Mile
Zero

Perhaps this is irony, coming on the heels of the previous post, but I'd like to announce that the first version of the NPR client for Android incorporating my patches has gone live. You can find it in the Market, or see it on App Brain. I get a credit and everything, as the second coder on the project. I'm pretty thrilled.

I got involved because, in keeping with the open-source spirit behind Android itself, NPR has released the source for the client at a Google Code repository under the Apache license. You can download it for yourself, if you'd like (you'll need an API key to compile, though). The NPR team would love to have contributions from other coders, designers, or even just interested listeners. You can hit them up via @nprandroid on Twitter, or send an e-mail to the app's feedback address.

This version mainly splits playback off into a background service with a notification, which is a better user experience and means the stream won't be killed if you leave the application with the Back button. We've got another version in the works that improves this functionality, incorporates some little UI tweaks, and lays the groundwork for home screen widgets. I'd like to thank Corvus for his help in spotting areas where the Android client needs improvement. The NPR design team is also finishing up an overhaul of the look-and-feel of the application, and hopefully we can get that out soon. Along with taking care of bug fixes and project cleanup, that's my priority as soon as existing revisions are cleared.