This week's developerWorks newsletter intro focuses on our new Android feature, which shows you how to build an app that allows mobile devices to access stock information.   Not subscribed? Sign up for your customized newsletter today!

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Welcome, developers!
As I write this, world stock markets are taking another roller-coaster ride. No doubt, millions of investors are nervously tapping away at their smart phones as they try to keep tabs on their portfolios. How appropriate, then, that our new feature, "Using Internet data in Android applications," shows you how to develop a simple Android app that enables mobile device users to access the latest pricing information on specific stocks. As you implement it, you'll learn how to make Android work with three different data formats -- XML, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and Google's protocol buffers -- along with the performance and coding trade-offs associated with each format. It won't make life any less nerve-racking for market watchers, but mobile development can be a useful addition to your skill set.

And in fairness to roller coaster enthusiasts, I admit that my metaphor is flawed -- after all, the most enjoyable part of a volatile stock market isn't the free-fall.

Until next week,
John Swanson and the developerWorks editorial team


This week's top features on developerWorks:

• AIX A-Z: Managing printing on AIX (AIX and UNIX)
• Deriving new business insights with Big Data (Open source)
• Create a virtual data center with POWER7 and Tivoli Provisioning Manager (Tivoli)
• Use Lotus Forms on the cloud to create a car repair application (Web development)
• Building a highly available WebSphere Business Events event infrastructure (WebSphere)
• Creating mobile Web applications with HTML 5: Develop new visual UI features (XML)

Tags:  android newsletter introduction json intro developerworks top feature xml