Advanced Android 0.9 Now Available!

The Busy Coder’s Guide to Advanced Android Development, Version 0.9, is now available to those on the Warescription. It will show up in print in about 6-7 weeks.

Learn more in this cw-android Google Group post.

 

Android Programming Tutorials Version 1.0!

Android Programming Tutorials has finally reached Version 1.0! If you are a subscriber, you can grab the latest edition from your Warescription page.

The Tutorials will also be released in print in the coming weeks. I’m not completely sure how quickly it will hit the virtual shelves — the original book took a while, but that was partially getting CommonsWare set up as publisher.

Learn more here!

 

Lowering the Threshold, Part One

Android is a modern, capable, perhaps even “sexy”, mobile operating system. However, you can say the same thing about iPhone and Palm’s upcoming WebOS. What distinguishes Android from those two is being open source. In theory, Android should be able to add more capabilities more quickly via having more people contributing to its development.

In practice, contributing to Android is far from easy. The simple things (e.g., contributing to documentation) are hard, and the hard things (e.g., overhauling built-in applications like the media player) are byzantine.

Read the rest over in my latest post for NetworkWorld!

 

Three Posts, Two Announcements, No Partridge

On Friday, I announced the launch of an Android developer wiki (article here) and the “Help a ‘Droid Out” list (article here).

I also just published another post in the Market Maneuvering series, “Cooperation May Be Key”, about marketing Android applications outside of the Android Market.

 

Android Programming Tutorials Version 0.95 Available

Those of you on the Warescription can download Version 0.95 of Android Programming Tutorials. This version adds basic support for the Android 1.5 SDK. Learn more in my post to the [cw-android] Google Group!

 

Monetizing ‘Droids: OEMs and Remixes

A lot of the focus on making money off of Android is focused on writing applications for distribution through the Android Market. Given the huge wave of publicity surrounding the iPhone App Store and authors’ successes there, this fixation is not surprising. However, it does leave out other possibilities, particularly ones both old (OEMs) and new (remixes) that are more in line with Android’s abilities and objectives.

Read more in my latest Android Angle column on NetworkWorld!

 

Flattening the Stack

Android has limits as to how complicated its GUIs can be; Android 1.5 tightens these limits. In particular, stack depth can be an issue, if you have too many layouts holding too many widgets. Learn tricks to help address this issue in today’s episode of Building ‘Droids over on AndroidGuys!

 

Beware the Research-Challenged Columnist

It is really sad when columnists write sensational columns yet fail to do basic research of their claims. Case in point: PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan, who has a piece up today entitled Has Android Already Failed?

For example, Mr. Segan writes:

But the Android pipeline seems terminally clogged. Six months after T-Mobile released the G1, there’s a grand total of one more Android phone available: the HTC Magic

Clearly, if “the Android pipeline” is “terminally clogged”, then the other mobile device OSes must have done significantly better when they started out, right?

So, how many devices were running the iPhone OS six months after launch? Ummmm…2 (iPhone and iPod Touch).

Then, there must have been scads of Windows Mobile devices, right? Well, no, Windows CE — the progenitor to Windows Mobile — started with 2.

Palm OS? 2. Symbian? Near as I can tell, 1. Only Blackberry, which might have had a whopping three or four by the time they got to phones, was higher than those.

So, it would seem like Android’s progress is on par with the other mobile OSes at similar points in their respective histories.

He goes on to write:

But to actually build devices, you need a solid SDK, a clear idea of Google’s role, and a development ecosystem that’s at least as cozy as Windows Mobile’s.

A third-party developer SDK is immaterial for building devices, as evidenced by the fact that Blackberry somehow managed to ship quite a few devices without one. He offers zero evidence that “Google’s role” is somehow slowing device manufacturers. And, of course, even Windows Mobile didn’t have a “development ecosystem that’s as least as cozy as Windows Mobile’s” back when it started, either.

But wait! There’s more!

Android’s customizability was supposed to appeal to wireless carriers, but most carriers seem unimpressed. Verizon proclaimed support for Android in 2007 and never followed up. AT&T says it’s still mulling it over. Sprint is focused on the Palm Pre, for now. That’s a pretty weak show of support.

Mr. Segan is suffering from “ugly American syndrome”, assuming that the only wireless carriers in the world are those in the US. So Orange’s six handsets and SFR’s Android development contest and Vodafone’s upcoming HTC Magic release apparently do not count.

More of the second page of his piece is credible. Android is definitely not optimized for netbooks, though I suspect DataViz might quibble on his claim of no Android “desktop productivity applications”. It would certainly help if there was Google marketing akin to Microsoft’s early Windows Mobile marketing efforts. And so on.

But, of course, that apparently was insufficiently sensational, so he concludes with:

Android has one last chance: It can wow us this fall. The CTIA Fall trade show in October needs to include a full-bore assault of Android models from multiple manufacturers, in multiple form factors. If that doesn’t happen, we’ll just have to toss Android into the big pile of Linux distributions that tried to breach the consumer market and failed.

If you looked at Windows CE, Palm OS, Blackberry, or Psion’s EPOC (precursor to Symbian) at the one-year mark, none of them would exactly have had tons of momentum. Yet, in the eyes of Mr. Segan, in one year, Android is toss-worthy for merely achieving as much, if not more, than many of its competitors in that timeframe.

Now, truth be told, it would be nifty if there were more handsets. However, it takes a while to adopt a new mobile OS. Motorola announced its Android intentions last year, and their first devices are not yet available. Trust me, though, they’re working on it, and I expect other device manufacturers need similar time.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not peaches-and-cream in Android-land. However, it’s not nearly as bleak as some columnists apparently want it to be.

 

Android Programming Tutorials, now Version 0.9!

Android Programming Tutorials Version 0.9 is now available for subscribers to download. Just log back into your Warescription page and your PDF should be waiting for you. A Kindle edition will show up later this month.

This version adds another dozen or so tutorials, totaling about 120 new pages. It also has a few errata fixes from the previous edition.

Source code for the tutorials is also available off the book page.

Also, the Book Bug Bounty program is now in effect — errors found in Version 0.9 or any future edition earn you Warescription coupons. You get one six-month Warescription coupon for each email containing valid confirmed unique bug reports. Use the coupons yourself, give them to colleagues, sell them on street corners, or whatever.

This book will be released as Version 1.0 in early May, to subscribers and in print.

 

Waking Up with the Alarm

A popular issue in Android-dom is “where is cron?” The reference is to the cron utility in Linux, which runs commands on a pre-determined schedule, such as every hour. While Android does not have cron per se, it does have a similar facility, in the form of AlarmManager.

Read the rest over on AndroidGuys!