Droidcon London is back, the largest Android conference in Europe!

Droidcon returns to London on October 25th & 26th for its fourth consecutive year! 1000+ talented developers and designers! 

And this year's Droidcon is a celebration of the 5 years of Android and a glimpse in the future of the platform! No worry we won't have any futurists - that's not what Droidcon is about!

 3 great keynote speakers will talk about where they're bringing Android in the next 5 years:

• Julie Uhrman CEO of OUYA. The first Android based gaming console was launched on Kickstarter earning funding ($8.5 million dollars!) and fans. The Kickstarter darling will ship to gamers in March 2013.
• Paresh Patel Founder of Vendscreen, whose Android vending machine is changing the way people buy... just about anything!
• Frederic Albinet Marketing Group Manager at Parrot, having flown the world with their phone controlled AR.Drone quadricopter, Parrot have launched their Asteroid series of Android based in-car entertainment devices

Champage corks were popping in Mountain View on Oct 1st as Google passed Microsoft to become the worlds second most valuable company - largely due to Android. Googles' stock rose 1 per cent finishing in New York with a share worth of $761.78 (£471.34) translating into a total market capitalisation value of nearly $250 billion (around £155bn). On the same day, Microsoft fell 1 per cent, closing out business at $29.49 (£18.25) with a lesser valuation of $247.2 billion (£152.9bn). It hasn't been reported what happened to the stock of any office furniture repair businesses in Redmond.

Pawn to Kings Bishop four. At least, that's how industry observers see the relentless march of the mighty Amazon and its various hardware/software/online activities. This time we see the Cloud Player coming to the UK, the software which has been available to the US on Android, iOS, macs and PCs for some time now. With the free versions, imaginatively called Cloud Player Free, you can store 250 music tracks for, err, free. From then on its a not-too-bad £21.99 per year.

Check out the full details at www.amazon.co.uk/cloudplayer.

Aston Martin - yes, that Aston Martin of James Bond fame - have announced the Aspire, a stylish gold/silver/black/white/rose gold Android 2.3 handset any secret agent would be proud of. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the $1,290 price tag for the basic models (rising to $1,590 when 24K gold is used in the cases) makes it live up to that Aspire name admirably.

There's a 3.2 inch HVGA display, WiFi, 3G, front and rear cameras and sports a MicroSD card slot for expansion.

Initially launched in Hong Kong, this is sure to have fans both shaken and stirred ;-)

Toys R Us have announced their Tabeo 7-inch tablet, which promises child-safe features for $150. Surrounded by a huge drop-safe bumper, there's a front facing camera, WiFi and Toys R Us even run their own app store, the "Tabeo Store", to complement the 50 proloaded games and apps it comes preloaded with.

Powered by a 1Ghz CPU, theres a decent amount of storage provided - 4Gb - but it also comes with a MicroSD card slot, which can handle up to 32G cards. It's no slouch in the Android department either, sporting ICS (Android 4.0) from the off. It's available for pre-order now but wo't ship until October 21.