CAUSTIC for Android: Caustic 2.0 is coming...

CAUSTIC for Android: Caustic 2.0 is coming...

Exciting news for Caustic owners and Android music makers. I've got a few week's work left polishing up version 2.0 of Caustic and it's HUGE. It would probably be shorter to list what's NOT new rather than the new features so for now I'll give you the major items with some screenshots. A more complete feature list, as well as a user's manual, will accompany the official release.

One Click PhoneGap Build to Android Device Script | DZone

One Click PhoneGap Build to Android Device Script

I've been fooling around with PhoneGap Build, and I really love it. I love that I don't need to fire up Eclipse or XCode to start fooling around with an app. All I need is a text editor and a browser. What I especially love is the ability to integrate a github repository to the whole process. It makes following proper development practice, while living in the cloud, very easy.
But I've been spoiled for the last year or so. Being able to immediately preview on a connected device has ruined me for the command line, multi-step, manual crap. So at least on Android I've fixed it for myself by building a nice shell script that takes advantage of PhoneGap Build's Web APIs to create a one-step build.

Why Android's UI Is Laggy Compared to iOS and Windows Phone | Daring Fireball

Daring Fireball Linked List: Why Android's UI Is Laggy Compared to iOS and Windows Phone

Interesting technical look at the design of Android’s graphics and event processing by Andrew Munn, trying to explain why it feels so laggy compared to iOS and Windows Phone:

Android UI will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints I discussed at the beginning:

• UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
• UI rendering has normal priority

[…] This is the same reason why Windows Mobile 6.5, Blackberry OS, and Symbian have terrible touch screen performance. Like Android, they were not designed to prioritize UI rendering. Since the iPhone’s release, RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia have abandoned their mobile OS’s and started from scratch. Android is the only mobile OS left that existed pre-iPhone.

Android Dashboard Design Tutorial | Ravi Tamada

Android Dashboard Design Tutorial

Tutorial about creating android dashboard screen design. An example of facebook dashboard screen is explained. Also added some functionality like launching new activity on selecting icon on dashboard.

Siri Gives Apple Two Year Advantage Over Android - Slashdot

Siri Gives Apple Two Year Advantage Over Android - Slashdot

Hugh Pickens writes "Gary Morgenthaler, a recognized expert in artificial intelligence and a Siri board member, says that Apple now has at least a two-year advantage over Google in the war for best smartphone platform. 'What Siri has done is changed people's expectations about what's possible,' says Morgenthaler. 'Apple has crossed a threshold; people now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English — and be understood. Siri has cracked the code.' The threshold, from mere speech recognition to natural language input and understanding, is one that Google cannot cross by replicating the technology or making an acquisition adds Morgenthaler. 'There's no company out there they can go buy.' Morgenthaler's comments echo the recent article in Forbes Magazine, 'Why Siri Is a Google Killer' that says that Apple's biggest advantage over any other voice application out there today is the massive data Siri will collect in the next 2 years — all being stored in Apple's massive North Carolina data center — that will allow Siri to get better and better. 'Siri is a new interface for customers wanting to get information,' writes Eric Jackson. 'At the moment, most of us still rely on Google for getting at the info we want. But Siri has a foot in the door and it's trusting that it will win your confidence over time to do basic info gathering.'"

Google Preps Devs For One-Size-Fits-All Android - Slashdot

Google Preps Devs For One-Size-Fits-All Android - Slashdot

alphadogg writes "Google is preparing Android developers for the latest edition of its Android mobile operating platform that will work the same on both tablets and smartphones. Scott Main, the lead tech writer for Google's Android Developers Blog, reminded developers on Monday that the newest edition of Android — dubbed 'Ice Cream Sandwich' — will 'support big screens, small screens and everything in between.' Main also emphasized that Android would maintain 'the same version ... on all screen sizes' going forward."

RMS: 'Is Android Really Free Software?' | Slashdot

RMS: 'Is Android Really Free Software?' - Slashdot

An anonymous reader points out an article by Richard Stallman in The Guardian which questions whether Android should be described as 'free' or 'open.' Quoting:

"Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General Public License for Linux, but the Apache license on the rest of Android does not require source release. Google has said it will never publish the source code of Android 3.0 (aside from Linux), even though executables have been released to the public. Android 3.1 source code is also being withheld. Thus, Android 3, apart from Linux, is non-free software, pure and simple. ... Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go. Hackers are working on Replicant, but it's a big job to support a new phone model, and there remains the problem of the firmware. Even though the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones, they cannot be said to respect your freedom."

Nook Color: Updated Clockwork Recovery Bootable SD | Maurice Mongeon

Nook Color: Updated Clockwork Recovery Bootable SD | Maurice Mongeon

This is an updated compilation of the latest bootable CWR SD images. These new images are unique in which they work for all ROMS including honeycomb, froyo, stock, and gingerbread. Just write one of these to the SD card and copy over your ROM.zip files to flash. A special thanks goes out to cmstlist @ XDA Developers for creating the bootables and referencing my page here.

Barnes & Noble Nook Color: Full Update Guide - CyanogenMod Wiki

Barnes & Noble Nook Color: Full Update Guide - CyanogenMod Wiki

This guide will walk you through the process of taking the Barnes & Noble Nook Color from stock to having a custom recovery image and the ability to flash the latest version of CyanogenMod.

Scala: The Android programming language you didn't know you had | Application Development - InfoWorld

Scala: The Android programming language you didn't know you had | Application Development - InfoWorld

While developers already are aware of Java and C++ language usage for Android, they also can use other JVM languages because Android leverages the Java-compatible Dalvik VM, reasoned developer Mike Burns, of Thoughtbot, a Web and mobile application development company. "There's a growing community of people [developing] with Scala," he said.

Members of the Boston Android Developers Group, for instance, have begun to leverage Scala for Android development, said Burns, who runs the group: "Scala lets you write the code more quickly and share the code more easily than you can in Java."

 

From Windows to Android with Glassboard | Nick Bradbury

Nick Bradbury: From Windows to Android with Glassboard

I can tell you that switching to Android wasn't easy after almost two decades of Windows development. I had to learn a new language (Java), a new IDE (Eclipse), a new platform (Android) and a new programming mindset (mobile) in a very short time. Oh, and just to make it harder, I decided to do it all on a Mac. I guess you could say I was looking for a challenge :)
And a challenge it definitely was.

HP TouchPad Android Ports Already Under Way | Android Community

HP TouchPad Android Ports Already Under Way | Android Community

I must say for $99 crisp dollar bills, the HP TouchPad rocking Android would be a pretty awesome deal. That would be a great price for a tablet and once we get some Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich running on it everyone will be glad they snagged one for $99 dollars. After HP discontinued the TouchPad it went on a firesale and is now in the bargain bin. The specs compare to that of the HTC Sensation with that 1.2 Ghz dual-core Qualcomm processor, but with a 9.7″ 1024×768 IPS display. All that running Android sounds like something I’d be okay with.

App Inventor Continues Life at MIT - Slashdot

App Inventor Continues Life at MIT - Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes with a press release on the App Inventor Weblog. From the release: "MIT announced the launch of the new Center for Mobile Learning, with a first activity being to take over and refine App Inventor for Android. The center will be led by App Inventor mastermind Hal Abelson, Mitch Resnick of Lego Mindstorms and Scratch fame, and Eric Klopfer, the director of teacher education at MIT and an expert in games and simulation. This news boomerangs the negativity surrounding Google's discontinuation announcement last week. To the many teachers whose curriculums have been energized by App inventor, and to the thousands of newly empowered app builders: Rejoice! The fun has just begun!"

Ben's Macroblog: Developing Android apps: it's really not so bad!

Ben's Macroblog: Developing Android apps: it's really not so bad!

There's been some talk recently about how Android development can be difficult for newcomers to jump into (for one, this rant on Hacker News, claiming that you'll need "months researching Android design patterns"; the top rated response is mine.) I thought I'd elaborate and show my roughly two week journey from deciding "hey, I'd like to try building an app some time" to releasing a full blown, (IMHO) polished Android app to the market. I plan on following up with more stats in a week's time to show how I'm doing with revenues, downloads, etc.

Google Pulls Plug On Programming For the Masses - Slashdot

Google Pulls Plug On Programming For the Masses - Slashdot

theodp writes "Google has decided to pull the plug on Android App Inventor, which was once touted as a game-changer for introductory computer science. In an odd post, Google encourages folks to 'Get Started!' with the very product it's announcing will be discontinued as a Google product. The move leaves CS Prof David Wolber baffled. ' In the case of App Inventor,' writes Wolber, 'the decision affects more than just your typical early adopter techie. It hurts kids and schools, and outfits like Iridescent, who use App Inventor in their Technovation after-school programs for high school girls, and Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab, which teaches app building to kids in Oakland California. You've hurt professors and K-12 educators who have developed new courses and curricula with App Inventor at the core. You've hurt universities who have redesigned their programs.' Wolber adds: 'Even looking at it from Google's perspective, I find the decision puzzling. App Inventor was a public relations dream. Democratizing app building, empowering kids, women, and underrepresented groups — this is good press for a company continually in the news for anti-trust and other far less appealing issues. And the cost-benefit of the cut was negligible-believe it or not, App Inventor was a small team of just 5+ employees! The Math doesn't make sense.'"

Nick Farina - An iOS Developer Takes on Android

Nick Farina - An iOS Developer Takes on Android

Recently, we released the Android version of Meridian, our platform for building location-based apps.
We didn’t use one of these “Cross Platform!” tools like Titanium. We wrote it, from scratch, in Java, like you do in Android.

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Data On Android? - Slashdot

Ask Slashdot: How Do You Protect Data On Android? - Slashdot

Gibbs-Duhem writes "It makes me very nervous that my Android phone has access to my email/AIM/G-talk/Facebook, protected only by a presumably fairly easily hacked geometric password protection scheme. Even more because simply attaching the phone to a USB port allows complete access to the internal memory and SD card regardless of whether a password is entered. I have no idea how much of that information ranging from cached emails to passwords stored in plaintext is accessible when mounting the device as a USB drive, and that worries me." For the rest of Gibbs-Duhem's question about issues in Android security, read on below.

Writing Android Apps using Visual Studio « #AltDevBlogADay

Writing Android Apps using Visual Studio « #AltDevBlogADay

Google has made it unnecessarily complicated to write Android apps under Windows for C++ developers who are used to Visual Studio. Hopefully this posting makes it easier.

This article is about setting up your Android development environment in combination with Visual Studio and WinDBG for mobile systems beta. The result is that you can create and debug Android projects from within Visual Studio on emulator and the actual device (that doesn’t need to rooted). Those project files are kept in sync with the original NDK build files (Android.mk etc) so they are compatible with the command-line tools. In other words, you can still use ndk-build and ant. If you are a happy Eclipse user, this posting isn’t for you.

My Experiences with Android Development | Javalobby

My Experiences with Android Development | Javalobby

Because I was missing coding, and because my friend and I had an awesome phone app idea at the weekend, I thought I'd try my hand at developing an Android application this week.

I want to give a quick overview of my preliminary thoughts on getting started on this endeavour.

Background: I've got more than 10 years Java experience, but any UI for the applications I've worked on was always a web UI. I am completely new to mobile app development.

Live Blog: Groovy Android programming | Jworks.nl - Agile Software Development

Live Blog: Groovy Android programming | Jworks.nl - Agile Software Development

This blogpost will keep track of our current progress on our effort to make Groovy run on Android phones. Instead of creating a summary like in the previous ‘This Week in Discobot’ posts, we will update this blogpost every half an hour!