Category: android

01/09/12 11:28 - ID#55881

The Galaxy Note - The New Dream Phone

I want this device so bad. I know I just got the Galaxy SII but I would kill for this resolution and size right now. I wonder if it will come out soon or not.

The CNET article does a good overview. I cannot wait to see it at the AT&T store.

Permalink: The_Galaxy_Note_The_New_Dream_Phone.html
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Last Modified: 01/10/12 12:17

Category: android

10/07/11 05:50 - ID#55262

At&t Attain/Samsung Galaxy s2 - Android Development on Fedora 15

I was excited to see that my new Samsung Galaxy S2 from AT&T works as good with the Android SDK (ADK) on eclipse as my Nexus One did. This tutorial is assuming you already have the ADK environment setup and are just changing phones like I did.

Step One is to enable debugging on the device under settings -> applications -> Development. Check the box that says USB debugging.



When you first plug the device into the computer and type: adb devices: at the command prompt, it will show up as a bunch of question marks, meaning that it won't work with the ADK.

In order to get it working you need to first get the usb device identifier. You can do this by typing lsusb into the fedora terminal application.

This will give you a list of usb devices plugged into the computer. You need to look for the one that matches your phone.

[paolo@svelt15 ~]$ lsusb

Bus 002 Device 006: ID 04e8:685e Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd

Next step is to create a new udev rule for the device using your favorite text editor. You can use vi or nano.

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

then add the following rule:
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="685e", MODE="0666"

Notice the produce and vendor ID come directly from the lsusb info above. You could use these instructions with other phones, in fact it worked perfect with my Nexus One when I was first developing on that.

After this is done you can either reboot or restart udev. Almost all of the instructions you find are for ubuntu but on fedora you restart udev rules with
sudo /sbin/start_udev Then just unplug and plugin the phone. It should now work with the ADK.

When you type: adb devices: You should now see the device listed instead of a bunch of question marks.

Permalink: At_t_Attain_Samsung_Galaxy_s2_Android_Development_on_Fedora_15.html
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Last Modified: 10/07/11 06:02

Category: android

05/15/11 05:16 - ID#54291

Moto Xoom tablet

This is pretty nice but its still too heavy for me.

Permalink: Moto_Xoom_tablet.html
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Last Modified: 05/15/11 05:16

Category: android

01/02/11 02:28 - ID#53378

Nook Development

I updated my android SDK as I am now on eclipse Helios 3.6 and I wanted to make a few updates to the estrip publisher app since seeing it on the nook tablet.

I discovered they do have their own nook SDK which is nice but on the shitty side it only works with their nook emulator so far. This is cool if you don't have a nook but not so cool if you do. I remember from the estrip app. Testing on the Nexus One was so much better than on the stupid emulator. Its just not the same trying to get a feel for it. Luckily, a rooted nook will let me put apps on it for testing but its annoying and a hack.

I wish so bad that B&N would just allow the regular android store. Having it on my rooted nook is incredible. It makes the device so damn useful that I can't put it down. In fact I love typing on it with the new gingerbread keyboard I downloaded.

I mean, I get why they don't want it. I am sure they are terrified of people using the kindle app on it and buying book from amazon instead. They shouldn't have too much to worry about because the reading experience on the native nook app is so much better than with the Kindle app. For example, kindle won't let me pinch and zoom on my books. Plus the notetaking and sharing quotes, lending feature, etc.

I can't wait for them to open up whatever market they are going to open. I would love to get in on it but it seems like they are really playing up to the big company devs more than the small guy. Reading through the forum this is pissing off a lot of developers who feel they if they are going to be treated as second class devs, they might as well develop for the ipad's larger market.

Well, anyways, here is hoping that whatever it is I end up developing finds its way into the store when its done and they I stay dedicated to working on it without knowing for sure if it will. Its just so hard to be motivated for something that might just turned down at the last stage. That's exactly why I never developed the estrip app for iphone.

Permalink: Nook_Development.html
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Last Modified: 01/02/11 02:45

Category: android

08/10/10 10:42 - ID#52414

Android App Update

Get your version 1.11 update from the marketplace. Added support for up to 10 images and a category. Does this work on your gphone (e:tinypliny)?

Permalink: Android_App_Update.html
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Last Modified: 08/10/10 10:43

Category: android

07/25/10 09:00 - ID#52290

estrip 1.09 android app and estrip podcasts

Now you can post a sound recording with each blog by directly recording in the android app using the screen found by clicking on the microphone.

There is something in it for everyone. If you uppoad sounds recorded in mp3 format to your blog, estrip will automatically add them to your new estrip podcast. People can then subscribe to your podcast with their favorite podcast aggregator. It takes into account any sound blogs you posted in the past and will display up to 20. There is a link on your journal right under you avatar.

Permalink: estrip_1_09_android_app_and_estrip_podcasts.html
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Last Modified: 07/26/10 10:17

Category: android

07/23/10 08:50 - ID#52265

Removing facebook from your nexus 1

Since I got my n1 I have wanted to remove the facebook, twitter and amazon mp3 app but as they are stock apps it would not let me. Its so annoying that they were running in the background and possibly using battery but it was even more annoying that when I selected a pic in the gallery app it would always have facebook and twitter in the share menu when I really wanted to just have estrip there. After rooting my phone which is really quite simple on a nexus 1 (you can find instructions by searching on google) you need to do this.

Make sure your phone is recognized with adb by typing adb devices

Then run the following code. It basically mounts the system drive and then you move the apps to a backup file where they are there if you later change your mind, but they will no longer run.

To be fair I totally stole these commands from here and then added Twitter and amazon mp3 store to it

su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/app
mv Facebook.apk Facebook.bak
mv com.amazon.mp3.apk com.amazon.mp3.bak
mv Twitter.apk Twitter.bak
mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
sync

Permalink: Removing_facebook_from_your_nexus_1.html
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Last Modified: 07/26/10 10:17

Category: android

07/23/10 08:30 - ID#52264

cyanogen mod 6

The most interesting part of this is that I am typing this journal from safari 5 windows edition using wine of Fedora 13 Linux.

Seems to make my phone much snappier, its hard to believe it could be any faster. I really just installed it and rooted it so I could get rid of facebook which you can't uninstall by default.



The battery on my n1 seems to last forever with the stock froyo. Lets hope it is the same here. They also included this new feature to make the screen monochrome red which is supposed to by a way to double battery life. I am very curious if that works or not.

Permalink: cyanogen_mod_6.html
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Last Modified: 07/23/10 08:30

Category: android

07/17/10 06:21 - ID#52212

Android Mobile App 1.05

The mobile app now allows you to take a picture with the camera directly. Previously you could select the select pics button and go to the camera from the gallery but that seemed to only work on froyo. I tested it on my nexus one and it works. Hopefully, it will work on the moto phones too, although, there are a lot of bug reports about their camera functionality - so who knows. Next step maybe, record audio directly to your blog.

On a related front, it now should handle the rotation issue with moto images. What was happening was this. In order to send the pics to estrip from the mobile app, I first resize them on the phone as it would take forever to send 5-8MP images. The problem is that my nexus one truly rotates images when rotated, while the moto droid line seems to just set the EXIF_ORIENTATION bit to the rotation desired. I get why they do this, the problem is that the android resize functions strips out the EXIF data. So I was stuck with the problem of having no EXIF data to work with when it got to the server. Mind you I still think the whole store in EXIF data is a little sketchy as not all software supports it. Just try and look at one of those images in firefox for example, they are incorrectly rotated.

So to solve it I read the EXIF data before the resize and send the orientation information along with the packet to the server. I tested with some images from a droid and it worked good. Hopefully it will work for (e:heidi)'s droid X. (e:chris) told me facebook had the same issue. Really it seams to be a bug in androids bm.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, outputStream); method.

You can get the update from the android marketplace.

Permalink: Android_Mobile_App_1_05.html
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Last Modified: 07/17/10 06:22

Category: android

05/22/10 06:37 - ID#51710

Wifi tethering froyo update

As if the file upload in the browser and flash was not enough (e:paul,51709) , froyo also provides wifi and USB tethering with one easy press. This is one of the reasons I wanted the google phone from google and not from a carrier. I wonder how the carriers will react to this when rolling out froyo to their own phones.

Permalink: Wifi_tethering_froyo_update.html
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