The Android Market Is Getting Ready to Explode [Data]

With total apps surpassing 20,000 this month, the gap in size—and consequently, quality—between the Android Market and the iPhone App Store is finally starting to close.
AndroLib's been tracking new submissions stats since the Market opened—stats which don't just show us when Android apps pass arbitrary milestones, but how quickly it's happening. And to answer the implied question: very quickly.

There were more that twice as many new apps approved in the month of November than in July, and the rate of increase is only getting higher. Of course, raw app numbers don't guarantee that there will be anything worth downloading, but they do help. Even if just one in every 100 apps it worth downloading, the good stuff starts to add up pretty quickly. It's a sad formula! But it works out.
[Gizmodo via AndroidLib via MobileCrunch]

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The internationally geolocated geek's slavery [GeoLocation]

Hi, I'm Rani and I am a geek. I'm also international because I live in Israel, which is located outside US. As a geek I love gadgets and new tech but you've probably figured that out already, if you've seen my blog.


Last month I got my latest toy, a Google Nexus One, which hasn't left my hands since (my wife is close to taking my two year old boy and leaving home). I download and test apps on a daily basis and try to read the reviews as much as time allows. I find the geolocation apps to be very game-ish with their continuing appeal on me to win more points and activate more mayorships as well as complete challenges.

Lately I've started to feel a little frustrated. There is no single venue in Israel in the indexes of SCVNGR, in my city there are about 40 places in Gowalla (a few of which I created), and last but not least, FourSquare, which is better but still I already registered at least a dozen venues. So I'm like making my town visible to the people coming to visit here. I feel like a lone rider boldly going where no one has gone before.

I said a lone rider for a reason. Not only the Israeli places are missing in the geolocation apps but also available friends are scarce. I have more then 500 contacts in my gmail account and more then 250 friends, mostly close friends, and non are SCVNGR usrers, 1 is a Gowalla user which until recently was my only FourSquare friend. I now have 7 friends in FourSquare, 2 of which didn't log in for centuries, 3 promotion companies, 1 from Thailand which I don't even know and asked me to befriend him. I did, what do I care... The last one is the one from Gowalla which is my only true friend. As I said, this is pretty frustrating being the pioneer. I actually feel a little like those pioneer to came and tamed the land here in Israel in the beginning of the previous century. Brave, strong headed, motivated and patriots.

If you are a non-US located geolocation user like me, let me know how is it you experience the check-ins lifestyle? What other locations are miserably abandoned like Haifa?

BTW, you can reach me as ranibaron in FourSquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR.

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