News: Google Maps with 3D, Android Market changes, free Gmail calling through 2011

Recent news in the Android world:

• Google Maps 5.0 for Android is released with 3D maps and offline caching.
• Android Market update: client UI redesign, device targeting based on screen sizes and densities, increased the maximum size for .apk files to 50MB. Bad news: user friendly 24-hour refund window has been reduced to fart app’s developer friendly 15 minutes.
• Voice Search added personalized recognition for greater accuracy.
• Bookmarks synchronizer Xmarks released Android client (requires Xmarks Premium subscription)
• AnderWeb, developer of the popular open source ADW Launcher released a pro version: ADW Launcher EX ($3).
• An interesting and thoughtful Android Police interview with TweetDeck’s developer Max Howell on his experience with Android. His main points: fragmentation is not a problem, lack of restriction on number of beta testers is great (as compared to 100 testers limit on iOS). He also criticizes Android documentation, slow List View component, 16 MB heap memory limit. Thinks that Google should put more efforts into the SDK to make it easier for developers to make great looking apps.

Gmail news:

• Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011 (available only to U.S. based Gmail users).
• Gmail added a new feature to Google Contacts that allows to revert contact list and undo any mistakes made up to 30 days in the past.

Google Maps 5.0 for Android with 3D maps