Galaxy Nexus ICS 4.0.4 – Regaining su privileges

About ten days ago I finally received the OTA update for my Galaxy Nexus that would take it from 4.0.2 to 4.0.4. Of course it didn’t show up at a convenient time despite my numerous checkin requests over the previous two weeks, I was on the motorway, using Google’s Navigation app. Ten minutes later however …

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Google I/O 2012 Verdict: Must Do Better.

Last year’s Google I/O conference sold out in under 60 minutes. This year, with many more tickets available, it sold out in just 28 (according to my browser) or 20 (if you read Vic Gundotra’s Google+ post here). Google could have sold every ticket at least three times over last year. Or, if you just …

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Dear Samsung… you’ll never be Apple

Samsung is a company that has successfully renewed itself in recent years. If I want a good quality and feature packed TV I look at Samsung, not Sony. And If I want a good looking, up-to-date Android device then they have some fantastic hardware that performs well and looks good. At Google I/O I got …

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The Joy of JSF

Android has been taking a back seat recently (although that is about to change) as the new Formula One season looms and I’ve been comprehensively overhauling the fantasy game web site I’ve been running for over ten years, fantasy-f1.net. Last year I spent three months removing the Struts MVC layer, restructuring the underlying code and …

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Social Apps on Android

At this year’s Devoxx, Google’s Tim Bray gave a thought-provoking keynote which covered several areas but what stood out for me were his comments around writing applications for Android. In summary his message was “give software away and sell a service” and “make it social”. Giving software away and selling a service is a whole …

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Galaxy Nexus ICS 4.0.4 – Regaining su privilegesGoogle I/O 2012 Verdict: Must Do Better.Dear Samsung… you’ll never be AppleThe Joy of JSFSocial Apps on Android

Nov 12

Android 2.2.1 – No Release Notes, No Install

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Android

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When Android 2.2.1 was pushed to my Nexus One I was reluctant to install it immediately. So I googled for release notes and found none. This did nothing to soothe my (perhaps irrational) concern that I was upgrading to an unknown quantity. Eventually I upgraded and of course there were no dramas.

My curiosity however continued and with the impending release of Gingerbread I decided I wanted to dig in enough to find out exactly what had changed. With still no release notes available I opted to do the only thing I could – look at the source code. So I had a dig around through the Android source code repository and noticed that Google had applied a tag, android-2.2.1_r1. This prompted me to download the Android repository and have a proper dig through.

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Nov 12

Writing a simple Android widget

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Android

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A widget in Android is something that sits on the home screen and does something more than just allow you to start an application. Android ships with some built-in widgets and many applications provide widgets of their own. In this post, and its associated download, I aim to demonstrate that widgets can actually achieve a fairly useful function and yet still be simple and compact.

Although widgets might seem to be more involved than a ‘standard’ Android application, they are actually very simple to write. As an exercise in understanding the basics of widgets I thought I’d write a simple one that displayed the status of the wifi connection, and allowed you to change the status by touching the widget. If you are interested in finding out more about Android programming and widgets in particular, download the complete Eclipse project and keep reading. I should stress that this is not a ‘start from nothing’ tutorial – you should read into Android and widgets on developer.android.com before proceeding.

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Nov 10

Eclipse Keyboard Shortcuts

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Development

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Being a regular Eclipse user I’ve been somewhat slow to learn all of the really useful keyboard shortcuts. Hunting around for a cheat sheet the only one I can find is this one from the Eclipse-Tools project on sourceforge.

The only downside to this fairly comprehensive cheat sheet is that it appears not to have been updated since Eclipse 3.1 in 2005, and does not cater for Mac users like myself. Still, it’s a starting point, and perhaps I’ll put out my own cheat sheet for all those Mac users out there.

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Sep 18

Get Your Act Together, Google

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Android

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Having purchased and immediately returned one Android tablet because it lacked the Android Marketplace I’ve been doing some research into exactly what is available, or will shortly be available, in tablet form. There are a few promising things on the horizon or already here from some relatively big names – Samsung with the Galaxy Tab, Archos with tablets in several sizes, and Toshiba with a 10″ tablet due by the looks of it for Christmas. However there are problems.

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Sep 15

My Favourite Android Applications

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Android, Tech Geekery

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As an Android user since early 2010 I have a plethora of applications installed, and each month a few more of my friends acquire an Android phone of their own. So of course we get chatting about the various applications I am using and I end up sending them a list. From now on however I’m going to direct them to this blog post that will catalogue my main recommendations. I’ve split the applications into sensible categories and added some relevant notes. Read the rest of this entry »

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