Google added new countries where developers can sell paid apps and get paid via their local bank account. Developers from Czech Republic, Israel, Mexico and Poland can now offer paid apps inside Google Play. Those in unsupported countries still have to resort to workarounds.

Samsung invests quite some money into a challenge to boost development of apps for the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy Note. 80 developers can win prizes of a combined value of 4,080,000 US$. You also have the chance to be featured prominently in their channels - especially if you register now during the early bird phase.

The reference Android developer phone, the Galaxy Nexus is now sold via Google Play in the US. Users can buy the device from Google directly, not having to go through an operator or reseller. There is a new devices section inside Google Play where the device can be obtained, unlocked, without any contract commitment. The device ships for $399 and comes with Google Wallet pre-installed.

It is time to say goodbye to Cupcake. This is not about the pre-Easter fasting period. It is about Android, more specifically about the Grandpa of Android operating systems: Android 1.5, called Cupcake by his friends. Or her friends. To be honest, Cupcake never really communicated its gender.

The yearly U.S. edition of the EclipseCon is where the Eclipse Community Awards are being handed out. Those awards honor the best contributions and top achievements for the Eclipse open source project. Among the winners are some familiar ventures like Code Recommenders, who won the "Most Innovative New Feature or Eclipse Project" award. Named "Top Committer" was Sven Effinge and the "Top Newcomer Evangelist" award went to Lars Vogel.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich is being rolled out to selected devices – this is what we read on the Android Google+ Profile. The update brings better camera performance and stability improvements, among others. More devices are to receive the update over the coming weeks. As usual, the source code of the new Android version will be available.

The Android SDK sees another update, the 17th so far and it comes with many new features. The most notable may be the updated emulator. It now supports running x86 system images at a high speed. Further improvements refer to the build system, Lint and an updated Support Library.

Purdue University researchers have looked at the battery consumption of Android apps and found out that ads inside apps in fact do eat up battery. Well, obviously they do, but the amount of power sucked up by ads compared to what the real app consumes is the surprising part. Up to 70 percent of the power is used by ads – is there potential for more energy efficiency?

We are still getting used to not talking about the "Android Market" anymore, but there are already some new changes to the Play Store. Some of them might work in favour of developers/publishers. Users might not like all of them.

How about making smartphone apps on your smartphone? Ok, if not your smartphone then maybe your tablet. AIDE is a development environment that works on Android devices and has everything to write fairly complex Android applications. Without leaving the Android world, you can write, compile and run apps directly on the same device. It even comes with code completion, error checking and formatting as well as the ability to compile and execute APKs on the device. Has the time come for app developers to switch from a PC to a tablet?

The last few days, there were a few attention-grabbing headlines such as "Google Forces Android Developers To Use Google Wallet". Thus, Google would do something that Apple has done from the very beginning. The question is: Is it a bad thing for us?

What is the approximate population density of the world? Are Rastafarian and Baha'i faiths Abrahamic religions? What was the nationality of Antonia de Andrade, the first European to travel to Tibet? Our Top Member App for March is a quiz app installed by a few million Android users and produced by Urbian from Austria. It's available for Android and iOS.

From the depths of Google Labs to the goodwill hands of the MIT - App Inventor has made it to Beta status and is now available to the wider public. The drag-and-drop app creation tool allows building Android apps without the need for proper programming skills. App Inventor was donated to the MIT Center for Mobile Learning after Google stopped the project back in August 2011.

The news about Google's Android are quite numerous today and we decided to sum up a few thoughts here. Aside of the question of how dependent Motorola is going to be after Google's takeover and Android tablets still lagging behind their smartphone counterparts in terms of sales, the Mountain Viewers hinted towards the codename of Google's next Android version. Not literally, but with a big bowl of... jelly beans.

If you are coding with Eclipse, Code Recommenders might save you a lot of time and effort. It aims to provide you with just the right piece of code just when you need it. Now, its first official release, version 0.5, has been published.