Archive for the ‘android’ Category

  • Security Warning: Using a mobile phone to take pictures of kids activities/work

    Date: 2010.07.08 | Category: android, ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT | Response: 3

    Did you know when you take a picture on your mobile phone it may add your current location to the Exif data of the image?

    So if you are out on a school trip and have GPS or location enabled on your device then you upload an image to an e-portfolio or blog anyone will be able to see the latitude and longitude of where you took the picture.

    I discovered this when working on Classdroid and Kudos to Hak5 for the useful link.  Safe to say all images uploaded from Classdroid will set the location as: “The moon”.

    This is especially a concern if you out doing school trips and updating your blog on the fly.

    How to turn off location tagging. On Android, Click Settings then Locations then un-tick My Location.

  • Android install APK

    Date: 2010.06.28 | Category: android, google, ICT | Response: 1

    So you are beta testing an application or whatever and you have been given an .apk file to install.

    Before we start make sure you have the android device driver installed, if not you can download it here.

    1.  Plug the phone in to your PC with a USB Cable.  When prompted DO NOT mount USB.

    2.  On the phone goto Settings –> Applications then click the Unknown sources tick box.

    3.  On your PC Download the Android SDK

    4.  Extract the Android SDK to c:\androidsdk

    5.  Copy the .apk file you were given to c:\androidsdk\tools

    6.  Click Start –> Run then type in:

    c:\androidsdk\tools\adb install -r c:\androidsdk\tools\whatever.apk

    Make sure you replace whatever.apk with the name of the file you copied.

    7. Your application should now be installed.  Visit the application menu on the Android device and look for your icon.

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  • Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 2

    Date: 2010.06.15 | Category: android, classdroid, google, ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT, school, schools, sdk | Response: 0

    Today as I ventured towards Droidville I met a sage who reminded me about some useful keystokes.

    Eclipse: Control Alt Down duplicates line
    Emulator: Rotate screen – Control F11

    As I moved closer to Droidville the air began to fill with hope, thousands of hopeful children and teachers poored into the streets, so I quickly hid and jumped into Bar Youtube (Part of the Starbucks chain) and watched another video to further my understanding of the power of Android, another good one this time by Ye old O’Reilly

    Building my team to fight the forces of evil

    I got in touch with a developer through rent-a-coder called Kumar Bibek who has 3 years experience fighting the forces of evil (developing Android apps). We had a conversation that went something line:  ”I can make the bow, can ye make the arrow?”  We agree’d on 100$ for the array (final bits of the work that were out of my skill set).

    Overview of the bits I’m doing:
    Making Classdroid look fit for a princess (Layout design/User interfaces)
    Making Classdroid easy to use  (Application flow)
    Making Classdroid link together (Intent assignments)
    Designing how Classdroid will save our princesses minions (Database design)

    Overview of the bits he’s doing:
    Not shooting the messenger (Code to read/write preferences/settings to/from SQLite)
    Carrier Pigeon nurturing (Control method for post to WordPress)
    Controlling the Eye of  Gondor (Camera SDK modifications)

    In the Sage’s library I found a piece of parchment with some notes scribbled on it:
    Resource = text,pictures, sound objects, layout….
    Intent = change the page
    View = new page layout/display
    \n = newline when using text elements

    Very cryptic clues, maybe I will need them to enter the great hall of Droidville?

    It’s been a long day…..

    As the day drew to a close and the Sun nestled the hills of Azrowilsden I discovered WordPress have an android application that does 80% of what I want to do from a control point of view so I’m going to hack into that to save me needing to write the function that posts the RPC over XML to WordPress.  This is why the world should embrace more open source, it empowers us all instead of dumbing us down like iLem users who are too scared to google how to create an android application (or don’t see it being a valuable use of their time).

    As the iLem users fall off their platform I am gently warmed inside by the knowledge that we are creating a better, more open world without any corporate borders.  One application at a time.

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  • Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 1

    Date: 2010.06.15 | Category: android, google, ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT | Response: 0

    Today I started on my journey towards Droidville, past the gargoyles of SDKs and into the realm of eclipse. I began my journey equiping myself with the finest weapons possible in the form of eclipse and android sdk including all the power ups and runes. I stopped for lunch at bar youtube where I indulged in an excellent documentary and began my developing whilst following the gentle, slightly distant voice of the presenter. “Whisper control shift oh! to the sage and ye be blessed with organized imports” I heard him mutter under his breath..

    Hours went by and the youtube video was stopped, rewound and replayed various times, as the sun set I had my Hello world working and some UIs designed, unfortunatly my Hello World app is called com.golf.. The icon is set. If this is groundhog day let it end…

    Flute playing and shots of rolling hills come into screen..

    Will tomorrow bring safer travels for our hero?

  • Android gets turn-by-turn based navigation

    Date: 2010.04.21 | Category: android, google, ICT, primary, Primary School, Primary School ICT, Uncategorized | Response: 0

    android_man_kicking_appleSo, this might initially be a very “educationally focused” post but you have to read between the lines to understand the significance of this (even though it was somewhat inevitable) announcement.

    Basically turn-by-turn is that lovely lady who tells you to “turn left in 20 meters”.  We all knew it was coming to the UK but companies such as Jarmin & Tomtom have been trying to stop it.  That is because they have made absolute packets of money by selling their app to iPhone fanbois and girls alike.

    This may be the final blow android needed to really knock the Apple iPhone OS off it’s #1 mantel.  How does this affect education you may be asking?  Simple, a consumer based demand of Android handsets is inevitable now that your phone now replaces your usual Sat Nav product, and lets face it.  Google will do some crazy cool stuff with turn-by-turn based navigation, already boasting an incredibly smart caching system that caches your trip so if you lose Internet connectivity you don’t lose your map or location.

    As android becomes more popular and more schools grow sto adopt the platform it means less iPhone applications will be developed and more Android developers will pop up.  Is this a good thing?  Surely iPhone apps are better than Android apps?  Yes it is a good thing.  Android promotes open source and a large majority of the applications available in the market place are completely free.

    So today’s  announcement might not have a direct impact on Android in Education but the knock on effect should be huge and the future certainly looks bright the little green operating system and it’s place in the UK market.

    As a side note its worth mentioning that most of the popular netbooks/tablets will soon run Android (including devices such as the Asus EEE)

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