizes I would give you one! Hopefully everyone is finding this site useful and is spending less time searching the internet for downloads than you would without this site. Please make sure you are voting for applications you try so that other users know if they work or not before downloading. Also please post any new downloads you find elsewhere so I can add them to the downloads section. Thank you for registering and happy downloading!

Per user feedback it seems that I will not be able to make the main downloads component “device friendly” and since that is the main goal of this site, I am moving (copying for now) the downloads to the forums. Each download will be a separate topic and will have a direct link to the file so that they should be installable from your browser. As with everything else I do I would love feedback and opinions on this change.

(UPDATE) The move (or copy) is now complete. It took a few hours, but I made a new topic for each download and hard linked each apk file. I am hoping that G1 users will now be able to download and install directly from the site and no longer have to use a PC or their own private web server to install apps.

Registered users go here for the “new” downloads section.