This week we look at Landmarker and other innovative apps recently released by Google as part of its new Android Experiments project.

Android Experiments

The biggest difference between Apple and Google's philosophy of mobile computing is that while Apple prefers the user experience to be polished, tidy, and neatly controlled, Google's Android tends to put more emphasis on openness and experimentation.

So it was not out of character last week when Google announced "Android Experiments," an app project that the company's developer's blog dubbed "a celebration of creativity of code."

Android Experiments consists of open source apps that showcase developer innovations that push the boundaries of the Android platform and the devices that run it. Each app gets a slick Google-style page with screenshots and GIFs and a link to the Play store, as well as a link to the app's code in GitHub for anyone to peruse, learn from, and be inspired by.

There are 20 such apps on display at Android Experiments, but that's just the start, since the project itself is an open invitation for all developers to submit their own experimental apps.

The collection is all-Android, but pretty much any device that can run Android -- phones, tablets, smartwatches, "and beyond," as Google put it -- has experimental apps on display that the company says "creatively examines in small and big ways how we think of the devices we interact with every day."

Landmarker

One of the best examples of creatively rethinking Android devices is Landmarker, one of three initial releases in the Android Experiment batch. Coded by Anthony Tripaldi, the app is an augmented reality compass, of sorts, for Android smartphones.

(Photo : Android Experiments)

Landmarker presents a deceptively simple interface, considering what's going on underneath the surface.

To use it, just hold your smartphone horizontally (as if you're taking a picture) and the app will show you landmarks in the direction your facing, along with the distance the landmark is from you. You can click on the landmark to see it on Google Maps, or you can cycle through nearby landmarks with a quick pull-down swipe.

(Photo : Screenshot / Robert Schoon)

You may be holding the phone like you're taking a photo, but Landmarker works without activating the camera sensor at all.

Instead, it uses GPS location data, mixed with the phone's contextual sensors (like the accelerometer) to track your orientation to Google Places' digital markers, in real time. It's kind of amazing to realize such complicated data and connections that go into such a simple-looking app.

Similar blends of three-dimensional space, device sensors, and creative user interfaces are present in a few other Android Experiment apps like InkSpace and Space Sketchr, which are both unique takes on mixing motion tracking with a drawing app.

One particularly interesting thing about Android Experiments is that, in exploring the creative possibilities of Android software and hardware, these apps may also open up other creative spaces in further iterations of these apps by inspired developers.

Landmarker, for example, uses the Google Places API. But in its minimal display of in-world direction and distance to landmarks -- rather than, for example, a marker displayed on a top-down graphical map -- Landmarker or another Android Experiment app inspired by it could lend itself to experimental social games in the vein of geocaching and treasure hunting. Or likely many other possibilities not thought up yet.

Tap That App 

Or in this case, tap those apps! Check out the project on Android Experiments for a slew of interesting (and mostly simple, low-footprint and low-permission) Android apps, including Landmarker.

And if you feel inspired, submit your own!