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android

By Liam Green-Hughes, 31 July, 2011

Reader poll on tablets puts Android in first place by huge margin

tablets
tablet
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android
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playbook
poll
meego
windows
hp
mobile
mtech

Church sign with a temporary Polling Station sign on it but the word Alleluia is still visibleFrom time to time I like to runs polls on this site to gauge opinion about technical issues and to help me pick topics to write about that are going to be of interest to readers. One of the most interesting polls has just closed with two hundred votes cast. The question asked was “Which tablet do you own or are you wanting to buy?”. Obviously there are some restrictions to how seriously this poll should be taken, but I am hoping that the number of participants in the poll is big enough to give some meaningful data on the tablet battles. So the results are in and they are surprising – who are the winners and losers?

By Liam Green-Hughes, 25 July, 2011

Adapting Android Scripting Layer (SL4A) for tablets

ase
tablets
eeepad
android
mobile
mtech
programming
app
sl4a
sl4a-tf101
development
python
php

SL4A logoRecently my evenings seem to have been disappearing in the blink of an eye. It is funny that when you get really into a bit of computer programming time can seem to disappear quite quickly. It can be quite a fun and mentally challenging way to spend time, not to mention absorbing. So I am hoping the project I am working on will enable more people to join that fun by writing small programs on their tablets. I am working on a version of the Scripting Layer for Android ("SL4A" – which used to be known as the Android Scripting Environment) and adapting it for tablets, especially the EEE Pad Transformer. The aim is to make the package work well on tablets and to adjust the user interface to make the most of the screen and new features such as the Action Bar.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 6 July, 2011

Converting a Bookmarklet into an Android Share app

app
delicious
development
android
mobile
java
mtech
howto
tutorial
liamislearningandroid

Partial screenshot of the Delicious web pageI read quite a lot of web pages on my Android tablet and it is useful to be able to save them to my Delicious account so that I can look at them again later. On desktop browsers it is possible to save items using a small bookmarklet that lives on a menu bar in the browser. This very handily gets the title and address of the current page and prepopulates the fields on the Delicious save form, it also shows suggested tags. Sadly on the tablet it is not possible to use bookmarklets* in the same way and the apps I found that shared to Delicious used the mobile version of the save page. So I went about converting the bookmarklet into a small app that would hook into Android's Share functionality. The app could easily be repurposed to use in the place of other bookmarklets too, so here is an explanation of how it works.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 21 June, 2011

RefSignals: A quiz app built using App Inventor - how to stop repeated questions

mobile
howto
fun
mtech
google
android
programming
app inventor
appinventor
ice hockey
example app
refsignals

RefSignals app screenshotSummer is an odd time. With no ice hockey matches to attend our thoughts turn to other subjects, such as why does RefSignals sometimes repeat questions? I've been asked a few times about how to stop it doing this, so here is a solution. RefSignals is an Android app built with Google App Inventor for Android that quizzes you on the signals made by referees during ice hockey matches. In February I wrote about this app and published the source code so that people could take it and use it as the basis for their own quiz apps. The response was great and the app has been remixed for all sorts of subjects so I hope this will come in useful.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 2 June, 2011

Will the Asus Eee Pad Transformer cause your laptop to gather dust?

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eeepc
eeepad
eeepadtransformer
android
asus
transformer
tablet
mobile

Eee Pad with keyboardIt is strange to think that it was only 2007 when the first Asus EEE PC came onto the market. This fun little machine turned heads and would often be the subject of curious questions. I think it was also a bit of a game changer, opening a world of ultra mobile computing to a whole new audience. It is also ancient ancestor of the Eee Pad Transformer. I've had mine for just over a week and have sometimes used it as a tablet, sometimes as a netbook depending how I'm feeling. It is feature packed and runs on Android 3.1 (since a recent update), Google's optimised operating system for tablets. There is also a possibility that a lot of people might find it is the only machine they need.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 4 May, 2011

Out with the old HTC Desire and in with the new HTC Desire S

mobile
mtech
review
android
htc
desire
desire s

Publicity shot of the HTC Desire SThe HTC Desire seems a popular phone, I keep noticing it where ever I go. I've had one for nearly a year now and am very happy with it, apart from a few gripes, so it was interesting to receive a HTC Desire S on review to see what has changed in the new model. Unlike the Desire Z and Desire HD which offered different hardware options (a keyboard and a bigger screen respectively), the Desire S is designed as a successor to the original. It is about the same size and has the same 3.7” 800x480 resolution screen, but a lot about the phone has changed, and it has picked up a few new features..

By Liam Green-Hughes, 2 April, 2011

The Xperia Play (a.k.a. the "Playstation Phone") lands in London

mobile
mtech
games
gaming
android
sonyericsson
event
ericsson
sony
playstation

People dressed as superheros and characters from computer games in a queueCrossing the road towards the venue I was looking for I stopped at stared at the building in the distance. It was looking rather sorry for itself, broken windows, graffiti and a tired concrete look. Outside, a woman in a grey boiler suit directed me to the press/guest list queue. This rather odd venue is the “Old Sorting Office” in the heart of London and the location of Thursday's (March 31st) launch of Sony Ericsson’s much anticipated “Playstation phone” officially named the Xperia Play. Inside was a party venue that was a complete contrast to the outside of the building, a location inspired by computer games and the sights of the far east. It might have been a sorting office once, but for that day only it was the "Xperia Play Rooms". This was going to be an interesting evening.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 2 March, 2011

PhoneGap Build makes apps in the cloud for multiple platforms

web
development
symbian
css
android
javascript
html
blackberry
phonegap
ios
webos
phonegap build

Part of the phonegap build status screen for an app, showing downloads and errorsJust targeting one mobile platform is not good enough anymore but building apps for lots of different mobile phone platforms could be a long and tedious task. Every smartphone platform has its own software development kit (SDK), these will need a developer to use different languages to be able to work with them all. You could easily end up with five or six code bases in order to reach a decent number of devices. So what to do if a mobile web site isn't seen as an acceptable alternative? Fortunately mobile apps and mobile web sites are two ends of a spectrum of possibilities. Sitting somewhere in the middle is PhoneGap Build, a service that lets you develop using Javascript, HTML and CSS and then builds apps for five platforms in the cloud.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 10 January, 2011

RefSignals: A multiple choice quiz app built using App Inventor for Android

refsignals
mobile
howto
fun
mtech
google
android
programming
app inventor
appinventor
ice hockey
example app

Screenshot of the RefSignals app*** Update! See: RefSignals: A quiz app built using App Inventor - how to stop repeated questions for an improved version of this app! ***
I've been going on quite a lot about Google's App Inventor for Android to anybody who will listen recently. An example application I show them is one I built as a result of a conversation I had with my friend Georgina Parsons while we were sat in an ice rink in Gothenburg, Sweden watching a great match between the Frölunda Indians (the local team) and HV71. Ice hockey is a shared interest of ours but normally we attend matches in England so following proceedings in Swedish could be tricky. Fortunately the referees have a series of standard signals they make to indicate which penalties they are calling and our conversation turned to how it would be great to have a mobile app to help us learn those signals.

By Liam Green-Hughes, 6 December, 2010

Using Linked Data in App Inventor for Android with the help of a bridging script

openuniversity
mobile
php
apache
mtech
google
android
apps
appinventor
rdf
linkeddata
sparql

Many organisations are offering rich Linked Data stores now that you can interrogate with the SPARQL language. This data might be interesting for the mobile app developer to work with so it would be great to be able to experiment with this data in Google App Inventor for Android applications. At the moment you cannot do this directly as App Inventor only offers quite limited functionality to interact with the web, however with the help of a server side "bridging script" we can close that divide and send a SPARQL query from inside the application and deal with the results we get back.

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