Mike dg Android Blog

Watch out XOOM, iPad 2 has 13 apps

2011-04-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Lately, there's been a ton of news about how there's only 50 Android Tablet apps and the XOOM has been out a month. But nobody ever goes beyond that number to give some exact stats on available apps from the competing platforms. So I decided to do some investigating and the results will shock you!

XOOM - 50 apps, I trust everyone else did their work and this is a legit and valid stat.
iPad 2 - 13 apps, see attached photographic evidence!!!
Playbook - 0, I could not find a single tablet optimized app in the App World, and I know for a fact that developers have had access to the Playbook SDK for months. So what's the problem?
Nintendo DS - Over 1150, according to Wikipedia

Looks like the DS wins!

Amazon Android App Store Experience - REJECTED

2011-04-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

I submitted SMS Contest Winner to the Amazon App Store 2 weeks ago. Today I got rejected for the following reasons.

The application crashes upon launch with the following error: "Sorry! The application Battery (process com.incorporateapps.battery) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again." Steps to reproduce: 1. Download the application from the Amazon App store. 2. Launch the application. 3. Verify the application crashes with the error message above. alogcat output indicated that your app was missing its application identifier. We were unable to figure out why this would be missing.

com.incoreporateapps.battery is apparently some random Battery Status application that is completely unrelated to my app. And they are using aLogcat? I can only begin to assume that they are testing these on personal devices. Which probably explains why root only apps managed to get into the market sans root only descriptions.

And I can't just update the existing submission, I have to re-enter all my data and re-upload all my images.

Finally an official Blogger app for Android

2011-02-04T03:42:00.001-08:00

This might put me back on track with my Android blog.

What is dg Sudoku -A- Day?

2010-06-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

It's a Sudoku game that quickly and seamlessly downloads a few new games every day when you run the app.

What's in there now?

*Comes preloaded with 90 puzzles.

*Daily updates.

*Soothing color scheme.

*Open source.

*Provided by a developer you love and trust.

What's coming soon?

*Multiple daily difficulties

What's possible?
*Score boards, does anyone think these are reasonable, or will too many players just cheat and clear every board in under a minute?

Source available at GITHUB
License at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Finally... dgMoney has been updated - Backup/Restore

2010-05-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

I've finally added a full and reliable backup/restore to dgMoney. It writes a dgmoney[somenumber].db file to your external storage. You'll need to rename the file to dgmoney.db when you choose to restore.
After backing up or restoring, you will need to reopen dgMoney.

I'm still working on a revamped dgMoney and that will have a much more user friendly backup/restore feature.

Thanks,
Mike dg

Keyguard Disabler

2010-02-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

There is a new version of my Keyguard Disabler app out. It adds support for some new devices, a new look, some bug fixes, and support for the toast feature of Melon.

With this app, you don't have to worry about swiping or hitting menu to start using your Android phone.

Multitouch Keyboard

2010-02-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

Due to popular demand. I will be releasing the multitouch keyboard to a public beta.

I've taken so long to get a release ready for the users who donated that I feel bad and I will be refunding any money sent for this project.

I hope to have this out in a week or so.

The iPad

2010-01-28T06:22:00.000-08:00

What if an iPad could function as a bluetooth keyboard for your desktop? And if you brought it within X number of feet, it could automatically bring up whatever you were doing on the device, on your desktop monitor?

Nexus Downers

2010-01-15T06:12:00.000-08:00

I've used the Nexus for a week and this is what I hate about it now...

The trackball light

It does not respect color or timing information for notifications. So that means it always pulses white at an annoyingly slow interval. It will pulse blue when a bluetooth device connects, but as of now, theres no way to change color in the API for normal users and it does not respond to the old API.
I've also become annoyed by it at night. This thing pulses BRIGHT. I'd say almost as bright as the flash just with a diffusion filter.
It certainly still is great for navigation, but as a means of notifications it fails.

The new launcher sucks

Way too slow.
Animation takes longer than the old launcher did.
Scrolling is not smooth.

Speakerphone

It's just not as clear orloud as the Droid

The gallery

It's a beautiful app, but it doesn't act like anything else I've ever seen on a mobile platform, let alone Android. You open this up and you are in a different world that requires you to think differently to use the app.

I did find some good things though. I had some complaints about the screen before, but have found one big advantage. At night, using the Clock app's minimal brightness setting, this phone gives off almost no light but is completely readable. It makes a FANTASTIC night time clock, except for the pulsing flashlight trackball.

Multitouch Keyboard

2010-01-13T05:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a video of a new keyboard I'm working on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy90vqZpUGc
The big feature here is MULTITOUCH. Theres also a handful of other features that I'm keeping secret.

Want to beta test it? Please donate some money. I'm trying to get enough to go to Google I/O 2010 this year. It's $500 plus airfare and lodging :( You'll be guaranteed a beta test spot as well as a free full version of the app when it's finally released. There are quite a few more features in it than just multitouch. I just can't talk about them yet. But I need testers for the multitouch aspect. You'll need a Droid or Nexus One. At the moment the Nexus One has some serious issues with multitouch, so as a tester you will be more valuable, but less liekly to have a keyboard that you can use on a day to day basis for a while.

Nexus One Thoughts

2010-01-08T10:35:00.000-08:00

So I got my Nexus One today. Some thoughts...

The screen kinda sucks. It's damn vibrant on it's highest brightness, but upon comparison to my Droid everything looks slightly fuzzy. When the screen is on it's dimmer modes, the colors look very washed out and everything takes on a very warm red hue. Upon closer inspection, and I can see the spaces between pixels. My Droid looks like a single smooth image compared to this.

The keyboard is great. I don't know what they did to it, but I'm typing much better and faster on this compared to any of the previous android devices and their soft keyboards.

The trackball is refreshingly noticeable when it lights up. However, it doesnt seem to stay lit up or flashing like LED's on the other Android devices. For navigation its better than the G1 trackball, a little worse than the MyTouch trackball.

It feels good in my hand typing, but no so much up to my face talking.

I'll post some more thoughts later.

6 Reasons to Appreciate The Nexus One

2010-01-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

This article at PC World annoyed me.

Here are six things the Nexus One has going for it:
1. This is a great phone if you use Google apps. Even on the desktop you can sync and edit all your contact information. If you ever lose your phone and need someones phone number, all you need is access to a computer and your Google account. The cloud isn't bad.

2. That trackball is damn near amazing. Sidekicks were the first device I've ever seen with a LARGE glowing indicator with nearly unlimited colors. For notifications, this functions similarly to the small LED indicator on most android phones, except it's pretty big. Personally, I've found front facing trackballs to be pretty useful and on par with scrollers on the side of a phone. It's just so easy to navigate one handed with a trackball. Part of that is because Android allows its UI components to be focused on.

3.Google had a significant helping hand with this device. When the Droid was released, it seemed like Motorola and Google were becoming good buddies. The Droid had exclusivity on Google Nav and 2.0 for some time. 2.0 source was not released to the community as fast as some people thought it should. The collaboration with HTC on this device goes a way towards showing that Google is in it to make Android better overall. Every company will get their chance to work with Google.

4. It's bad for Android. At least the Android that everyone besides Google uses. The Nexus One will give handset makers even more incentive to take open source Android into quasi-proprietary user interfaces and applications.

5. It's unlocked and coming on a variety of different carriers. You can''t go wrong this device.Sure it won't have 3G on AT&T, but until they get their act together and actually release an Android phone this is good enough. You could even ride out your AT&T contract and then switch to T-Mobile.

6. Google isn't tightening control on Android. This is the same old Android we've had. The community will get the source code. We can flash our own version of the OS on the device. Freeeeedom!

And as a sidenote, this isn't THE Google phone. It's still HTC branded. It was done in collaboration, just like the Droid. In fact, here's a quote from Gizmodo's liveblog of the recent Android Press Conference...

Q: Why was it necessary for Google to design the phone? Why couldn’t it just be an HTC phone running the new flavor of Android? And will these new features becoming to Droid?
A: It’s inaccurate to say Google designed the phone (points to HTC CEO). [Google] is just merchandising it online. Everybody will get 2.1 when it’s open source, within a couple of days.

Happy New Year - The Year in Review.. Sorta

2009-12-31T04:05:00.000-08:00

We started the year off with one device on one carrier, I think. Android has come quite far this year. And we can be sure to see even more devices displayed at CES next week. The Nexus One is on it's way.

It's the first year of the Android Market. I'm nearing a quarter million downloads of free apps, almost 500 downloads of my paid apps, and a few bucks from donations (Thanks again). I wish I could get an exact number for sales, but I am not a Google Checkout Ninja. Does anyone know how to do that? I've only been able to find a 31 day download, and I don't feel like doing that a dozen times, since I still have to do some massaging since not every month is 31 days. I'm sure I'll get some tax forms in the next few weeks though, so that should help.

I/O 2009 was truly exciting. Free phones for attendees, the anouncement to Wave.

But the biggest Android event this year, imo, was the surprise announcement and release of Google Nav. Most of the Droid and Android 2.0 specs were leaked early, but Google Nav still managed to surprise everyone. And then Google pulled out an even bigger surprise by making it available for Android 1.6 devices.

I hope next year is just as exciting.

New Melon 1.1.0 - With Tagging!

2009-12-28T05:41:00.000-08:00

I just uploaded a new version of Melon.

This release adds Tagging! For now it's pretty basic and the interface is ugly but it's functional and useful. On the main screen you can slide the tags drawer up and select a tag to view everything with that tag.

Check it out in the market or by scanning the QR code below.

The Droid 2.0.1 - 2 Steps Forward 1 Step Back

2009-12-16T04:22:00.000-08:00

So, Android 2.0.1 was recently pushed over the air to Droid owners. At first glance I liked it. They changed some looks of widgets to be more in line with the new icon guidelines. The home screen swiping was alot smoother, and BEST of all, the notification drawer was no longer plagued with performance issues.

But then I started using the phone for a few hours. And I noticed that the performance for the secure keyguard screen has dropped to terrible levels.Sometimes I'll press the power button and it'll take seconds for the keyguard to display, sometimes I'll be able to see the layout actually change from landscape to portrait or the little icons expand. It seems to me that layout calculations for the keyguard are being calculated wayyy more than necessary.

It doesn't seem to be some overarching performance hit to the device in general, because if I disable the keyguard with the app Keyguard Disabler, I see no performance issues when turning the screen back on.

Has anyone else been seeing the same issues?

Please STOP! Calling it the Google Phone

2009-12-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

Time for a badly written angry post.

This past week, a phone was given out to Google employees. The net has been going wild, calling it the Google phone that's been rumored for years. Pleasestop! calling it THE Google Phone. This is as nonsensical as so many people calling the Magic/Ion/My Touch/ADP 2 the G2. It causes even more confusion in a market where there are so are currently 3 different versions of the OS in distribution.

Let's not forget that last year, Google dogfooded the Dream. Were those THE Google Phone too? Why not start calling this Google Phone 2? Sigh.

It's nothing more than yet another Android phone that's being dogfooded. It's not a dramatic earth shaking change to Android. And it's not a carrier defying device to change the world. It's a phone with presumably a custom back cover for Googlers.

Of course, if it winds up coming out and being marketed as "The only Android device groomed for success by Google," then I'll eat my words.

But for now, use common sense and wait for a phone to have GOOGLE plastered across it instead of "with Google," before calling it THE Google Phone.

Talking Web Browser

2009-12-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

I've released the code to my talking web browser. It's not the exact version submitted to ADC2, but this version was updated to support Android 1.6 built in Text to Speech, which should make it more desirable.

The big secret to this is some Javascript trickery. A few javascript methods are added to the onClick of the body of whatever document you load. This method has not led me into any issues, but if you find a site with issues let me know. The javascript lets us change the background color of whatever is clicked temporarily and queue it up for a change back to normal. This makes it much easier to figure out what will be spoken. The javascript is also responsible for passing back the String of whatever was touched to Android via a javascript to Android interface on the webview.

All of the magical code is in com.mikedg.talkingbrowser.web.WebViewClientCallback.java

The source code is hosted on github and is licensed under the GPL 3.0

http://github.com/kaze0/Talking-Browser/tree/

Chromium OS and a Warning

2009-12-05T04:23:00.000-08:00

Not really Android related...

So various builds of Chromium OS have been floating around the net. Have you installed one? Did you build it yourself? None have been released by Google and none of the builders or distributors of the ones I've seen have been from sources I trust, except for the Dell build. I trust do Dell.

Did you realize that whomever did put together these builds could have inserted code to steal your Google account passwords? I'm not usually the paranoid type, but I wold be changing my password if I tried one of the builds and didn't build it myself.
I know I'd be devastated if this happened to me, so be aware and be secure, just...
Build it yourself!

Other builds...
http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
http://linux.dell.com/files/cto/
http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/

What is SMS Contest Winner?

2009-12-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

SMS Contest Winner is an app which let's you send SMS text message to a phone number as fast as possible. This app was requested in order to win radio contests where the winners are the people who send the most text messages.

It's one of the first paid apps, that will help you win contests! Feel free to try it and if you don't win, request a refund within 48 hours of purchase for your money back. Don't forget that this does send text messages, and without an unlimited plan, you may incur expenses.

One limitation of apps in Android is that if you send more than 100 SMS in an hour, then you will be prompted before that app sends every message for a while. This will happen with any app, and I've even seen complaints about this coming from users who send a lot of messages using the normal text messaging app. In that case, my suggestion is to set a delay between messages, just long enough for you to tap OK at each prompt and just hold the phone and keep tapping away.

It's very basic at the moment. But if you send requests to smswinnerandroid@mikedg.com I will make some additions. Tell me what your local contests are like and I'll add options just for you!

6 Things I Love|Hate About The Droid

2009-12-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

This is going to the first in a series of posts about 6 things I love and Hate about each Android device.

Hate

The squareness of the keyboard. It unnerves me when a Q is directly over an A.
The capacitive buttons. Hard to use without looking at them. A little nub between each button might have helped with usage.
The choppy home screen and notification drawer.
The directional pad. Utterly uselsss. Not enough differentiation between the center button and the directions. It's too long vertically to be able to easily rock between up and down. Andit's on the right side of the keyboard so that eschews normal gaming conventions. Why does it even exist?
No hard navigation buttons with the keyboard closed. The directional pad might have been tolerable if it was usable while the keyboard was closed. Coming from HTC's devices with their great trackballs or 5 ways on the fac eof the phones this was a huge let down.
The menu button does not hide the default keyguard. Why, why, why, is it only swiping to unlock? This is even more baffling considering that the menu button is capacitive so theres a lot less chance of hitting it by accident than on other phones.

Love

The keyboard. It took some getting used to, but I'm a bigger fan of this than any other mobile keyboard I've used exxcept for the Sidekick 2.
The giant screen. This screen could eat babies.
It's a damn snappy phone. Except for the above mention home screen and notification drawer, everything I've thrown at this phone flies.
Finally, a default SD card that I'm not just going to throw in a drawer and replace. 16 gigs for the win!
Battery life. I haven't done real tests, but I can say that I haven't been coddling the phone like I've had to do with my Pre and G1.
The media dock. This is going to be the easiest way to charge without going to inductive charging. It drops into the dock and starts charging with no fuss.

Android SDK Updates

2009-12-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

Good'ish news. New SDK updates released almost a month before expected updates on the actual device.

Android Developers Blog: Android SDK Updates

Where are you, cool apps?

2009-12-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

I downloaded Tweet on the Fly a few weeks ago. And now I can't find it anywhere except on my device. I was going to promote it as one of Android's underrated apps. It was simple, reliable, and not over engineered.

It was a one click twitter status update. I had been using it with quicklaunch shortcuts to make it so I was always just a keyboard shortcut away from a Twitter update.

It's gone from my market downloads and I can't even find a trace of it on Androlib or Google. If I didn't still have it on my phone, I'd think it never even existed.

What apps have you guys used that seemed to disappear from the market?

The Bitter Post

2009-12-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

Talking Browser flopped in ADC 2.

Thank you for developing your Android application 'Talking Browser' and participating in ADC 2. Unfortunately, your application was not selected by Android users as one of the top 20 in its category.
According to the scores submitted by users, your application 'Talking Browser' ranked in the bottom 25% of all applications submitted.

I shelved Melon to work on a talking web browser for ADC 2. It seemed like it might have been one of those impractical but impressive projects that win stuff. Bad guess. It wasn't a particularly fleshed out app but I thought it had great technical merit and originality. Noone has attempted that yet on a mobile platform. Oh well.

My thoughts on some of the winners...

Spectrek won in the lifestyle category. The first line of it's description is

Improve your fitness with this revolutionary augmented reality ghost hunting game

2 Guitar apps won in 2 different categories. Come on!
Should I have just thrown in a port of Quake in the Travel category for a few grand?

A car finder did well... When we already have a pretty cool car finder, and its FEATURED on the market website. I thought originality was supposed to be a big point?

I've already heard user complaints about not being able to find these apps in the market. Is this going to be another rehash of ADC 1, where well publicized apps are never heard from again?

ADC was a nice injection of excitement into the Android dvelopment community, but after the winners were announced it's pretty disappointing. I was hoping that Stroids would have one in a games category.

For more details about the winners of ADC2...
Android Developers Blog: Announcing the Winners of ADC 2

What is Airport Maps?

2009-12-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

Airport Maps is the latest app that I've had the opportunity to be a part of. It provides maps of places within terminals of Airports all over the United States. It has the ability to have the airport data updated without redownloading the application and currently supports many of the major US airports. More airports will be added. Scan the barcode to the right to find it in the market, or do a search for com.mikedg.android.airport.

It was produced and published by a company call Nverse. This is Nverse's first Android app, but they have quite a few great web apps with a ton of users.

Nverse is

a small, San Francisco-based team building web applications based on realtime feedback. So far, we've reached lots of users. We'd like to do the same for you. Get in touch and let us know what type of app you want to build. We'd love the chance to help out.

The dg Philosophy and Apps

2009-12-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

The dg series of applications for Android powered phones were all designed with the goal of making using your phone more efficient. Much of the inspiration for these applications came from what I liked about other phones that I've previously used.

The current list of useful dg applications
dg Alert - Improved alert settings for text messages.
dg Money - An expense tracker and check register.
dg QuickCut - Keyboard shortcuts to direct calls or direct text messages along with keyboard shorcuts to toggline certain settings.
dg Away - Auto respond to text messages and phone calls with a text message of your own.
Super Silent - Basically a forceful mute. It ensures that no app can play a sound even if they raise the volume. This was my first paid and useful app.
Keyguard Disabler - With a capacitive screen, the keyguard becomes somewhat useless. You have a much smaller possibility of dialing a number while the phone is in your pocket and the keyguard just gets in the way of normal phone usage. This removes the keyguard.
Melon - The latest in the long line of apps. It's a notepad app with some nifty features.

The Not so Useful Apps
I am Richer - Please stop with the hate mail, although if you are here, you probably didn't send any hate mail. Mentioned @ http://i.gizmodo.com/5159107/i-am-richer-app-pops-up-in-android-marketplace-for-200, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022309-i-am-richer-app-appears.html?page=1, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10170331-94.html
I am Rickest
Do Not Buy Me