If you're not the sort of person who explicitly trusts GPS and mobile navigation, move on. For everyone else, Google's just flipped the switch on a cool little feature for Google Maps Navigation (which we're reminded yet again is still technically a beta product). Now, when you're driving and using a Google Maps Nav route and have traffic up ahead, the app will automatically route you around it. And you don't have to touch a thing. From the Google Mobile Blog:

You don’t have to do anything to be routed around traffic; just start Navigation like you normally would, either from the Navigation app or from within Google Maps. ... Starting today, our routing algorithms will also apply our knowledge of current and historical traffic to select the fastest route from those alternates. That means that Navigation will automatically guide you along the best route given the current traffic conditions.

Hey, whatever keeps us from having to ask for directions is a good thing. Full deets at the source link. [Google Mobile Blog]

Android applications purchased in Amazon's app store (which may finally go live to consumers any time now) will use Amazon's special sauce of digital locker/digital rights management to help combat piracy. Amazon spells it out in its developer blog:

Customers who purchase an app will retain an entitlement to their app even if they decide to replace their current Android device and/or purchase new devices, as long as the new devices meet the installation requirements of the app. This provides insurance to customers that their purchased apps will be available for use on all supported devices, even if the customer has uninstalled or otherwise removed those apps in the past.

The digital locker service combined with a robust Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution not only make managing apps easier for customers, they also address one of the biggest concerns developers have: unauthorized copying and distribution. An authorized user can now install your app on any of their supported devices; however, if you chose to apply DRM on your app at submission time, your app will not run on unauthorized devices.

Any app that has Amazon DRM applied to it will require users to have installed and signed-in to the Amazon Appstore client to access the app. When an app is accessed by the user, it will verify with the Amazon Appstore device service as to whether the user has an entitlement to the app. If the user does not sign in or does not have an entitlement to that app, then the app will not be usable. However, any user can gain an entitlement by purchasing the app through Amazon.

The tl;dr version: You can use apps purchased from Amazon on multiple devices just fine; you'll just need Amazon's app store app installed for them to work. It's not nearly as scary as some would have you believe, and it's an extra cushion for developers. [Amazon Developer Blog]

Google is a software giant, and many of us user their proprietary applications on our Android phone.  With good reason -- apps like Gmail, Androidify, and YouTube absolutely rock on an Android device.  But did you know that Google, Inc. has a veritable laundry list of apps available on the Android Market?  They're all free, too! 

Some of you more Android savvy types might already know of them all, but for the rest of us there's an easy way to have a look at them, using search while in the Market app on your phone or tablet.  Just open the search dialog using the search button on your phone or the search icon in the Market, and look for Pub:"Google Inc."  That's a search by publisher -- in this case, Google, Inc.

So can you guess all the Google apps? We've given you seven freebies, and we've got your list after the break. Thanks for the tip, cdubbs!

Don't look now, but it would seem that people love them some Angry Birds. A shocker, we know. Rovio announced at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) that the free-with-ads Android version of the popular game had been downloaded an astounding 30 million times. What is even more impressive is that Rovio claimed five million downloads back in early December. They said they were pulling in $1 million in ad revenue back then, so some quick math would estimate that they might be raking in north of $6 million per month now. That's a lot of irate avians. [Joystiq]

Just a heads up that Google Body is back in the Android Market, and it's now available for download on Honeycomb tablets. Again, you'll need a tablet running Android 3.0, not a phone running anything other than Android 3.0. But with it you'll be able to explore the human body from a muscular, skeletal, vascular and nervous point of view, and it's pretty darn cool. Download links and our hands-on video are after the break. Thanks, Richie!