HTC just announced via good ‘ole Twitter that a new upgrade for the Hero aimed at Orange users has been released. Read more and download the update here.

After my gripe last night about Khalid a friend Justin from nexsoftware.net informed me of a cool app that I must have missed. My Market is described as an overlay for the market that allows for much more refined searching. You have the ability to filter out results by author name or by keywords.

My Market filter list

My Market add new filter

Adding in “Sapphire” immediately removed the offending Top Pretty Ladies that were flooding in at a rate that seemed to be about 2 per hour. I then added some other authors to the list and watched the market clean itself up. While that alone is enough to make this app a great one, it does not stop there! There is a built in bookmarking feature, the ability to email a link to a friend and even an internal rating/recommendation system.

My Market app list

My Market app list

About the only downside I could see to this app is that it does not install the selected program itself and instead sends you to the real Android Market to finish the download/install. While this is not a huge disappointment, it does leave you wishing for a better implementation. Overall I would have no problem rating this application 5 stars. If you have not already, go check this app out on cyrket.com.

Apple banned him so he went underground. He used to go by Khalid Shaikh on the Android Market, but lately his apps have been showing up under the alias Sapphire Apps. His company name Perfect Acumen can still be seen in his package names and the annoying flood of his “Top Sexy Ladies <insert female celeb name here>” apps (which most users seem to view as spam) keep him from being hard to find. He packages a few pictures he finds on various websites into a slideshow and attempts to sell them for $5 each. The vast majority of his apps have a 1 star rating, and mostly because that is the least you can rate an app.

Khalid Shaikh Spamming the market with low rated apps

He currently has 178 apps listed on cyrket.com and was up to over 900 when Apple banned him from the AppStore. Google, it is time to stop Market spam and give us a filter option!

*Edit* While I was writing this (and after counting) Sapphire Apps posted 2 more apps to the Android Market. This puts his count up to 180.

*Edit2* 3 more apps were posted within an hour of this post. Grand total 183 and counting. At this rate, he might hit 300 before noon tomorrow.

The results of the Droid Dev Challenge 1: Cupcake Widget are in. 18 widgets were submitted to be voted on and 2 were chosen as first and second place winners. The widget that won first place gets a prize total of $656 with the second place winner getting $164. While I could keep typing here forever to prolong the results, I will hold in my deep desire to be mean like that and just get on with it

First place goes to aniWidget from aniFree

Second Place goes to Weather from Android Apps

Thanks to all of the devs and those who donated. This will probably be the last contest here for Android-DLs.com but do feel free to check out the Android Bounty contest and AndroidandMe.com to get mobile Quake working on Android.

Well, it seems Haykuro has done it again. Rogers will be the second to release the Rogers software when their Android phone hits the market tomorrow (June 2nd). They were beat by a 17yr old who happened to finish his homework early and have some time to spare. They should change the back of the phone to say “WITH Haykuro” instead of the “Rogers” logo. This early release presents another first also: US G1 owners have a chance to use the Canada only rom before Canada gets to use it. Grab your copy of it here!

Now that is an odd mouthful. For those who do not understand what it means, Rosie is the home screen HTC wrote that shows all those nice widgets. Hero is the phone the wrote the nice UI for and haykuro is the one who got it all from them. I have reports from the man himself that while it looks great, the speed is a bit lacking. The HTC Hero has better specs than the G1 and therefore can handle it a bit better. No word yet on when/if there will be a release. Watch the video below for the latest on Rosie from haykuro.

The first (but hopefully not last) Droid Dev Challenge is coming to an end. Developers, you do not have much time to get your submissions into me. Please read the rules on submitting your entries to me. The rules and submission guidelines can be found on the contest page.

We have had many Android developers express interest in the contest, and some have started submitting their Android widgets already. As you can see from the sidebar, there is a nice chunk of change sitting in the prize pot. Good luck to all of the developers and may the best widget win!

Haykuro, with the help of a Magic owner was able to find a method to obtain root access on the 2nd Android device. They found that fastboot was left unlocked and allowed for unsigned images (unofficial) to be flashed. A boot.img that was unsecured was flashed, giving root access in adb, which then gave them the power to flash a modified recovery. As we all know from the G1, having the modified recovery is the main step required to be able to flash custom roms. Haykuro has offered to build a JF-like rooted rom for the Magic community and is probably working on that now. >Full instructions on how to gain root access and flash the modified recovery on your HTC Magic/Sapphire can be found in the wiki.

JesusFreke released his Cupcake (Android 1.5) udpates for ADP1 tonight. The mirrors can be found here.

You will still need to update to the new radio which is not packaged inside the update. I will add the radio to the JFupdater list BRIEFLY tomorrow so those that want to wait for that can. Keep in mind, since the radio does not change your OS version it will always show as an update even if you have already flashed it (hence the brief time I will leave it there).

We are still waiting for someone to find the URL for the G1 OTA that has been rumored but not proven to be released. If you are able to get us this url, please contact me with it. Thanks in advance.

Droid Dev Challenge 1

With the success of the Android Bounty from AndroidandMe.com and the Android Developer Challenge from Google, I decided to start up our own little contest. The task: create an Android 1.5 compatible widget. The best submitted widget will win the pot, which will be filled by user donations. More information can be found in the Droid Dev Challenge section.