Along with all of this come the additional benefits of: pizza, beer, competitions (there were an insane amount of competitions last year), freebies, and more free beer!

For those of you unfamiliar with droidcon here is an excerpt from their website:

Droidcon London 2011 is Europe’s largest conference that exclusively covers Android development and applications. The conference will take place in London on 6th-7th October 2011.

Droidcon London 2011 has grown tremendously since last year, in line with the exponential interest in the Android platform. This year, upward of 600 Android enthusiasts will rub shoulders with the premier experts in the field to dig into every aspect of Android and its ever-growing ecosystem. High on the agenda this time around are Android for the Tablet, Android in the Enterprise, Android for Games, Android for business, Augmented Reality, multi-mobile and a whole lot more.

The first day will be community led with a full-day Barcamp and Democamp. The second day will be conference day, with presentations from some of the world’s foremost Android experts, including two Google Developer Advocates Richard Hyndman and Nick Butcher, Mark Murphy (CommonsWare), Al Sutton, and Kieran Gutteridge (I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting the other speakers yet). A full list of presenters is available here.

You can register via the Droidcon London 2011 site: (http://www.droidcon.co.uk)

Follow Droidcon London 2011 on Twitter: @DroidconUK tags: #droidconUK #droidcon

Follow Droidcon London 2011 on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/droidconuk/

I made a promo image for the wallpapers that should be visible on the market place any time now. I have limited art skills so this is the best I could come up with:

Nexus Revamped promo image

Jazz-hands (multi-touch)

I managed to fix a bug with multi-touch in my code, thanks to this question on stackoverflow. This now means that my wallpaper will work with up to 10 fingers or “jazz-hands”. This also fixes some of the crashes that were occurring on devices with 3.1 and up.

Save / load themes

I’ve also added the option for users to save their own themes so that if you have a few you like you don’t have to keep changing all the settings back and forth. This is also a step towards the next update I have planned whereby users can upload/download themes with a rating system and all the junk.

Save custom themes

Better tablet / honeycomb support
I’ve added several improvements for large screen devices / tablets, the whole wallpaper is scaled effectively so that it no longer is just a giant zoomed in version of the phone wallpaper, and multiple more graphical changes to improve usability.

Nexus Revamped on a xoom

Android Market Links
Either click the following android market links (in android phone) or search the market for nexus revamped.
Pro Version
Nexus Revamped Pro Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevampedpro)

Free Version

The free version is the same as the pro version but with some of the fancier features are missing, and some non-intrusive adverts. Both versions are fully supported.

Nexus Revamped Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevamped)

Full changelog (since last blog post at version 1.98.01)

1.98.14

• Bug Fix: Multi-touch force close bug fixed
• Improved: Due to above bug fix, multi-touch now supports more fingers. This is great for tablets with ‘jazz hands’ support (more than 5 fingers!)
• Added: Ability to save custom themes (Preset > User)
• Added: Red Grid theme
• Improved: Thumbnail images in preset menu scaled to screensize

1.98.12

• Added: New & exciting Color changer dialog!
• Added: Loads of new textures, try adding a background tint to make these more personal!
• Added: German translation (thanks Steven!)
• Added: Danish translation (thanks Johan!)
• Added: Russian translation (thanks Dmitry!)
• Added: Licence information
• Improved: Transparent theme consistent throughout all settings now
• Improved: Wallpaper changes scale based on screensize to better suit tablets etc.
• Improved: Honeycomb background was a bit shoddy, fixed!
• Improved: Icons/gfx more suitable for range of screensizes
• Improved: Background tints are applied once on bitmaps rather than every frame, saving cpu time
• Removed: Some unused functions and boring code
• Bug Fix: Appearance bug in changelog fixed (doh!)

1.98.10

• Added: Spanish translation (thanks Hector!)
• Added: Swedish translation (thanks Joar!)
• Added: Preset option for quick setting of common themes
• Help me: if you want to add translations please email me!
• Added: Added a cool carbon fibre background option!
• Added: Differentiation between market places
• Bug Fix: When configuring livewallpaper via launcher pro or similar some settings were not automatically updated
• Bug Fix: Email in the about section will actually fill in my email address, surprise nobody spotted this sooner! Also added some information into each email to help me with issues.

1.98.09

• Bug Fix: Minor bug in revert to default settings
• Bug Fix: Minor bug in open application from market or settings

1.98.08

• Added: Power saver in the reactions menu, can make the wallpaper static when battery reaches a certain percentage.
• Added: Norwegian translation added (thanks Dan!)
• Added: Obfuscation for improved efficiency and to help decrease piracy
• Bug Fix: Glow size was forgotten on screen power off

1.98.07

• Added: Particle scaling, like the Nexus S live wallpaper
• Improved: Got sexy transparent menus working again, enjoy!
• Improved: Dialogs look better on small screens and with different orientations; some screens are now scrollable in the next version this will be replaced with a better solution
• Moved: Disable analytics is now in advanced menu
• Bug Fix: Fixed a FC bug
• Bug Fix: Using a custom background then renaming the file will no longer cause a FC

1.98.05

• Added: Option to display FPS on screen (Advanced > FPS)
• Added: Rotation on battery level
• Bug fix: Memory leak from using custom backgrounds fixed (hopefully)
• Bug fix: When Multi-touch option was disabled normal touch would not function
• Improved: Code backend made more efficient by combining some classes
• Added: Cool new background called “The Grid”

Portal 2 Soundboard running on motorola xoom (honeycomb actionbar support)

And on pre-honeycomb devices:

Portal 2 Soundboard running on Nexus one

Download Links
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.stealthcopter.portal2

Portal 2 soundboard is now 42nd in free entertainment apps in the android market, woop!

Find it on the android market:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.stealthcopter.liveview.plugins.alarmclock

Would love some feedback from anyone with a LiveView, there must be someone else out there who has one right?

Sony Ericsson LiveView Alarm Clock Plugin

There are two types of plugins.
1. Announce plug-in

Announce plug-ins can send announcements to the LiveView™ device. This is done in
the same way as the predefined announce features, like Facebook and Twitter.

Gmail Plugin Emails

The SDK Announce plugin (helloWorldPlugin) example is very simple and and mostly contains code scheduling a timer to send events to the phone along. This is a single class which is supported by a small number of helper classes and the plugin only contains a few things foreign to a typical android application:

Just extend the class provided by the SDK for plugins:

public class HelloWorldService extends AbstractPluginService {

Send updates to the phone using the following function:

mLiveViewAdapter.sendAnnounce(mPluginId, mMenuIcon, header, body, System.currentTimeMillis(), "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_world_program");

Where:
mPluginId – identifies which app send the update
mMenuIcon – the icon the update will appear with
header – the title (IE: email subject)
body – the main text (IE: email text)
timestamp – timestamp of the announcement
link – action to perform when user clicks at end of message (event to occur on phone). This is interpreted by overriding the function below:

@Override
	protected void openInPhone(String openInPhoneAction) {
		Log.d(PluginConstants.LOG_TAG, "openInPhone: " + openInPhoneAction);

		// Open in browser.
		final Uri uri = Uri.parse(openInPhoneAction);
		final Intent browserIntent = new Intent();
		browserIntent.setData(uri);
		browserIntent.setClassName("com.android.browser", "com.android.browser.BrowserActivity");
		browserIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
		startActivity(browserIntent);
}

2. Sandbox

The sandbox plug-in can take complete control of the LiveView™ device by sending
images to it and control its ability to vibrate and display different colors on the LED. All
user activities are propagated to the plug-in, so that it can take appropriate actions.

Contact Call Plugin

We extend the same class however this time we say yes when we are asked if we are a sandbox plugin:

    @Override
	protected boolean isSandboxPlugin() {
        return true;
    }

So now rather than using sendAnnounce to send text to the liveview we directly send images. Below is a function used that draws some text to a bitmap and then sends it to be displayed.

    public static void sendTextBitmap(LiveViewAdapter liveView, int pluginId, String text, int bitmapSizeX, int fontSize) {
        // Empty bitmap and link the canvas to it
        Bitmap bitmap = null;
        try {
            bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(bitmapSizeX, fontSize, Bitmap.Config.RGB_565);
        }
        catch(IllegalArgumentException  e) {
            return;
        }

        Canvas canvas = new Canvas(bitmap);

        // Set the text properties in the canvas
        TextPaint textPaint = new TextPaint();
        textPaint.setTextSize(fontSize);
        textPaint.setColor(Color.WHITE);

        // Create the text layout and draw it to the canvas
        Layout textLayout = new StaticLayout(text, textPaint, bitmapSizeX, Layout.Alignment.ALIGN_CENTER, 1, 1, false);
        textLayout.draw(canvas);

        try
        {
            liveView.sendImageAsBitmap(pluginId, centerX(bitmap), centerY(bitmap), bitmap);
        } catch(Exception e) {
            Log.d(PluginConstants.LOG_TAG, "Failed to send bitmap", e);
        }
    }

So we can create a similar function drawing whatever we want to a bitmap and then passing it onto the screen.

Only one thing left (I think). Intercepting button presses:

@Override
	protected void button(String buttonType, boolean doublepress, boolean longpress) {
          ....
         }

Where the the following buttons are defined:

• PluginConstants.BUTTON_UP
• PluginConstants.BUTTON_DOWN
• PluginConstants.BUTTON_LEFT
• PluginConstants.BUTTON_RIGHT
• PluginConstants.BUTTON_SELECT

and we can see if the were tapped or held down with the boolean longpress. Note that we cannot detect longpresses of select as that will exit your plugin and the power button at all as that controls the screen.

My Attempt at a plugin: Alarm Clock
So I thought given that this thing is pretty much a watch, it would be useful to be able to set an alarm with it.

Plugin Icon

12hr clock (select sets alarm)

24hr clock

Unfortunately I don’t think it is possible to set the alarm programatically in android in versions prior to gingerbread (posted a stackoverflow question about it). So the user base is very limited, only users with gingerbread and higher with a LiveView will be able to use it so I don’t expect a massive response. Also I have no idea if this will work with non-stock alarm clock apps as I’m not aware of any manufacturers modification of gingerbread as of yet.

The LiveView application on the phone handles links to all the shared preferences for the plugins (they’re mandatory just for the enable/disable option) but an example is included in all the examples and it is very simple to just add more options to the preferences.xml and grab them in the code.

LiveView plugin settings

Alarm set via plugin

Conc
If you want more info please read the documentation linked at the start of this post. I will probably release the liveview alarm clock plugin onto the market soon, but I don’t expect the reception to be that good as it will only work on a few phones / tablets. Anyway I had fun programming for mine, enjoy!

Sony Ericsson LiveView Watch

Bluetooth connection
Well this is the major downfall of the device, it cannot hold a bluetooth connection very well with my phones (Nexus One and Desire HD) and constantly requires you to pull your phone out of your pocket to scan for bluetooth devices, pair with it, disconnect and reconnect in the LiveView program, restart your phone, or turn watch off and on in pairing mode.

LiveView lost connection

This problem was significantly worse before installing the firmware update onto the LiveView (something which I strongly suggest as now it is only half as buggy). However the firmware update for this LiveView will only work on a Windows machine boo!!!

I’ve checked around a few forums and found that the bluetooth connection issues seem to be phone specific with the sony ericsson phones performing much better.

Builtin apps

• Text messages – shows text messages you have received
• Find phone – plays a sound on phone so you can find it… would be useful if I didn’t have to find my phone first to accept the pairing request!
• RSS – not tested this, obvious what it does though
• Missed calls – shows any missed calls you’ve had
• Music control – volume control, next/prev, play/pause and sometimes displays current track name/artist

Plugins
There is a fairly complete list of plugins avaliable for liveview on the sony ericsson blog: blogs.sonyericsson.com. There aren’t too many apps available so it’s quite easy for devs to find something that hasn’t been done before with the liveview.

All the ones I’ve tried are quite good and function well but are perhaps not as ascetically pleasing as they could have been but I’m not going to complain about that.

Ones I’ve tried:

• Gmail – Alerts you to new gmails and lets you read a snippet
• Calendar plugin – Monthly view and agenda
• Contact call – Browse contacts and intiate a call, I managed to accidentally call someone using this leading to much hilarity…
• Binary clock – A binary clock, quite fun for geeks

Update issues
Most of the functions in the watch are for updates; tweets, text messages, emails etc… Unfortunatly many of these ‘plugins’ do not update properly, only showing updates that occurred whilst the watch was actively connected which means according to LiveView the last text I receive was 4 days ago… but I have had several since then… don’t think it would be very hard to fetch this information.

Lack of update for 4 days

Just as a watch
So I decided I’d give this device a chance of working solely as a watch for a day.

The battery life quite good, still shows a full battery icon after 9 hours, which isn’t that shocking as the screen is only turned on when you want to know the time and it seldom requires to use bluetooth. I do wonder if it actually keeps track of the time onboard or if it keeps syncing (I suspect it doesn’t sync due to battery life and troubles syncing when using functions).

Conclusion
I’ve really tried hard to like this device but it really isn’t making it easy for me. I would recommend it if:

• You’re a developer with a sony ericsson phone
• Or the fun of writing an app will overwhelm the annoyance of constantly repairing

I wouldn’t recommend it if:

• You’re an end user, looking for a cool watch
• You’re need to rely on your watch to function
• You want your watch to have all the standard functions
• You don’t like re-pairing bluetooth devices repeatedly

Next
In my next post I’ll talk about the LiveView SDK and creating a LiveView plugin.

Box of 16 dead zebra android collectibles

16 dead zebra android collectibles unboxed

The Cupcake one actually smells of cupcakes!!! amazing!

We actually ordered the last box (sorry!) of 16 from funkypeanut.co.uk for just over £100 including delivery, singles are still available though. There were actually some issues with paypal when checking out for this, but the admin of the store sent an email shortly afterwards to sort it out manually, great customer service!

Below shows the explanation in the market of why my live wallpaper requests full internet permission:

Internet permission explanation in android market for nexus revamped live wallpaper

And this image shows one user complaining about the permission in the reviews:

Complaining about permissions in review without reading description

This combined with the inability to respond to comments to explain how the commenter is an idiot (something the amazon app store allows) can severely hinder your applications downloads, as sales are strongly influenced to the ratings of the last three comments.

Solution

• Allow developers to add explanations to certain permissions so that users can understand why your app might (optionally) need access to your contacts, use the internet, or send an text message etc…
• Allow developers to specifiy which permissions are optional giving the user the ability to deny an applications access some permission. This could be handled automatically in android with a popup box saying an app is trying to use an optional permission would you like to allow etc… similar to how the super user stuff works in rooted phones, or the background data/gps etc…

Would love to hear other developer’s opinions or alternate ideas!

Anyway enough of the boring stuff, let’s see what’s new. Something I’m REALLY excited about (hence the caps) is multi-touch! It is so much fun just playing with a blank home screen creating particles! Unfortunatly this isn’t something which translates well into a screenshot, so you’ll just have to try it out for yourself.

Nexus Revamped 1.98.01 screenshot

New Particle Appearance Screen

I’d like to thank all of my beta testers for the very helpful feedback I have got over the past couple of weeks. There is much more to mention but I am now absolutely knackered. I’m sure I’ll follow this post up soon with some more interesting things. Enjoy!

Changelog

1.98.01

• Improved: Now using OpenGL to draw the live wallpaper, which should give approximately a 16x performance increase (awesome eh?)
• Added: MULTI-TOUCH!!! :O
• Improved: Lowered file size from over 1Mb to less than 300Kb
• Added: Option to not spawn particles when dragging / swiping across screens etc, set by default
• Added: Anayltics see which areas need improving
• Added: Sexy Particle appearance dialog to set saturation and tail length
• Removed: Tail length and particle saturation (see above)
• Added: Custom colors for battery level colored particles
• Added: Speed now allows you to set the minimum and maximum speed
• Removed: Removed speed deviation (see above)
• Improved: Scaling can go negative now (i.e. shrinking)
• Improved: Lots of default values changed to make prettier on first run
• Improved: Speed and Spawning decoupled from FPS settings, should be uniform now
• Improved: Max FPS setting now 80 (25 is recommended still)
• Improved: Max speed increased
• Improved: Max tail size increased
• Improved: Max particle number increased
• Improved: Added some nice icons in the about menu
• Bug Fix: Particle alignment works more consistently on different screen sizes and scales

Android Market Links
Either click the following android market links (in android phone) or search the market for nexus revamped.
Pro Version
Nexus Revamped Pro Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevampedpro)

Free Version

The free version is the same as the pro version but with some of the fancier features are missing, and some non-intrusive adverts. Both versions are fully supported.

Nexus Revamped Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevamped)

Download link

AND guess what else??? I’ve added multi-touch! Unfortunately as exciting as it is, it doesn’t translate well into a screenshot so you’ll just have to try the beta or wait for the release on the market.

How do I sign up for this awesome beta?
Just send me an email (beta at stealthcopter.com) or leave a comment below with a valid email (it wont be displayed on-site) and I’ll add you to my beta testers mailing list.



Android Market Links (FOR OLD VERSION, NOT FOR BETA)
If you don’t fancy the beta, but still want to install the livewallpaper you can install the old version and wait for the update (probably about 1 to 2 weeks away) either click the following android market links (in android phone), scan the QR codes or search the market for nexus revamped.
Pro Version
Nexus Revamped Pro Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevampedpro)

Free Version

Nexus Revamped Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevamped)

Hi-voltage – link

Hi-voltage dead zebra android figure

Can see the black behind the yellow outline and arms are coloured slightly differently.

Copperbot – link

Copperbot dead zebra android figure

Line along middle of head doesn’t line up but overall quite good quality

Reactor – link

Reactor dead zebra android figure

Overall quite good but again the arms don’t quite match, the glow in the dark is very cool though. Below shows photos of the reactor android figure under UV light and then it’s residual glow (apologies for my poor photography skills)

All together

Dead Zebra figures from dealextreme

Avaliable to buy at dealextreme. The last couple of photos have the android figure standing on some aerogel on my desk.

I love the Dead zebra android toys but I’ve found that they are impossible to get a hold of any. Thankfully dealextreme have them in stock each picture links to the dealextreme page for each android:

Most of the figures cost around $5 with some of them a little bit more $7.50 (suit, space invader, tribal). I’ll post an update with images when they arrive.

How to get it for £87.10

• +£12 Go through a cashback website like quidco and click through to the orangeshop
• Once at the website goto orangeshop student select PAYG and enter your NUS code or just enter 000000000000000 they don’t verify it!!! for a 10% discount (this was a tip off from someone at droidcon, but I didn’t manage to catch name please let me know if it was you and you can have the credit)
• £99 + £10 Topup Select San Fransisco in Gray or San Fransisco in White
• -£9.90 Your 10% discount will now be applied ^_^ Choose which tariff you want, I chose dolphin as you get free internet and 300 texts when you topup £10
• Total £87.10, win!

It’s a good phone and it’s very easy to flash a custom rom onto if you don’t like the orange one. I got the rom and followed the guide at modaco.

Again as this is quite a long post here is a mini table of contents to speed it up:

• Excellence in the Android User Experience
• Android reuse models
• Make it fun
• Monetize your apps in emerging marketss
• Android behind the scenes
• Make it fun
• Android has a “dude” problem
• Other

Excellence in the Android User Experience

Romain Nurik talks about creating applications with great UX and great UI, this follows on from a similar presentation he has posted up on slideshare.

Roman Nurik making android pretty

Android reuse models

Mark Murphey discussed some of the ways in which we can reduce lots of android developers reinventing the wheel everytime we need something. There are a few methods that a developer can use for distributional:

• Souce Code
• As an Application
• As a jar
• Library
• Combine the two above methods, and distribute a jar in a library. As we don’t live in a perfect world source code cannot always be distributed (Remember to create a licence)

Libraries can be used to solve problems for people who want free and paid versions of the app, and don’t want to maintain two versions of the code. Google have shown a google example by creating the LVL code as a library for app developers to use.

Resource name collisions can still be a problem, but this can be solved by using a prefix that is unlikely to be used by the child application. Mark shows an example of this in his color mixer widget that uses “cwac_colormixer” as a prefix. You can find lots of mark’s cool projects on his github: githubcom/commonsguy

Mark went on to discuss that we need a place to collect code to reuse and mentioned building a community website for this purpose, also saying “I can’t write a website to save my soul, I ain’t doing it!”

During the talk/questions, a great open source view was mentioned Swipe view by @jasonfry which is like view flipper but the animations between the views are not static and more like the home screen.

Make it fun

This was basically a demo of using the Unity 3D framework for creating applications that can be run on iphone/ipad/android/wii/computer. Seemed to have some cool features but I will let them do their own sales talk.

Monetize your apps in emerging markets

This was an interesting talk by a guy from movend who discussed the concept of marketing your apps to emerging markets. For a lot of people in emerging markets the phone is the only access to the internet, social networking, and gaming/entertainment device.

He had some intersting statistics on mobile phone payments. Asia Pacific accounts for $62.8 million in mobile phone payments and the rest of the world only accounts for $45.8 million. The market for mobile app revenue is estimated at $135million for 2009 and at $4 billion for 2010.

Market is extremely fragmented, android market does not exist in certain countries/handsets. Try to get your application pre-loaded onto a phone and target what specific users like. Apparently the Chinese like to play mmorpg the most. Micro-transactions are a great was to add value to a free application.

Android has a “dude” problem

Lady geek and ladygeektv

This presentation started with a great slide:

Ladygeek android penis

Only 5% women want an android phone whereas 50% want an iphone. She goes on to discuss why we as developers should care. Apparently women buy more gadgets than men, and between the ages of 25-39 there are more female gamers than men!

She then used this awesome droid advert as a demonstration of how android is currently marketed which contains the awesome quote of “Race horse duct taped to a scud missile, fast”

Android behind the scenes

Sony Erricson sharing some behind the scenes information about how they work on android.

They were constantly trying to remind developers that they are very open and are contributing changes upstream to the android project. They are interested in decoupling applications from android so that signature apps are built on top rather than into android. I believe they said this was the case for their sexy timescape view:

Sony Ericsson Timescape

Sony Erricson want to be very in touch with devs and they don’t believe creating seperate communities will help anything and instead will provide support in current communities such as stackoverflow and google groups.

They briefly mentioned the Ericsson application awards 2011 which has a theme of “Connected things” and has 4 prizes of 15,000 each with phones awarded throughout different stages of the competition. They will also provide live beta testers to evaluate your application.

Other

We had a quick play on some of the cool new android tablets.

Android Tablet

There were some free android usb sticks, which someone said were from orange but there was no branding on or nearby them.

Android 2gb usb stick

As this is quite a long post here is a mini table of contents to speed it up:

• Git on android
• Swingme
• Google Bootcamp 1
• Alternative Markets
• Meta-Markets
• Google Bootcamp 2
• How I do it
• Apps for good
• App Circus
• Rest

Schedule

Barcamp schedule (sorry for crap pic)

Git on android

This was a really surprising talk, just by the name it’s a little confusing as to why this would be useful but it was a really good talk. A guy from who works at the guardian (need to find name) walked through all the problems he came across when trying to use git on android and how using open source goodness he could simplify a lot of trouble by simply extending pre-written code and even create work arounds for troublesome bugs.

It was a very interesting talk just to see how everything had fitted together and to see a demo of some sexy git-based syncing, including using some ssh agents securely.

Swing me

swingme
Draft still…too tired to write.
A single UI widget toolset that can easily be ported to other operating systems. Uses guestures pinch zoom all the things you would be used to. Non-android specific code and can specify protocols nicely to cooperate with different devices. Removes hassle on behalf of developer, debug using xml, then switch to binary mode for performance
.
Difference between keys on certain phones… assign buttons, like “back” as a button on phones with dedicated back buttons ie nokia soft key hidden and at bottom, android will hide it and use android hardware back button. IE. unhidden back button not hidden (good solving of problem)

Problems with accessing core bits of anroid but private/protected stuff. Radio easy but problem with tick box.
Missing clipboard (almost finished, work on android, symbian, desktop… lol @ apple)
Still use native android based stuff

Google Bootcamp 1

So there were four google guys present to answer the questions and complaints of the developers and one to pass the microphone around.

Google Barcamp 1

Someone asked when Gingerbread was going to be released and Reto Meier answered by not confirming anything regarding the release date, be it this year or next. He even went as far as to say that he couldn’t confirm gingerbread’s existence, despite the rather large statue outside building 44

Roman was asked a question about the Action bar and if it was going to become a standard widget in the android apk, he said that it wasn’t currently part of the widget set and couldn’t confirm when it would be added.

Reto mentioned about in app purchasing and said google was looking into other method to monetise can’t comment on specifics. However in app purchasing currently is against the google TOS, so you might want to be careful if your app has this and is distributed via the google market. Of course this is fine to do if released on to another app store such as and app, doubtful that orange and vodaphone app stores would be so generous.

Google tv was mentioned and how to write android on it. Currently only html 5 / web stuff but as it is based on android the plan is to be compatible. So we are waiting for compatability hopefully sometime next year. The google tv’s should receive market via OTA updates so there will probably be no need for OEM manufactures to get in the way. Media server such as a upnp server, status is currently unknown.

In app google analytics was mentioned and another barcamp talk was refered to which unfortunatly I missed, if anyone went to this and has written it up I am happy to add the link in here.

In app logic – services/content providers global = bad, shared prefs, instance state mainly for UI shiz. setters/getters saved pref/database on logic. check if its been set etc. roman/reto

Someone briefly asked about adverts without using the internet permission and instead using an addon/plugin which did access the internet. Currently it seems this is not possible at the moment but is something they may look into in the future.

Have I missed off any of the other topics discussed during this bootcamp, if so let me know!

Alternative Markets

Draft still…too tired to write.
Vodaphone – incentive – random draw to win a htc legend. 30 70 split
Orange – 30 70 again (yawn) want good apps, as many as possible pay via phone bill, no registeration, france/uk last year. need several countries/languages arabic/african etc.
Nokia – no alternative operators, content agregator, locilzation/adaptation/uploads etc… Sensing, in app billing

Individual / OS devs fetching market data/pulling to diff apps sotres as we dont have the time to move to diff places

App stores share with other stores, very nice
Orange apps tied to network you lose them if you move

Meta-Market Model

This talk tied in very nicely with problems regarding using alternative markets discussed in the previous talk. Mark Murphey (Commonsware) discussed an alternative to writing open letter to google (as was discussed via email) about the android market. He created a brain stroming session on the market problems and what can we can do as a community to help improve this for ourselves (devs) and for users.

Mark Murphey Meta Markets

Some of the good problems highlighted by people were:

• Comment spam, and no way to “Reacting to punters” or dealing with users who are “dissing” all apps
• Not enough screenshots / descriptions / add videos etc…
• Searching the market is terrible (My contribution)
• Analytics
• Email messages about cancelled users every time
• Refund policy too leaniant
• Option to explain the reason behind each permission as users don’t know what’s going on when you can’t fit an explanation in the description
• Better rating levels, UI/UX etc.
• Downloads don’t work

The market on android is improving at a “Glacial pace” and even though there was some sexy stuff demonstrated at Google IO 5 months ago we are still waiting to see the improvements, such as a web based market that can push applications to devices.

There was also a good discussion about the websites that scrape data from the android market (appbrain, cryket, androidzoom)which is kinda sketchy territory as it is probably against TOS of android, kinda counting as pirated data. There is even a google code project to fetch the data from the android market.

Data goes in data doesn’t come out
Pirated data not supported by data cant rape data from market.

So what makes this presentation more than just a compaint about the android market?
Market is a closed club, OEM’s who don’t agree to the rule book don’t have access. And simply creating a app store for each carrier/OEM etc. isn’t a viable solution which Mark summarised with a brilliant quote: “those who complain about fragmentation you ain’t seen nothing yet”.

So Mark has come up with an idea about having a single open feed of android applications that all the market applications can hook into. So this would work as some sort of extended atom/rss feed (just add namespace) with open access which could benefit from the standards introduced and the maturity of the software already written. This sounds like a great idea but will obviously need a large amount of momentum to succeed, Mark is obviously a major player in the android field and this proposal was backed up by the developer of AndAppStore.

Mark also mentioned that even market owners who were unwilling could be worked-around using a firefox plugin to remove most of the leg work. So this would mean that developers can have a single place where they have the app description, screen shots, all the minimums required for android market but more for those who support more.

To wrap up mark said that instead of us complaining at google to fix the market we should fix the market problems ourselves. At the end of the session Mark was collecting email addresses to create a mailing list with regards to the start of this process.

How I do it

Kevin McDonagh of Novoda gave some brilliant tips and tricks for writing android applications. I’ve written some of them up, but hopefully he will publish his whole list online (hint hint…)

@Override
public void onLowMemory(){
super.onLowMemory();
// Code to execute on low memory
// Free up unused drawables etc.
}

• Use weak references
• Avoid Generics, use primitives where possible
• Clean up drawables onPause()
• Use the heirachy viewer

Kevin also mentioned some stuff which I’m sure I should have come across before but for some reason I was still oblivious to.

Extending styles to avoid having to retype android:height=”wrap_content” etc. on every item.

There was some good discussion on the conventions for android:versionCode and android:versionName and someone mentioned very helpfully that versionName appears in the market description and is limited only to 255 chars, which means you can add additional versioning changes into this (shown below a screen shot of nexus revamped in the market with the versionName highlighted).

android:versionName displayed in android market

Apps for good
Apps for good is a charity that gets a group of people between the ages of 18 and 25 and gives them the resources and skills required to create an application that can benefit society. Once students have finished the course they often go on to mentor the next batch of students.

The apps they have already produced on this scheme are Stop and Search StudentVoice StudioPhly and they discussed a up and coming app they are working on currently so that the balance of an oyster card can be checked via a android device so that you are never caught out.

They are looking for help so if you are feeling charitable I am sure they would appreciate your input or if you know of anyone 18-25 who would like to go on the course, please inform them of the opportunity.

Google Barcamp 2

Ok, so this barcamp was delayed and I think alot of the better questions were already asked, that in combination with my laptop battery dying mean I have less notes and worse memory about this one.

Google Barcamp day 2

Bundling several apps into one installer apk, currently not possible. Could be achieved by having a program that sends intents to install other apps, or by having one large app with serveal launcher items in the app menu.

Tips from tech hub:

• Devs arn’t always design focussed, should assume users are complete idiots and don’t understand anything.
• Ported apps don’t act in an android style – back button doesn’t close etc, as devs don’t understand application lifecycle

App Circus
So app circus had a bit of a disappointing number of contestants, about 6 I think it was in total hopefully next time there will be more. The winners were

• 1st: Swiftkey
• 2nd: — Blind something? Sorry forgot the proper name
• 3rd: ProductPay

Rest

Coding in a hammock and drinking beer

I also met a lot of very interesting people and plan on meeting a whole load more tomorrow!

Subject: A Message from Android Market
From: Android Market Support
To: android .at. stealthcopter.com
Date: 25/09/10 00:03:32

Hello,

We’re writing to inform you about some changes to Android Market that require your attention.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding paid apps support for additional countries. If you have selected to publish your paid apps to all locations and intend to support all new locations as we expand the number of supported countries for paid apps, you don’t have to do anything. If you have selected to publish your paid apps to all locations but intend to only target the currently supported 14 countries, please update your location selections to target these specific countries.

Please look for follow-up emails when we introduce paid apps support for specific additional countries in the coming weeks. At that time, you’ll have the option to target these specific countries.

Thanks, and we look forward to continue working with you on Android
Market.

Sincerely,
The Android Market Team

Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Email preferences: You are receiving this email to notify you of important changes to your Android Market account.

1.1.16 Changelog

Minor update to fix a few bugs and add a few more things I did have time to include in the previous update. Should also increase performance and reduce FC/OOMs

• Added: Particle glow saturation (Particle > Saturation) to control the saturation of the glow around the particles
• Added: Added a preview of how the particle will look in the saturation dialog
• Added: Some people prefered the old particle look so I have added two buttons on the saturation to reset these values to either original nexus like (original) or like my previous ones (revived)
• Moved: More apps and Feedback are now under the Developer option
• Improved: Parallax and scale are no longer marked as experimental
• Bug Fix: Particles sometimes not properly aligned to grid on preview
• Bug Fix: Improved bitmap loading performance loads this should also get rid of most the FC/OutOfMemory errors
• Bug fix: Battery effects only started working once a battery update was given, now they work instantly!
• Bug Fix: Particle glow circle was truncated, now fixed!
• Bug fix: Touch location when using scale is fixed (still need to fix rotation)

New Saturation Options

This is in addition to the other particle options (tail length and custom colors) you can now completely customise how the particles look with the new saturation settings. Some users disliked the change I made to more closely resemble the original design wallpaper by romainguy so I had added an option to choose between one like his particles (original) and like my previous particles (revived).

New saturation options in nexus revamped pro

Performance
I have improved the way in which bitmaps are used which should take up far less memory. This will likely prevent the OutOfMemory errors some people were getting and remove the change of a force close. I have tinkered with a few other things which should provide better performance.

Video
I have put off the video until this version was released so this should be along shortly (the first videovideo is very outdated now)

Android Market Links
Either click the following android market links (in android phone) or search the market for nexus revamped.
Pro Version
Nexus Revamped Pro Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevampedpro)

Free Version

So the free version is a few versions behind the pro version and some of the fancier features are missing, I am constantly improving both so don’t worry if you don’t want to shell out £0.99 for an app.

Nexus Revamped Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevamped)

Download link

Future
I have plans and ideas for the future of this application, please complete the poll below to indicate what you’d like to see in this app or leave feedback (comment) if you have any.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Example of a grid adapter in use

Advantages of an adapter

• Dynamic – Can expand to any number of elements rather than statically coding each individual view.
• Elegant – Makes your code petite and quite clear to understand once you get over the initial difficulty
• Beautiful – Now you don’t have to control how many items there are in rows or columns, android will automatically fill up the screen in the best way possible. This also means you don’t need to redesign your application for horizontal and vertical orientations.

Creating a ButtonAdapter

So we’re going to dive straight into the deep end and create our own ButtonAdapter class that extends the BaseAdapter class. If you are doing this in eclipse you can write the first line and then it will offer to autocreate (implement) the missing methods for you (if you highlight the error). This code goes inside your Activity in your java file but not inside your oncreate method.

public class ButtonAdapter extends BaseAdapter {
 private Context mContext;

 // Gets the context so it can be used later
 public ButtonAdapter(Context c) {
  mContext = c;
 }

 // Total number of things contained within the adapter
 public int getCount() {
  return filenames.length;
 }

  // Require for structure, not really used in my code.
 public Object getItem(int position) {
  return null;
 }

 // Require for structure, not really used in my code. Can
 // be used to get the id of an item in the adapter for
 // manual control.
 public long getItemId(int position) {
  return position;
 }

 public View getView(int position,
                           View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {
  Button btn;
  if (convertView == null) {
   // if it's not recycled, initialize some attributes
   btn = new Button(mContext);
   btn.setLayoutParams(new GridView.LayoutParams(100, 55));
   btn.setPadding(8, 8, 8, 8);
   }
  else {
   btn = (Button) convertView;
  }
  exus
  btn.setText(filesnames[position]);
  // filenames is an array of strings
  btn.setTextColor(Color.WHITE);
  btn.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.button);
  btn.setId(position);

  return btn;
 }
}

So the important methods are getCount and getView. getCount returns the number of objects (in our case buttons) that will be needed in this adapter. getView returns an object (again a button in our case) so that it can be used.

Both these functions reference an array that I have referered to as filenames this is a string array (String[]) which looks something like the following:

public String[] filesnames = {
			"File 1",
			"File 2",
			"Roflcopters"
			};

Creating an OnClickListener

You can add the following to your getView method to setup a new onclick listener for your buttons so that they can react to button presses.

  // Set the onclicklistener so that pressing the button fires an event
  // We will need to implement this onclicklistner.
  btn.setOnClickListener(new MyOnClickListener(position));

For this to work we need to implement our own OnClickListner which I have named MyOnClickListener (for lack of a better name) this is the same as a normal onclick listner except we pass an integer so that we can tell which button called our onClick method (you could get the id from the view passed, but this method is useful when expanding your program later on).

class MyOnClickListener implements OnClickListener
{
 private final int position;

 public MyOnClickListener(int position)
 {
  this.position = position;
 }

 public void onClick(View v)
 {
  // Preform a function based on the position
  someFunction(this.position)
 }
}

Implementing this adapter

Now implementing the adapater is very simple, add a few imports and load a grid view from an xml file. Then we simply set the gridview’s adapter to be a new ButtonAdapter and it will automatically do the rest for us.

// You will need the following imports

import android.widget.BaseAdapter;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.GridView;

// In your oncreate (or where ever you want to create your gridview)
GridView gridview = (GridView) findViewById(R.id.gridview);
gridview.setAdapter(new ButtonAdapter(this));

And hopefully your all done, you could then go on to add a context menu(menu on long press) to your buttons. If you have any questions or want something explaining a bit better, just ask!

So Whats new?

This is a massive update and I have added many features, I have tonnes more ideas for things to include next. Please send me an email if there is anything you’d like or if you spot any problems! Enjoy!

• Added: EXPERIMENTAL Parallax option to have background scrolling effect and modify its magnitude
• Added: EXPERIMENTAL Rotation option to rotate the entire foreground (Physics > Rotation)
• Added: Darkness slider to all color dialogs, you now use the darkness slide.
• Added: Choice between 1, 2 and 4 custom particle colors, so you don’t have to bother filling them in if you only want 1 or 2 colors
• Added: EXPERIMENTAL to scale the size of the live wallpaper (Physics > scaling)
• Removed: Tint colors on non-image backgrounds, they are pointless now you can select all possible colors and are hence disabled for performance benefits
• Removed: Alpha slider from some color dialogs, you should now use particle saturation to change the alpha
• Moved: Touch interaction is now in the Reactions menu.
• Improved: Particle saturation can now be set for the head and the tail individually
• Improved: Changed the look of the particles should be more similar to the original wallpaper
• Improved: Changed some default values (Speed deviation, Particle saturation)
• Improved: Background color now uses a color dialog
• Improved: Made changelog text smaller
• Improved: How particle saturation works, it now affects the particle and trail properly
• Improved: Custom background images are now resampled to use less memory, should cause less force closes and lower memory usage. Also added a protection in to alter user when there was a memory error rather than force closing
• Improved: Custom particle colors selection now shows the color next to each option. Makes it a bit nicer I think
• Bug fix: Background tints now work properly on backgrounds / custom backgrounds, and are also more efficient
• Bug fix: Density is more consistent now, not reliant on particle speed
• Bug fix: Tails didn’t always decay to completely transparent
• Known bug: Disabling static foreground will cause particles to “fall” off the grid
• Known bug: Large rotation values can cause particles to spawn on screen
• Known bug: Licencing server issues when data connection not avaliable

Some are marked as experimental as I’ve tested them, and my beta testers have had a play but still need to be tried and tested, go wild! and let me know of any problems.

Walkthrough of some of the new and the more interesting settings

Custom Particle Colors

Follow this like a story board, left to right top to bottom. Shows the process of selecting custom colors

Custom Backgrounds

Setting a custom background image

Battery Reactions
The live wallpaper has the ability to react to the battery status either changing the particle colors or the speed of the particles.

Option to change colors based on battery level. (Right to left, top to bottom: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 0% battery capacity)

Scale (Experimental)
A few users asked if they could have an option to scale the wallpaper to larger sizes, so here you go!

Nexus Revamped Pro 1.1.15 scaling settings and examples

Saturation

Change the saturation of the particles heads and tails

Parallax (Experimental)
Parallax or the scrolling of the background at a different rate to the foreground is a difficult effect to demonstrate well in a photo so please wait for the video to see a preview of this.

Rotation (Experimental)
Rotate the grid of the foreground, particles will no longer be aligned to the grid but I think it looks kinda funky.

Nexus Revamped Pro 1.1.15 rotation setting

Nexus Revamped Pro 1.1.15 rotation

Changelog
Now you can know what’s up.

Changelog, no more wondering what I've been doing!

Restore default settings
Safety button to lose all settings.

Don't worry about experimenting with settings you can always reset

Video
I am still planning on posting a video soon (when I get some free time) to demonstrate the app as it has improved significantly since the first video.

Android Market Links
Either click the following android market links (in android phone) or search the market for nexus revamped.
Pro Version
Nexus Revamped Pro Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevampedpro)

Free Version

So the free version is a few versions behind the pro version and some of the fancier features are missing, I am constantly improving both so don’t worry if you don’t want to shell out £0.99 for an app.

Nexus Revamped Live Wallpaper (com.stealthcopter.nexusrevamped)

Download link

Future
I have plans and ideas for the future of this application, please complete the poll below to indicate what you’d like to see in this app or leave feedback (comment) if you have any.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Nexus one high capacity battery (2600mAh)

The battery costs $14.00 (£8.81) which will give an extra 85% increase in charge. This means the that my nexus one should last closer to 2 days with casual use now, I have ordered one and will update with some benchmarks when it arrives (unfortunately not in time for my camping weekend).

Ugly Buttons:
Below is show the example I will use to demonstrate the default buttons in use with a background image (It’s a picture of me hugging the android statue!)

Button States

There are four images you will need to create (you can use less if you want); one for each of the following states:

I recommend creating a nine-patch png for the button image, this way your image can be stretched to fit the button size as needed. Also soundboards look rather snazzy if you include a background image, and then you can use transparency in your png so that your buttons don’t obscure it.

Using draw9patch tool to make a 9patch png for use as a strechable button

XML Code

button.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_focused="true"
	android:state_pressed="false"
	android:drawable="@drawable/button_selected" />
    <item android:state_focused="true"
    	  android:state_pressed="true"
    	  android:drawable="@drawable/button_focus" />
    <item android:state_focused="false"
    	  android:state_pressed="true"
	  android:drawable="@drawable/button_pressed" />
    <item android:drawable="@drawable/button_normal" />
</selector>

main.xml
An example usage of how to use this newly created xml button in your layout file.

<Button
android:id="@+id/mysexynewbutton"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:textSize="30sp"
android:textStyle="bold"
android:text="Stealthcopter FTW"
android:background="@drawable/button" />

Results
Now you should have some nice sexy customised buttons that change depending on thier state. Which makes our example now look like this (I increased the padding and margins of the buttons slightly):

Pretty Buttons with transparency using 9patch png and xml

Below are a few examples of my work with some nice transparent buttons:

Example 9 patch image

button.9.png

So there are two methods for playing sounds in android SoundPool and MediaPlayer.

SoundPool

SoundPool is designed for short clips which can be kept in memory decompressed for quick access, this is best suited for sound effects in apps or games. Using this method with soundboards is a bad idea as you will be loading lots of “medium” sized sounds into the memory and you may exceed your limit (16Mb) and get an OutOfMemoryException.

MediaPlayer

MediaPlayer is designed for longer sound files or streams, this is best suited for music files or larger files. The files will be loaded from disk each time create is called, this will save on memory space but introduce a small delay (not really noticeable).

So lets have a look how to use Media Player instead of SoundPool

MediaPlayer Usage

MediaPlayer mp = MediaPlayer.create(ClassName.this, R.raw.sound);
mp.start();

Where ClassName.this should be the name of your class (Hint: this should be the name of the java file you are editing)

You can pause the sound playing and then use start to start the sound playing again.

mp.pause(); // Stop
mp.start();   // Start from place paused

To stop the sound playing use stop, using start now will start playing the sound again from the beginning

mp.stop();    // Stop sound
mp.start();   // Start from beginning

To reset the media player so it can be reinitialised with a another sound

mp.reset();
mp = MediaPlayer.create(ClassName.this, R.raw.sound2);

To release the resources once you are finished media player (free memory)

mp.release();

My Soundboards

Below are a few screenshots of my current soundboards on the market