The Android operating system is available in hundreds of custom configurations running on hundreds of different devices. To ensure that your Android app runs properly on every one of these platforms, you would have to acquire and update a lot of hardware. That's time-consuming And expensive. And judging by the frequency of patches that are rushed out after Android apps are released, no one does it. (See this interesting article on fragmentation in the Android application ecosystem.)

All of that may be about to change. An Australian firm called Apkudo has set up an app-testing lab for Android apps. They'll test your software on hundreds of hardware platforms and report on unexpected results.

Maybe the best thing about Apkudo's innovative service is the price. It's free.

Here's how it works. You upload your app to Apkudo's lab. The software is then loaded into 289 (at this writing) Android devices and comprehensively run through its paces. Cameras focus on the test hardware's screens, intelligently seeking error messages and inconsistent behavior. You get a report that shows your application's failure rate, a log of bugs found, and a list of which devices caused problems. You can go over the video logs, slowing them down to see where problems occurred.

With a deal this good, there's got to be a catch, right?

Well, sort of. Apkudo intends to offer more intensive, in-depth testing services in the future. These tests presumably won't be be free.

Maybe you'll sign up for Apkudo's premium services and maybe you won't. In the meantime, there seems little reason not to use the free service. It could save you lots of time and money.

Apkudo is slated to be announced at BZ Media's AnDevCon Android Developer Conference this month in San Francisco.

Web recommendation: In a recent post, I asserted that the first shots in a worldwide cyberwar have in fact been fired. I was talking about Stuxnet and Duqu, two trojans that have the security world spinning. Now we have learned that a French nuclear-power company, with installations in Japan and elsewhere, has been successfully infiltrated. We don't know everything about the break-in yet, but preliminary reports – like this one – are disturbing. J.D. say check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He lacks the patience to work on jigsaw puzzles.