Scottyab's blog

programming, mobile apps, running and me

Archive for category android

when your hot you’re on Fire

Sep 29

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Kindle fireFinally the new Kindle ‘Fire’ was announced yesterday with much promise for content and mass market pricing. As a consumer I’m really excited about an android tablet at that price with the potential to sell millions.

As a Android developer I’m still stoked ,  true it’s a highly customised version of Android (which i’m coining the phrase ”Amzoid”) and which api level or specific system features are still unconfirmed (based on 2.1 I hear rumoured). An app approval process to boot!

So my life just got more complicated but I see it as an challenge.  The same as I see the current fragmentation issues; it being a developer challenge rather than an issue for customer and businesses.

My biggest questions to Amazon are

a) When can we get the great cloud based music and video player’s in the UK?!

b) When can UK devs get hold of one?

I got together with Sarah at Mubaloo and wrote a few articles and they got published, yay! check them out:

http://mobile-device.biz/content/item.php?item=31987 [be prepared for the big head shot :S ]

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/content/mubaloo-blows-hot-and-cold-kindle-fire

http://www.telecomtv.com [extra points for those who spot the misspelling of Bown ;)]

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Gambling and Android

Sep 23

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Just encase anyone else was curious as me about gambling on Android marketplace or the alternatives.

Gambling is not permitted on the Android marketplace. Quote from the t&c‘s  “Gambling: We don’t allow content or services that facilitate online gambling, including but not limited to, online casinos, sports betting and lotteries.” -

Alternative app stores:

  • Vodafone and Orange have their own Android app stores, however Vodafone note that can’t be “Gambling-related”, confident Orange will be the same.
  • Amazon app store is US only

So it looks as if getjar is the only viable app store at the moment that allows gambling apps in addition to distributing directly (which you can do with Android). For example client could have the application .apk downloadable from their website.

Hope this saves someone time when looking it up.

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Android Magazine issue 3

Sep 22

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Managed to make it in to Android Magazine issue 3 with an interview I did about Sony/Amazon Android tablets. Check out page 7, here’s a PDF scan of the article that someone else scanned in [honest].

If you haven’t read the magazine yet it’s well worth checking out, it’s not just for geeks like me ;)

Updated with correct cover image and link to info

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I Heart App Design

Sep 3

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Started a tumblr blog to highlight some of my fav and superbly designed Android apps. http://iheartappdesign.tumblr.com/

Hoping to add to it regularly and tag them so other devs and app designs can see good examples of sign on page or dashboard.   Looking for a better tumblr theme – watch this space.

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Run ADB from terminal on Ubuntu

Jul 9

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Developing  Android on Ubuntu? here’s how to define your JAVA HOME and PATH:

What you’ll need:

  • Path to your Java installation
  • Path to your Android SDK installation
  • admin password

On windows you’d edit your environment variables, on linux you edit the .bashrc file.

Run this command:
sudo gedit $HOME/.bashrc

prompted for admin password.

Add the following lines to your .bashrc. Please ensure where you installed the Java libraries and your android sdk. The below reflects default installation directories.

export JAVA_HOME=”/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.24;”
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME”/android-sdk-linux_86/platform-tools”

Save file.

Run this command to reload your .bashrc:
source ~/.bashrc

Test by typing adb version
You should get something like
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.26

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ActivityNotFoundException after refactor? watch for the missing dot! [update fixed in ADK r11]

May 15

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Upodate: this is now fixed in ADT r11. Kudos to ADT team.
After refactoring Activity name from MyContactDetailsPage to ContactDetailsPage I spend a age trying to figure out why I suddenly started getting ActivityNotFoundExceptions.
Manifest before:
<activity android:name=”.contacts.MyContactDetailsPage”
android:label=”@string/app_name”
android:configChanges=”locale” />
Manifest after:
<activity android:name=”contacts.ContactDetailsPage”
android:label=”@string/app_name”
android:configChanges=”locale” />
Looks the same right? or at least the activity name has renamed, yay, but however Eclispe refactor has missed the dot prefix, so Android couldn’t find the activity, hence the exception. This drove me crazy for a good half an hour, I didn’t notice the missing dot. I guess its a good reason to use fully qualified package names when defining activities.+
04-28 11:39:19.623: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(28696): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
04-28 11:39:19.623: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(28696): android.content.ActivityNotFoundException: Unable to find explicit activity class {com.scottyab.android.proj/com.scottyab.android.proj.contacts.ContactDetailsPage}; have you declared this activity in your AndroidManifest.xml?
04-28 11:39:19.623: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(28696):     at android.app.Instrumentation.checkStartActivityResult(Instrumentation.java:1404)
04-28 11:39:19.623: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(28696):     at android.app.Instrumentation.execStartActivity(Instrumentation.java:1378)
04-28 11:39:19.623: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(28696):     at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:2817)

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Eclipse Crashing on Ubuntu 10.10 randomly

May 15

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

Encase anyone else is also having issues with eclipse or STS crashing or randomly closing on ubuntu? try running the latest official Sun JDK (instead of openJDK) is in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Official Partner Repository Thanks to the guys at webup8 for how to enable. There’s also a good stackoverflow question here.

The error i was getting…

# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
#  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb53d1635, pid=3933, tid=1804258160
#
# JRE version: 6.0_20-b20
# Java VM: OpenJDK Server VM (19.0-b09 mixed mode linux-x86 )
# Derivative: IcedTea6 1.9.7
# Distribution: Ubuntu 10.10, package 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1
# Problematic frame:
# J  com.android.dx.rop.code.Rops.ropFor(ILcom/android/dx/rop/type/TypeBearer;Lcom/android/dx/rop/type/TypeList;Lcom/android/dx/rop/cst/Constant;)Lcom/android/dx/rop/code/Rop;
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please include
# instructions how to reproduce the bug and visit:
#   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/
#

## A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:##  SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0xb53d1635, pid=3933, tid=1804258160## JRE version: 6.0_20-b20# Java VM: OpenJDK Server VM (19.0-b09 mixed mode linux-x86 )# Derivative: IcedTea6 1.9.7# Distribution: Ubuntu 10.10, package 6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1# Problematic frame:# J  com.android.dx.rop.code.Rops.ropFor(ILcom/android/dx/rop/type/TypeBearer;Lcom/android/dx/rop/type/TypeList;Lcom/android/dx/rop/cst/Constant;)Lcom/android/dx/rop/code/Rop;## If you would like to submit a bug report, please include# instructions how to reproduce the bug and visit:#   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/#

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findr version 0.1 released

Feb 17

Posted by scottyab in android, tech | View Comments

Finally got around to creating the additional marketplace images and application signing  to publish my first android app findr.

It’s still a beta so expect a few issues.findr feature graphic mosaic

I’m working on:

  • better storage to cache downloaded data
  • allow saving to SD card
  • better compression when setting as wallpaper
  • Live wallpaper

Why not give this a whirl and resist the 1 star ratings (if you can) and instead post some feedback or feature requests below or tweet me.

Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across computers. 2GB account is free! http://db.tt/Tk9RpcD (Shameless referral alert)

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Findr Beta

Feb 1

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

My first android app is almost ready for the market place, drop me a tweet if you want to test the beta.

Description:

Findr allows the user to search the popular photo sharing website Flickr for images that have been tagged with location data. For example: architecture in New york. The retrieved items are displayed as either a list of thumbnail images or as locations on a google map. Selecting an item allows you to see more details and a long press on an item in the list enables the user to set the image as their device wallpaper.

Technical Notes:

I have used Yahoo Pipes Flickr module for this app as it’s a quick and easy way of the required images with geo data.  I’ll look to use the Flickr API directly for the next version.  I’ve developed Findr for Android version 2.1 allowing it to be compatible with the majority of Android devices.
I have used this opportunity as a chance to experiment with a two 3rd party libraries showing my willingness to build on the efforts of the Android community and satisfy my programming desire to code efficiently:
  1. Spring Android- I’m currently studying towards becoming a SpringSource Certified  Professional and I have discovered a version of their useful RestTemplate for Android I’ve used this to retrieve the RSS feed.
  2. ThumbnailAdapter  by Mark Murphy aka Commons ware – Mark mentioned this at Droidcon 2010. This has been specifically created to download thumbnails in the background without blocking the UI thread. This was ideal for the list items page.
Also based on Google’s UI guidelines I’ve added the Action bar element, using example resources from the Google IO Schedule application.

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Apps for Good @Droidcon 2010

Nov 4

Posted by scottyab in android | View Comments

The idea to teach young people aged 18-26 about application development and generating ideas and solutions focused on improving the community. Couple of guys from the Apps for Good project/course gave a short presentation about Apps for Good and their of the applications. They had a  string focus on paper prototyping and implemented there ideas using Google App inventor.
It sounded a really worth while project so check out their site and interesting Apps: Oyster check, Stop and Search, Student voice

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