Sustainable Fish for Android, the free version – out now!
Sunday, August 29th, 2010As well as the paid for app, Sustainable Fish is also available as a free, Ad supported app [Android market place link].
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
send to phone with C2DM
Friday, August 13th, 2010|
[This post is by Dave Burke, who's an Engineering Manager 80% of the time. — Tim Bray] Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) was launched recently as part of Android 2.2. C2DM enables third-party developers to push lightweight data messages to the phone. C2DM created a nice opportunity for us to pull together different Google developer tools to create a simple but useful application to enable users to push links and other information from their desktop / laptop to their phone. The result was Chrome to Phone – a 20-percent time project at Google. Chrome to Phone comprises a Chrome Extension, an Android Application, and a Google AppEngine server. All of the code is open sourced and serves as a nice example of how to use C2DM. The message flow in Chrome to Phone is fairly typical of a push service: 1. The Android Application registers with the C2DM service and gets a device registration ID for the user. It sends this registration ID along with the user’s account name to the AppEngine server. 2. The AppEngine server authenticates the user account and stores the mapping from account name to device registration ID. 3. The Chrome Extension accesses the URL and page title for the current tab, and POSTs it to the AppEngine server. 4. The AppEngine server authenticates the user and looks up the corresponding device registration ID for the user account name. It then HTTP POSTs the URL and title to Google’s C2DM servers, which subsequently route the message to the device, resulting in an Intent broadcast. 5. The Android application is woken by its Intent receiver. The Android application then routes the URL to the appropriate application via a new Intent (e.g. browser, dialer, or Google Maps).
An interesting design choice in this application was to send the payload (URL and title) as part of the push message. A hash of the URL is used as a The code for Chrome to Phone is online. Both the AppEngine and Android Application include a reusable package called com.google.android.c2dm that handles the lower-level C2DM interactions (e.g. configuration, task queues for resilience, etc). Chrome to Phone is useful, but maybe it’s most interesting as an example of how to use Android C2DM. |
What Google got planed for Thursday the 12th???
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010It appears that Google is getting ready to announce a couple new features for Android on Thursday at an invite-only event, according to an invitation received by Gizmodo. There is only speculation at this point about what might be announced, but whatever it is, events like this tend to generate lots of buzz, and high expectations.
There are a few things I can think of that may come up Thursday — my best guess is maybe the new Android Marketplace (with music, and a full web-based version of the market) is ready for prime time. Other guesses include a sneak peek of Gingerbread, or perhaps something completely different. Last time an event like this took place, Google’s Navigation app for Android was announced.
Curiously, it appears that the launch for Motorola’s next phone (Droid 2) is on the exact same day. Since it sounds like there are going to be “features” demonstrated, I don’t think it’s going to be specifically around Droid 2, but you never know I guess.
What is your best guess?
Jailbroken or just broken?
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
Or
If you’re an iPhone user with their finger on the pulse I’m sure by now you’ve heard of Jailbrakeme and know that it jailbreaks not just iOS4 but all other makes by… according to Mashable “simply by visiting the JailBreakMe website”.
Hang on! Just by visiting their site you can jailbreak an iPhone…
Something smells fishy here.
Before I continue let me clarify, I’ve not visited the site, nor do I have and iPhone (jailbroken or not) to test it out. Also I’m not accusing the people behind JailbreakMe of any criminal intent or behaviour.
That said…
Apple’s phone is locked up very tight, you can’t install anything on it that Apple doesn’t want you to. So how is jailbrakeing done? Well traditionally it’s been done by installing an altered version of the phones firmware. Effectively replacing parts of the operating system which amended version.
So how is it done over the web? Well again I’ve not tried it but it appears that by just accessing a website with you iPhone your able to update the operating system…
Let me say this again, by visiting a specially crafted website you’re able to change the operating system of your Apple phone…
OK as I said, I’m not saying the iPhone Dev Team have any underhanded intent, but if they can do that, then your iPhone can be tricked into installing any new update it including an update that uses your phone to send spam text messages, or sends you account details back to evil corp. ETC.
China to get HTC with Froyo pre-installed.
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Earlyer this week HTC announced that for the first time they would ship to china under their own name (before they shipped phones under the name “Dopod” ), and today they announced that the Desire, Wildfire, Tianxi (really the HTC HD2) and Tianyi will ship with Froyo pre-installed.
Froyo is the fastist mobile OS around (much faster then Apples new iOS4) so it’s good news for chinesses mobile phone users.