Yesterday we run the third hackathon of the Android Aalto Community. Once again, it was astonishingly fun and enriching, were we covered several interesting activities, including:

• AdMob presentation: how to include Ads in your Android applications. See presentation below.
• Greek hackathon challenge: an Android hackathon was running at the same time in Greece. We had a Skype call with them and challenge each other by writing down five questions related to Android.
• Playing around with our new tablet (Archos 70): we brainstormed about possible ideas and we came to some interesting ideas that we might be implementing in the future as a project.

Let me elaborate a bit on each of the points. First, I held a presentation about AdMob and the basics of using Ads in applications published through the Android Market. It was very interactive and, since it is a very interesting topic (after all, we all want to make money with our apps), everybody was making good questions and we learned from each other.

Secondly, we run a Skype videoconference with another hackathon running at the same time in Athens (Greece). They had been working for the whole weekend in a Valentine’s Day application for Android. We held a challenge, where each team wrote down five questions and then asked the other team. It was very fun and we learned interesting facts and figures about Android (e.g. how many people learn in Dalvik ^__^).

Last, but not least, we were playing a bit with the new tablet the community received, the Archos 70. Maksim upgraded it to Froyo 2.2.1 and we had a brief brainstorming about possible projects that we could do on the tablet. The idea is to create some enriching project were we can create a large team among the members of the community and cooperate to create something useful, fun and attractive. We will continue this discussion about ideas and possible projects in the next hackathon.

So this is all for January, and we hope to see you all in the next event, which will be on February 8th. We will have the second Android Aalto Keynote, running from 18:00 to 20:30 (aprox) at the Aalto Venture Garage (Betonimiehenkuja 3, Espoo), in Otaniemi.

Just to remind you some of the most important events coming related to Android, please check the following list:

• Android Aalto Keynote #2 — Tuesday 8.2.2011 (18:00 – 20:30) — Aalto Venture Garage
• Jfokus Stockholm 2011 — 14-16.2.2011 — Stockholm (Sweden) — Please contact Hannu
• Mobile DevCamp — Saturday 26.2.2011 (10:30 – 18:00) — Arcada (Helsinki)
• Android Aalto Hackathon #4 — Sometime in February

A big THANKS to all the participants of the hackathon and see you all at the keynote event. As always, you can get more information from our facebook group, following us on twitter (#droidA, @claudiomkd, @MaksimGolivkin) and reading our mailing list (androidaalto@googlegroups.com).