I had the privilege of speaking on Android Services Black Magic at AnDevCon 3, in Burlingame, CA to an amazing group of Android developers. This is similar to the talk I gave at Android Builders Summit, but slightly expanded, so I wanted to use this opportunity to post the updated slides and the screencast.
Update: In response to the rather vocal outcries of many of its subscribers on the web, Verizon has clarified what will happen to 3G/4G data plans explicitly. The takeaway is this: anyone purchasing a smartphone from this summer forward on subsidy pricing will be pushed into tiered/shared data. If you choose not to buy a smartphone on subsidy, you can keep your unlimited plan if you choose to.
This means if you renew your 2-year agreement, from this summer forward, on any line by buying a "discounted" phone, you lose unlimited.
Here are the exact statements:
- Customers will not be automatically moved to new shared data plans.
Official Android Police t-shirts are now on sale, with over 25 designs to call yours.
[Update: Verizon Clarifies] Verizon Will End Unlimited Data Grandfathering If You Buy A 4G Phone From This Summer Onward was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
 |  |
The kerfuffle over an Apple patent claim that has left palettes of HTC EVO 4G LTE and HTC ONE X phones in limbo has caused retailers to shuffle the deck on release dates. The EVO 4G LTE was originally scheduled to be released on May 18th. Best Buy, who had been taking pre-orders, have been contacting customers with a revised release date of May 23rd.
HTC provided The Verge with a statement on the current state of the situation.
HTC is working closely with U.S. Customs to secure approval for shipments of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE. We have not made any announcements about a new launch date and will provide an update on availability as soon as we can do so confidently.
Source: The Verge
Best Buy Changes HTC EVO 4G LTE Release Date To May 23rd is an article from everything Android, sponsored by the Everything Android Store.
In most cases, getting an upgrade to a new version of Android is exciting. It usually ushers in numerous bug fixes, performance enhancements, new UI elements, and a whole new experience with the device than what people are used to. That said, sometimes it can be a real pain when a new version of Android comes out because a number of bad things can happen. For starters, you may loose root, along with the exploit used to acquire root. Secondly, the new version of Android may be a little buggier than you would like. This is why there are downgrade guides—so users can get back to an older version for whatever reason.
This is the case for the International Galaxy Note, as users who installed the LPY ICS update or received their phone with the update preinstalled cannot simply flash back to Gingerbread if they so choose. This would be a serious problem if there were nothing they could do, but luckily there is. XDA Senior Member thehackersz has released a tutorial to downgrade users from LPY Ice Cream Sandwich back down to Gingerbread safely. The guide is easy to follow, as it simply involves flashing a number of things over ODIN and a custom recovery. Do pay attention to the order though, as flashing in the wrong order can be detrimental to the health of your Note.
There is, however, one thing to take into consideration. Some users have reported that using PC ODIN to flash has bricked their phones and that XDA Elite Recognized Developer Chainfire‘s Mobile ODIN is the way to go. Of course, there are also users who’ve bricked their phones using Mobile ODIN, and recommend the PC version. So be warned that there could be serious risk when attempting this method as, you may brick your device if you’re not careful.
For additional information, make sure to visit the original thread.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
This edition focuses only on new tablet apps or ones that added tablet support. Regular apps and games are coming soon.
Unfortunately, I could only find 4 tablet apps in almost a month, which makes me really sad. Sure, a lot of apps are automatically compatible with tablets, but we always appreciate the extra effort that goes into making a dedicated tablet UI.
Official Android Police t-shirts are now on sale, with over 25 designs to call yours.
4 Best Android 3.0+ Apps For Tablets From The Last Month (4/19/12 - 5/17/12) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
| |
It looks like the pre-orders for Samsung's newest high-end Android phone, the Galaxy S III, has jumped the borders of the UK and are now available for U.S. residents to pre-order. Both the white and blue models are up on Amazon for pre-order at a cost of $799 and up.
by {ga=andrew-huff-aka-extremet} (702records@gmail.com) at May 17, 2012 08:24 PM
Andromo App Maker for Android version 1.10.1 has been released!
Here is a list of changes in this version:
Andromo App Maker for Android v1.10.1 is now live at www.andromo.com.
Start making Android apps online today – for free. There’s no coding required, so anyone can do it!
by Sameer Singh (noreply@blogger.com) at May 17, 2012 07:18 PM
Android UI Engineer Kirill Grouchnikov has posted his slides from his AnDevCon III talk in responsive mobile design (for Android of course!) and putting that into practice on the Google Play Store app (even showing some of the layouts in use in the real app).
http://www.slideshare.net/kirillcool/responsive-mobile-design-in-practice
If you’re an app developer, then this is really useful to know, understand and use in your Android apps!
Engadget just posted its tablet buyer’s guide for spring and the Galaxy Tab line was listed three times. Only two Galaxy Tabs are on the list though – Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and the Galaxy Tab 7.7. The Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is listed on the the budget category and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 is listed under both the 7 inch category and the 3G/4G category.
You can buy the Wi-Fi Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 on Amazon for $249, the unlocked GSM Galaxy Tab 7.7 on Amazon for $595, and the Verizon Galaxy Tab 7.7 on Amazon for $599.99.
Related posts:
The World of Midgard third beta, which is a public beta, has been updated once again and a new download is now available. Officially named Faction Wars, the third beta has been updated on a fairly regular basis, almost every other week to be exact, since it went public.
by {ga=andrew-huff-aka-extremet} (702records@gmail.com) at May 17, 2012 07:08 PM
Flipboard is a mostly curated news reading application which is extremely popular among iOS users, and the Samsung Galaxy S 3 has an exclusive Android version, but is available for everyone to use. We take this experience for a test drive.
Setup of the app is really smooth and simplistic getting you to add many of their curated sources such as “Technology” and “Style” which seem to focus mainly upon Tweets by these publications. One thing you will notice about this application is, while it is not following hardly any of the Android design guidelines, it actually feels quite nice with the natural flipping of “pages” with few visual bugs which will get beaten out of the app as development continues.
The main area of the app includes 2 major sections, the cover which (shown bellow) has distinct areas for images and content from sources Flipboard have picked out as being interesting to you. The lower section involves tiles of the sources you have picked, allowing for their curated sources, your Facebook and Twitter and any extra sources (which are more difficult to add).
When you browse through the news, the layouts change dramatically depending on the content, and while some of them feel like they could do with more text or graphics (that could be down to screen sizes) it mostly gets it right and it feels nice with the difference between them, making it more like a real-life magazine.
However, depending on the website viewing articles can either involve a built-in viewer which kind-of-works but a lot of typical website formatting does not display properly or you are simply thrown onto a Webkit view with a fancy loader which doesn’t even show a mobile-optimized page (I would have preferred something like Readability)
Digging deeper, you can interact with people on Twitter with a comment-style interface which seems to work but feels a little odd and it is based on Gingerbread styling which is a little bit of a letdown as the rest of the application feels extremely modern and thought out, I would have liked the Flipboard team to have included many of the Android design guidelines which would have made a major difference.
Finally, being extremely picky the icon feels like it was simply taken straight out of the iOS version, and feels completely out of place with all of the other Android App icons and could do with changing.
Conclusion
3 stars, as it is mainly curated content which is where they seem to want to push you into (probably as a way for them to make money) and they should have included more ICS styling instead of falling back onto Gingerbread areas.
Our Rating 3/5:
For now, it’s downloadable via XDA-Developers as it’s SGS3-exclusive right now 
If you’ve ever looked into compiling your own version of CyanogenMod or AOSP from source then I’m sure you will have noticed that there are a wide selection of extremely detailed and helpful guides out there. However if you intend on building on a Mac, you may have noticed that most of those guides aren’t quite applicable.
While there a few tutorials on how to build CyanogenMod 7 on Cupertino’s finest, it seems that CM9 has yet to receive the same treatment. This is where XDA Senior Member ArmanUV comes in. He has put together a comprehensive guide on how to do just that.
The guide is based around building CM9 for the GSM Galaxy Nexus on OS X Lion, but could also be adapted to building for other devices with a little cross referencing from one of the other many tutorials available. It should enable you to start building from source in no time at all. Pretty much everything is covered from setting up the required tools such as Java and the Android SDK right through to downloading the source, device specific files, and obviously the compiling process itself.
If you are a Mac user and wish to learn a little more about how to build your own ROMs, you should definitely take the time to check out the guide thread.
If you’ve been leading a paper-cluttered life, it’s time to make good use of your smartphone by downloading a note-taking app. With over 10 million downloads and counting, Evernote is one of the must-have Android apps to stay organize.
The latest Evernote app, now on version 4.0, comes with a brand-spanking new look and features. The redesigned home screen shows a scrollable display of all your notes based on dates — along with a preview of the content, which would make it easier for you to look for a note and open it. The notebook list has also been updated, as it now combines user notebooks with shared notebooks. The new contextual “Action Bars”, meanwhile, give you easy access to more functionality.
Swipeable navigation is another new addition to Evernote. You can now swipe right from your note and note list to show the home screen, saving you the hassle of clicking back and forth. The swipeable navigation also works when you want to move from Notebook to Tag to Place views.
The changes are just the cherry on top for what’s already a solid note-taking app. You can easily make a regular note, an indented or numbered list, to-dos, a task list, and many more. You can even insert photo and audio. Evernote also lets you sync your notes across desktop computers, Android and iOS devices, and other platforms – which is one of the strongest points of the app.
Check out Evernote 4.0 for Android on Google Play now if you haven’t already done so, and say goodbye to those piles of papers. If this isn’t your cup of tea, you definitely want to read our list of the best note-taking apps on Android.
Here’s one clever little application that will fire up your social-media sharing obsession. Seedair +3 is relatively a new location-based media service specifically made for mobile tech junkies. Seedair +3 is basically a sharing application that lets you geo-tag photos, share ideas, thoughts, and emotions to other app users near your vicinity.
But, before you head out and share your emotions on the air, you need to have a Seedair +3 account to get you started. Creating a new account is absolutely free of charge and can be created when you launch the app.
After logging in your credentials, you’ll be greeted with the app’s homescreen. Seedair +3 will automatically track your current location via GPS and prompt you to select your visibility status for anyone to see.
On the app’s main menu, you are presented with five different options to begin your day with Seedair +3. If you want to share important stuff, all you need to do is tap the Create Airsign option. Here, you can compose messages and attach media related to your message. Basically, Airsigns are just the same as posting Facebook updates but with an innovative twist.
To share, just hit Publish to begin sharing your Airsign with other Seedair +3 users near your location. A bubble message icon will show up on Google Maps informing other Seedair +3 users of the important updates or happenings in that area. You can also browse any part of the map to explore areas where other users have left Airsigns.
On the other hand, tapping the Mainpinwall on the app’s homescreen will list all the activities on the Seedair +3 network in chronological fashion. Here, you can check all the likes and comments that you have received from all of your posted Airsigns. You can also jump to other Seedair +3 user profiles by simply tapping the button found on the top-right of the screen.
Users can filter messages, photos, and other starred content by selecting the Tubeview icon on the app’s main interface. Seedair +3 keeps a list of personal messages and notifications via the Mailbox icon found on the app’s main homescreen.
Similar to Facebook, Seedair+3 lets you befriend other Seedair+3 users and explore the content that they have geo-tagged and shared over the air. You can also send friend requests to other users and expand your circle of friends to stay connected.
Overall, Seedair +3 is still in its early stages, slowly growing and reaching out to social-media people from around the world. The only downside of the app is the few users it has in its database, making it hard to find people who are also using this service.
Seedair +3 is an innovative geo-tagging social media app that will surely feed you with detailed information and updates from your close friends, not to mention knowing the exact location where an event is happening. Seedair +3 is absolutely free to download from the Google Play Store.
ssLauncher – Fresh & Innovative twist on Home Screen Replacement Android Apps is a post from: AndroidTapp.com
MiniTown – build your city on a floating island in this cute Tycoon game is a post from: AndroidTapp.com
Tapas Interactive releases Aerial Wild Adventure for Android
Aerial Wild Adventure is a new Android game from Tapas Interactive that takes you into the skies as Abu the bird. Abu got lost in a dangerous storm, and your job is to help him find his missing chicks and help them all get back home. Aerial Wild Adventure is a flying game that has you soars and dive to pick up baby birds, fruit and power-ups. As you’d expect there are plenty of dangers in your way including snakes, evil birds, bees, and the ground of course. Controlling Abu is done through touch; you can touch/hold anywhere on the screen to gain altitude, but you’ll lose stamina in the process. When you let off the screen you’ll slowly start to drop and your stamina will recharge; there’s also a dive button that lets you swoop down quickly to pick up hard to reach chicks and power-ups. There looks like there will be 4 different areas in the game, the first level area is unlocked, but the rest are marked as coming soon. There are several different power-ups to collect in the game, and there are achievements and trophies to collect for doing well in the game. Verdict Aerial Wild Adventure is a great looking flying game and it’s pretty fun as well. That being said, the game does seem a bit short at the moment as I counted around 10 levels, and they are pretty easy to get through. More are listed as coming soon, and either way it’s a free game so it’s definitely worth a look. You can pick up Tapas Interactive’s Aerial Wild Adventure on Google Play. Aerial Wild Adventure Tapas Interactive
by Sameer Singh (noreply@blogger.com) at May 17, 2012 11:27 AM
Appbrain analyzed 140,000 Android apps and came up with a list of the top 10 ad networks.
While they don't openly state the source of this data, I am willing to bet that it comes from analytics reported by their Ad Detector app which hit the Play Store a few months back. The app itself, much like Lookout Ad Network Detector, is very handy - it lets users figure out what ad networks, social SDKs, and even developer tools are used by apps installed on their devices.
Rather than one Pure Google experience later this year, we could be in for multiple smartphones running stock Jelly Bean.
A number of years back, I read yet another complaint about someone having trouble finding a computer with Linux preinstalled.
So I did something about it: I created LinuxSi.com, where it is possible to register computer stores in Italy (this was an Italian Linux mailing list) that are helpful towards people wishing to buy a Linux machine.
Fast forward past getting married, having kids and buying a house, and LinuxSi.com is not something I have much time to run any more. I still think it's a useful service, even if the site itself is a bit creaky.
In any event, I've put it up for auction with Flippa.com, and there's one week left on the auction. Right now, it's going for just $10, which even with the low amounts of adsense income it brings in, you'd make back pretty quickly.
I hope that it goes to someone who cares about promoting Linux in Italy - if nothing else, the domain name is a good one that could be employed for many things.
Just when I thought things were beginning to calm down a bit in terms of the ongoing patent war between Apple and Android, something like this happens, which reminds me that the ongoing battle is still in full swing. One of the most desired phones in the US, the quad core packing HTC One X, along with the HTC Evo 4G, is now being held at US Customs awaiting inspection. Apparently, the phones will not be released until they are reviewed to make sure they they aren't infringing on any of Apple's pattents.
(This is a preview - click here to read the entire entry.)
GalaxyTabs.com has come a long way from when it launched back in August 2010. The traffic rapidly increased until August 2011 when it started to settle. Last month, April, saw 38,711 unique visitors visiting the site 51,896 times for a total of 125,959 pageviews. The most popular month GalaxyTabs.com has ever seen was January 2012. January brought in 60,334 unique visitors for 79,095 visits and 178,978 pageviews.
This website is not just popular in the United States, where I am located, but in many countries. Only 20.86% of traffic is from the United States. The next highest is the United Kingdom at 4.46%. The USA definitely brings a lot more traffic than any other single country, but only accounts for 1/5 of the total.
Search queries on search engines like Google were responsible for 69.83% of the traffic in April. Direct traffic, which accounts for traffic brought from typing the URL in the address bar and opening bookmarks, drove 23.74% of the traffic. 5.38% came from other websites (including Facebook and Twitter) linking to GalaxyTabs.com and the remaining 1.06% came from RSS feeds.
In April, 36.22% of the traffic came from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The top 5 mobile devices were the Galaxy Tab 10.1, iPad, original Galaxy Tab, iPhone, and Galaxy Tab 8.9.
This website is almost entirely a one man operation and is my part time job while I attend college full time. I want to be able to do this full time though. That is why I am trying to expand my portfolio of websites. The current website that I am trying to gain popularity with is TabletDigger.com. It is meant to be just like GalaxyTabs.com, but for all tablets.
I sincerely thank all of you for reading my site. It is because of you that I am able to make money doing something that I enjoy. Please let me know in the comments what I can do to make this site or TabletDigger.com more useful to you.
Related posts:
Google Glasses haven't landed at your nearest eyeglasses shop yet but they have landed at the US Patent and Trade Office. Google has patented the "ornamental design" of their augumented reality specs. But as to when the internal hardware will get the seal of approval is anyone's guess.
(This is a preview - click here to read the entire entry.)
The NBA Jam Android App by EA Sports is an old school arcade basketball game featuring 30 NBA teams in this classic 2-on-2 arcade basketball game. This old school console game has been ported over to Android and EA did an excellent job with it.
The graphics are well done without losing the original game feel. The controls are on the touch screen and feature all the same buttons that you had for the console editions. The game features 3 modes of gameplay which include:
• Play Now – Select a team and jump right into the ballgame.
• Classic Campaign – Defeat all other teams to win the championship, and unlock legends, hidden players, and outrageous cheats.
• Local Multiplayer – Go big head 2 big head against a friend via local WiFi or Bluetooth.
Overall, this is a great port of an classic old school console game that is now available on the Android platform. The Local Multiplayer feature is a nice addition and ensures that no gameplay mode from the console version is left out. At the time of this review the NBA Jam Android App is $4.99.
by Randall Hanley (noreply@blogger.com) at May 16, 2012 06:36 PM
Sports teams and community clubs are now able to create their own custom app to share news, images, and events – all without programming. Using Andromo App Maker for Android, a free do-it-yourself service for creating professional quality Android apps, teams and clubs can build their own app as quickly as they can point and click.
(WINNIPEG, MB) - Sports teams and community clubs can now design their own app in-house with new Andromo App Maker for Android. Andromo is an online service for creating professional quality Android apps without having to know how to program. Groups of all sizes are already making apps with Andromo to share news, photos, team schedules, fundraisers, events, and more.
Nowadays, people are getting their news and information through their smartphones, and teams and clubs are no exception. With over 350 million Android devices worldwide, Android apps are a must-have item for any organization that wants to keep connected, and keep up with the times. Using Andromo’s new online app making service, any team can have a custom app of their own with little effort required.
Andromo’s visual, no-coding approach is ideal for any group that wants to make its own Android app. Using Andromo, the designer simply selects the desired app features from a list of popular activities. For instance, sports teams can include their website and Twitter feeds where they post current news and schedules. Community clubs can make apps that display photos galleries and YouTube videos from club events, and connect their members directly to their Facebook page. Other app features include interactive maps, music, ‘about us’, and much more.
“With websites, Facebook and Twitter, the days of using the club bulletin board are obviously long behind us,” says Andromo founder Colin Adams. “Today’s communication tool of choice is the custom app, and Andromo makes this available to groups of any size. There’s no programming and no need to spend a fortune, so any team or club can benefit.”
Over 69,147 people have already signed up with Andromo to quickly and easily design Android apps. To sign up to start making Android apps using Andromo, sports teams and community clubs can visit http://www.andromo.com and click on the ‘Start Making Android Apps‘ button. Signup is free.
About Andromo App Maker for Android
Andromo is a trademark of Indigo Rose Software Corporation. Privately held, Indigo Rose Software has been creating award-winning software development tools since 1991. Our programming tools – AutoPlay Media Studio, Autorun MAX!, MSI Factory, Setup Factory, TrueUpdate, and Visual Patch – have been used to deliver software to hundreds of millions of systems worldwide.
Get Retro with Priority Interrupt’s Delver for Android
What happens when you cross Minecraft with an old-school dungeon crawler? You get Delver from Priority Interrupt. Delver is a killer retro dungeon crawler that will wow you with its retro 3D backdrops and surprise you with its depth as it randomly generates levels so you’ll never play the same way twice. If you’re not familiar with Dungeon Crawlers, they’re basically old-school RPG style games where you kill monsters, collect loot, and level up. Devler allows you to do all that, but the whole layout looks like you just stepped out of a Minecraft world. Our hero is blocky, the bad guys are blocky, and even the blood is full of pixely goodness. Your goal in Delver is to make it through the dungeons while you try to find the Yithidian Orb and bring it back to the surface… this will not be an easy task. You’ll get a little help from the loot you pick up which includes new weapons, armor, and the ever important health potions of course. Controlling your hero is done by simply using the left side of the screen to move, and the right side to attack; there is no on-screen joystick, but it’s still very easy to move about the dungeons. Verdict Delver is a simply game to play, and it’s a lot of fun as well. If you enjoy rouge-like dungeon crawlers it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll want to pick this one, but you may have a hard time putting it down. You also have to take into account that this is an early version of the game, and I for one am pretty excited to see where Priority Interrupt takes the game next. There isn’t a free version to try, and the $3.99 price tag may seem a little steep to some but it’s well worth it if ya’ dig these kinds of old-school games. You can check out Priority Interrupt’s Delver on Google Play. Delver
The Avengers Live Wallpaper Android App by Cellfish Studios features the superhero team’s logo hovering over a destroyed New York City street with Hulk and Thor in the foreground.
Download The Avengers Live Wallpaper Android App
The pace of life always seems to quicken, rather than stay at a constant speed. And if you’re feeling that your 3G phone is having a hard time keeping up with your fast-paced on-the-go mobile lifestyle — whether it be streaming HD video, uploading photos, or collaborating on graphics-heavy presentations with coworkers — maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade to a 4G smartphone.
With a phone running on a 4G network, you’ll experience speeds up to 10 times as fast as 3G networks. For example, the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network features download data speeds of between 5-12 megabits per second (Mbps), which compares to peak 3G download rates of around 2 Mbps. Uploading files is also faster over 4G, with speeds between 2-5 Mbps on the uplink (compared to an average 730 Kbps speed for 3G networks).
If all these numbers are making your head spin, here’s the basic takeaway: 4G is lightning fast. But more than just increased speed, a smartphone running on a 4G network gives you more freedom. With faster data speeds, you’ll spend less time staring at your screen and waiting for something to download and more time to enjoy the world around you.
If you’re ready to upgrade to a 4G phone, you’ll first need to find out if you’re eligible to upgrade to a new phone. AmazonWireless makes it easy to check your status with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless via this online tool — no need to call your carrier and wade through an endless phone tree to find out. And you’ll find a list of upgrade phones (many of them 4G-enabled) that will cost you just a penny, including the Samsung Stratosphere.
 |
Samsung Stratosphere 4G
|
Check your upgrade eligibility today and start shopping for your new 4G smartphone.
HBO GO, the video streaming service which offers episodes of HBO series and their current run movies, has been strangely unavailable on the latest version of Google’s mobile OS. While Netflix made sure their application worked on Android 4.0+ in a timely manner, the HBO GO application has kept ICS users waiting for the last 7 months.
While HBO subscribers with ICS devices will no doubt be happy about this bit of news, it does highlight a serious problem within the Android ecosystem. Problems linked to Android’s fragmentation are often blown out of proportion, but when it directly effects users of Google’s flagship devices like the Galaxy Nexus, it’s easy to see how the vast array of different Android versions and devices can make using the platform more confusing for consumers. Imagine a user who upgraded his phone to a Galaxy Nexus, only to find he was unable to use the HBO GO app he was just previously enjoying on his two year old device.
As if to further confound users, this update manages to skip over ICS powered tablets entirely. So users of ICS powered phones will be able to stream the latest episode of Game of Thrones, but tablet owners (arguably where people are more likely to watch a full episode or movie) are left out in the cold. For them, winter is still coming.
If you subscribe to HBO through your cable provider (unfortunately, there is no way to access HBO GO without an active cable subscription), you can download the app from the Play Store and get access to not only the movies and documentaries in HBO’s current rotation, but every episode of their most popular series.
"The Sopranos" via HBO Go
While this represents a considerable amount of content, there are some logistical issues with the service. Older series which proved very popular like The Larry Sanders Show and Six Feet Under don’t appear, and the rotation of HBO’s movies is so rapid that users have very little time to watch them before they have been replaced with a new group.
Still, there is no additional cost to use HBO GO for existing HBO subscribers, so it’s worth taking a look now that it’s device support has been expanded to cover the latest and greatest Android handsets.
"Star Trek: First Contact" via HBO GO
ownCloud, the open source file storage and syncing service, has recently released the first version of their Android application. While it isn’t in the Google Play Store yet, users who want to get an early look at the new application can install a test build from the ownCloud blog.
Storage in the “cloud” is all the rage right now, with services like DropBox and Google’s own GDrive taking the center stage. The concept of storing your files on a central server is of course nothing new, certainly, we’ve all been doing it in some form or another since the first days of the Internet. But what DropBox and others brought to the table was an easy to use way to do it from all of our devices.
ownCloud aims to offer a similar experience to the industry leaders, with some very big differences: it’s free open source software, and you can run it on your own hardware. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want their files stored by a corporation who makes their money by selling their users advertisements, this may be the service you’re looking for. The ability to put the ownCloud software on your personal server is a very interesting proposition for users who are looking for secure file storage for themselves, friends, and family.
ownCloud is licensed under the Affero General Public License (AGPL) a service-provider oriented version of the standard GNU General Public License (GPL), which was created specifically to address loopholes in the GPL in cases where users interfaced with free software remotely rather than on the local machine. Using AGPL for ownCloud shows a strong commitment to the values of free software, something very refreshing considering the stance of it’s competitors in terms of privacy and transparency.
The recently released Android application allows ownCloud users to upload, download, sync, and manage their files from their Android 2.3.6+ device. ownCloud estimates it will be available in the Google Play Store, as well as for iOS, within 4 to 6 weeks; but in the meantime has offered up a test build to get early input from its users.
The Android application continues the ownCloud’s commitment to free software, being itself licensed under the GPL. The full source code can be downloaded from Gitorious.
ownCloud for Android
According to HTC, the new HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE are being delayed at customs and US availability will be delayed. HTC was found guilt of patent infringement last year. As a result, the US International Trade Commission ruled that future phones found to be in violation would be blocked. HTC believes they have a workaround as to not violate the patent. This software workaround has been implemented into both the One X and EVO 4G LTE.
A quick check of AT&T and Sprint will reveal that both devices are out of stock.
HTC’s official statement:
“The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order. We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval. The HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE have been received enthusiastically by customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.”
This is getting ugly. Hopefully this gets resolved sooner then later.
Source: Phonescoop
HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE Held At Customs Over Apple Patent Violation is an article from everything Android, sponsored by the Everything Android Store.
We are happy to announce another preview release of RAP mobile. Version 0.5.8 adds support for even more widgets on the Android side while improving stability and performance on iOS and Android.
The new release brings improvements to the mobile client side but RAP itself has undergone some minor changes as well and we highly recommend that you update your target definition. The changes will also impact your server-side code slightly as the wording of some RAP classes has been refined.
Most notably the ApplicationConfigurator is now called ApplicationConfiguration and the ApplicationConfiguration has been renamed Application. Simply replace the names in your code and organize the imports. You will also need to update your dynamic service declaration which now provides an org.eclipse.rwt.application.ApplicationConfiguration implementation. For more details check the great post from Ralf.
And now for the new and noteworthy features of RAP mobile. If not noted otherwise all features described here are available on Android and iOS.
The Android client now supports the SWT Group widget. The appearance of the groups is derived from the Android holo theme with its simplistic title and horizontal line. In addition to group.setText() you can also use group.setForeground() to colorize the title and horizontal line.
The right-click is a common ui metaphor on the desktop but has no clear parallel in the mobile space. In an SWT application the right-click is usually used to open a contextual menu. The RAP mobile framework therefore uses the method Control.addMenuDetectListener() to register a listener that is activated when the user long presses on an item.
RAP mobile supports a special mechanism to help you find the available entry points configured for an Application. You can append the special identifier “/index.json” to your url, which delivers a JSON document, listing all the available entry points. The RAP mobile client uses this list to let you choose the app to start. As part of that feature we also simplified the Android start activity as you can see in the screenshots to the right. On iOS the discovery menu is activated by doubletapping on the status bar at the top.
Up until this RAP mobile for Android release an image has been loaded from the server every time it was requested. We have now integrated client-side image caching on Android as well which greatly reduces the bandwidth and power requirements when an image is requested multiple times. Try out the “/virtual-tree” demo which displays the same icon dozens of times.
Since the state of a RAP mobile application is bound to a session on the remote server, there is always the possibility of a session timeout. We’ve recently improved this (expected) behavior so that you can now restart your session from the message dialog.
HTC have announced the new HTC Desire C with Beats audio and its perfect for the pocket- both size and price-wise.
HTC have had a great history of releasing popular budget handsets. The wildfire and wildfire S have all been massive sellers in the android market. The latest generation follows hot on the heels of the current Android leading HTC One series.
Here are the high level specs that will be of interest:
T-Mobile UK today announces pricing for the new HTC Desire C. The handset will be free on Pay Monthly plans from £15.50 per month (24 months), or for £169.99 on Pay As You Go. It will be available in-store, online and via telesales in early June.
Available in white and black, and coming with HTC Sense 4.0 integrated with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the HTC Desire C is great as a first smartphone or for those upgrading from an existing one. Packing a powerful battery and offering access to thousands of apps, games, music and movies – available through Google Play – you will always be connected and entertained whether at work, home or on the move.
“Listening to music is one of the most popular things people use their phones for, so it’s more important than ever that we deliver the power and emotion artists capture in the studio,” said Jason Mackenzie, President, Global Sales and Marketing for HTC Corporation. “The HTC Desire C offers customers excellent design, easy access to content and fast connectivity – making it the perfect all round device.”
Authentic sound without compromise
The HTC Desire C features a powerful, yet rich studio-quality sound experience that is enabled through the combination of optimized Beats Audio and amazing hardware. This integration enables a rich, clear audio experience to customers no matter if they’re listening to music or playing a game.
Premium design taken to a new level
Combining a durable metal frame with precision engineering, the HTC Desire C is ideal for those who want a premium-designed phone. Boasting a micro-drilled earpiece for sharp in-call sound, hyper-viewing angle display and metal camera bezel, this compact smartphone offers an unrivalled level of design and user-experience for its class.
Designed for sharing
Packing the latest mobile technology into a neat, eye-catching design, HTC Desire C’s vibrant 3.5-inch HVGA screen makes it easy to browse the Web, view photos or connect with friends and family. If you like to share personal experiences with your social network, HTC Desire C’s 5 megapixel camera and instant sharing capabilities will allow you to post any moment, seconds after it was captured.
Through HTC Desire C’s deep integration of Dropbox and 25GB of free online space[i], you also have the freedom to securely back-up, browse and share thousands of photos, videos and documents, whether stored locally or in the cloud.
Ensuring that HTC Desire C keeps pace with new mobile services as they become available there is also an NFC variant of this model, allowing users to make payments or access information and offers.
Availability
HTC Desire C will be available from Tesco Mobile, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Media, Three.
Related posts:
The Desire C has a 3.5-inch screen with a resolution of 320 x 480. It uses a 600 MHz processor and is apparently being marketed as a 3.5 G device, presumably meaning HSDPA. Internal storage is 4 GB, and the phone has a five megapixel camera. The phone will run Android 4.0.
. It’ll run on the country’s 3.5G network (HSDPA to you and me) and you’ll find Ice Cream Sandwich sharing the room on that 4GB of on-board storage. It’s also reported to have a 1,320mAh battery and will retail for €200 ($260) once it’s finished enjoying the Iberian weather.
This message is brought to you by Nex, thanks mate!
In order to reduce overhead in the Android backend when putting values into Preferences, we’ve updated the implementation to not commit changes until flush() is called on the Preferences object. Previously, every time you put a value into Preferences the Android implementation would create an Editor, put the value, then commit it. While this was good for ensuring that values would be persisted quickly, it also meant File I/O for each and every value placed into preferences. When putting more than one or two values, this could create noticeable slowness.
This may sounds like a big deal, but this actually brings the Android implementation more in line with the other backends, which have always required flush() to be called in order to persist the changes. It also mirrors the normal workflow for working with SharedPreferences in normal Android development.
TL;DR Version: You must now call flush() in all cases where you want changes to Preferences to be persisted.
The latest device to be unveiled by Doro is probably their most interesting ever, as it combines Android’s functionality with an easy to use interface and pretty decent hardware. The PhoneEasy 740 is still in the last stages of pre-production, but the manufacturers are hoping to iron out all the little kinks in time for a US release before the end of the summer.
Sporting a 320-by-480 3.2-inch touchscreen, the PhoneEasy 740 has a slide-out keyboard and features 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of on-board storage, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, 3G and WiFi connectivity, Bluetooth 4.0, and a microSD memory card slot. That’s not too shabby for a device that is set to be made available at a very affordable price, and the software is itself surprisingly functional.
The app store (Doro Selection) only features 15 apps right now.
The internet-enabled handset extends support to the 3G network speed to ensure swift web browsing. It is accompanied by a charging cradle. Needless to say, the Android phone lets users access the Google Play store to download applications. The GPS certified gadget is deployed with Doro Experience, that’s a cloud based software for remotely managing the device with the assistance of a Windows PC. Relatives of the user can load or delete applications and control its features from anywhere on the globe.
It will be made available in summer this year
Hello all!
So, it’s time to culminate our initial discussion on layouts. Till now, we have looked at the WYSIWYG editor, the code for the layout and a visual editor for playing with strings. Now, we shall come to the query raised in the last post, i.e., the value taken by the android:string attribute of the TextView which is described in the line:
android:text=”@string/niktechs”
For those who have been following this blog, it must be really easy now. But, still I should give the details for the sake of completeness.
Clearly, @string is a way to tell the compiler that the variable which will follow after a ‘/’ represents a string. This is necessary to distinguish the different types of variables. Yes! There are other kinds of variables which represent color, dimension, array, etc. Right now, I am not going to discuss how to use those variables. But, if you are one of those who really like to stay ahead, open the strings.xml and click on add. You will see the following dialog box.
Now, it’s on you to explore!
Also, the name that follows the ‘/’ is the name of the variable whose value is to be given to the android:text and thus, is to be displayed on the screen. Here, since the name is niktechs, the text that is displayed on the screen will be same as the value of the variable niktechs which is Developing Android Applications with Nikhil Gupta.
Now, I think I have laid the foundation of discussing the other way of changing the text on the screen. Remember, in the post titled Laying out the screen!, we saw how to use WYSIWYG to change the text on the screen. For a quick flashback, we used the edit text option and created a new R.string whose value was the text that we wanted to display.
The other way results from our discussion in the previous post. There, I created a new variable of type string named Blog. Now, instead of using the WYSIWYG editor, we can simply change niktechs (in the code describing android:text attribute) to Blog and save the file.
Now, look at the GUI (click on main.xml and then, choose Graphical Layout tab). What do you see? Yes, the text has been changed to Android Development which is the value of the variable Blog. Why does this happen? I hope that it’s now trivial for all. Since Blog is just another string type variable like niktechs (discussed in the previous post), replacing the two will result in replacing the values of the android:text attribute and hence, the text on the screen.
So, we have looked at the basic layout features and understood each and every concept related to it. But there are various attributes that can be used in the code for layout which can greatly vary the screen. It’s up to you to explore them. I may discuss a few of them, but only in the later posts. If you want to explore, go to a tag, type android: and press Ctrl+Space. You will see the entire options that are possible.
In the next few post, we will finally go into the JAVA coding. So, a lot more interesting stuff coming soon!
Till next time, BYE!
Job hunting after graduating from college has never been easy, but these days it’s harder than ever in a very competitive landscape. Luckily, with an Android-powered smartphone in your pocket, you’ve got a powerful Internet-connected mini-computer at your disposal for networking, updating and posting a resume, keeping yourself organized, and researching job leads at the drop of a tweet. Check out some of our favorite apps from the Amazon Appstore for Android.
 |
LinkedIn, Free
Start building your professional network with LinkedIn. Walk into any interview or client meeting with the ability to look up the details on a person’s career, and connect with more than 100 million professionals worldwide. The app displays complete profiles, including background information, resumes, connections, portfolio links, and professional recommendations. |
 |
Search Jobs & Find A Career: Beyond.com, Free
The Beyond.com app allows you to instantly search and share highly targeted jobs from top employers anytime, from anywhere. Search hundreds of thousands of jobs across more than 25 industries by location, keyword, and company. Learn about new opportunities in real-time via push notifications, and use Google Maps to find jobs near you. |
 |
Quickoffice Pro, $14.99
Work on your resume while on the go with Quickoffice Pro. Create, access, edit, and share all of your Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations with QuickofficePro on your Android smartphone. And you can conveniently access, share, and manage files remotely from your Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, Huddle, SugarSync, and MobileMe accounts. |
 |
Remember The Milk, Free
It’s got a cheeky name, but Remember the Milk is a powerful task management app that will help you keep track of all your job interviews and appointments. It connects with the popular online service of the same name, and you’ll be able to organize the way you want to with priorities, due dates, time estimates, repeating, lists, tags, and more. See tasks located nearby, add and complete tasks on the go, and sync it all seamlessly. |
 |
Evernote, Free
From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, the Evernote app helps you remember and recall anything that happens in your life. Type a text note, clip a Web page, snap a photo, or grab a screenshot — then add tags or organize notes into different notebooks. Later, sync it to Evernote on the Web and down to the Evernote PC app. |
by Gabor Paller (noreply@blogger.com) at May 13, 2012 08:11 PM
by Gabor Paller (noreply@blogger.com) at May 12, 2012 10:28 AM
In this presentation from DevCon5, Dir. of Product Management at Qualcomm, Sy Choudhury talks about how the future of mobile computing will impact app development.
by Randall Hanley (noreply@blogger.com) at May 11, 2012 09:03 PM
Could moving content from desktop to tablet save a life? When it comes to making it easier for doctors to view medical images, it just might.
Converting from desktop to mobile opens up new possibilities in form factor and workflows, but it also changes how information is consumed and shared. And even these seemingly small changes can completely reinvent an existing solution.
This piece is the first in a series exploring the transition from desktop to mobile, with attention to the less-considered opportunities and differences it surfaces. We’ll begin with a medical case study in which simple tactile differences result in a much richer and more consultative overall experience.
Case Study: Mobile Medical Consultations with SeeMyRadiology
With SeeMyRadiology – a system that offers instant access to medical images and reports via the cloud – moving to mobile brought a new ease to scanning through images. Doctors can flip through hundreds of images from CT scans by sliding or swiping a finger. This provides greater animation control and makes it significantly easier for a doctor to spot irregularities.
Unlike its desktop counterpart, the SeeMyRadiology mobile interface lets users dynamically resize an image, tapping and dragging on the screen to bring about even better clarity. The nature of a handheld device makes it effortless to bring the image closer for inspection.
While the desktop version offers similar basic functions, mobile introduced a better way to view and control images.
Creating a Consultative Experience
SeeMyRadiology’s mobile solution empowers doctors, health care professionals, and patients by giving them immediate access to images and medical charts on an iPad. Using a tablet, doctors can quickly provide diagnoses and consultations from any location with access to an internet connection.
But the consultative aspect isn’t specific to healthcare. While desktop monitors are larger in size, there’s a discernible barrier created by the information being tied to an stationary screen. As more industries begin to utilize tablets to power field enablement solutions, they’re discovering that this experience naturally encourages collaboration in a way that desktop has not.
Since many desktop products are made for individual experiences, they haven’t been matured for for the consultative, collaborative aspect. This transition not only requires clear visuals, but a completely new way to think about how you manipulate and access information.
Taking Users Beyond Desktop
With enterprises moving from rigid desktop programs to major mobile solutions, they should be aware of how great an impact even the smallest adjustments can be. The transition in mobile isn’t just a change in software, but a change in expectations and possibilities.
by Kaely Coon, Corporate Communications at May 11, 2012 08:51 PM
Hi everyone!
In the last post, we looked at the code for the layout of an android application. But we didn’t discuss discuss the strange value taken by the text attribute of the tag “TextView” and how it decides the text display by this TextView. Were you able to find any correlation?
In this post, I will discuss about strings in an android app. The concepts discussed in this post will be used to anwer the above query in the next post. So, let’s start!
Click on the values folder (It’s in the same directory as the layout folder). Do you find something which is related to our interest? Yes, a file named string.xml. Let’s open it! What do you see?
You can see that strings.xml opens up in an interactive editor. This editor is used to add Resources (to be discussed later) to our android application. For now, it’s sufficient to know that strings are treated as resources in an android app and hence, this editor allows us to make, modify or delete strings.
We can see three Resource Elements (as specified in the header), all being of type String as mentioned in the brackets beside the name. Thus, our android application has three resources, all of them being strings. The names that are visible are the names of the variables that are used to store the string type values (similar to the fact that x is a variable used to store integer type values when I write int x = 10 in C). Thus, hello and app_name are two string type variables which are automatically created during the creation of a project.
To look at the values stored by these variables, simply click on them. On clicking hello, you will see a panel in the right which displays the name of the variable and it’s value. Now, looking at the value of the variable hello, I hope that you can make out how the text displayed at the screen originally came about. Yes!, the value of this variable is Hello World, HelloWorldActivity!, the original text on the screen.
You must have seen another line of text in the screen of the app. Look at the value of the variable app_name and try to find out the place at which it is used. Comment below if you are able to find it!
Now, do you see why a variable named niktechs is there in the list? How it was created? Do you remember, while editing the text on the screen (Refer to the post Laying out the screen) , we made a new string variable? Yes, that variable is the same as displayed here. The value given to the field R.string there, is the name of the variable and the value is the same as given that time. Thus, when we changed the text displayed at the screen, we actually created a new string variable and gave its value to the TextView.
As mentioned earlier, we can create a variable by using this editor. Simply click on Add. A dialog box opens up. Don’t be afraid to see so many options. We will look at them as we proceed. For now, simply select String. In the resulting window, simply set the name (let’s set it to Blog) and the value (I am setting it to Android Development) as required and save the file. This creates a new String type variable.
We can modify a string by simply changing its value and saving the file. To delete a variable, simply select Remove.
Thus, we have seen how to play with strings in an Android Application. What is left to discuss is how to use these strings in the app. How these variables relate to the text displayed on the screen? How it answers the query raised at the beginning of the post?
All of this coming in the next post!
Till then, BYE!
Hey there! Dynamite Jack is available now! The store on my website gets you a DRM-Free copy of the game for Windows / Mac / Linux AND a Steam code (Windows / Mac).
If you want to learn more about the development of Dynamite Jack, I’ve done dev blogs about it over the past month.
Enjoy!
-Phil
There is a fairly extensive thread in progress on the android-developers Google Group, discussing the behavior of long-running services.
Unfortunately, the original poster on that thread drew incorrect conclusions from his market research. He found that there were other apps like the one he wanted to create, that used long-running services, and that those apps had decent ratings. His conclusion is that there is no problem with long-running services. Along the way, he ignores not only all the problems with his analysis (including low sample size and sampling bias), but also all the evidence that points to the contrary, such as the millions of users of so-called “task killers”.
However, he does have a point. Long-running services are not intrinsically user-hostile. The issue is not the service — the issue is the control over the service.
For example, let’s examine two apps that I always have installed on whatever phone I’m carrying at the time: United Airlines and Ambling BookPlayer Pro.
If I examine the Running tab of the Apps screen in Settings on my Galaxy Nexus, I see that both of these apps have “1 process and 1 service”. Yet, I am sincerely frustrated at United Airlines and worry not a whit about Ambling BookPlayer Pro.
Why? Control, and to a lesser extent, sensibility.
It is entirely possible that there is a reason why the United Airlines app would need a service. However, there is no obvious need for why it would need a service running all the damn time. I have not run the app in days. I have no control over whether this service is used, short of getting rid of it from Settings. I tend not to bother, but it frustrates me, and I can easily see other users attacking the United Airlines app with task killers to try to get rid of the service.
Contrast that with Ambling BookPlayer Pro. It too has a service running all the time. In fact, its process consumes almost twice as much RAM as does the United Airlines app, so in theory I should be twice as annoyed. But I am not.
Why?
I know why the service is there — it is waiting for headset plug events
I value the service being there, as I like being able to just plug my phone into my Prius and not necessarily have to fumble with the touchscreen to get the audiobook playing again
It is a foreground service, so I have an icon that I can get to where I can stop the service through the player’s UI
The only thing that it is missing is an obvious way to prevent the service from running in the first place, albeit at the cost of not handling headset plug events.
Ideally, you do not have an everlasting service in the first place, and use polling or other techniques. If, however, you have a technically justifiable reason for trying to have a service run constantly, ensure that the user knows why the service is there and give the user the ability to control the service behavior, including disabling the service outright at the cost of some functionality. Those items should help improve user acceptance of your everlasting service and reduce the percentage of bad reviews because of your service.
The CoPilot range of paid GPS apps has been joined by a new, entirely free option today, with the launch of CoPilot GPS on the Google Play Store. This offers a simpler approach to satnav than the company’s full price apps, removing a few features, but still offering offline map access, Points of Interest, route planning and local business searches.
And it looks like this:
The money-making part of the deal for the maker would appear to come by asking users to pay for a “premium” upgrade to an enhanced version of the app that includes 3D mapping and voice navigation. Can’t hurt to try it, eh?
Read more over on the CoPilot blog.
[This post is by David Chandler, Android Developer Advocate — Tim Bray]
Honeycomb introduced Fragments to support reusing portions of UI and logic across multiple activities in an app. In parallel, the showDialog / dismissDialog methods in Activity are being deprecated in favor of DialogFragments.
In this post, I’ll show how to use DialogFragments with the v4 support library (for backward compatibility on pre-Honeycomb devices) to show a simple edit dialog and return a result to the calling Activity using an interface. For design guidelines around Dialogs, see the Android Design site.
Here’s the layout for the dialog in a file named fragment_edit_name.xml.
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@+id/edit_name"
android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center" android:orientation="vertical" >
<TextView
android:id="@+id/lbl_your_name" android:text="Your name"
android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
<EditText
android:id="@+id/txt_your_name"
android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:inputType=”text”
android:imeOptions="actionDone" />
</LinearLayout>Note the use of two optional attributes. In conjunction with android:inputType=”text”, android:imeOptions=”actionDone” configures the soft keyboard to show a Done key in place of the Enter key.
The dialog extends DialogFragment, and since we want backward compatibility, we’ll import it from the v4 support library. (To add the support library to an Eclipse project, right-click on the project and choose Android Tools | Add Support Library...).
import android.support.v4.app.DialogFragment;
// ...
public class EditNameDialog extends DialogFragment {
private EditText mEditText;
public EditNameDialog() {
// Empty constructor required for DialogFragment
}
@Override
public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
Bundle savedInstanceState) {
View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_edit_name, container);
mEditText = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.txt_your_name);
getDialog().setTitle("Hello");
return view;
}
}The dialog extends DialogFragment and includes the required empty constructor. Fragments implement the onCreateView() method to actually load the view using the provided LayoutInflater.
Now we need some code in our Activity to show the dialog. Here is a simple example that immediately shows the EditNameDialog to enter the user’s name. On completion, it shows a Toast with the entered text.
import android.support.v4.app.FragmentActivity;
import android.support.v4.app.FragmentManager;
// ...
public class FragmentDialogDemo extends FragmentActivity implements EditNameDialogListener {
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
showEditDialog();
}
private void showEditDialog() {
FragmentManager fm = getSupportFragmentManager();
EditNameDialog editNameDialog = new EditNameDialog();
editNameDialog.show(fm, "fragment_edit_name");
}
@Override
public void onFinishEditDialog(String inputText) {
Toast.makeText(this, "Hi, " + inputText, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
}
}There are a few things to notice here. First, because we’re using the support library for backward compatibility with the Fragment API, our Activity extends FragmentActivity from the support library. Because we’re using the support library, we call getSupportFragmentManager() instead of getFragmentManager().
After loading the initial view, the activity immediately shows the EditNameDialog by calling its show() method. This allows the DialogFragment to ensure that what is happening with the Dialog and Fragment states remains consistent. By default, the back button will dismiss the dialog without any additional code.
Next, let’s enhance EditNameDialog so it can return a result string to the Activity.
import android.support.v4.app.DialogFragment;
// ...
public class EditNameDialog extends DialogFragment implements OnEditorActionListener {
public interface EditNameDialogListener {
void onFinishEditDialog(String inputText);
}
private EditText mEditText;
public EditNameDialog() {
// Empty constructor required for DialogFragment
}
@Override
public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,
Bundle savedInstanceState) {
View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_edit_name, container);
mEditText = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.txt_your_name);
getDialog().setTitle("Hello");
// Show soft keyboard automatically
mEditText.requestFocus();
getDialog().getWindow().setSoftInputMode(
LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_VISIBLE);
mEditText.setOnEditorActionListener(this);
return view;
}
@Override
public boolean onEditorAction(TextView v, int actionId, KeyEvent event) {
if (EditorInfo.IME_ACTION_DONE == actionId) {
// Return input text to activity
EditNameDialogListener activity = (EditNameDialogListener) getActivity();
activity.onFinishEditDialog(mEditText.getText().toString());
this.dismiss();
return true;
}
return false;
}
}For user convenience, we programmatically focus on the EditText with mEditText.requestFocus(). Alternatively, we could have used the <requestFocus><requestFocus> tag in the layout XML to do this; however, in some cases it’s preferable to request focus programmatically. For example, an OnFocusChangeListener added in the Fragment’s onCreateView() method won’t get called if you request focus in the layout XML.
If the user focuses on an EditText, the soft keyboard will automatically appear. In order to force this to happen with our programmatic focus, we call getDialog().getWindow().setSoftInputMode(). Note that many Window operations you might have done previously in a Dialog can still be done in a DialogFragment, but you have to call getDialog().getWindow() instead of just getWindow(). The resulting dialog is shown on both a handset and tablet (not to scale):
The onEditorAction() method handles the callback when the user presses the Done key. It gets invoked because we’ve set an OnEditorActionListener on the EditText. It calls back to the Activity to send the entered text. To do this, EditNameDialog declares an interface EditNameDialogListener that is implemented by the Activity. This enables the dialog to be reused by many Activities. To invoke the callback method onFinishEditDialog(), it obtains a reference to the Activity which launched the dialog by calling getActivity(), which all Fragments provide, and then casts it to the interface type. In MVC architecture, this is a common pattern for allowing a view to communicate with a controller.
We can dismiss the dialog one of two ways. Here we are calling dismiss() within the Dialog class itself. It could also be called from the Activity like the show() method.
Hopefully this sheds some more light on Fragments as they relate to Dialogs. You can find the sample code in this blog post on Google Code.
References for learning more about Fragments:
So in October of 2011, Ludum Dare hosted a second October Challenge. I had so much fun the last year, despite canceling my game, I decided to give it another go. I was really attached to the idea I felt I was approaching with Stealth Target, so I wanted to give it another try. Since I realized the aesthetics and UI were the biggest problems, I decided to take the game back to “Glorious 2-D” and use the aesthetic from my earlier Ludum Dare game Anathema Mines for the starting point of this game.
Here are cut-down versions of the blogs posts I made during the October Challenge 2011. Additional commentary included below the quotes.
Oct 13th – October Challenge, take 2
I’m doing brute-force ray casting here and it works great. It’s really nice to be targeting the desktop using C, so I can do stuff like that. (The older LD version was in python so I had to code it smart, and if I were targeting mobile I’d have to be more optimized.) Anyway, my goal is to have this game selling on the Mac App Store before the end of the month for a few bucks.
TECH: I’ve done a fair bit of optimization here, but really, the main gist is that I raycast from the center of the light until I hit something. I have a few optimizations and whatnot that help make this faster, but nothing super clever. A win for the component object system was that I’m able to change the size of the shadows each object has, which helps for the fine tuning of the look. If you look carefully you can see the size of the player’s shadow get larger when he dies and falls down.
BIZ: I changed my mind about the Mac App Store before the end of the month. I soon realized that this game was coming out really good and that it was going to be worth taking the extra time to really polish it up before releasing it for sale.
Oct 14th – More lighting stuff
I re-did my lighting systems in the game so now I can have various colored lights and I can add ambient light to corners of the caves.
TECH: Each tile on the map is given an RGBA “lighting” component. Each frame I color where light is on the map, and then I blur the coloring of the map. Then I draw the flooring and tiles using the lighting values. I use a different averaged color for each corner so that the shading is nice and smooth. When the player walks you can see the lighting jump ahead by tiles, it’s a technical shortcoming, but it “feels okay” because it feels like the light is flickering a little.
Oct 15th – Technology .. explosions!!
Some new goodies today. Well, the explosions I’ve had for a while, but I just added in the technology that you have to destroy in order to defeat the evil over-lords or whatever. The technology is RED that’s how you know it’s EVIL technology.
DESIGN: If you remember back to Dynamite the core game mechanic was exploding the load bearing pilars in the game so that the building would collapse. I decided that collapsing the cave like that didn’t make much sense, and that glowing alien technology would just look way cooler. I had to come up with a way for blowing up the tech to have a purpose, so requiring the user to explode all the tech of a single color to unlock some doors seemed like a straight forward design choice.
DESIGN: You can see the black “pit” below the explosion. In the prototype of the game, the explosions actually created holes in the floor that were impassable. I decided I wanted my game to never back the player into a corner, so I now have the explosions only break down walls and give the player more area to move in, instead of less.
So, here’s my level editor thing. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to set up the level entrances / exits / pathways throughout the level. Sort of some kind of cryptic code system. I’m not sure how complicated I want it to be. Depends on if I will have the level editing open to the general public or not.
DESIGN: I was thinking about some really bad ideas at that point …
That said, I think I want it to be editable by normal people. So I think I’ll probably pass on using those weird codes. But at least now I have those cool hex icons for no reason.
DESIGN: I quickly came to the conclusion that if the editor was going to be too hard for a “normal person” to use, I would also eventually get sick of it. So I made sure to only include things in the editor that I felt everyone could use, not just myself. This really helped me when creating the levels for the game. Since I’m not hugely into creating levels, having a super easy to use editor was what made it possible for me to create the 28 levels for the game.
Oct 22nd – Anathema Mines – now with animated characters
UPDATE: Using my cool-sauce edge generation script, with just a few minutes of graphics work I can get a totally different look to my game. This is going to be super helpful to giving my low-budget game the appearance that it has art in it (maybe).
TECH: This is the one place that I really used some fun python code. I created these interesting mini drawings of the walls in the gimp, one of the ones I use in the final game looks like this:
TECH: I then use a python script to use sub-sections of that image and face them in all different directions to generate the 200+ possible wall tiles for that style of wall. It took a fair bit of messing around to get this to work perfectly, and in fact the “red technology” has two separate layers to give it the look it has. I also save alpha data about each of these 200 sub-tiles which I use for the light ray-casting collision detection. I also use the same data for just plain collision detection.
Oct 27th – More shadows, levels, and editor tweaks
Not entirely sure if I’ll make the Oct.31 deadline, but I’m making quite a bit of progress. I’ll keep plodding along and see where I’m at in a few days!
BIZ: I missed the deadline, but I came pretty close … My new objective was to send Valve a pitch video of the gameplay footage to see if they would want the game.
Nov 1st – Anathema Mines: gameplay video footage
Here’s my gameplay demo video. I’m attempting to “monetize” the game as of Oct 31st, so I’ll report back on how well that goes.
BIZ: I didn’t report back, but I will now. I sent the video to Valve along with some of what I was planning. They were interested! Had they said no, I would not have spent more time working on the game. This was my way of attempting to “fail early” on this project by seeing if the game looked good enough to have mass market appeal.
DESIGN: You can see how the guards reacted to seeing your flashlight in the distance in this video. I changed this later on in development as it made the game too hard. Also the other “scientist” characters had that ability, so I decided it would give the game more variety if they behaved differently. You can also see how the guards turn around counter-clockwise in this video. This was somewhat random at one point, but now they always turn clockwise when going between two points. This makes tracking their paths much easier when playing.
It’s been a great month working on this. The game is coming along super-well, I imagine it’ll actually be released publicly in about a month now.
BIZ: I obviously have some rather poor time estimation skills. It is now six months later and the game is finally coming out this week! The amount of work and polish that went into this game were way beyond what I imagined, but it’s been totally worth it! I’m super pleased with how this game came together.
The game is coming out on Thursday, May 10th! Be sure to check it out then 
-Phil
P.S. The prototype was named “Anathema Mines”. I almost named the final game “Escape from Anathema Mines” but enough people couldn’t pronounce or remember the name that I decided to change it. A TON of ideas were thrown around, but eventually Dynamite Jack stuck
by William Ferguson (noreply@blogger.com) at May 07, 2012 07:32 PM
That’s the politically incorrect 1970s premise behind new Android gaming release Angry Wife, which is one of the latest batch of new Android games released by indie developer Atomicom. Atomicom used to call itself Playbox, and is/was behind the excellent 3D runner game Switch among others.
This is quite different to that, though. This is a 2D puzzler where you avoid objects.
How on earth did she get that fridge out of the window? It took two workmen to deliver the thing. Angry Wife is on the Play Store here (free) and here (paid).
Meanwhile, Atomicom has also released gem-based puzzler Tiny Jewels, silly 2D shooter Cats & Bombs and a high-spec 3D racing tech demo it calls Hawthorne Park (above) that’s specifically for Tegra-based machines.
Hawthorne Park costs a whopping £10, but the developer promises the money will be used to help fund the final release, which demo buyers will get for free, Kickstarter style, along with their names in the credits.
Gushiku Studios is excited to announce the release of the new Android painting app "Doodle Bug" to Google Play.
Are you a kid that loves to finger paint? Or maybe you are an adult that likes to draw? Or perhaps you wish you had a homework sketchpad like what you see on Khan Academy? With Doodle Bug, you can do all of those things!
Doodle Bug is a fun and easy painting program that lets the colors fly from your fingertips! It has a bunch of great and easy-to-use features that will have you producing masterpieces in no time:
- A whole RAINBOW of colors to choose from!
- A variety of brush sizes and densities.. from pencil thin to marker FAT!
- UNDO feature for when you make mistakes!
- ZOOM & PAN for getting in there and doing those fine details!
- Save and Load from your phone or tablet's internal memory or SD card!
- Import pictures and photos from your phone or tablet's gallery, and then draw over them! Cool!
[ tags: draw, sketch, color, paint, fingerpaint, finger paint, picture ]
Version 0.6 of the omnibus edition of The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development, as re-envisioned as part of The Big Book Reboot, is available to most subscribers. Those who subscribed after around 8am Eastern Time on May 4th will start getting the Omnibus with the next update.
This release adds ~200 pages, including a bunch of brand-new material:
Nine new tutorials
A largely rewritten chapter on Internet access
A partially rewritten chapter on Intents, filters, and broadcasts, incorporating some material originally found in The Busy Coder’s Guide to Advanced Android Development
A slightly revised chapter on services
A largely rewritten chapter on large-screen strategies and tactics
A largely rewritten chapter on backwards-compatibility strategies and tactics
This release tweaked the PDF format a bit, arranging for all chapters to begin on the right-hand page, to work better when printed.
The next update, 0.7, is expected to be out in about two weeks, with the rest of the new tutorials, plus a few more chapters.
If you encounter problems with the Omnibus or have other Omnibus-related feedback, please contact me at omnibus /at\ commonsware.com.
The most popular handset of 2011 for android has just hit a new generation. Its larger, its prettier, its smarter and its just about the fastest thing around!
Samsung don’t pull any punches when it comes to producing top notch, high end android phones. The Samsung Galaxy S2 was the best in its class, and the people I know who have one, extoll its features just as much as the ardent iphone fanboys. It was a magical, uncompromising combination of features that turned its users’ into Samsung fans. With the new generation, Samsung Galaxy S3, there are now even more reasons why this could just be the best Android phone around when it launches at the end of May in the UK. ( priced at about 36GBP per month when it arrives in Phones4U stores) You can pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S3 from Phones4U here, Three here and carphone warehouse here
With a new iphone several months sasw
A really great handset, check out the youtube video for the launch event and summary.
Related posts:
So with all this talk about Android market share and the copyright/IP trial it might be helpful to understand what the Android OS and Android Application System is and their relationship to the Mobile Device Indsutry as far as new innovations are concerned.
Although there were many mobile OSes in the beginning years before year 2000, mobile did not really take off until Nokia partnered with some of its competitors to come up with a new mobile operating system. Right before and during that time Motorola came up with a way to run java on a mobile device by stripping out major parts of java and getting Sun Microsystems to declare a new java edition catering to mobile devices.
While Java2Me gave us an application system to build on multiple OSes it was hamstrung by the OEMs into this we will never update the JVM/Application part of the OS and thus was a nightmare to develop and maintain mobile applications. Some middleware firms saw this road block as an opportunity to develop a new JavaOS for mobile outlook. Sun even bought one of the firms and its IP became javaFX.
Its at this point that two firms decide to not rely on OEMs and comeupwith their own versions of Mobile OSes and redefine what a Smartphone is as Nokia originally defined the smartphone in its first release of a Series60 device sometime ago. Apple of course came up with a Mobile OS that mimic their MacOSX in the mobile context with a embedded Webkit Webview, GPS, etc;.
Of course Google at the same time came up with their own definition after having bought the startup Android INC.
Android is thinking about the mobile OS as the empowering the human user operating as the a human recognized mobile computing device serving humans hence the term android which ,means a robot like computer in a recognizeable human form. But how does that go beyond say just embedding webkit into a mobile OS for touch-based mobile devices?
We have some layers:
Everything in blue is what the developer relies on in the form of APIs to write the Android mobile application. Everything in the yellow layer is the Virtual Machine called Dalvik. Everything in green is in C++ and provides such things as OpenGL WebkitWebview and other media libraries. Everything in red is the OS kernel.
Themagic that Google added to Android is in the application components. First and foremost, each application runs in ina dalvik VM instance and as a separate Linux process and under a separate user. This is why we do not have a traditional multi-user with mobile android devices amd its a security quirk you have to be aware of when designing mobile applications as most people from time to time hand over their device to their friends to show an application.
In an android application we have these possible components:
These components allow us not only to talk to the indiidual components of the application but to talk to other installed applications and components. If you will, an android nervous sytem interface in the same way that a human organ hooks into our own nervous system.
Each androdi application is broken down into manageabe activity units with one main activity identified in the androidi manifest as the applicaiton starting main activity. Activities represent single user screens and are often indepentn of one another.
You saw the IPC component in the Linux Kernel of the Android Architecture diagram, right? The services component of android applications allows us to integrae with the IPC and run things in background, for example file downloads such as a downloaded application. Its just a service and no user interface is provided.
A content provider is an abstract of application data that happens to be tied to the SQlite component of the android OS system. Because we have a multi-user system where each application is its own user, each application with the right user set permissions can query this application data through the content provider.
Its actually the object that receives notifications in form of Intent Objects. The notification bar on your android device displays results of receiving such Intent Objects. These are special Intents known as system wide boradcast annoucements. However, applications can also receive broadcasts from other applications to start an application component.
An Android Intent is this magical application call,notice I said application call? For example, Webkit Webview can send an intent upon receiving a user click on a mobile telephone link and open the dialer to make the call. But that is not all, you can as an indvidual developer send intents to user installed applications.
Its the Android Nervous System that connects application components to each other and other applications both system applications and user installed applications that makes the Android OS unique among Mobile Operating Systems. Other Smartphone Operating Systems are less human or if you prefer less social.
Whenever we talk about server-side apps and RAP mobile, one topic always comes up: how to access native functionality like Geolocation or the Camera. With this post I want to show you how we access this functionality on the server-side. At writing, we’ve implemented Geolocation Support, and more additions are planned for the near future.
I have to point out one thing first. When you take look at RAP mobile from a very abstract view, it is nothing more than an object synchronization mechanism. That is, if a button (or any other widget) is created on the server it also needs to be created on the client. This is exactly the same for native functionality. When the server needs the location of the client it has to tell the client that it needs the location. Then, the client has to tell the server the location and this cycle starts over again. The challenge in this approach is to hook the location to the right session. Fortunately, RAP’s server side has solved these issues a long time ago, and it’s pretty easy to hook this information together.
One issue that remains is that SWT has no API for native access because it was made for the desktop. So, a new API is required that needs be an abstraction for all devices. But wait a minute – this sounds like a well known problem that has been solved already. I’m referring to Phonegap/Cordova. This technology created a JavaScript abstraction for accessing native functionality within HTML5 Apps. And, IMHO, these guys did a really great job and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. We decided to take the Phonegap API as a template and created a very similar Java API. Our first result is the Geolocation API which is located in the RAP mobile server code. As mentioned in previous posts, everything on the server side is open source, including this API. The RAP mobile server code is located in the com.eclipsesource.rap.mobile*.jar and is included in the demos target. You can also take a look the Geolocation API here at github.
We have created a demo for the Location API, which you can see in the videos linked below. The source code for this demo is also located on github. To conclude, I can proudly say that with RAP mobile it’s now possible to access the Geolocation API of iOS and Android from Java by writing the code only once!
When managing the inventory of your paid applications, you can choose any one of the following options:
OR
How does this remote licensing option work differently than using static keys?
The sounds of keyboards clicking and caffeine-loaded sips. If someone walked in unannounced, they’d think it a head-phoned cult summoned by their master to type.
Nope, just another Mutual Mobile hackathon.
Designers and engineers met on the weekend at high noon for the latest smack down. Throwing out app ideas gathered prior to the event, participants piled them into good, decent, and those “not so great.” Clear winners included an Instagram global map and a Jira status board, and from there it was all about how to divide and conquer.
Ryan Engle, an engineer focused on building the Instagram app, said, “My goals were to first display a 3D globe that showed the real-time position of the sun, then import the top photos and their location information, finally displaying them on the globe.”
A big part of the hackathon is dividing tasks amongst participants, so they don’t conflict with each other’s implementation to make the most of crunch time. Hackers stopped to ask each other for advice or clarifications, but mostly it was a day of headphones on, straight-up coding. “My drink of choice was Mountain Dew, and snacking on Goldfish,” said Engle.
There’s hope for an even bigger and better turnout for the next one, since any hackathon’s success lies in a group of people truly passionate about creating, willing to get it done at any cost. That energy is where the next big idea is born.
by Kaely Coon, Corporate Communications at April 24, 2012 09:39 PM
Gushiku Studios is happy to announce the release of Pyromancer's Laboratory to Google Play, the Amazon App Store, and Slideme.org.
Pyromancer's Laboratory is a simple and casual design game. There are no monsters to shoot or points to score. This game is entirely about CREATIVITY! You play the role of a Pyromancer perfecting your craft by designing new and wonderful pyromantic creations. Conjure up interesting patterns by tweaking an effect's various aspects. Can you transform the base effect into a fish? ...a candle flame? ... a waterfall? ...a spinning blade? The possibilities are ENDLESS!
Trace or tap your finger around the screen to see the patterns change and emerge in spectacular ways! The designs you come up with can then be shared with your friends via e-mail.
We already have effects submissions! Visit the following link on your Android device, click on a link, and select "Pyromancer's Lab" to complete the action.
http://www.gushikustudios.com/pyromancerslab
Would you like to share your creations with us? Click the in-game share button and direct your creation to "gushikustudios@gmail.com". We may put it up on our web page!
The Samsung Galaxy S3 is perhaps the most anticipated smartphone of 2012, only challenged for this title by the iPhone 5 / new iPhone. The Galaxy S2, launched in 2011, was one of the biggest selling smartphones of all time and the biggest threat to the iPhone's as yet unrivalled supremacy. This was no doubt the main underlying reason for Apple suing Samsung left right and centre and deciding to ditch to Korean firm as its main source for iPhone components.
Apple of course denies that it feels threatened by the Samsung Galaxy range, instead insisting that the spate of lawsuits were in response to Samsung slavishly copying Apple's products and designs. Images were produced in various courts throughout the world showing the similarity between TouchWiz, the Android interface used on most Samsung phones, and Apple's own iOS. Then there was the whole issue of the solitary central home button found on the S2, and Apple was quick to point out that it invented centrally aligned buttons on phones, app icons and even rectangular devices.
But in some respects Apple are correct – Samsung have been copying Apple's ideas. Apple has a knack for creating a foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria around its product launches, shunning the rest of the industry and insisting on doing things its own way. Apple does not attend industry events such as the Consumer Electronics Show or Mobile World Congress, instead opting for its own launch events which give the company an air of exclusivity and of being something quite unique.
MWC – Where is the S3?
Although Samsung did have a few smartphones on show at Mobile World Congress, many had their hopes dashed by meeting with the Galaxy Beam instead of the Galaxy S3. Instead, Samsung promised that the long awaited flagship would make an appearance at a separate event at an unconfirmed date later in the year. This vagueness created a buzz with onlookers wondering if each successive Samsung press conference would be the one where the S3 finally made an appearance.
Samsung has also taken cues from Apple by maintaining the utmost secrecy surrounding the phone, refusing to even confirm a rough estimate of its launch. Apple famously keeps its employees under strict control regarding prototype iPhones and iPhone components, even launching raids on the homes of people who seem to know too much. This secrecy leads everyone and anyone to speculate on what they think might make an appearance on the device.
New smartphone models need testing, in real world conditions and on various networks across the globe, which means that they inevitably need to come out of their top secret hidey hole at some point. This is usually when the blurry leaked images start to appear online, and much of the mystery surrounding the phone is dispelled.
Samsung has taken unusual steps to prevent this from happening, by sending the phone's components for testing in a non-descript plastic box. This box allows third parties to run their necessary tests without having any concrete knowledge of how the phone will appear once it is released. Again, this is a tactic that is also employed by Apple, who has reportedly been providing test models of the iPhone 5 contained within iPhone 4 cases. The lack of any concrete knowledge about the phone ensures that the frenzied interest is maintained at its highest level until launch day.
Leaked Images
Without the usual leaked images available to feed people's curiosity, a vacuum is created for anyone with a modicum of Photoshop knowledge to produce their own mock-up and attempt to fool the world with their vision of the future. Here are some of the more prominent "leaked" images that have appeared online in the last few months:
This first image is of a phone featured in a Samsung video. The phone has not been identified, and Samsung has not commented on the device. But as it is a genuine Samsung phone that at least existed at one point it is the leaked image with the most weight behind it.
This next image was released by Eldar Murtazin, and industry insider with a lot of important connections who has a habit of releasing rumours which turn out to be fairly accurate. Unfortunately this one was not. Murtazin claimed this "press shot" of the S3 from February was from an upcoming launch of the device at Mobile World Congress, which we all know never took place. The phone also looks suspiciously like the Galaxy S2 with a few Ice Cream Sandwich buttons added to the bottom.
by Tap (tap.nospam@nospam.topandroidphones.com) at April 20, 2012 02:35 PM
Over the last year, we here at Android Activist have enjoyed having you read our opinions, reviews, and watch our videos. We appreciated every ounce of feedback that you have given us and every article comment that you have made. Over a year ago, a few of us came together to create something that we [...]
The Amazon App Store has been a popular alternative to the Google Play Store since its inception. The app store is popular among both users and carries pretty much the same apps as the Google Play Store. If someone had to point one of the major flaws of the Amazon App Store it would have [...]Steve Blank is known for his teachings on the Silicon Valley type of entrepreneurship, with his ideas forming the basis for the "lean startup movement" amongst other things. He writes frequently on entrepreneurship, and with a great deal of credibility, having been involved in various startups in a number of roles. He has, without a doubt, walked the walk in terms of startups, and now seems to be spending his time helping other people learn how to walk the same path. That's a noble thing to be doing when, with the money he's made, he could probably be off doing pretty much whatever he wants.
If you've heard of Steve Blank, you've probably also heard his famous phrase: "get out of the building", an admonition to startup founders to get out and talk with their customers to validate their ideas, rather than huddling in their offices building something that may or may not have a market.
With that in mind, when I saw he had a new book out, The Startup Owner's Manual, I thought "great, that's one I'll get without hesitating!". Unfortunately, though, an eBook wont' be out until "2nd half of 2012"! Ouch.
To me, his ignoring eBooks is indicative of a need to get a bit further outside the building, though. "I want an eBook" was probably the biggest request on his blog post announcing the new book, along side messages of thanks for writing the book.
After reading, on Blank's blog about the availability of the book from BookDepository Ltd, who offer free worldwide shipping, I went ahead and ordered it even if I would have prefered the eBook. Since they're in the UK, and I'm in Italy, I figure it can't take that long, right?
Wrong. I ordered on March 15th, and as of April 13th, it still isn't here.
Compare and contrast with the other books I'm currently reading which I was able to order and start looking at in just a few minutes on my Kindle.
Granted, Steve Blank surely isn't doing this for the money, and from that point of view has little real need to listen to his customers - it's not wrong to say he's doing the world a favor by writing the book in the first place. If he thinks a paper version is far superior, that's his perogative. However, I think he's doing a lot of his readers a disservice by not making the eBook available sooner. I know I would have liked to start reading what he had to say last month, rather than waiting for a paper book to make its way (by mule train?) down here to Italy. The crux of the matter is that while he may well be right in thinking a paper book is "better", for some people, an eBook is the only option, and for them, an "inferior" eBook is a heck of a lot better than no book at all.
Also, on a more constructive note, with eBooks, you can get pretty creative. For instance, if you have a tabular worksheet, you can simply hyperlink to it in, say, Google Docs, so that those with more advanced devices like iPads can open up the link and start working with a real, live spreadsheet immediately, rather than a chart in a printed book. Granted, that means 'giving away' the worksheet, but presumably it's not that valuable on its own, and makes for great advertising if it gets a lot of attention.
Finally, since I actually run a business that does eBook conversions , on the blog post announcing the book, I offered to donate our services, so he'd get his book done for free, so you can't accuse me of just complaining!
Mr. Blank, get out of that building and make an eBook available, please!
[This post is by Francesco Nerieri, engineering team lead for C2DM — Tim Bray]
In the upcoming weeks, some of the older Client Login authentication keys will expire. If you generated the token you’re currently using to authenticate with the C2DM servers before October 2011, it will stop working.
If the response from the C2DM servers contains an Update-Client-Auth header, you’ll need to replace the current token with the one included in the header.
// Check for updated token header
String updatedAuthToken = conn.getHeaderField(UPDATE_CLIENT_AUTH);
if (updatedAuthToken != null && !authToken.equals(updatedAuthToken)) {
log.info("Got updated auth token from datamessaging servers: " +
updatedAuthToken);
serverConfig.updateToken(updatedAuthToken);
}We suggest that you start using the Update-Client-Auth response header to update tokens regularly, as keys will expire periodically from now on. For example, have a look at the Chrome to Phone service hosted on code.google.com; this code takes care of authenticating via Client Login and then sending a message:
Alternatively, you can manually generate a new Client Login token now and replace the one currently in use. ClientLogin can be used with any application that can make an HTTPS POST request. The POST request should be structured as a form post with the default encoding application/x-www-form-urlencoded, like this:
POST /accounts/ClientLogin HTTP/1.0 Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded accountType=GOOGLE&Email=johndoe@gmail.com&Passwd=north23AZ&service=ac2dm
If the POST succeeds, the response contains the authorization token, labeled "Auth", which is your new token. You could even do this from the command line:
curl -d \ "accountType=HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE&Email=johndoe@gmail.com&Passwd=north23AZ&service=ac2dm" \ https://www.google.com/accounts/ClientLogin | \ grep Auth
If your request fails or if you are prompted for captchas, please read ClientLogin for Installed Applications. And of course, if you updated your code to use the Update-Client-Auth header after the keys had expired, then you will first need to manually generate a new token.
Have fun with C2DM!
by Tim Bray (noreply@blogger.com) at April 13, 2012 04:44 PM
by William Ferguson (noreply@blogger.com) at April 13, 2012 10:07 AM
Hello,
For a change, it’s not Rohan here. Work on Camera is still a WIP. Code for the camera libraries are closed source with NVidia and getting around the camera sub-system is taking longer than expected.
Having said that, if you are waiting for the camera update, voicing at Tegra Forum might help though most of the questions are either deleted or never replied. Here is one of the dev for Adam voicing for support, but even the last suggestion suggests to move on to OMAP
As the lead for the sw, it is extremely important for us to make sure that the roadmap doesn’t break anything on Adam 1. The only option (and better one) was to opt for RenderScript.
RenderScript is hardware independent (though can be tweaked) and development on RS will make sure that Adam 1 stays in SW support for at least 2 more years.
RenderScript and SVG are going to be in out focus for next two-year here at Notion Ink. Below is a very small sample of RenderScript rendering an A3D model of simple sphere, with Earth Map (from Nasa), bump map created using GIMP, couple of lights and animation (not obvious from an image).
Frankly sharing anything on development on next versions of Eden doesn’t make sense till the camera issue is resolved. That’s the last piece of puzzle, and if you can help sport your voice on that forum, possibly we can fix things faster.
As an ex developer of a leading brand you all know about, it is really fascinating to even absorb the idea of how community has made more than 200 ROM variants for Adam. Unlike Adam 1, there will be no short-cuts for 2. If something not working, it won’t go out. Our roadmap is built for next 4 years, so there will be speed differences. But one thing is clear and that’s what I bring here at NI, great products needs stronger fundamentals, and that’s what we will build first.
Last words on the next generation SW approach. We are approaching the era of micro-apps. Every app cannot be tuned in for a particular user. A doctor may have 15 years of formal education and 25 years of practice, but when it comes to sw, he can’t possible build one. But if see clearly, IDEs and APIs like Android SDK and iOS SDK have worked till now to ease the development of the programmers to attract more developers, making things sometimes as easy as making a “task flow” like an accountant would do, “refer” a value in one cell of a sheet to another cell. There is a truck load of information yet to come, but first things first.
Best
V
Hello All,
We are back from hibernation now! Sorry for the break (much-needed on our end).
Let me know what is flowing across your minds and I will keep you busy reading on weekends!
Regards
Rohan Shravan
When i was in SF we worked on a pretty resource intensive app that easily goes beyond the Java heap limit on Android if one counts native resources against the Java heap. We received quite a few OutOfMemoryExceptions, which would happen if we’d have used Android’s Bitmap class, which stores pixel data on the native heap, but counts it against the Java heap. We did not use Bitmap, so it was puzzling to us how our app could throw OOMs. On the Java side we barely scratched the 10mb barrier.
To communicate with native code (non-Java, e.g. C/C++) one has two options. Either transfer data from the Java heap to the native heap, or allocate space on the native heap in the first place, circumnavigating the Java heap completely. One mechanism to do the later is to use direct buffers, A Java object that wraps the address and size of a native heap memory location. The VM usually doesn’t count the native heap memory of a direct buffer against it’s Java heap memory. Turns out Android’s Dalvik VM is special in that regard compared to say Hotspot.
The first, generally known, situation where the Dalvik VM counts native heap memory against the Java heap memory is the use of the Bitmap class. A Bitmap is a thin wrapper around a native heap memory area that stores pixel data. To enfore application memory limits, that native heap memory of the Bitmap is counted against the Java heap, which is limited to 16-25mb on Android. Hard to cope with for Android developers at times (see Stackoverflow), but understandable from the perspective that a mobile device has limited resources, even more so if you have true multitasking.
For direct buffers i assumed the situation to be different. Direct buffers provide a way to allocate memory outside the bounds of the Java heap memory and are not counted against the Java heap on most VMs. Let’s see what happens on Dalvik. Observe the following code:
This method is called when one allocates a new direct ByteBuffer through ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(int numBytes), which returns a ByteBuffer that points at a native memory area of numBytes bytes. Following through we get to
which calls
This is where it gets interesting. The first statement in that constructor allocates the native memory through a call to PlatformAddressFactory.alloc(). The second statement tells the address wrapper object (SafeAddress) that this memory area should be automatically deallocated when the buffer instance (and thus the address wrapper instance) is garbage collected. Let’s see what the PlatformAddressFactory.alloc() method does.
It calls into OSMemory.malloc(), which invokes a C++ method that actually allocates the native heap memory. Also observe line 140, where the memorySpy is informed of the newly allocated memory area. We’ll get to that later, as it has some more implications.
What happens in OSMemory.malloc()? This:
It actually tracks the native memory allocated and counts it against the Java heap:
jboolean allowed = env->CallBooleanMethod(gIDCache.runtimeInstance, gIDCache.method_trackExternalAllocation, static_cast<jlong>(size));
This will return false if the requested memory size would exceed the Java heap. In line 64 we see that the first 8 bytes store the size of the buffer so memory can be subtracted from the used Java heap size again if the buffer is deallocated (when it’s GCed), see
The second issue is the memory spy thing i mentioned above. What does that do? Bucket of salt: this is my understanding of it which might be wrong.
Every time we allocate a new direct buffer (and thus PlatformAddress) the memory spy is informed of that event. It keeps so called PhantomReferences to all of these PlatformAddresses. These references allow us to get information on whether a Java object was garbage collected. The problem is that you have to poll that information, as you can’t register a callback that gets invoked when the GC kills a Java object. So, the designers of that code had to come up with a mechanism to frequently do that.
This method is called whenever we allocate new native heap memory. The first couple of lines poll the reference queue, if a platform address was GCed, the spy can also free up the native heap memory (orphanedMemory(ref)). Due to this design you always leak one direct buffer, as you have to allocate a new buffer so that the polling mechanism is kicked off.
Games written in C/C++ do not suffer from these problems. They can allocate memory all day long without Android ever getting angry about it. Games like Shadowgun wouldn’t be possible without that ignorance of Dalvik. If you write a pure Java game for Android you’ll suffer from that problem.
For libgdx games you don’t have to worry as we added a very nasty 3 line hack that will ensure that the memory allocated for a ByteBuffer is not counted against the Java heap. While i completely understand that there have to be memory limits, the situation is different for games. Adding this little “hack” at least allows us to cheat just as the native guys do. (See BufferUtils#newUnsafeByteBuffer()).
I’d like to introduce a new change to libgdx, where we do not load any resources from disk anymore. Instead we cache everything (pixel and vertex data) in memory. This would mean we’d have to change the semantics of a few things for the better. Any unmanaged textures would be managed now, e.g. textures constructed from Pixmaps.
HTC is continuing to expand its affordable range of Android powered smartphones with the latest rumours suggesting that a handset called the Golf is soon to join its catalogue of products.
The HTC Golf will be an entry level smartphone which is pitched to replace the HTC Explorer, which has been on the market for just a few months now.
Information leaked about the HTC Golf suggests that it will sport a 3.5 inch touchscreen display, which is a little larger than the 3.2 inch panel found on the Explorer.
It will also feature Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which is the latest iteration of Google`s mobile operating system. Powering this will be a single core processor clocked below the 1GHz mark, although you will get a 512MB allocation of RAM to help Android run smoothly.
HTC has been attempting to present a more united front in 2012 after it saw profits slip in 2011 due to its oversaturation of the market with smartphone after smartphone. The HTC Golf looks like it could be a worthy addition to the lower price bracket and could be one of the most affordable ways to experience Android 4.0.
Of course if you are already in possession of the Samsung Galaxy S2, last year`s most critically acclaimed Android smartphone, then you may be wondering when an update which brings Android 4.0 to the table will arrive.
Samsung recently confirmed that the rumours of an imminent update were true, before eventually dismissing them as incorrect. This may seem like it is toying with its fans, but closer inspection reveals that there was simply a bit of confusion within the firm itself.
The dual core power of the Samsung Galaxy S2 will be a perfect fit for the advanced capabilities of Android 4.0, so fans will be anxious to see an update arrive, particularly if they are tied into a 2 year contract.
However, the approach of the Samsung Galaxy S3, which should be launched and in stores by the middle of the year, could easily overshadow Android 4.0`s arrival on the Galaxy S2.
The Galaxy S3 has been kept under wraps by Samsung so far, although it was originally going to make its debut at the Mobile World Congress 2012 back in February.
While not much is known about the technical aspects of this handset, it is assumed that it will pack a quad core processor, a high definition display and Android 4.0 as standard.
People who have invested in the Galaxy S2 will not be too disappointed to see the Galaxy S3 arrive and trump their handset as long as Android 4.0 is available via an update. Of course those with a smaller budget to spend on Android mobile phones may be more interested in the arrival of the HTC Golf, because it is always good to see a value-oriented handset getting some high end features.
by Tap (tap.nospam@nospam.topandroidphones.com) at March 19, 2012 09:03 AM
Did you know you can easily promote your apps on websites, blogs, and forums using SlideME Widgets like the one below?
Get the OfficeSuite Android app from SlideME.
SlideME Widgets work a lot like ads, except they can provide more details than simply a purchase link. These widgets are designed to display relevant up-to-date info about your apps straight from the SlideME Market, such as the developer, price, or even your application icon. Using the provided HTML code, you can embed these widgets into nearly any internet medium that provides HTML capability. You could place them on your website, on a company blog, within internal or external forums, or even marketing emails. We provide a variety of Widget designs you can implement with little effort.
So, hands up if your notification bar looks like this:
I see similar levels of clutter when other people show me their phones, and this just isn't a good user interface. These icons mean all kinds of different things, and the level of urgency of each one is really not clear. They're just ordered by most recent update first. On CyanogenMod I can turn off the clock to fit all 9 of them in, but really, a lot of them shouldn't be here.
There's an excellent Android Design article on notifications, highlighting many of the common reasons for notification clutter. If you see one of those anti-patterns, you should definitely bug the app developer about it (by email please! - again, we can't reply to Market comments), but that's not what's happening here. Let's look through them shall we? (I clicked in a text box, so now there are 10.)
Now we can see: 3 I really want, 3 system ones that aren't really notifying me of very much, and the other 4 are just background services that I really want to keep running. Apps like that have to show a notification, even if they've nothing to say, to avoid being killed, in line with an API change that was made in Android 2.0 (and here's the relevant API doc).
I think that was the right decision for Android at the time. As that article says, there was very much a tragedy of the commons problem with background services before then, with every app declaring itself to be high priority, the platform unable to make good decisions about what to kill, and users getting the short straw with slow phones where the apps they wanted to keep running would keep getting killed. So with that change, apps had more incentive to limit their use of background services, and users were much more likely to notice and take action when an app they didn't want was hogging resources.
The problem now is that this phone has a dual-core 1.2GHz chip and 1GB of RAM, and can happily run much more stuff in the background than can sensibly be prominently displayed to the user all the time (a nice problem to have). It means there really needs to be a better UI for managing background functionality. I don't have a definite answer to this problem, let alone a plan to migrate all the existing background apps to it, but here are a couple of ideas:
A big difficulty here is identifying which notifications serve no other purpose. Often a notification on which startForeground() is called is also displaying useful information, or acting as a shortcut for something that the user will frequently want to switch to without using the home screen. The second idea above seems safe-ish to apply to ongoing notifications from existing apps where a custom layout is not used, but you might have one app whose detail text you really want to see, and then you have to keep the whole thing expanded all the time. Still, even putting non-ongoing notifications first seems like an improvement to me.
For myself, I might put a band-aid on it by adding a CyanogenMod option to hide the icons of ongoing notifications from the status bar. Even then, I'd like the pull-down drawer to at least prioritise notifications that are, y'know, notifying me.
Better ideas, anyone? Bueller?
Comments preferred at http://chris.boyle.name/2012/03/android-foreground-service-notifications using OpenID/Facebook/Twitter (comments elsewhere are unlikely to reach me).
Rather than doing a time-based scrolling feed of today’s event, this time we’re bringing you a curated summary of the important announcements. For a more conventional scrolling liveblog, see CNET’s Apple iPad live blog. After the event, be sure to join Tech Republic’s Let’s talk iPad webcast.
Major announcements:
Miscellaneous facts:
Notable demos on stage:
In case you’re wondering, it looks like the new iPad is just called “The New iPad” or “The 3rd generation iPad”, not iPad3 or iPad HD or any of the other names that were rumored before the event. You can call it the “4G iPad” if you like, but 4G is extra cost. The new iPad uses the same dock connector as the current iPads, which debunks another rumor.
The A5X is described as a “dual core CPU with a quad core GPU”. I’m not sure exactly what that means. Most GPUs are way more than quad core - for example the Tegra 3 has 12 graphics processors that operate in parallel. Also unknown is the chip’s clock rate and the size of the iPad’s memory. These details will probably come out next week when people start tearing them apart.
For more coverage see:
Didn’t see that one coming. Instead of giving up on its heretofore failed foray into music, books, and video, Google announced today it was combining all of its entertainment offerings into one site: Google Play:
Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we’ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you’ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play—simply log in with your Google account like always.
Despite being far-and-away the most popular part of the new service, Android apps are relegated to last place on the screen. The other items are not even available yet in most parts of the world (music is currently U.S. only, movies in the US, UK, Canada, and Japan, and books in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia). And don’t even get me started on the prospect of selling serious business applications on something called the “Play Store”.
Links to the Android Market are already being redirected to the new Google Play web site, and Google is rolling out updates to rebrand their apps on all Android devices running 2.2 and above. Developers should read the Google Play FAQ for Android Apps Developer page and the updated Android Branding Guidelines page.
by LiteDroid Development (noreply@blogger.com) at February 28, 2012 06:15 AM
In your Fragment class, if you create listener on a particular interface, and make the parent implement that interface, you can communicate via events.
First create the interface:
public interface OnNewFragmentPressed {
void onNewFragmentPressed();
}
Then create a listener method of that interface.
public static class NewFragment extends Fragment {
private OnNewFragmentPressed mListener;
…
Then in the onAttach() method of your Fragment, use the passed in Activity to make sure it implements the interface, and set the listener to that.
@Override
public void onAttach(Activity activity) {
super.onAttach(activity);
try {
mListener = (OnNewFragmentPressed) activity;
} catch(ClassCastException e) {
throw new ClassCastException(activity.toString() + ” didn’t implement OnNewFragmentPressed”);
}
}
Now you can call methods of that interface, thereby interacting with your parent Activity.
In your FragmentActivity, you can call getSupportFragmentManager().findFragmentByTag(“tag”), or findFragmentById(R.id.frag), to access the child Fragment. From there you can call its methods.
Similarly, in the Fragment, you can call getActivity() to get access to the parent FragmentActivity().
Two requested features landed in this new release:
Playing games on your mobile phone may have once seemed anti-social, but thanks to the multiplayer game, this needn’t be the case. If you fancy sharing a game with friends, then here are just a few of those which we would recommend.
4 Player Reactor
This fast-paced reaction-testing game can actually be customised to accommodate 2, 3 or 4 players. If you think your super-fast reflexes are a match to other, then test them other with this quick-moving game. You’ll need to think fast and stay focused in order to win.
Guerrilla Bob
This multiplayer game first appeared on iOS devices, although it has now made the transition to Android, and is a must-have for fans of first-person shooters. The impressive graphics of Guerrilla Bob are particularly well-suited to large-screen devices, such as the O2 or the HTC Sensation XL. If you want to be both amused and entertained for hours, then this is the app for you.
Words With Friends
Scrabble has made the move to android, and is quickly becoming one of the most popular multiplayer games around. It’s easily to use, and will get you thinking about letter and word combinations quicker than your morning crossword. What’s more, you can have up to twenty games on the go at the same time – so all your friends can get involved.
What the Doodle
Another multiplayer android game which takes its inspiration from the traditional games, What the Doodle is perfect for fans of Pictionary. Simply sketch a word which you are given, and other players will guess what it is that you are trying to draw. It’s also free to download to your android device, and will keep you amused for hours.
by LiteDroid Development (noreply@blogger.com) at January 13, 2012 06:49 PM
Hamster: Attack! is now published by Backflip Studios on Android, the developer of the top games Paper Toss, Ninjump, and many others on iOS.
And with the new release, there are no more coins required to play any of the first 90 levels, including six that are completely new!
It should be possible, in a more complete implementation, to define the time associated with any particular interval.
AnimatorPath path = new AnimatorPath();
path.moveTo(0, 0);
path.lineTo(0, 300);
path.curveTo(100, 0, 300, 900, 400, 500);
Here, we are constructing an AnimatorPath (which is part of the demo project that we'll see below) and supplying it with operations that will become points in the path, along with the operations to navigate the intervals up to those points. The first operation defines where the path starts, (0, 0). Then we move in a straight line to (0, 300). Finally, we move along a curve (a cubic Bézier curve, to be precise) to the point (400, 500), using control points (100, 0) and (300, 900) along the way. final ObjectAnimator anim = ObjectAnimator.ofObject(this, "buttonLoc",
new PathEvaluator(), path.getPoints().toArray());
This animator uses a new PathEvaluator object (introduced below). It also queries the AnimatorPath object to get an array of PathPoint (covered below) objects; these will become the points in the animation that define the intervals that we animate between. The animator will send the animated values to the this object, which is the activity instance itself. We implement the setter below to receive those values and pass them along to the actual Button object that we want to move on the screen: public void setButtonLoc(PathPoint newLoc) {
mButton.setTranslationX(newLoc.mX);
mButton.setTranslationY(newLoc.mY);
}
public void moveTo(float x, float y);
public void lineTo(float x, float y);
public void curveTo(float c0X, float c0Y, float c1X, float c1Y, float x, float y);
public Collection getPoints();
public static PathPoint moveTo(float x, float y);
public static PathPoint lineTo(float x, float y);
public static PathPoint curveTo(float c0X, float c0Y, float c1X, float c1Y, float x, float y);
public PathPoint evaluate(float t, PathPoint startValue, PathPoint endValue) {...}
The return value of evaluator() depends on the operation described by the endValue PathPoint object. if (endValue.mOperation == PathPoint.CURVE) {
float oneMinusT = 1 - t;
x = oneMinusT * oneMinusT * oneMinusT * startValue.mX +
3 * oneMinusT * oneMinusT * t * endValue.mControl0X +
3 * oneMinusT * t * t * endValue.mControl1X +
t * t * t * endValue.mX;
y = oneMinusT * oneMinusT * oneMinusT * startValue.mY +
3 * oneMinusT * oneMinusT * t * endValue.mControl0Y +
3 * oneMinusT * t * t * endValue.mControl1Y +
t * t * t * endValue.mY;
}
For lines, we perform a simple linear interpolation between the start and end points: else if (endValue.mOperation == PathPoint.LINE) {
x = startValue.mX + t * (endValue.mX - startValue.mX);
y = startValue.mY + t * (endValue.mY - startValue.mY);
}
For moves, we simply jump to the location defined by the end value: else {
x = endValue.mX;
y = endValue.mY;
}
Finally, we create a new PathPoint with this calculated xy information, which will be passed to the setButtonLoc() method seen above:return PathPoint.moveTo(x, y);
by Chet Haase (noreply@blogger.com) at January 04, 2012 05:49 PM
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 530,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 7 sold-out events for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Until quite recently, probably every 5 minutes on average, every waking hour, I would take my phone out of its holster (or wake it up, if docked) and glance at it, to make sure I hadn't missed any attempts to contact me. Frequently, I found I had: even with a belt holster, the phone's vibration is easy to miss. Now, I just look at my watch instead, and almost never miss any such notification in the first place: a watch vibrating is much more noticeable.
…so I never actually see the watch full of notifications like this. :-) The watch in question is a MetaWatch (digital), and I think it's a pretty neat idea. In contrast to previous smart watches I've seen, it's not trying to be much of a computer in its own right, just an add-on for an existing smartphone (or other Bluetooth device), providing an always-on, glanceable 96x96 LCD display and 6 buttons. The battery life is quite reasonable: about two days on mine, which I'm constantly messing with, some people report four days and five should be possible. It's built around a TI MSP430 and you can modify the firmware if you want, but currently that requires non-free tools and, in any case, I find there's more fun to be had hacking the supplied Android app ("MetaWatch Manager" or MWM), where you have a net connection and the data on your phone to play with. The firmware defines a few modes: idle (showing the time), full-screen application and full-screen notification.
I've not seen anything else quite like this: the LiveView seems much less hackable, the inPulse has one button as its only form of input (why?!), the WIMM One (no detail there, so have a review) is very shiny but is trying to be an independent smart device (running everything on the watch, with its own wifi connection) and is correspondingly more expensive, and all of the above seem like they'd have trouble achieving a four-day battery life.
I should mention at this point that it took a few heinous hacks in MWM and a modified build of Android to get to the photo above. The default UI out of the box is rather less information-dense:
I wanted to make better use of the pixels on mine. I suppose the stock layout does give you something pretty to show people in the absence of any notifications: mine is just the time, date and temperatures in that situation.
You can look through my commits on github to see what else I'm up to. Earlier today I mapped a button to act like a Bluetooth headset button: play/pause music and answer/hangup calls. I also finally got the Remember The Milk API to cooperate, so I can press a button as I'm walking into the supermarket and see my shopping list on the watch. The next step would be a UI to flip through the items and mark them as completed.
I'm also looking to improve the UI on the phone screen: the settings screen is about 10 screenfuls long and should be split, and I think the main screen could be much more useful. Currently it's just a text dump of various bits of status, but what if it showed you the current watch display (a feature I liked in Cicada) and let you remap buttons using dropdowns? Something like this…
Food for thought, at least. Meanwhile, quite a few others seem to be joining in, a few weird and wonderful projects have been going for some time and the forums seem to have a friendly and helpful community of users and developers. I think I'm going to have fun with this. :-)
Comments preferred at http://chris.boyle.name/2011/12/hello-metawatch using OpenID/Facebook/Twitter (comments elsewhere are unlikely to reach me).
Two years ago today, still a junior in college and bored out of my mind at home, I started this blog with a humble post.
My goal for this blog was simple: I wanted to share not just my coding experiences, and little tips and tricks I picked up along the way, but I wanted to share my code – and tons of it. I’m a firm believer that sometimes, the most helpful way to learn how to master a platform/language is just by looking at tons of code.
And now, 800,000 views and 40 tutorials later, I hope I was able to accomplish that to some extent. What do you guys think?
This blog has been a joy to keep up with and even though I’m starting to run out of tutorial ideas, I hope you guys continue to find great use out of it.
Until next time, happy coding, and:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("MERRY CHRISTMAS!");
sb.append("AND");
sb.append("HAPPY BIRTHDAY THINK ANDROID!");
System.out.println(sb.toString());
- jwei
The 80s are back with a bang. Space battles to the sweet and nostalgic sound of synthesizers
take you back to your childhood back when R-Type was truly a gaming icon. This time around
the classic game is joining the ranks of the world’s most respected Android apps. While I’m sure anyone old enough to remember
arcade halls understand just how awesome this game really is, R-Type may not be as well known to
the younger crowd.
The game is a classic arcade-style shooter i.e. one where you’ve got to have your finger glued to
the trigger. You’re aim is to fight against the (obviously) very evil Bydo empire and come out of
it alive. As you whizz through space at breakneck speeds, you have to blow up incoming enemies
while picking up power-ups, upgrading your weapons and collecting other useful boosts.
It may all sound extremely simple, but the actual game is extremely challenging and requires quite
a lot of agility and skill. After all, it’s not easy to keep a cool head when you’ve got enemies flying
and shooting at you from all over the place. One hit is enough to down your spaceship and you’ve
got a total of 5 lives to live through before it’s game over time.
It’s thrilling, it’s addictive – in short, R-Type is everything a classic space shooter should be. The awesome retro
graphics and sound effects recreate an atmosphere that is best described as 8-bit heaven.
by Chet Haase (noreply@blogger.com) at December 14, 2011 10:58 PM
Abduction!
Amazon Appstore
Amazon Wireless
AndroMarket
Android Activist
Android Apps
Android Authority
Android Bloke
Android Buffet
Android Developers
Android Games
Android Games
Android Magic
Android Police
Android Tapp
Android UI
Android from Scratch
Android-Games
AndroidBytes
AndroidPIT
AndroidTip Guys
AndroidUK
Androidsx
Androitism
Andromo Development
Androzoom
App Review Source
Badlogic Games
Bain Labs
Bill Lahti
Blue Scream
Brain Flush
Carl and Kevin from Novoda
Chet Haase
Chris Boyle
Chris Hager
Coderz Heaven
Dan Morrill
Dario Laverde
David Welton
Droid Lessons
Droid Sector
DroidDevelop Stream
DroidGamers
Eclipse Source
Ed Burnette
Electric Goat
Everything Android
Everything and Anything Android
Four Feet Software
Fred Grott
Frederic Hornain
Gabor Paller
Galaxy Tab Review
Galaxy Tabs
Getting Android
Google And Blog
Google Phone
Gushiku Studios
Hakan Tandogan
Hello Android
Hugo Visser
James Elsey
Jason Wei
Josh Guilfoyle
Jumblee
Kenneth Lewelling
LandOfDroid
Lars Vogel
Larva Labs
LiteDroid Studios
Luke Meyer
MakeMobile
Marakana
Mark Murphy
Marshall Farrier
Matt Oakes
Matt Quigley
Matthew Rollings
Michael Maitlen
Mobnotes
Monodroyd
Mutual Mobile
NeatPIX
Nikhil Gupta
Notion Ink
PewPew dev blog
Phil Hassey
Recharge Games
Romain Guy
Sameer Singh
Sean Catlin
Shantanu Goel
Skyler Slade
SlideME
Stripeymilk
Swarm
Tasos Kleisas
Tesuji Games
The Powerbase
This Green Machine
Top Android Phones
Tughi
Ugo Sangiorgi
Volker Leck
XDA Developers
droidconUK
