Mercury Intermedia is proud to announce the launch of USA TODAY on the Android platform. This native application offers news, scores, photo galleries at a glance. In addition, users can get weather for their favorite cities or their current location as well as vote on the popular USA TODAY Snapshots, with instant poll results viewable by your state and city.

This application uses some of the best features of the Android OS, including a full-featured rich user interface, GPS, and others, while adhering to the standards of the Android device, making it a comfortable experience for the Android user.

Developing for Android was an interesting experience, as was the challenge of porting from iPhone to Android. We felt strongly that the app itself had to have the look and feel of an Android device, not just create iPhone-ish elements to show up on Android. Some things were easy decisions, such as moving from the bottom oriented TabBarController of the iPhone to the top oriented TabHost in Android. Others were more challenging, such as deciding how to use the physical elements of the G1 (menu button, trackball) vs solely relying on touch screen elements. But all in all, we’re proud of the product, and hope consumers find it easy to use.

We’ve immediately jumped into other projects, but if we can get our heads above water, we’ll post some more of our experiences/pain points/successes.

For more information, go to the Android marketplace on your handset, or go to http://www.usatoday.com/android/