Guest writer Amit Kulkarni, Co-Founder and CEO of Manymoon, took to the Google Code blog recently with a very interesting article that gives four important tips to would-be app developers.  While this is geared more to the Google apps space and enterprise solutions, it's also a must read for anyone thinking about developing applications for the Android Market.  Google's cloud computing scales down very well to our phones, and potential tie-ins between Google apps and Android applications is still a largely untouched field.  Whether you're an app developer, or just curious, take a look to get a little inside view from a very popular developer. [Google code blog]

Here's a great find that comes to us from Emlil at androidscoop. Froyo now gives users the ability to import .vcf cards into contacts.  Even better, it looks like Froyo can handle the .vcf files right from the e-mail application as well as Gmail.  Emlil gives a nice walkthrough of
the process using the Gmail application, and we've attached a few pics of doing it through the regular pop mail app. 

Also very cool is the ability to share contacts as .vcf files.  Again, Emlil walks us through doing it via Gmail, so we grabbed a few snaps of doing it over bluetooth.  Business users as well as those of us with big address books will surely find a use for this one.

Jump past the break to see some more pics and a short breakdown.

(Thanks Emlil! Find a cool new feature in Froyo and want to tell the world about it? E-mail us here and we'll make you famous!)

[YouTube link]

Sat down (erm, stood up) at Google IO with our pals from Dataviz to take a look at Docs to Go version 3.0. We got a glimpse of it at Mobile World Congress in February, but now it's ready for public consumption, though it won't be available in the Android Market for a few more weeks. And if you're looking for an easy method of syncing your important documents between your computer and phone, this is it. Check it out.

Update: Good news, everybody. Dataviz tells us the update will be free. Quoting: "Documents To Go version 3.0, including the new desktop sync application, will be a free upgrade for all customers who previously purchased our full version. Hopefully that news will make our customers and your readers very happy!" Indeed, it does.

Don't worry so much about not understanding that headline. We don't blame you. The Dalvik Virtual Machine is a behind-the-scenes tool that most of you never see, let alone need to worry about. Same goes for the Just-in-Time compiler -- aka the JIT. But those two things are among the main reasons Android 2.2 -- Froyo -- is leaps and bounds faster than than its predecessors. (Check out our own benchmarking tests if you need proof.)

Google's Dan Bornstein recently took to the Android Developers Blog to explain more about Dalvik and Jit. And he turns it into plain English far better than I could:

We added a Just In Time (JIT) compiler to the Dalvik VM. The JIT is a software component which takes application code, analyzes it, and actively translates it into a form that runs faster, doing so while the application continues to run. If you want to learn more about the design of the Dalvik JIT, please watch the excellent talk from Google I/O 2010 given by my colleagues Bill Buzbee and Ben Cheng, which should be posted to YouTube very soon.

To be clear, the differences aren’t always dramatic, nor do they apply uniformly to all applications. Code that is written to run the CPU all-out can now do more in the same amount of time (running faster), and code that is written to be rate-limited can get its work done using less time and less of the CPU (using less battery). On the performance front in particular, we have seen realistic improvements of 2x to 5x for CPU-bound code, compared to the previous version of the Dalvik VM. This is equivalent to about 4x to 10x faster than a more traditional interpreter implementation.

OK, I take it back. I understood parts of that. But I especially understood the part where Dan explain that things run "4x to 10x faster." There's no interpretation needed there. And on top of the speed increases, the JIT is light on RAM, too. It's a win-win. Check out Dan's entire post for the whole nitty-gritty on the JIT and why you'll love it. [Android Developers Blog]

Here's ye another example of why our forum members are the best. Locoman shot this picture of the moon through a 10-inch Dobsonian telescope -- with the HTC Incredible, putting that 8-megapixel camera to good use. But it gets even better. Check out his shot of Saturn -- yeah, the one with the rings that's way, way out there -- and some more moon shots in his forum post.

Not everything in Android 2.2 is hardcore behind-the-scenes stuff.  Some of it is a bit fluffy.  Butt-kicking-cool useless fluff though, so it's all good.  Mix up one part fluff and one part function and you have the new 3D gallery and camera apps.  Like so much other stuff in Froyo, some of the changes seem very useful, while others completely random.  Hit the jump to get the run down, some handy pictures, and a video of something fun called pinch peek.

(Thanks, Chris! Find a cool new feature in Froyo and want to tell the world about it? E-mail us here and we'll make you famous!)

And the Motorola Droid Shadow is spotted again! This time the Droid Shadow is shown from the uber-sexy side angle and from the looks of it, we're quite impressed with the overall thinness and clean lines of it. In this shot we can clearly see the HDMI out that's in line with previous leaked info but the Howard Forums user who posted the pic says that the Droid Shadow "only" has a 4.1-inch screen, TI OMAP 3630 processor (720 ARM Cortex A8), 8GB internal storage, and 8-megapixel camera. That's a little off from previous information so we'll have to wait and see who's right. We'd like Snapdragon and the extra .2 inches in screen size please. Other than that though, this phone looks sweet. Those of you who passed on the Droid Incredible might have a great thing in your hands soon. [via engadget]

Mobile advertising server AdMob -- whose purchase by Google, by the way, was approved by the feds last Friday -- just released its April numbers today. (AdMob servers up many of the in-app ads you see on your Android phone.) Let's look at the bullet points:

• Some 75 percent of unique Android devices are in North America. Asia has 12 percent of Android devices, followed by Western Europe with 11 percent.
• In the United States, the iPhone has about 10.7 million devices, and Android makes up 8.7 million. (If you count the iPod Touch along with the iPhone, Apple's share jumps to 18.3 million.)
• Worldwide, there are about 11.6 million Android devices pinging AdMob's servers, compared to 27.4 million iPhones and 40.8 million for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
• Top Android smartphone in the United States in April was the Motorola Droid, with 16.1 percent of AdMob advertising requests. The HTC Magic (myTouch) followed with 5.3 percent, the HTC Dream (G1) with 5.0 percent, Motorola Cliq at 4.5 percent, HTC Droid Eris and Hero each at 4.3 percent, and Samsung Moment at 3.3 percent.
• Android phones showing gains in April were the Magic (0.5 percent), Droid Eris (0.2 percent) and Moment (0.2 percent).

You can find more at AdMob's site, and you can read the entire report here. (pdf link)

After what felt like years of speculation, the Dell Streak is officially official. As in Dell has announced it and it's coming to O2 in the U.K. in early June and the US later this summer (likely AT&T). The announcement is completely in line with what Dell CEO Michael Dell told us a couple weeks back and the specs are similar to all the leaked info we've seen in the past months. But there's nothing like a good 'ol press release to put the final stamp on it.

The official specs of the Dell Streak:

• 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor
• 5-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen
• 5-megapixel camera with LED Flash
• 16GB internal memory with microSD support
•  Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
• launching with Android 1.6, update to Android 2.2 by end of the year

The only thing we don't have is pricing, and we hope Dell doesn't mess it up. All you folks across the pond will find the Streak available online and in stores from O2, Carphone Warehouse, and Dell.co.uk. Us Americans have to wait just a little bit longer. Thanks Dell. [businesswire]

Yes, folks, we're well aware that the Froyo ROM we're all running on our Nexus Ones isn't a final build. We said as much on Monday, and it was confirmed by Google just a couple of hours later and has been reiterated several times since.

Think it through: The Froyo update first started showing up on a few devices -- journalists no less -- and these were devices that originally were distributed by Google. So the Goog knew the IMEIs -- a unique identifier of the phone -- and started pushing out early updates. It was a targeted distribution.

When an over-the-air update is pushed, it actually just tells your phone "Go to this Internet address to download the update." From that point, it's just a matter of finding the download location (which takes about 30 seconds if you know how), and that's the ball game. The rest of us now have this early version of Froyo.

Rest assured, we'll see a more final build soon, and hopefully we'll have the source code released before then so that our favorite chefs can get to cooking. As for when a specific phone will get a Froyo update, well, we don't know. And it's really unlikely anybody else does at this point either. So be careful in reading those random posts from customer-service bots or some guy in a store. We thought we'd taught you better than that. :)