Google is moving into the mobile ad market with AdSense for mobile apps. Over the past few months, Google has been testing both text and graphical ads with ten mobile app developers, including Shazam and Urbanspoon. Today it is opening the private beta to more developers who meet certain criteria.

These are contextual ads for iPhone and Android apps. To qualify for the public beta, the apps must be free and generate at least 100,000 pageviews per day. The program is only for iPhone or Android apps. Developers must be ready to go live with the ads in four weeks and participate for three months.

So we just got word that HTC will be the first manufacturer to bring Adobe Flash to the Android platform with the release of its new Hero / Sense device. If you needed more proof that Android is here to stay and will not sit on the sidelines in the mobile operating systems game, this is it. If you think about it, the iPhone is now the only platform with substantial weight on the market that doesn’t boast support for Flash.

With the new Flash Player 10 just around the corner and HTC officially joining the Open Screen Project, Android, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Palm WebOS will be among the first platforms to support full web browsing and access to virtually all Flash-based Web content.

The era of true Android customization has begun with HTC’s Sense UI, a customized overlay for Android that adds HTC’s stunning graphical interface to the sturdy Android OS. The UI will run on the new Hero, a 3.2-inch touchscreen phone running at 528MHz with MicroSD slot.

More specs on the phone:

With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content, while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including AGPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.

The new Android UI will have something called “Perspectives,” a new method for connecting email, contacts, and social media automatically. This version will also be the first to support Flash natively.

Watch this post for live info as we get it.

Some of the most promising set of mobile apps being built today use a cell phone’s camera and GPS to overlay data onto the real world. In other words, instead of looking at a browser, you look through the camera lens at the real world around you and information is layered on top of the view projected on the small screen. (It’s not just a viewfinder, you know). Last year at TechCrunch 50, the Sekai Camera demo from Japan that does this blew away the audience. More recently, Layar showed us similar augmented reality apps for the Android phone. Now IBM has its own augmented reality mobile app for Wimbledon called Seer Android (see demo in the video above).

As the first Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1 was a much welcomed entry into the smartphone market. And it may have been considered the must-have smartphone were it not for a certain device from Apple. The reason is that while the Android platform itself has a lot of possibility given its open nature, the G1 hardware simply was not great when compared to something like the iPhone. But now T-Mobile is coming back with another attempt at an Android phone in the U.S., which it is calling the myTouch 3G — and it’s much better.

How do I know? Well because I’ve actually had a unit for a few weeks now. You see, the myTouch 3G, which will be available in early August for $199 with a 2-year agreement, is actually the same device as the Google Ion phone that was given to everyone who attended the Google I/O conference a few weeks ago. And technically, both are really the HTC Magic, which was released a few months ago in Europe, and more recently in Canada. But for the myTouch 3G, T-Mobile is offering some other bells and whistles to differentiate it.

Always nice for a reporter to bump into a developer who builds mobile applications for startups and gives you a live preview and details of yet-to-be-announced stuff. No worries, he has permission to talk about the apps (he thinks). The man I’m talking about is Julián Moreno from development house Droiders, and he and his team have been hacking away at some fine apps for the Android platform: Kyte, Rummble, TransDroid and an ebook reader for the Google Books database.

Imeem has a great Android app. In fact, it’s still one of the few very good apps available on that platform as it continues to find its legs. It’s so good that we gave it a Crunchie this year. But as good as it is, it took the application coming to the iPhone platform to push the company past a big milestone: 1 million mobile platform installs.

Imeem Mobile for the iPhone, which we were the first to report on back in May right before it launched, already accounts for 1/3 of Imeem’s mobile users, we’re told. It’s been consistently in the top 5 music apps and near the top 50 overall in the App Store since then. But does that mean that it’s better than the Android version? No, in fact, it’s worse for one reason: It can’t run in the background.

The T-Mobile G1’s physical keyboard sucks. The keys are oddly spaced, they’re too depressed and the device’s Leno chin makes for an overall awkward typing experience. The Google Ion (sometimes called the “G2″ or the HTC Magic) offers a much nicer experience with its virtual keyboard, and is overall a much nicer device. I’m not sure why anyone would buy a G1, but to those that did, Google threw them a rather nice bone today: Keyboard shortcuts in Gmail.

If you have an Android phone with a physical keyboard (so, as of right now, the G1), you can now use the same keyboard shortcuts you’re accustomed to in Gmail on your computer web browser. So, for example, if I’m reading a message in mobile Gmail that I want to archive, I can simply hit the “e” button on my G1 keyboard. The same will not work for devices with a virtual keyboard, presumably because it only pops up when you’re in “writing” mode, and when you’re reading email, you wouldn’t be in writing mode.

Can you feel the tingling in the air? If you haven’t found it already,you will. This is going to be the summer of love. I am talking, of course, about smartphone love. The serenades have already begun for the June 6 launch of the Palm Pre. Next week, Apple will reveal it’s next iPhone (you know MG is going to get one). Blackberry might come out with its second Storm by summer’s end. And the lovefest will continue throughout the year with launch after launch of new Android phones as well. It will be practically nonstop. I hope you can handle it.

I’m in New York City right now for Internet Week and considering I haven’t been here in eight years, I’m fairly lost most of the time. I’ve gotten by just looking out for big groups of people with iPhones to figure out where I should be going, but when I’m by my lonesome and just looking to get a quick bite to eat, I basically have no idea where to go. So it’s awesome that Google has just launched a new Android app that lists the places around me.

Places Directory is a straight-forward app created by some Googlers as their 20% time project. When you launch it, it looks up your location and gives you a directory of the types of establishments around. If I click on “Bars” for example, I’ll then get a list of the bars around me complete with a thumbnail image, the location’s distance from me and a star rating. Clicking on any of the listings will take you to a page with an overview of the place, including its address and phone number. You can also read reviews of the place by Google local users and see more pictures of the place.

We’re less than a week away from the launch of the supposed next “iPhone killer,” the Palm Pre. The iPhone has miraculously survived a few of these attempts on its life before — it somehow weathered the BlackBerry Storm, and before that, the G1 was going to be the device the did it in. The G1 was compelling because it was the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. But as a piece of hardware (made by HTC), it sucked. You know it, I know, even Google employees will admit it. And that’s why I was at first less than thrilled when I heard Google would be giving away Android phones to everyone at the Google I/O event a few days ago. But it turns out, they weren’t giving away G1s, but rather that device’s successor, which they call the “Google Ion,” though some know it better as the HTC Magic, or even as the “G2.” And it was a brilliant move by Google, because this device is leaps and bounds better than the G1.

Mostly setting aside the software itself — the Ion runs the new “Cupcake” variety of Android, aka Android 1.5 — the hardware that HTC has built this time around is much, much better. First of all, the thing just looks a lot nicer. It’s fairly sleek, almost iPhone-like, compared to the G1, which looked like a dull black plastic brick with a protruding chin at the bottom. The Ion is smaller, it’s thinner, the camera is nicer, the buttons are nicer, hell, even that stupid trackball that HTC insists on including is nicer. Most importantly though, it’s much more usable as a device. And we can thank one thing for that, as well as for much of its much improved design: The removal of the physical keyboard.

After learning that everyone who attended the Google I/O conference was getting a free Android phone, were you upset that you weren’t here? Well I have good news. But it will cost you.

The Google Ion (aka the HTC Magic or the “G2″) that was given to everyone who attended the Google I/O conference today is already available on eBay. Quite frankly, I’m shocked that it seemed to take an hour for this to happen.

Today during its keynote address during Google I/O, Google showed off its Latitude location-based service running on the iPhone. This is notable because so far, Latitude hasn’t been available on the huge popular smartphone. Instead, not surprisingly, Google opted to focus on getting it running on Android. But it’s coming, soon, with the launch of the iPhone 3.0 software this summer.

But also interesting is that the reason Google has been waiting for the 3.0 software is because it’s not actually creating a native iPhone app for Latitude — as all other location-based services on the iPhone are — instead it’s using the Safari web browser to run Latitude. Thanks to HTML 5, Safari will be able to access a user’s location information and Latitude will be able to access that as well (provided the user gives permission). This will put it on par with what Google is doing in its browser for Android.

Today at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Vic Gundotra, the VP Engineering for Google has a special surprise saved for the end of the show: A free HTC Magic (aka the G2) for everyone in the audience. Not only that but it comes with a SIM card with unlimited 3G access and talk time for 30 days. As Gundotra joked, he always wanted to have an “Oprah moment.”

I would have preferred a free car, but I suppose this will do. Though I do worry that Google seems to love to give these G1s away (see update). But this seems like a better deal.

Update: I previously stated it would be a G1, but it turns out, Google is giving away an HTC Magic, aka the G2 — forget everything nasty I said. Nothing but Google love for this move.

Just weeks ago, Google unveiled a polished up version of Product Search for Android handsets. Near the tail-end of the post, we postulated that Google would add barcode scanning support to Product Search soon. Such services have already proven quite popular on Android already, with the success of applications like ShopSavvy and CompareEverywhere.

Sure enough, Google is announcing this morning that Google Product Search for Android now has barcode scanning support. If you’re looking to price compare a product that’s right in front of you, why type out its name and dig through irrelevant results when you can just scan the barcode?

The Netherlands-based eBuddy, which markets a comprehensive application that lets users handle multiple instant messaging accounts from the web or their mobile phones, is today releasing an application for the Android platform a couple months after Meebo made its similar product available on there (November 2008).

The eBuddy application for Google’s open mobile OS is now available for free on the Android Market, and users can thus benefit from a single ID to chat with their friends on third-party communication platforms such as Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ and more.

When Medialets was founded in June of last year, CEO Eric Litman and his team decided to take a risk. They bet big that Apple’s iPhone platform would explode. It did — and it’s taken Medialets along with it. Today, the mobile analytics and advertising company announces its series A round of funding.

It was barely a month between the founding of the company and the launch of the App Store on July 11 of last year. But Medialets was there from day one. And thanks to that early start, the company’s offerings can now be found installed on nearly half of the iPhones and iPod touches out there in circulation. And their clients include many of the top downloaded apps. But the company clearly hopes the iPhone is just the beginning.

After a somewhat steady stream of T-Mobile USA customers reported that the Android “Cupcake” update had hit their G1s last week, all went silent. Not everyone had gotten their update, and it seemed as if the rollout had suddenly stopped.

Whether this first batch of updates was a mistake, we’re not sure - but at least now we know when it’s coming for everyone else.

The name “Android” is at the very core of Google’s mobile initiative. It’s even successfully gotten people to move away from calling the devices “Google Phones” or “GPhones,” something which seemed impossible prior to the unveiling. But Google may be in serious trouble of losing that name — or at least having to pay a hell of a lot of money to keep it.

Erich Specht, a man who runs a small Midwestern data company, applied for and was granted a trademark on the Android name in 2002, according to Forbes. Google? Well, it tried to trademark the name in 2007, shortly before its massive Android PR blitz — but it was rejected a few months later. Still, Google pushed forward with trying to gain legal rights over the name, but its appeals were again and again rejected, and its trademark application was apparently suspended last November.

So what does that mean? Well, Specht is seeking $94 million from Google (and all the other members of the Open Handset Alliance) for infringing on the Android name. He’ll be in court next week, and Google will have 60 days to respond to him. Given Google’s rejections by the Patent and Trademark Office, this things seems to reek of a high-priced settlement, in which Google gets to keep using the name while paying Specht something substantially less than the $94 million. But, it’s not quite that cut and dry.

First, it was reported that Apple was talking to Verizon about getting the iPhone on its network in 2010. Then it was reported that Apple was actually working on new mobile devices for Verizon. With so much Apple blood in the Verizon water, it was only a matter of time before the Microsoft shark surfaced.

A new report in The Wall Street Journal suggests that Microsoft is also talking with Verizon about getting a device on its service. To be clear, this apparently is not just a standard new Windows Mobile device, as there are already plenty of those on the Verizon network. What this apparently is, is some sort of new device, designed in part by Microsoft, but developed by a third party. This device is said to include access to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile — its app store.