Democracy Now! Viewer for Android

Posted: January 31st, 2010 | Author: | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

Shortly after purchasing my Droid I noticed an under-served niche in the Android Market after my app search for “Democracy Now” turned up empty. Some quick google searching took me to forums where others were also bummed with the lack of easy access to Democracy Now video casts from their Android devices.

More recently, I stumbled across some interesting technologies this past week and things just kind of fell in place for the development of an Android app that will stream daily Democracy Now newscasts via the native Android media streaming capabilities. I was able get the initial beta of this application developed, tested, and up on the Android Market in just over 8 hours. After less than 48 hours on the market I have almost 100 users who have installed the app.

I must say, Android development has left a good taste in my mouth thus far. Thanks Google, for allowing a guy who had an app, that people apparently wanted, to get everything developed and available on the public Android Market with such ease and quick turn around. This level of openness and quick time to market will allow the Android Market to grow rapidly and hopefully eventually outshine it’s more restrictive competitor in Apple’s App Store.

How do I get the app?

If you have an Android device, just search for “Democracy Now” on the Android Market. The app is lightweight, simple, and free, so download and enjoy with moderation (if you are like me, one to two Democracy Now! broadcasts per week is depressing enough – yet necessary).

Technologies Used

Big ups to the amazing platform that the folks over at phonegap.com have put together. Phonegap has an android project template that allowed me to write my native android app with HTML, CSS and Javascript, essentially a web app that can still take advantage of native application niceties like cross-domain AJAX requests, and device specific APIs (i.e. Accelerometer, Geo Location, ect).

I was also able to make use the the very nice jqTouch library to throw together a quick UI for this app.