Category: android

Ye Olde Android adventure – Day 1

Posted on by John McLear

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

Posted on by primaryt

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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Etherpad on Android based devices

Posted on by primaryt

etherpad_on_android
This isn’t working yet, nor is it working on the iphone.  It is because the web browser that comes on these devices does not have the correct support for the Etherpad objects.  You can however view pads in read only by browsing to the usual URL.

We expect more mobile support in late 2010 but it may not be something we can change server side, it may be dependant on the client device browser implementing designMode. Opera Mini now has partial support for designMode however I haven’t tested Etherpad with it. *Update 31/03/2010 – This doesn’t work

iPhone claims to have support for this but of course it doesn’t work.

Android’s web browser is built on the WebKit application Framework.  Optional browsers Steel and Dolphin do not appear to support designMode at current.

Find out more about Etherpad

Drag and drop in flash objects on android

Posted on by primaryt

Does anyone know if its possible to drag and drop in flash on android.  I want to play a flash game on my phone and it appears that the click and drag functionality doesn’t exist or isn’t supported?

Am I missing something?

The HTC Hero comes shipped with Flash Lite, sound and video works although some games are a bit too heavy for the graphics processor to handle.