Submitted by dave on Tue, 13/12/2011 - 21:18
If you have been following along with Part 1 and Part 2 of this mini-series you should now have a basic Android application which displays your current location on a map. Not amazing functionality I'll admit but the basis for many location based applications in the Android Market. What will make the application truly useful is the ability to add markers at specific locations, e.g. points of interest, cash machines, checkpoints etc.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 24/10/2011 - 20:45
In my last post I showed you how to create a basic Android application which would display a map and zoom in to a specific location, my home town. While the functionality was not what you could call awe-inspiring it does lay the foundations for most mapping applications and serves as a good starting point. You can download the code from Part 1 but you will need to insert your own Google Maps API key for it to display the maps.
Submitted by dave on Thu, 29/09/2011 - 21:21
I'm currently working on an Android application which displays points of interest on a map and allows the user to see additional details by tapping on the associated marker. This sounds like a straight forward requirement for an Android application and so you would have thought that there would be a wealth of resources on the web to guide a developer on his way - but that's not been my experience.
Submitted by dave on Sun, 27/03/2011 - 09:33
So I was at work the other day and a tweet grabbed my attention. It said "Steve Jobs vindicated: Google Android is not Open" and linked to an article on The Register. After reading through the article I was reminded of my childhood when kids would say things like "yeah, well you eat snails!". Steve Jobs vindicated!! Well I bet he'll sleep better for all of that!
Submitted by dave on Sat, 26/02/2011 - 07:43
When I bought my HTC Hero I was both impressed and disappointed. Yes it was the best phone I'd even owned but as it was running Android 1.5 it didn't do some of the whizzy things that I'd read about; things like Turn-By-Turn Navigation, Speech to Text etc.
Submitted by dave on Mon, 29/11/2010 - 20:39
In my previous post I mentioned that one of the problems I faced when trying to install and debug my first Android application was that the Android Debug Bridge (adb) was not running as root. Now shutting the service down and restarting it with sudo was all that was required but that's a bit of a faff, there had to be a way to configure adb to be started with root privileges - and there is.
Submitted by dave on Thu, 25/11/2010 - 12:43
So I wanted to roll my sleeves up and get going with Android and have come up with a suitable 'pet project' to work towards. Now that I've got my development environment sorted out, and with my pet project in mind, I decided to do something with the accelerometer. In the Android Development book that I bought there is a sample application to display the current G being experienced by the device as well as the maximum G experienced.
Submitted by dave on Tue, 05/10/2010 - 19:42
So today I found out that Skype have released an app for Android 2.1+ devices and just had to give it a whirl. I have friends in France and Thailand that I'd like to keep in touch with and Skype is a very cost effective way of doing so. Ok I could use the full application on my laptop/netbook (yep - the Linux versions run just fine) but hard to believe as it may be, I don't have them turned on all the time. Having Skype in my pocket would be fantastic, but would it work?
Submitted by dave on Mon, 06/09/2010 - 13:44
One of the reasons I bought a smartphone was to use it as a SatNav - thus removing the need to carry around two devices. I'd heard that Android phone came with turn-by-turn navigation - for free! However, I didn't really do my homework and bought a HTC Hero. Not that there was anything wrong with the phone itself, but it was running Android 1.5 which didn't have the functionality I wanted. With a trip to France looming I bought CoPilot 8.0 for Android with the Europe maps and apart from a few, minor niggles I've been quite happy with it.
Submitted by dave on Sat, 24/07/2010 - 17:18
Ok, so it's no secret that I'm not impressed with the Broadband service from TalkTalk; the connection speed is pretty good but it is unstable - dropping sometimes dozens of times a day. This is just too frustrating for words and the TalkTalk Technical Support is frankly a joke! Anyway, one day I was trying to download the Ubuntu Lucid Server ISO and was having numerous connection drop outs when a Sky salesman knocked on my door. Now normally I would not entertain these intrusions into my evenings but today was different.
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