TuneWiki Introduces Social Blip Technology with New Android Cupcake Release

TuneWiki's Social Music Player App for Latest Google Phone Offers Worldwide Connectivity in Music and Lyrics through Facebook, Twitter and Email

(San Francisco, CA) May 20th, 2009-TuneWiki, the next generation social media music player, today announced its new app for Google's Android 1.5, Cupcake. This new version of the app features Blip technology for increased social connectivity, offering to post the user's current song on their Twitter or Facebook profile. The new social media capabilities come in addition to earlier TuneWiki versions, promoting a social network that allows users to add, edit and subtitle lyrics for audio and video files in all languages. This new version of TuneWiki is the most advanced and comprehensive social media music player compatible with Cupcake available today. Features found only in the Cupcake version include a home screen widget, allowing users to control TuneWiki without having to launch the full player, and the ability to organize and access different parts of their music collection directly from the home screen through live folders. TuneWiki for Cupcake is Bluetooth compatible and can be upgraded to an ad-free version for $4.99.

Features Include:
• Blip technology to update Facebook and Twitter with current playlist selection
• Android Home Screen widget
• Bluetooth wireless compatible
• Free Ad-Supported or Ad-free version available for $4.99
• Interactive Music Maps showing what other users are listening to around the globe
• Lyric subtitling for both audio and video, including the option to translate lyrics into 40+ languages

[TuneWiki]

After a bit of tinkering, Haykuro managed to get the build to work on the G1. I have to admit, the UI looks great—nice and polished. Yet another sweet snack for Android users to drool over. [PhoneDog via BGR]

The home screen folders are kind of cool, although at this early stage all they offer is a folder view of your contacts (all or starred). On display is also, of course, the soft keyboard, as well as a few UI brushups. A few other features touted as new here aren't actually new to Cupcake, and on the whole, not a lot has changed since we took the Cupcake dev branch for a spin via the Android SDK emulator a few months ago. [Phandroid]

We've known how this Cupcake tastes for a few days now, and we're still most excited about the soft keypad, of course, which will come in handy in the many situations where you don't want to flip open the G1 just to type a few letters. There are also a few mysterious new apps, some of which look like dev tools but may be polished for eventual release, as well as hints of haptic feedback for the keyboard and a few more tidbits. Check out our captioned gallery for a tour:

My number one wish, though, would have to be improved battery life via smarter data connection management. The G1's hardware battery may be partly to blame, but one of the reasons the G1 usually can't make it through a whole day without re-juicing is that the data connection is constantly active for email and contacts sync as well as push updates and whatever else you may be doing. Sure you can turn most of the automatic data syncs off, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the phone. Hopefully cupcake will fix some of this.

If you want to load Cupcake on your computer via the Android SDK, grab the SDK here. Then, follow the instructions laid out by the folks at Nullwire (very easy) to replace your system image files with the new 1.5 Cupcake versions, then simply run the "emulator" app (a UNIX executable on OS X and Linux, and an .exe in Windows) inside the SDK's "tools" directory and you're in business. [Nullwire]

Developer Arron La was able to test the most recent batch of Cupcake and make his own observations about the changes. According to him, there will be a new Notes and Global Time application, along with various other fixes. Since February is almost here, I wouldn't be surprised to find most of these coming to the G1 soon.

1. New Local Setting Page - Gives you option to pick different locales and pick different text inputs.
2. New Option to view running and third party applications - An option to view running and third party applications from the normal application list. Does not provide a way to terminate them.
3. New windows opening/closing animation effect - a new popping effect when windows are opened/closed.
4. New default notepad - a very simple and ugly default notepad.
5. New Global Time application - not sure if it will be provided by T-Mobile but it’s just a rotating Earth and I couldn’t get it to do anything else.
6. New Spare Parts Application - Once again not sure if the official version will have this, but it provides a number of extra settings such as setting windows animation and transition animation speed, font size, end button behavior and etc. It also has a “display rotation” option which supposedly should allow auto-rotate base on orientation across the entire os, but it is not currently working.
7. New Virtual Keyboard (as seen on video -ed.)- The virtual keyboard will pop up on every edit box. I didn’t feel any haptic feedback but I am thinking that it’s just not there on the example keyboard. Because the phone does not auto-rotate (an option exists but it doesn’t work), it’s very hard to type on it. The sample keyboard also does not provide auto-corrections.
8. Slightly better looking buttons with more shadow.

[Arron La via IntoMobile]

The two most notable aspects of the keyboard are its style and its method of feedback, which are both slightly derivative. You may recognize the keyboard styling from HTC's TouchFlo 3D handsets, which are skinned very similarly, albeit with an inverted color scheme. It diverges, however, in its visual feedback; instead of simply magnifying the key around your finger, Cupcake displays a disembodied duplicate at a fixed distance above the original key, for an effect not unlike the iPhone's onscreen keyboard.

Not shown in the video are some of Cupcake's meatier features, namely the video recording and browser find functions. The robust, if unrefined, preview of this keyboard serves to show that developers are taking Android dev seriously, and that the platform could well turn out to be the evolving OS that we originally hoped for. [MomentaryLapseofReason via ModMyGphone—Thanks, Neerhaj]

The most practical update may be to the camera functions, which have finally expanded to include video recording. The browser gets a hefty refresh as well, with an inline find function and creatively implemented selective copy and paste, as well as quite a few under-the-hood speed enhancements.

Some of the other updates are a bit more forward-looking, and clearly not focused on the G1. There'll be a framework put in place to allow for simple system-wide on-screen input (read: touch keyboards) and as our tipster pointed out, the mysterious and tantalizing inclusion of "Basic x86 support."

Being that this development isn't coming from a hardware manufacturer, x86 support doesn't indicate that a particular new gadget will be adopting the OS, but it does imply that seeing Android on a rich variety of gadgets, including some in unexpected form factors, isn't out of the question. Check the full feature list at the source link. [Android—Thanks, Ben]