GeekYouUp's Mobile Blog

Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer finally updated!

2012-01-06T16:46:00.002Z

Finally after almost a year of good intent, the updated version of Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer for Android has just gone live, v5.0.0. It'll be making its way through the interweb caches to an Android Market near you soon.

Thank you so much +Marie Schweiz (http://marie-schweiz.de/) for your awesome designs!

Updates:
- New clean design
- Action Bar on all versions (using ActionBarCompat)
- Touch feedback on all elements
- Light face for stopwatch, Dark face for countdown
- Lap Times separated out
- Built for Android 4.0 with support for versions 2.0+
- Portrait / Landscape layouts for all sceen sizes including QVGA and Tablets

Big fixes:
- Sporadic countdown alarm notifications fixed
- Galaxy Tab time appearance fixed
- QVGA layouts fixed
- Other minor issues resolved

Source available at http://android-ultimatestopwatch.googlecode.com
Comments and questions to the post on Google+ please so I can respond https://plus.google.com/u/0/115995639636688350464/posts/KhqUhC1ezB4

Android 4.0 ADB Backup / Restore

2011-12-19T15:21:00.000Z

Android 4.0 ADB Backup/Restore
I switch phones quite a bit and the cloud is immensely useful for that, almost all of my #Android apps restore and most of the data is up there, even my wifi settings and wallpaper get reinstalled. But games are still lagging behind on this, they rarely keep their settings in the cloud or give a backup/restore option.

I really didn't want to lose my 'World of Goo' progress so I've just used adb backup/restore to pull it off one ICS device and push it onto another. Worked a treat.

The command lines I used:
> adb backup -f worldofgoo.bak com.twodboy.worldofgoofull
and a little dialog appears on the phone screen to confirm the backup and offer the chance to enter a password to protect.

> adb restore worldofgoo.bak
and another little dialog appears to confirm the restore

et voila, done. Other options on adb backup allow for full user data backups (-all), just type adb to see all options.

adb backup [-f ] [-apk|-noapk] [-shared|-noshared] [-all] [-system|-nosystem] []
- write an archive of the device's data to .
If no -f option is supplied then the data is written
to "backup.ab" in the current directory.
(-apk|-noapk enable/disable backup of the .apks themselves
in the archive; the default is noapk.)
(-shared|-noshared enable/disable backup of the device's
shared storage / SD card contents; the default is noshared.)
(-all means to back up all installed applications)
(-system|-nosystem toggles whether -all automatically includes
system applications; the default is to include system apps)
( is the list of applications to be backed up. If
the -all or -shared flags are passed, then the package
list is optional. Applications explicitly given on the
command line will be included even if -nosystem would
ordinarily cause them to be omitted.)

adb restore - restore device contents from the backup archive

ViewPager example from PAUG

2011-07-23T06:11:00.015Z

During a recent session at the Paris Android User Group (hi PAUG!) we did a live coding of a ViewPager example, it took around 5 minutes. What is a ViewPager? It is a tasty new class smothered in awesome sauce on a bed of rocking adapters, seriously I think I may use at least one in every Android app I make from now on. It was released as part of the updated Compatibility Package.

White on green was a great choice, right? very.... visible.

If you search for 'android view pager' you'll see many questions on how to implement smooth, finger tracking, horizontal view paging in Android, so it seems appropriate the solution is called ViewPager. ViewPager was launched at the end of last week as part of the updated Compatibility package and supports Android 1.6+.

Some of you may have been aware of the Workspace example open sourced with the I/O Sched app. An important difference between ViewPager and Workspace is that ViewPager pulls its views from an adapter, so like with a ListView as the items are slid off the screen they can be recycled and/or brought back in on the right side of the screen. The sample code for ViewPager shows this being done with a FragmentPagerAdapter, where each view is a fragment, giving you an amazing amount of control over your application.

In this example we are just sliding TextViews on and off the screen, here is the complete guide:

1) Download the update from Android SDK & AVD manager: Available Packages -> Android Repository -> Android Compatibility Package, revision 3. It will be installed in \extras\android\compatibility\v4

2) Create a new Android Project (I'm using Eclipse) and include the library. Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries -> Add External JARs -> android-support-v4.jar, it is in the install directory.
Update: As Thomas says if you're using the latest ADT you can now just right-click on your project -> Android Tools -> Add Compatibility Library

3) Your should now be able to use ViewPager in your Activity

4) If you use ViewPager in an xml layout, be sure to use the full reference, e.g.

<android.support.v4.view.ViewPager
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:id="@+id/awesomepager"/>

5) Create a PagerAdapter to serve up your Views to the ViewPager. The key methods to implement are getCount(), instantiateItem(), destroyItem() and isViewFromObject() here are my implementations along with some JavaDoc from the source.

Note: It is up to the developer to add the views they are creating in instantiateItem() to the collection being passed in. The converse applies to destroyItem(), you must remove the item from the collection. The collection in this example is the ViewPager that is using the PagerAdapter.

The complete project source is at http://code.google.com/p/viewpagerexample/

A more professional and complete example can be found in the Compatibility Package samples (in the install directory), where a FragmentPagerAdapter implementation is provided. Using fragments inside a ViewPager can provide much better structure to an application as each view has its own FragmentActivity.

Supporting Honeycomb pt2: Updating the Ultimate Stopwatch

2011-06-21T06:08:00.014Z

For most developers, taking advantage of the features of Honeycomb is also going to involve ensuring their app runs on tablets. It is one thing to do this right from the inception of an app or game, but often a much harder task to upgrade an already complete project to look great on larger screens.

If your app has multiple views then you can utilise fragments to show more than one of them at the same time. If not then you can think about any other data or views that may be able to augment it, or possibly increase the size of some elements.

In the case of the Ultimate Stopwatch the counting digits clearly need to be larger, then the remaining screen space can be used to include an easier to access list of lap times and split times. I mocked up some wire frames and settled on the following design.

So how do you make this magic happen? Well, as the Ultimate Stopwatch uses a SurfaceView and I spent so long getting the small screen UI right, I didn't really want to mess with it, so I'm going to leave it alone and just add new layouts for x-large devices. For many apps, especially those using standard layouts, it is less of an issue and the Android Compatibility package is the best option for a consistent application. I am however going to use fragments for the new layouts, to give me the best control over the larger screen whilst keeping my class files smaller. I'll have a fragment for the animated stopwatch view, one for the counter digits and one for the lap times.

1. In your project properties set the Android Build Target to 11

2. Tell Android that your app is optimised for Honeycomb by updating the androidmanifest.xml by adding <uses-sdk android:targetSdkVersion="11" /> as per my last post, which also shows how to enable hardware acceleration for good measure.

3. To totally segment my previous code I created a new Activity which decides which version of the app to launch based on OS version and screen size, not forgetting to update the AndroidManifest.xml.

4. I've done custom layouts for both landscape and portrait to give optimal experiences. As I'd used fragments it made the portrait view much easier, it only took a couple of minutes.

5. Another thing to remember is that your menu items will now appear in the Action Bar. It is good practice to let Android know which items it can hide under the overflow button if necessary by appending android:showAsAction="ifRoom" in to the item in your Menu.xml.

6. When building the layouts and activities, be mindful of the fragment lifecycle, making sure to inflate your views in the onCreateView() method.

7. To add a little more Honeycomb goodness I also used ObjectAnimator to do a 180 degree animation on the lap times fragment when switching to Countdown Mode and back again, this hides the times and informs the user of the mode the app is in. I also freshened up the Countdown time select dialog with the new NumberPicker.

Launching this update was also a great opportunity to refresh the Android Market listing, adding new screenshots, featured image and descriptions.

The full source of the Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer is available at http://code.google.com/p/android-ultimatestopwatch/

For those of you who want to know how USW looked in landscape on a tablet before this overhaul, prepare yourselves:

Follow me on twitter for further Android related updates.

Supporting Honeycomb pt1: targetSdkVersion=11

2011-05-21T15:59:00.023Z

Since the day I started at Google I've been trying to find the time to update all of my Android apps to support Honeycomb. However, I'm into my 3rd month and various distractions, like the awesome I/O, have meant that I haven't touched any of them.

So, here we go, part 1, Honeycomb support for 3 of the 9 apps I have live in the Android Market. I'll confess now that I've chosen the easiest 3, in fact they are all so easy that there is just one line to change. The apps are Auto Bright, Dimmer (Night Mode) and The Cleaner.

These apps all run in compatibility mode on Honeycomb, which means it shows the 'menu button' in the system bar to the right of the previous tasks, home and back buttons. To sort this out all you have to do is update the AndroidManifest to ensure it includes:

<uses-sdk android:targetSdkVersion="11"/>

Now that extra compatibility icon will vanish and technically these apps will support Honeycomb, perfect!

For the sake of completeness I've taken this opportunity to also furnish 'The Cleaner' with support for Honeycomb's Lights out Mode. This mode reduces the system bar elements on a Honeycomb device to small dots, making them less distracting. It is usually used for immersive experiences in games, video players, image galleries, etc...

To set Lights Out Mode on a view, just set the system UI visibility to STATUS_BAR_HIDDEN.

v.setSystemUiVisibility(View.STATUS_BAR_HIDDEN);

--- Updated 24/05/2011 ---
As WarGoth points out there is no need to use reflection to maintain backwards compatibility, simply wrapping the code in an android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT>=android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB check is sufficient. Clarification in the comments from Weeds that this only applies to Android 2.0+, the class loader would throw a java.lang.VerifyError on 1.5/1.6.

if(android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT>=android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) {
v.setSystemUiVisibility(View.STATUS_BAR_HIDDEN);
}
--- End ---

I did it slightly differently by using reflection to maintain compatibility with older versions of Android without duplicating classes:

Class classView = Class.forName("android.view.View");
Method methodSetSystemUIVisibility = classView.getDeclaredMethod("setSystemUiVisibility", int.class);
methodSetSystemUIVisibility.invoke(v,1);

The full source of these apps is available on Google Code

Part 2 of this series will take on converting one of my more complicated applications.

Android Nexus 1 Flashing - assert failed: write_raw_image("/tmp/boot.img", "boot") - solved

2010-12-21T10:00:00.009Z

NOTE: I've since noticed that WiFi doesn't work with the method outlined below, however it does work with "fastboot boot boot.img" so further investigation is required. Some other users are saying that reflashing the hboot helps, but there are drawbacks to that as well.... Still if you are having this error and want to try gingerbread asap then the solution below is good:

It is a fun error isn't it, thousands of Nexus 1 users are happily flashing the latest ROMs onto their devices with no issues and when you try it you get something a little like this:

Installing update...
assert failed: write_raw_image("/tmp/boot.img", "boot")
E:Error in /sdcard/update.zip
(Status 7)
Installation aborted.

Same here, however there is light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is a lack of space to flash the new boot image, the cause could be one of two things:

1) You have some corrupted memory in the boot space, shrinking the size of the available boot partition and not allowing larger boot images to reside there.
2) This is a guess and I'd be interested in feedback: The Nexus 1 I use for custom ROMs is from the very very first Google seeding back in late 2009. I wonder if these devices had slightly smaller boot partitions.

Either way, there is a solution! The boot partition and the recovery partition are physically very similar, so after flashing the latest Gingerbread ROM (Gingerbread-Rooted-Gapps-v.06-signed.zip in this case, from the awesome XDA forums), I do this:

1) Extract boot.img from the ROMs zip file
2) Connect my N1 to my PC via USB
3) Boot the N1 into Fastboot by holding down the trackball when turning it on.
4) Flash the boot.img into the recovery partition:
"fastboot flash recovery boot.img" (fastboot is in the platform-tools directory of the SDK these days)

Now when I boot my Nexus 1 I hold down the trackball to get to Fastboot and then choose recovery mode, et voila Gingerbread launches.

If you need to get back to a real recovery mode you can either boot into Fastboot then boot a recovery image from your PC e.g. "fastboot boot recovery-RA-nexus-v2.0.0-CM.img"
Or reflash a recovery image, do your thing and then reflash the boot image.

I found this trick out at XDA Forums (where else?), here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=731657

1 day into a relationship with the SonyEricsson LiveView

2010-12-01T09:49:00.005Z

I absolutely love its geekiness. I'm running it with a stock Nexus 1 on 2.2.1. Yes It does disconnect all the time and I spend quite a lot of time turning it off and on again, re-pairing the bluetooth and generally willing it into life. But, I'll definitely knock a couple of apps up for it in the hope that SonyEricsson make a second generation device with a higher res screen, full touch support and a longer battery life. Some say the battery life is pathetic, but that is an understatement, a watch that doesn't get through half a day is crazy.

So far the best use for it is remote controlling the music players, i've had no problem with the built in Music remote control and my Nexus 1. It supports play/pause, volume control, next/previous track. The Where Am I plugin is ok, brings up a map of your current location on the LiveView. The GMail and SMS plugins don't seem particularly reliable, but I'll keep persisting.

Providing your Android Activity with a Theme

2010-08-24T07:12:00.013Z

I've recently been asked a couple of times by new Android developers how 'Tech Buzz Widget' manages to overlay itself ontop of the desktop, allowing your wallpaper to show through. Assuming that it is easier to Google the answer than ask me, it may be somethiing that there isn't enough detail on already. So here is my 10 cents.

The main detail is to set the correct android:theme for your activity in the AndroidManifest.xml. For Tech Buzz Widget we used android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"

So the activity looked like this:

<activity android:name=".FullArticleView" class=".FullArticleView"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>

Once you've done that you you'll see that any elements of your layout that are transparent or unfilled will show through onto the underlying application or desktop. To make this more obvious in Tech Buzz we put a margin around the entire layout.

The exact details of all the activity themes available in the current Android platform are available in the Android source here: http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/frameworks/base.git;a=blob;f=core/res/res/values/themes.xml

Search for Theme.Translucent and you'll get the idea. There are fullscreen themes as well if you want to get rid of the notification bar. You can also define your own themes in a similar way.

1 Million Installs of Battery Widget for Android!!

2010-06-15T08:34:00.009Z

As far as milestones go I'm thinking that this is a pretty big one. I've just returned from a trip to the Le Mans 24 hour race to find out that the first Android app that I submitted to the Market has shot through 1m installs. Fingers crossed that this is the one that gets you an E-mail from Mr Rubin ;)

Battery Widget is currently ranked 24th 'top free' application in the Productivity category in the UK and has been in the top 30 for over a year with a top 5 spot for a while. I'm thinking it may be time to revisit the app and sharpen it up for the higher res screens of today's Android devices and allow a few different colour combinations.

Although I'm super happy that Battery Widget is staying up the Android charts it is a double edged sword. As an Android fan-boi super-user fanatic there is definitely still an issue with freshness and churn in the top spots of the Free/Paid Android apps/games in the Market. The Market algorithm that is keeping Battery Widget up near the top for over a year is also making it hard for new apps to break through and for me as a user to find those exciting new applications. I'd 100% definitely sacrifice the popularity of this app for a more harsh ranking of older applications. I wonder what it would take now for a new application to enter the store and knock Battery Widget down a spot or two? It is still getting more new installs a day than all of my other apps combined.

You may say that the Market is favouring new Android users and making it easier for them to setup their devices with top apps, but there should be a better way for long time users of discovering new awesomeness without trawling through hundreds of pages of 'Just In' apps. The awesome apps are out there and I usually find multiple new great apps or games each time I have 15+ minutes to spare to 'trawl'. No doubt Google are fully aware of this and it'll just be a matter of time.

Thanks to all who have downloaded! Here's to the next Million.

Creating an Android Activity with no UI

2010-04-12T09:16:00.011Z

Since I released 'Dimmer (Night Mode)' into the Android Market I've had a few Android devs asking how to create Activity based applications with no UI.
The answer is that you need to set the activity theme in the manifest, for dimmer I use:

android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"

like this in AndroidManifest.xml:

<activity android:name=".Dimmer"
android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"
android:label="@string/app_name">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>

The latest set of activity themes are defined in /res/values/themes.xml in the Android source here.

Which may not be particularly user friendly but it also demonstrates how you can create your own activity themes in your own /res/values/themes.xml if you so desire.

Note I'm not using the theme 'NoDisplay' as I do actually show notifications on the screen as the Activity is going about its business.

Getting Started with a Nexus 1 - Apps, Hints & Tips

2010-02-21T08:14:00.015Z

Quite a few of my friends, especially in the mobile industry, have aquired Nexus One's recently and more often than not it is their first foray into the world of Android.

Over the last couple of days I've been asked to help set several of them up with my preferred settings, applications, games, etc... So I'll maintain this post and from now on I can point people here.

First Boot
First and most importantly is that if you have multiple G-Mail and Google Apps accounts, make sure you sign in with your 'primary' one first. The N1 may have multiple GMail account support but it will only sync one calendar, the first one you enter. Also the first sync is going to use a whole bunch of data, so best to be on wifi.

If you received your Nexus 1 at MWC 2010 it will now inform you that a firmware update is ready. This update adds multi-touch support to the Browser, Gallery and Google Maps, go for it, it doesn't take long.

Android Usage Hints
Notification Bar - Top of the screen where the clock and battery level resides. New notifications from the apps on your phone will appear here. To see the detail of the notifications just drag the bar down.

Menu Button - On the N1 it is the second button in, above the trackball, with the 4 lines on it. Most apps have a Menu and this button makes it appear. Holding the button for a second also forces the On Screen Keyboard to appear, which can be a useful override at times.

Home Button - A bit like the button on the iPhone, always gets you back to your home screen. Hold it down to view the last 6 apps that you've run. These aren't necessarily still running.

Long Press - One of the interaction metaphors in Android, especially on items shown in a list. It is akin to the right click in Windows. Just touch and hold an item for a couple of seconds and sometimes a context sensitive menu will appear.

Stars - Look for small stars in the top right of UI's. They appear in G-Mail (you should know about them there for 'starring' mails), but they also appear on Google Maps for saving favourties if you long press on a location and touch the address bubble. Another place is in contacts, you can star a contact and then add a live-folder called 'Starred Contacts' to your home screen, keeping the most contacted people easy to access.

Widgets - Android allows Widgets to be displayed on all 5 of your N1's home screens. Press the 'Menu' button, then Add, Widgets. If the 'Add' button is greyed out then you probably don't have enough space on the current home screen to add another widget, try swiping to another one first.

Shortcuts - You can easily add shortcuts on your home screens, not only to apps but also Contacts, Bookmarks, etc. Go to Menu, Add, Shortcuts

Folders - Very handy at keeping related shortcuts together. I have a Games folder on my desktop with shortcuts to all my games in it. To change the name of a folder, open it then long press on the current name, a change name dialog will appear.

Google Search box / Search button: This little box or button can do a whole lot. It searches contacts, applications and the internet. Try it out, also supports voice search.

Settings
You can find your Nexus's settings by pressing the 'Menu' button, then selecting 'Settings'. For example I go into Settings -> Wireless & Networks -> Wi-Fi Settings -> Press 'Menu' Button -> Advanced -> Wi-Fi sleep policy, and set it to Never as I have issues with the N1 failing to reconnect to our office Network. Then I manage when wifi is on or off with the pre-installed 'Power Control' home screen widget.

Auto Screen Brightness is useful at getting the best out of the N1's OLED screen and battery life, it is in Settings -> Sound & Display -> Brightness -> Automatic brightness

Allow non-market application downloading/side-loading by going to Settings -> Applications -> Unknown sources

Add a little security to your N1 by setting an unlock pattern in Settings -> Locations & Security -> Set unlock pattern. If you enter the wrong pattern too many times the phone locks up until you re-enter your G-Mail password.

Check for System updates from time to time in Settings -> About Phone -> System Updates

Also in 'About Phone' there is an item 'Battery use' which shows you a breakdown of which apps are using the most battery.

Applications
Market: This is your app-store now, get used to it. All the following apps are in there somewhere. NOTE: If you don't have a SIM card in your phone, or if the Android Market doesn't support payments in your country you will not see any paid apps. It's a feature.

Google Maps: Updates to this are delivered via the Market, the latest update right now includes Multi-Touch and Google Buzz.

Google Listen: Number 1 podcasting app for Android, search for your podcasts or import them and let it get on with it.

beebPlayer: iPlayer for UK Android users, awesome, amazing, thank you.

Weather Widget - Free by Android Apps: In my opinion the best looking weather widget in the Market, I use the 2x1 'Weather Small' varient.

Barcode Scanner: QR Codes are a decent way of transferring data between devices, if this is installed you can not only scan QR Codes but also create them from Contacts, Clipboard, Bookmarks or Applications.

Seesmic: My current fave Twitter client for Android

Flickr Droid: One of several Flickr uploaders, does a decent enough job and adds a Share to Flickr intent into the Gallery sharing options.

London City / London Tube: Both very valuable for someone who uses the London Underground frequently. Between them you get a decent map, line status's, routing and live departure boards (as widgets!)

Qik: If you're into Qik'ing, then the Android client is solid.

gTasks: Syncs with your G-Mail tasks lists if you have any.

Battery Widget: (Yes it is one of mine) I like to know the exact battery level so I have this widget on one of my screens.

Tech/News/Gossip/Gaming Buzz Widgets & Buzz Deck: A set of Widgets/Apps from us at Mippin to keep you upto date with the latest news in your chosen category.

Astro: My favourite file manager for Android, always in beta but works well.

MP3 Store: The Amazon MP3 store is preinstalled on the N1, has previews, special offers and can be a tad dangerous when drunk.

Shazam, Ultimate Stopwatch (me again), Compass, Urban Spoon, i-Music, Google Googles are all also worth checking out

Games
Tower Defence games have taken off well on Android and there are quite a few around. The original was Plox, it is a year old now but worth a bash, the most popular is Robo Defence.

There are also many 'Flight Control' style games, my fave right now is 'Air Control', smooth gameplay, online scores and suitably difficult.

My top 3D games right now are Raging Thunder, Iron Sight, Breakout Legend

I still also like a good card game, there are loads.

Live Wallpapers
The Nexus 1 is the first Android device to support animated, interactive Wallpapers. Check out the preinstalled ones by pressing the 'Menu' Button, then Wallpaper, and Live wallpapers.

There are quite a few new ones now in the market including the 'Digital Rain' from the Matrix and my favourite 'Starfield 3D' which includes double tap for Hyper-space! I've knocked up 'Duck Paper' which is a Duck Hunt based Live Wallpaper, also available in the Market. We're intending on knocking a few more of these out over the next few weeks.

Rooting / Jail breaking

If you're top of your techy game and fancy being able to perform some more advanced functions on your Nexus 1 you need to get root access. Once done you'll be able to install apps for wired tether, wireless tether, screenshot, strobe light, boot animations, Apps to SD, no limits. You'll have super-user root access to your device in the terminal as well. The first stage of gaining root access is to unlock your bootloader, enabling the install of custom ROMs. Google were very clever about this and provided a simple method for doing it, but it warns you it will invalidate your warrenty and place an open padlock onto your boot screen.

I followed the guide over at Android & Me: http://androidandme.com/2010/01/hacks/video-how-to-unlock-and-root-a-nexus-one/

Thanks for reading and happy Android'ing

Android App Optimization: Using Reflection to test if an Android device is using 'Live Wallpapers'

2010-01-27T16:59:00.005Z

I agree this may be a a pretty rare usecase, but I've just spent an hour figuring the details out so I thought it only polite to share them. Oneday, someone, somewhere may benefit.

What is Reflection?
It's been around almost as long as Java, described here and examples from Sun here

Why bother?
We've been receiving complaints that our Buzz Widgets are lagging on the Google Nexus One when Live Wallpapers are enabled. A little testing showed that this was down to the apps blurring out the desktop and rendering the content on top of it. If the desktop has a Live Wallpaper running on it, then blurring it eats some serious processor cycles. I understand that Reflection is more costly than directly calling the APIs, but this is just one simple call.

Why use reflection, not the actual API?
I'd much prefer to only have one version of each of our apps in the Android Market and the APIs for this only became available in the 2.1 SDK. Reflection enables us to use the APIs where available, whilst still letting the app run on devices with older firmwares.

How?
Well to get to the point we want to perform the test

if(WallpaperManager.getInstance(this).getWallpaperInfo() != null){//Live Paper, don't blur}

To do this with Reflection we have to use the methods Class.forName(""), Class.getDeclaredMethod() and Object.invoke() a little like this:

boolean blurBackground = true;
//get the WallpaperManager Class
Class classWallpaperManager = Class.forName("android.app.WallpaperManager");
if(classWallpaperManager != null)
{
//find its .getInstance(this) method
Method methodGetInstance = classWallpaperManager.getDeclaredMethod("getInstance", Context.class);
//invoke the WallpaperManager's .getInstance(this) method to get one
Object objWallpaperManager = methodGetInstance.invoke(classWallpaperManager, this);

//discover the WallpaperManager Object's .getWallpaperInfo() Method
Method methodGetWallpaperInfo = objWallpaperManager.getClass().getMethod("getWallpaperInfo", null);
//invoke it
Object objWallPaperInfo = methodGetWallpaperInfo.invoke(objWallpaperManager, null);
if(objWallPaperInfo!=null)
{
Log.d("WidgetDroid","WallpaperInfo not null");
blurBackground=false;
}
}

Also to ensure it is only run on Android 2.1+ devices I also wrap it in a quick Android Version check and a try/catch block for future safety:

if(Double.parseDouble(android.os.Build.VERSION.RELEASE)>=2.1){...}

Job done, now if the device is using a Live Wallpaper the apps background isn't blurred and all is well again in our Widget World.

The Android Market sweet spot & USW hits the 'final milestone'

2010-01-25T10:23:00.012Z

The Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer for Android has just made it passed the 'final milestone' of 250,000 installs, great stuff. It's my second app to have reached the dizzy heights so far, the next is a couple of months away yet at around 150k. Seems like new device sales are keeping the install rates strong. Reaching 250k has a bizarre effect of dramatically increasing install rates. It is apparently a far more complelling proposition to install an app with >250k installs, almost as if the user starts believing they're missing out on something great. Battery Widget has rocketed from 250k to 450k installs in less than 2 months.

It seems, even though the Android Market is getting pretty busy these days, that if you focus on users desires it is still possible to get decent traction. Live Wallpapers are the sweet spot at the moment, they are being searched for by Nexus 1 users and a decent one will get thousands of downloads in the first week. I spent an hour creating 'Duck Paper' last week and it is now at 3,500 downloads. Content apps are a little trickier, especially if you don't have a recognised brand behind you, make them specific and easy to use, then update weekly.

Creating an Android 2.1 Live Wallpaper

2010-01-12T15:54:00.010Z

Quick disclaimer: this isn't a tutorial, but a brief guide of what Live Wallpapers actually are and how I went about creating 'Duck Paper' - my first Android 2.1 Live Wallpaper. There are tutorials here, from Arno den Hond and here, from AndroGames.net

The Android 2.1 SDK was released today and the only major update was Live Wallpapers, so I thought I'd better find out what they are all about. What I found was quite surprising, I'd imagined that they would be some sort of animation or video playing on the desktop, a bit like MS DreamScene, but actually they are more akin to a an Android application open as the desktop. Live Wallpapers extend the WallpaperService class and the animations and interactions are handled in code, just like in a game. Realising this it seemed reasonable to try and port the only game I've written for Android, Duck Hunt, into a Live Wallpaper.

After less than an hour the first version of 'Duck Paper' was ready - as the ducks fly past in the background you can touch them to shoot them, then they fall off the screen.

Fortunately there is an example Live Wallpaper in the 2.1 SDK called CubeLiveWallpaper. This is definitely the starting point for anyone looking to create their own Live Wallpaper. I opened up this sample project, played with CubeLiveWallpaper1 and merged its Engine with Duck Hunt's SurfaceView code, et voila we have a Live Wallpaper.

Unfortunately I don't have an Android 2.1 device to try it on and it runs pretty slowly in the emulator. Once I've had it tested on a real device I'll put it in the Android Market.

Update: I've had it tested by a friend with a Nexus One and all seems well, so it is now live in the Android Market

Activate Motorola Droid / Milestone Multimedia Dock Mode with a magnet, Save £30

2009-12-16T15:06:00.005Z

Some chap, not me, has figured out that the Motorola Multimedia Dock has a magnet in it which activates 'multimedia mode' on the Motorla Droid / Milestone Android devices, and guess what? it works!

Just put a magnet to the back of the device in the top left corner, like in the image below and it instantly says 'Multimedia Dock Connected', queue lots of cheap cardboard homebrew docs. You can even use your $$$$ phone as a digital picture frame.

Alternatively download DockRunner from the Android Market.

The Final Milestone?

2009-11-23T09:06:00.013Z

From humble beginnings in a post on this blog in May the Battery Widget for Android has become a little more popular. The post from May shows it had 3061 installs and today I'm really rather chuffed to say it has just broken 250,000!!! In Android speak that's 'the final milestone'. The Android Market now lists Battery Widget as having '>250k' installs! Yay.

The install brackets are:
<50,
50 - 100
100 - 500
500 - 1,000
1,000 - 5,000
5,000 - 10,000
10,000 - 50,000
50,000 - 250,000
>250,000

You can get through the first 4 bands pretty quickly, but the last one has taken a while. Battery Widget is now high up in the Productivity Category and is receiving around 1,000 - 2,000 installs a day. Also with just under a 60% retention rate, it is still installed on around 150k devices.

The question that remains though, is whether or not 250k is actually the final milestone. Or is there a some secret next level, like >1,000,000 installs, accompanied by a letter from Andy Rubin maybe?

Buzz Deck reviewed on App Judgment

2009-10-09T11:00:00.004Z

Being a fan of all things Revision 3, you can understand how shockingly happy I was when App Judgment reviewed Buzz Deck!

Now to work on those Cons... a new version is due today with custom web cards, and a faster UI!

Running rings around donut Part 2 - What does the end user get?

2009-09-21T09:52:00.017Z

I've been running Android 1.6 (donut) on my handset for a week now, so here is a quick guide of what to expect, tied to a little expectation management.

Android Market Updates
The most obvious update is the much needed revamp of the Android Market. The new UI provides a far more compelling end user experience, now including application screenshots.

Good job, well done. Although I'd still love to see a recommendation engine included so you get a 'you may like' section. It is still quite easy to miss decent apps/games in the 'Just In' section and the Featured apps list is quite limited.

Quick Search Widget:
A great little addition to the default Android widgets. This little puppy lets you search contacts, applications, bookmarks and web information without actually launching the browser. It is location sensitive and I've used it a lot, +1 for productivity.

Battery Monitor:
So the bad news is that my battery life isn't any better, but on the plus side I can now tell where it is all going. The handy Battery Monitor is very quick to point out the Wireless LAN is a great big battery hog.

VPN Connectivity:
If your home or office has a VPN then this will be a very pleasant little suprise, built in VPN connectivity.

Toggle Switches Widget:
Another nice little add-on, makes simple tasks that little bit easier by giving you instant access to Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and Brightness settings. Does a good job of making a lot of Market apps completely redundant.

Speech Synthesis:
So far only slightly interesting as all it can do is say its test phrase in multiple languages. Hopefully we'll see some apps using this soon.

General System Performance:
Always slightly subjective as every single machine on this rock we call Earth is faster after a wipe and clean operating system install. However I'd claim that it is still absolutely flying after a week of installing 50+ apps and using it more than a tortoise uses its shell.

Running rings around donut - Android 1.6 SDK Screen Sizes

2009-09-16T15:43:00.007Z

Over the past couple of weeks Motorola, SonyEricsson, INQ, LG, GeekPhone ONE, Samsung, Archos and HTC have all make Android related announcements. For an Android fan like myself that is big. Now to top it all off the announcement of the Android 1.6 SDK makes it a pretty good week.

After a few hours hands on, here is what it means to us.

There are new screen sizes supported. In addtion to the regular 320x480px HVGA screen resolution there are now QVGA (240x320), WVGA800 (800x480) and WVGA854 (854x480). But what does that mean for applications? will developers have to update their apps to support the new sizes? Well I've tested all of our Android applications out and the news is good, here are the results:

News Buzz Widget Home Screen WVGA 480x856px:

News Buzz Widget Home Screen QVGA 240x320:

News Buzz Widget WVGA 480x856px:

News Buzz Widget QVGA 240x320px

Somehow Google/Android have managed to get the scaling algorithms to work like magic, they maintain aspect ratios where necessary and scale to fill as much of the screen as they can whenever possible. This knocks a big worry on the head for me, I was concerned about the fragmentation problems of different screen sizes. Of course there are still issues, but they are minimal and most importantly the apps are still perfectly useable and 100% functional.

Good job, well done.

How to Make an Android Home Screen Widget

2009-06-24T14:06:00.003Z

Here's the presentation I gave on Android Home Screen Widgets at the last London Android User Group (Londroid) on 22nd June 2009.

Londroid Android Home Screen Widgets

View more OpenOffice presentations from Richard Hyndman.

Android Widget Crazyness

2009-05-07T13:20:00.008Z

Since my last post I've been Widget'ing away like a good dev, check the Mippin Blog for details of our 'Tech Buzz Widget'

I also wanted to launch a personal widget project as well, so I took a long hard think about what Widgets people really really need and came up with.... wait for it... yes you guessed it... a Battery Widget, doh! Well there wasn't one, so I thought I'd be first at least.

The first incarnation wasn't quite so pretty, but I've got it looking quite nice now. A little 24bit alpha blended glow around the widget helps it blend into any wallpaper. There is also a little charging indicator for the sake of completeness.

If you touch the widget it shows quick links to the Display, Wifi and GPS settings pages. Really this should be replaced with embedded toggles switches to turn GPS/Wifi/Bluetooth/Radio on and off as well as a brightness slider, hopefully I'll get time for that later.

Developing home screen widgets on Android is really enjoyable, so if you have any widget ideas, I may well take you up on them.

By the way, if you are wondering how strong the demand for Widgets on Andorid is right now, the Battery Widget hit 3000 downloads in the first 5 days.

Widgets on Android: Simple, powerful and beautifully formed

2009-04-21T16:51:00.006Z

Today I have Google Joy and more specifically Android Joy. I was reading the Android Developers Blog and the latest article was on the topic of Widgets.

I reached the end of the article and set about creating my own Android home screen widget. It had to go off to Twitter, retrieve the latest status update for @flashy1980, a colleague and good friend, then display it on my home screen. In a period of time less than or equal to 20 minutes I was wondering around the office with a slightly inane grin on my face, showing off my first Android widget.

Some say I'm biased, and I am, I really am, but I love Android. I'm off to play some more with the Widgets API now. Source code for Google's example Widget that I based mine on is here

NB: you need version 1.5 of the Android SDK to create widgets and they only run on a device with a 1.5 firmware. I've installed the 5.0.2Hr3 firmware from the Sapphire-Port-Dream project. Many thanks to @Haykuro for all his firmware efforts.

The increasing complexity of mobile app stores, a developers view

2009-04-14T13:35:00.009Z

Can manufacturers learn from the success of others, or do they always think they can do bigger and better? Apple innovated a beautifully simple end to end business model with a single piece of hardware running objective C apps. The genius of the iPhone app store is in its simplicity, 1 phone, 1 screen size, 1 feature set, 1 integrated way of purchasing and it was preinstalled on all devices from early on.

The second store to open up was the Android Market, it's based on the Apple model and is initially successful. It remains to be seen if this initially simple concept can stand up to the oncoming added complexity of new Android devices being launched with different hardware specs. Certainly Android developers will need to better consider screen resolution and whether a device has a 3D chip, a hardware keyboard, touchscreen or a trackball. It is all starting to get a little more complicated.

Then Blackberry joined the game. The Blackberry AppWorld is a trickier proposition for developers. There are 4 main different screen resolutions to worry about and the Storm of course is touchscreen while the other devices aren't, some have GPS some don't.

Nokia is now almost ready to go live with its offering. Looking at the Ovi store, it is a whole new level of complexity for the poor developer. For a start the uploads can be: Flash, Themes, Ringtones, WRT Widgets, Java apps or Symbian apps. Each of which work on some phones but not on others and for each type there are multiple screen resolutions, operating system varients, feature sets and signing requirements. On top of all of that the Ovi store isn't preinstalled on any devices yet, although the N97 is very likely to be the first.

From simple to complex in 4 steps. I hope no one else has an even more complicated model up their sleeves. What if Nokia had gone for an N97 only app store, pre-installed on all N97's from launch? A simple proposition that is easy to understand. Build up the base and then expand into a thriving environment on other devices. It remains to be seen if the Ovi store will attract the fanactical user base required to breathe life into it and motivate developers to get coding. Personally I think it will grow slowly and survive only due to being presintalled on a lot of high volume devices over the coming year, we shall see.

Android (G1) Market Model: Low-volume Low-cost?

2009-03-30T16:08:00.017Z

I absolutely love developing for the Android platform, I've never felt this way about any other platform. But what if that just isn't enough; In a market where the 'Top 100 Most Popular Games' doesn't contain a single paid game, is there money to be made? Is the userbase sufficient and willing enough to support a developer? is the Market growing fast enough to contribute to ongoing revenues? Here are my frank and open findings based on 3 applications I've made available in the Market over the past 6 weeks:

Case 1 - Shoot the Ducks

Shoot the Ducks is a simple game that's quick to play and looks pretty good. First round is based on the classic 'Duck Hunt', then second round is target practise and then skeet shooting, etc... It took 12-24 hours to developer and I launched it into the Market at a discounted rate for the first 100 installs of £0.50, increasing to £0.79 after that.

Revenues after all fees
Day 1 - £32.94
Day 2 - £36.70
Day 3 - £28.65
Day 4 - £15.60
Day 5 - £6.05
...
Day 9 - £3.30
Day10 - £6.80
Total so far £144.99

Lesson 1
As expected there is an intial peak while the game is in the top 10 Most Recent games. What wasn't expected was an ongoing revenue stream of around £5.00 per day after the app had dropped down the charts. Slow and steady with Low-volume Low-cost. If this revenue keeps up as new Android devices are launched, takeup increases and paid Markets open in other countries, there is hope yet.

An optimistic model would show a developer with 10 games in the Market averaging £5 per day per app. Multiplying that up you have £50 per day, £1500 per month, £18250 per year. I appreciate that isn't up to the standards of some of the iPhone Appstore stories, but it is better than a kick in the nuts for a months work. Of course it still remains to be seen whether 'Shoot the Ducks' is still generating revenue outside of its first month.

Case 2 - Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer

This didn't take too long to build approx 8-12 hrs, but it was designed to be and is regarded as the best Stopwatch / Timer in the Market. I orginally launched it for £0.50. After 2 weeks there had been 12 installs and 8 uninstalls, uninstalling an Android Market application in the first 24 hours results in a full refund. So total revenue after fees was about £1.50.
Not entirly happy with this outcome I decided I may as well make the application free and see what happens. Well what happened next suprised me, the application had 1000+ installs a day for the next few days and is currently at 13031 installs of which 10623 are still installed.

Lesson 2
There were other, very plain stopwatchs in the Market. If there is an app in the store which provides similar functionality to yours for lower cost, then the current G1 userbase won't pay for a nicer UI. However there is a strong demand for free high quality applications, unsuprisingly. Also highlighted by the 37027 installs of another of my free apps, Newton's Cradle.

Case 3 - Latitude Enabler for Root

There is a long and drawn out story behind this application. Check some of my previous Latitiude posts for details. But to nutshell it, T-Mobile UK barred Google Latitude on the T-Mobile G1 in the UK. I discovered a way to reenable it, but the fix only worked if you had "rooted" your G1 (the G1 equivalent to jailbreaking an iPhone, and hilarious to anyone from Austrailia)

Lesson 3
It turns out that G1 owners are a bunch of hackers. There are a lot of 'rooted' G1 phones out there and these guys are more likely to be techies and will pay for useful apps like Wifi Sharing, tethering, VPNs, etc...

In conclusion...
The Android Market is turning around. Paid games are climbing up the charts and I reckon we'll see a paid game break into the top 100 Most Popular Games within the next month. G1 users were slightly spoiled by apps being releassed for free, as payments weren't available in the Market from launch. But users are quickly getting used to the fact that premium content comes at a premium price and are prepared to pay. Developers are settling on relatively low price points, although similar to those found on the iPhone, to try and drive their apps up the Most Popular listings, as that is where the holy grail of seeing 250,000+ installs resides. Top paid games are currently struggling to get 5,000 installs. I'm holding out a lot of hope for some key improvements being made to the Market over the coming months, not least of all a proper website for browsing the apps.

Until then I'll try to exploit the potential of the slow and steady low-volume low-cost model by creating and launching some more quality Android games.

Gadgetshow Flashmob

2009-03-20T15:37:00.002Z

The Gadgetshow presenters have been testing their abilities to get flashmob's together using different tools. Jason was only allowed to use Twitter and Susie (subs'ed very ably by Gail Porter as Susie was ill, get well soon Susie) used Facebook.

On the day the twitter crowd won out by a large margin, I'm guessing around 150 in the twitter crowd compared to about 15 in the Facebook crowd.

A dance off ensued, all good fun, catch the show on Channel 5 on Monday 27th April at 8:00pm.

Re-enabling Latitude on your rooted UK T-Mobile G1

2009-03-09T10:13:00.009Z

UPDATE: 10th March 2009 - I've released an application to do all this for you automatically now, it only works on ROOTED G1's and it is availabe in the Android Marketplace as 'Latitude Enabler for Root' and also on GoogleCode latitude_launcher.apk

--------------
Original Post:
--------------
This has all got out of hand now, I became so frustrated with the Latitude situation on my UK RC9 T-Mobile G1 that I resorted to underhand techniques to re enable latitude on it after it disappeared again.

Google Maps is checking for a value in the gservices table, it checks that "maps_enable_friend_finder" has a value of "1". If it is then it shows the Latitude options in the Maps menu.

I added this value into the table on my rooted RC9 G1 and Latitude reappeared. I'll knock up an App today or tomorrow which resets this value and launches Google Maps, so that latitude is always enabled. If you want to do it for yourself now and you're braver than some and happy with words like adb and sql then you need to:

1) Connect your Rooted G1 to your PC via USB and run 'adb shell' (or use the G1 Terminal App no the phone)
2) su
3) cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
4) sqlite3 settings.db
5) .dump gservices (to see all your current settings and check if maps_enable_friend_finder already exists)
6) INSERT INTO "gservices" (name,value) VALUES('maps_enable_friend_finder','1');
7) .quit
8) exit

Now the Join Latitude button will be shown in Maps again, no need for a reboot.

If it doesn't appear make sure you have the values
<boolean name="FF_SHOWN" value="true" />
<boolean name="SHOW_MY_FRIENDS" value="true" />

in the file /data/data/com.google.android.apps.maps/shared_prefs/com.google.android.maps.MapsActivity.xml

hope it works and helps some of you out there. I'm off to write an app to do this automatically now.

Google Latitude on T-Mobile UK G1 RC9 my final solution

2009-03-06T06:38:00.010Z

7th March 2009 - UPDATE: After a couple of days and reboots Latitude has managed to disable itself again on my G1. Now looking for ways to either reset Google Maps and Latitude to their original state or find a different fix.....

OK I was about to post a blog post (now attached to the end of this one as a 'what not to do'), thinking that all my G1 Latitude problems were solved, but I checked and Latitude had returned to its disabled state. Instead I've found a much better solution here. This has worked for me and I'm now running a version of RC9 which has Latitude enabled. You do need to get root access to your device before you can do this, so the steps are:

1) follow these instructions to get root access on your G1
2) follow this guide to install this updated JF RC9 firmware without a sim in the phone.

and Robert's your Father's brother, you'll end up with this:

And for posterity here is what NOT to do:
Some people across the digital sphere have been claiming that Latitude has been working for them on the UK G1, personally I still have nada. So I've decided to take action and hook my G1 up with JesusFreke's UK RC9 firmware. This is a hacked firmware that first requires you to gain root access on your G1. Also there were reports of Latitude not working on that either, so I went to the US RC33 firmware first, oh and to get root access you first have to downgrade your phone to RC7. So 3 firmwares later I finally have Latitude running on a UK G1 with RC9, was it worth it? of course not, but if you fancy trying it, it takes about an hour and of course I take no responsibility for borked phones:

1) follow these instructions to get root access on your G1
2) Install JF RC33 firmware
3) You should have a UK device running US RC33 firmware now, check that latitude is running. Now you could choose to leave your G1 in this state, personally I didn't like the US formatting of the phone numbers, too many hyphens, and my phone became unstable when opening and closing the keyboard. So I decided to continue to the UK firmware.
4) Download the JF RC9 firmware and rename it to update.zip and place it in the root of your SD Card.
5) Download JFUpdater and install it on your G1. Easiest way is to go to http://code.google.com/p/jfupdater/downloads/list on your G1.
6) Run JFUpdater and choose to install the update.zip that it finds on your SD card.

These are the steps I followed and as I say I now have a UK G1 running RC9 firmware with Latitude and the latest marketplace running.

Note: after a couple of reboots Latitude has disappeared, not happy. Question is do I go back to RC33 or not.

T-Mobile UK G1 updated to Firmware RC9 ( no latitude or voice search? )

2009-03-03T11:04:00.008Z

The news of the latest UK firmware for the T-Mobile G1 has been spreading across the internet this morning. So I put my brave hat on, downloaded the firmware file from here and got on with the update.

A few different sites have published the guide to manually upgrading your G1, it goes like this:

Grab the RC9 update from here

Rename it to update.zip, and place it in the root of your Micro SD

Turn off your G1, then turn it back on by holding the Home+End (House key + On key) keys until you see an icon popup after the T-Mobile G1 logo.

From the icon screen, open the keyboard and hit Alt+L. This will display the log saying what is happening

Now press Alt+S to begin the update. Remember, the update needs to be in the root of the Micro SD card and needs to be named update.zip.

Once it finishes, just follow the onscreen instructions and press Home+Back to finish.

The G1 will reboot a few times, showing various different icons, flashing different parts of the firmware. Be patient

If all went well, you should now be running the latest update, RC9. To make sure all your hard work wasn’t for nothing, hit Menu > Settings > About Phone > scroll to Build Number. You should see RC9 at the bottom.

So what do I have that is new? Firstly and most disappointingly I can't seem to get Google Latitude working, Google Maps launches but there are no obvious latitude options :-( If I go in the browser to google.com/latitude it says I have it and offers to launch it, but then Google Maps just launches. I'll double check this later and see if I can figure it out.

Secondly I now have the updated Marketplace, it tells me when updates for my apps are available.
Thirdly there is a new icon called 'Sim Toolkit' offers services from the operator like Horoscopes and football scores, I can't see that I'll ever use this.

Fingers crossed I can get latitude working as that was my main reason for the upgrade, there is some hope as Google thinks I have it installed. If I do I'll update this post.

Newton's Cradle goes for a drive

2009-02-12T14:04:00.002Z

This is great, one minute I'm knocking up fun apps up for the G1 / Android app store and then out of the blue a nice guy from the USA (hi Nat B) mails me to say he loves it and drives his delivery route with it running on his dash. With the addition of a little clock at the bottom of the screen for recording delivery times, he is a happy customer ;-)

Check out his vid:

More Android? is it even possible

2009-01-16T17:06:00.004Z

Apart from a most interesting trip to the ICA London last night for the Every Single One Of Us powwow I've spent a lot of the last week playing with balls!

I thought I'd set myself a little Christmas project this year; to create a Newton's Cradle app for the G1. I've had some maths lessons in my past so I figured it couldn't be that hard. I kicked off with the Lunar Lander demo to get a nicely set up canvas with physics run thread and worked from there. Unfortunately either my maths isn't as good as I suspected, or I never gave Newton all the credit he was due. Anyway, a few Sin, Cos, Tan's, circles and triangles later we have the Newton's Cradle app for the G1 in the Android Marketplace.

I've decided not to put code snippets in this time as again the entire source code is available here.

Playing with the Android source: Bookmarker

2009-01-12T15:16:00.002Z

Since Christmas I've been wanting to achieve 2 small goals (1) get to grips with the Android OS Source code and (2) make another Android application.

As is usual with these things I've started but not finished 6 android apps, various things from a Newtons Cradle model to a Comic strip reader, the former sent me right back to maths class. The application that I decided to complete first was a tiny tool which allows you to re-order the bookmarks in an Android devices web browser.

So how do you go about replicating the bookmarks page of the web browser on Android? well it is pretty simple - you go to the Android source code at http://android.git.kernel.org/ and scroll down to platform/packages/apps/Browser.git where you are free to browse the source of the various branches of the android web browser from Release 1.0 upto and including the cupcake branch. Dig a little deeper and you end up at BrowserBookmarksPage.java. Now you can create a new project in eclispe download the appropriate source files (BrowserBookmarksAdapter.java is the key to it all) and marvel at how powerful open source operating systems really are.

Add a couple of buttons over the top of the ListView to enable moving, deleting and launching of the bookmarks and really it is a suprisingly quick and easy app to knock up. Although admittedly a little more attention could make it a lot prettier. You also need 2 permissions in the manifest file to get read/write access to the bookmarks
<uses-permission name="com.android.browser.permission.READ_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission name="com.android.browser.permission.WRITE_HISTORY_BOOKMARKS"></uses-permission>

This time I have released the project source code on Google Code, the project is called AndroidBookmarker at http://androidbookmarker.googlecode.com/

On a side note if you have any experience modelling balls on peices of string then I'd like to talk to you, this Newtons Cradle app is doing my head in, angular velocities, gravity, momentum, agghhhhhh.

Mippin goes Android

2008-12-16T07:02:00.009Z

I've spent the last 3 days delving into the depths of the Android SDK and you know what? they've been a pretty plesant 3 days. The API documentation takes a little getting used to but when you figure out the best way to navigate it is to use search (I should've figured that one out a little quicker for a google product) it all starts to fall into place pretty quickly. The Android guys have provided a pretty complete set of default widgets and themes to make development rapid and to make your final product blend well into the phones UI.

The result of my time spent on the Android SDK is the Mippin app, which is now in the Android Market Store. That's right I finished the first version of the app yesterday evening and within 10 minutes I'd signed up, paid my $25 to become a registered Android developer and published the app into the Market place, seconds later it was live for download. That was a great experience, so simple, I spent the evening checking my phone every half hour to see how many downloads the app had and to see the comments coming in. In the first 12 hours there were over 3000 downloads - not bad.

As yet I haven't published the source code for the app, but if there is anything in there that you'd like to know how it was done just comment on this post and I'll get back to you. The development process showed that in the end there is usually a pretty simple way of doing each seemingly tricky task, usually I ended up writing many lines of code before realising I could add a single line into an XML file. But here are my top 3 tricks I figured out while developing the app:

1. The translucent blurred background on the keyboard view
This is much simpler than it really should be, Android provides a set of default themes for any View and they can be applied in the AndroidManifest.xml file, this one is android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar", like this:

2. Get on top of Intents and returning results from them
Intents are one of the keys to happy Android developing. They generally start an activity to complete a task. You can create intents which are set to return values. For example to launch my search box I create this intent from my Activity when the menu item is selected:

Intent intent = new Intent(MipWeb.this,OSKActivity.class);
intent.putExtra("boxtype", TranslucentBlurActivity.BOX_SEARCH);
startActivityForResult(intent, ACTION_SEARCH_BOX);

Then in the activity of the search box I return the search term enter using this code

Intent mIntent = new Intent();
mIntent.putExtra("search", searchBox.getText().toString());
setResult(RESULT_OK,mIntent);
finish();

This sends the result to the onActivityResult() method in the calling Activity.

3. Auto rotation doesn't need to be hard
In the onCreate() method of an Activity just call setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_SENSOR); this works for all standard widgets that support orientation like the WebView.

happy coding.

T-Mobile G1 Battery Conditioning and Calibrating

2008-12-01T06:43:00.006Z

The T-Mobile G1 is a great device, a great device with a slightly wonky screen. It maybe new to the market but it is making quite a stir. Often due to its Android OS, but unfortunately its terrible battery life gets almost as much attention. Following a couple of simple steps I'm now obtaining reasonable life from my G1 with it now lasting a day between charges.

There are two issues here, battery meter calibration and battery conditioning - the G1's battery meter seems to come particularaly poorly calibrated, mine was reading 1% remaining when I still had around 15%-20% remaining (use Power Meter from App Store to see the voltages). Maybe it is down to the flexability of the Android OS, maybe not, either way you need to calibrate the battery meter yourself.

To calibrate the battery meter let the phone run down to 0% battery and turn itself off, for the last percent or two don't apply too much load to the device, just let it drain out. Even while using it my G1 hung on to its last 1% of battery for almost 2 hours. Now the battery meter knows the real 0% point. Then get it charging, I'd recommend charging it with it turned off for 5 or 6 hours. I've done this twice now, the second was a couple of days after the first time made the most difference to battery life. This should have now calibrated the meter and conditioned the battery.

I personally wouldn't do this too often, I'm under the impression the Lithium Ion batteries don't like being discharged to this level or at least left in that state for too long - although that may be a myth.

Little Willow http://littlewillow.co.uk

2008-09-12T18:49:00.004Z

Lisa (my Wife) just launched her baby boutique Little Willow http://littlewillow.co.uk I'm so chuffed for her.

off topic? slightly, sh*t loads of fun? hell yeah!

2008-08-07T12:36:00.004Z

My 30th birthday came and went quite recently, and my fab parents bought me one of those Drivers Dream Days - Ferrari 430 vs Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder.

Needless to say it was an absolute blast and I'll never think of these cars in the same light again. But it is true that the Ferrari was far more delicate and 'finger tippy' to control, whereas the Lambo was a seriously planted bit of kit with raw power that inspired confidence.

Here's a little vid of the day...

thanks Mum and Dad :-)

Mobile Geeks of London IV and Brian May

2008-08-01T06:16:00.002Z

Thanks to Whatleydude for another great Mobile Geeks of London last night. The largest turn out so far, even Brian May (of Queen fame) made an appearence ;-)

Other than Brian, there was a very generous helping of folk from all areas of mobile geekiness, I'm sure Whatley will do some kind of write up on his blog soon.

HTC Diamond gone wrong

2008-07-31T16:56:00.004Z

I just turned on our HTC Diamond for the first time in a couple of weeks and this screen came up. Doesn't look very promising :-(

Can anybody help?

HTC Diamond Unboxing

2008-06-10T11:02:00.002Z

The HTC Diamond is the first VGA (480*640 pixel screen) device I've got my hands on. It promises lots with a 3D Touch Flow interface claimed to rival the iPhones.

I qik'ed the unboxing here...

Since then we've got the deivce connected and played about a bit. All in all it is a disappointing device, the UI isn't responsive enough and it is too easy to fall back in to the old Windows Mobile UI.

Due to the addition of the Touch Flow UI, there are a few duplicated apps, 2 web browsers (Opera 9.5 and IE), 2 photo albums, etc...

Can Justin get his SIM in the phone?

2008-02-22T13:19:00.001Z

or will he be fired?

Motorola really have a lot to answer for...

N95 8GB arrives

2008-02-20T15:27:00.013Z

I had to take my son to the doctors this morning, everything was fine but it somewhat displaced my day. When I finally turned up at work just before midday there was a very pleasant surprise sat on my desk! No it wasn't a pole dancing usb device, or even a Whatleydude with a new Mobster, it was a new Nokia N95 8GB Spiderman Edition

Nokia really are getting pretty hot at consumer packaging, I couldn't wait to rip this baby open (although quite carefully as I wouldn't want to effect the residual value).

Taking off the outer Spidey sleeve we are left with a more conventional Nokia box

Flipping the lid on that almost provides access to the showcased device.

Before going any further I should explain what about the N95 8GB has drawn my attention so far from my beloved standard N95. It may be suprising that it isn't the enlarged memory on the new device, I had a large Micro SD card in my old Nokia and I never filled it up. The look and feel of the N95 8GB is great and I love the bigger screen, but the clinchers for me were the widget support, flash-lite 3 embedded in the browser (yes I can now watch YouTube videos live in the webpage on the full youube.com) and longer battery life.

The inclusion of Spiderman 3 was also not a key feature, but it was the first thing I launched on the device. There is a warning associated with the included feature film though, if you upgrade the firmware on your device or reset it to factory settings you will no longer be able to play the movie as you will wipe out the DRM license file. So it is highly recommended that the first thing you do after unboxing the new phone is to peform a complete backup the device, which I do find pretty amusing.

Now I've installed all my favourite apps on the device and I'm ready to go.

Video from MWC Mobile Monday

2008-02-14T13:52:00.004Z

Geeking it up after Geektails

2008-02-06T10:05:00.000Z

Whatley, Abul, Ella and Rich(me) geeking it up with qik last night...

Testing Mippin on my Wii

2007-11-20T14:37:00.000Z

Mippin is really a mobile service, but after bothering to set up my favourite content i thought it would be nice to sit back and view it on my tv. It turns out that the Wii and Mippin go together most agreeably.
This is my 1st post direct from my N95, so i hope it comes out ok.

Whatley is weird

2006-11-01T17:05:00.000Z

Its our release 4 party and litres of beer all round

Giraffe

2006-09-24T12:36:00.000Z

Lunch with the ex-uni mates.

Gotta get me one of these

2006-08-02T12:29:00.000Z

The new golf gti is an awesome motor. Mark V has really put the gti back in the golf.

Dark men in office

2006-08-02T11:34:00.000Z

Nonmomo

Doh!

2006-08-01T13:45:00.000Z

That is so bad