Digital photo frame & shortcut

7.0 Flickr & Dropbox

2013-05-15T15:39:00.002+02:00

I added two cloud providers as source for your photos that should be used in the slideshow.

Dropbox

A great storage provide which I use already a long time. Recently they started focusing more on the storage of photos for example automatic storing of photos from your mobile in your dropbox folder. If you are not a dropbox user yet, use this url to get 500Mb extra (also for me so thanks!).

Flickr

One of the best known photo storage providers so it seemed obvious to include this one first.

I included these new sources in the premium app. If you are a user of the ad-supported app, you will have to install another app which includes these new sources but not network drives or UPnP. Both apps do include the possibility to do a slideshow of local photos.

Let me know what you think, what is missing or what other providers I should include!

Release 6.3 : multi-select and date mask

2013-04-28T12:48:00.000+02:00

For release 6.3, there are two important new features to help the user to filter the photos shown in the slideshow and one feature giving a nicer single photo view UI.

Multi select for local and LAN sources makes it possible to select only a couple of files and folders instead of running the slideshow for every folder.

Date mask allows the user to select only photos more recent than a fixed date or only in the last period (periode defined by a number of years, months or days)
Satellite menu during single photo view is just a nicer look of the previous menu but in the future, it will be easier to add new functionality.

v6.2 Text options

2013-04-07T17:10:00.000+02:00

Additionally to selecting if numbering and file name are shown, you can now also choose the location (top or bottom) and the color of the text.

Next to various bug fixes, I also achieved to minimize the file size. Don't forget you can also install it to sdcard if more space is needed.

Available on amazon app store

2013-03-22T11:44:00.003+01:00

Digital photo frame is starting from now also available on the amazon app store! Currently only the ad-supported version but the premium version should be approved by amazon soon.

Version 6.0 released : transitions

2013-02-18T15:03:00.002+01:00

As promised before, I worked on transitions between two photos for this next release. The implemented transitions are :

Dissolve : photos fading into each other.
Fade in/fade out
Zoom in and zoom out: The next photo replaces the previous one from inside or outside
Slide left and right : The next photo replaces the previous one from left or right
Random : any of the above

To make playing with the above transitions possible, I used a sliding menu to change the layout or transition during slideshow playback.

New photo frame version 5.6.1

2013-02-04T13:55:00.000+01:00

Highlights of this version are:

Transitions : Next to fade-in/fade-out, there is also a dissolve transition which shows the two photos blended together. More transitions to come ..., I'm open to suggestions.
Completely redone recent slideshows. There is now the possibility to

Rename the slideshow to whatever you want
Delete the slideshow from the list
Start the slideshow using the button next to the slideshow
Go to the folder represented by this slideshow. This is a very useful feature if you often show photos from a subfolder of a certain location.

The recent now has a (R) at the end to indicate it is a recursive slideshow.
UPnP should now retrieve the photo with the best resolution instead of just the first one (depending on the server this would be an ok one or just a thumbnail)
Unreadable photos crashed the app, this will now show nothing instead.
Fixes the bugs introduced in 5.6 impacting a lot of users, sorry for this.

Released new photo frame version 5.5

2013-01-16T19:18:00.002+01:00

The highlights of this version are

Maximum delay between two photos is now 600 seconds
If a layout with multiple photos is used, it is filled up as fast as the photos can be loaded.
Selecting a specific photo starts the slideshow from that photo.
Better full screen usage
A new random layout as shown in the next picture

Let me know any additional feature you would like to see in the comments!
Also I keep a page about the digital photo frame on google+, I've you would like to be kept up to date, click the follow button on the right.

Crash reporting android apps

2012-10-13T23:20:00.002+02:00

I started using https://www.crittercism.com for crash reporting of my photo frame app. It only makes the app 40 kB bigger (peanuts on a 1Mb app) but sends the stacktrace automatically to their servers.
Where I normally receive one or two crash reports a day, it was soon clear to me that the problem is a lot bigger than that. Thanks to the detailed stack trace, I was able to resolve most of the problems really quick.

On a daily basis I have 300 people checking out my app but only 100 or less keeping it. Now it is clear to me why. Most of these users run into a crash that does not occur on my test devices. I hope the number of users that keep my app will be higher now and that the current users will have a more stable app.

New app : Tel/SMS shortcut

2012-08-21T20:35:00.000+02:00

I released a new app to create shorcuts to start a call directly from your home screen or to send a predefined sms to one of your contacts. Just a little productivity tool, I use myself a lot.

Tell me what you think!

Android development tools

2012-05-07T08:23:00.002+02:00

I created a bitbucket repository containing some unix scripts and groovy scripts I use when developing android applications. I will continue adding things as I need them. I hope somebody else gains time using these.
Let me know if you use them and feel free to add things in the bitbucket repository.

Currently it contains a conversion script from svg to png's in the different sizes needed and conversion from strings.xml location files to a csv and the other way round to ease collaboration with another team doing the translation. The wiki should explain more.

Special networks

2012-04-24T11:58:00.002+02:00

By default the photoframe app searches servers in the local network which is fine for most of the users. But sometimes the server is not found or the server, you want to access, is in a different network (could be over VPN for example). In that case, you can enter the server name or its ip address in the options menu and then only that server will be shown. No network scanning is done at that point so the only server you will see is the one you entered.
Unfortunately this only works for the network option, not for upnp. If anyone knows how to get this working with the cling framework or just how it works with UPNP. I already found this interesting page explaining UPNP. Since it works with UDP unicast it doesn't seem to be easy to do. I should be able to skip the discover state and add a device with the fixed ip directly.

Bugfixing

2012-03-20T14:42:00.000+01:00

Thank you all for your bug reports. When the application force closes, sending me the bug report is of great help. I go through each of them to check how I can resolve them best.
Please also think about the device you are using and the photo's to show. While a tablet will be ok with 15 megapixel photo's, a phone with small resolution will struggle to show them. Best is to resize the photos beforehand on a more performant pc. This is even more important when these are located on a network share.

So feel free to send me more errors!

Photo frame preferences

2012-02-24T12:22:00.000+01:00

I updated the preferences page of digital photo frame to the android standard for options. I'm still learning the android platform and finding nice features. Thanks to google for a great SDK.

A user wanted to see pictures he adds to a network folder while the app is running. You can find a setting to configure an update interval in which the app should look for new photos. By default this is set to off because I'm unsure of the performance impact of this feature. Seemed to work very well on my tablet but how will it run on a phone?

Next I continue to improve the single photo view with sharing to other apps and view next and previously displayed photos.

Memory and performance

2012-02-17T16:04:00.000+01:00

I took a look to the bug reports people sent to me (thanks for that) and fixed a number of memory and performance issues. For other android developers working with (potentially) large images, take a look at inSampleSize when loading the bitmap.Because I'm loading bitmaps over the network, the faster I can handle them, the faster I can show them to the user.

Next I'll be working at advanced layouts. Not sure what to do after that. Anyone suggestions?

UPNP

2012-02-09T11:28:00.000+01:00

Released a new version which is more stable than before and should be more responsive since more threading is used, especially when loading photos over the network.

Next I'm working to implement UPNP as a photo source. That will be the last source of photos. I don't plan on implementing a flickr or picasa source unless there is enough demand for that.

Digital Photo Frame

2012-02-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

Released an ad free version today for a low price. Thank you for supporting me!

Also added new functionality recently. You can click on an image and show it fullscreen. The application stops showing new images at that moment. This is very useful if you are just watching the photos pass by but wants to stop at a certain photo.

Photo frame 1.4

2012-01-31T11:03:00.000+01:00

A new release having important new functionality. I included the selection of windows network shares using samba. Currently only anonymous accessable network shares are supported.

Next up is a list of recently used folders (local or network share) so you don't have to navigate every time if you use the same folder often.

Photo Frame 1.0

2012-01-29T19:50:00.000+01:00

The release of the first version of my photo frame application is a fact. It is a simple but usable application to view your photo's as a digital photo frame would show them.

I plan on enhancing on it further especially with more possibilities to open file on different locations.

Any other suggestions are welcome but since it is more a hobby project I can't give any guarantees if it will be developed and when.

I hope you have as much fun of the application as I had developing it.