An Android photo camera from Nikon

The Nikon s800C is a photocamera based on Android. A normal camera in the front with a big touch screen in the back with the navigation buttons.

Some features:

• Optic zoom 12X
• Display: 3.5"
• Wifi
• Android 2.3
• GPS
• Web browser

There isn't a slot for the SIM card so the connectivity is possible only using the WIFI, The price has not been announced yet.

Otto library for the communication inside an Android application

When an Android application become complex, the communication between the different parts of your code become difficult and in this complexity the risk of introducing bugs grows.

A tiny library called Otto and developped by Jack Warthon, helps to simplify your code and to update easily different parts of your application following an event produced by an action.

In fact you might need to update the status of several acitvities after a change in the settings. A deep explication of the communication problem and the example using Otto are published on the Square blog while the library is downloadable from GitHub and there you will find also a complete tutorial

Viadeo 2.0 for Windows Phone is now available!

Viadeo has published the version 2.0 of its application for Windows Phone devices: see it on Marketplace. The application is now fast and fluid with its interface Metro and with a lot of improvements and bugfixing compared to the previous release.

Below, the list of features taken directly from the description of the Marketplace. With the new application you can:

• Develop your network: add new contacts quickly and easily
• Keep in constant touch with your network
• Read and reply to your messages
• View the profiles of millions of other professionals
• Keep up to date with and share the latest news from your industry

Install it and give your feedback!!



For some design inspirations

For many developers (me included :) ) it's always difficult to build an application with a slick design. It is then useful to have a list of good examples of design from which take inspirations.

The following are some sites that show screenshots (especially taken from iPhone) of applications with nice designs, great UI pattern and different ideas from which a developer might be inspired to build or at least improve his application:

• http://pttrns.com
• http://www.lovelyui.com
• http://www.androidpatterns.com
• http://mobile-patterns.com



 

Browse your Android SQLLite database from Eclipse

I think this is very useful tool for any Android developers. Sometimes you need to check what you store in your application database or SharedPreferences. Ok, you can always write a good test for it, but in some case you just need a quick check to verify the integrity of your stored data or the structure of your tables.

Since a lot of Android developers uses Eclipse to implement their application, it would be great to have a tool inside our IDE to explore our application Database.

SQLite & XML Browser is the tool that allow that. You can download it clicking here

After that you have downloaded the plugin you can:

• Put the file in your Eclipse plugins folder (e.g. /usr/lib/eclipse/plugins)
• Restart Eclipse
• Start up an Android Emulator w/ Debugging in Eclipse
• Switch to the DDMS Perspective in Eclipse
• Go to the 'File Explorer' tab to locate your device's database file
• Navigate to: e.g. 'data -> data -> com.myapplicationpackage -> databases -> myapplication
• Click on the little Database icon at right top
• Switch to the 'Questoid SQLite Browser' tab that appears
• Switch to the 'Browse Data' sub tab
• Select your table from the drop down menu
• Browse data

 Here you are a video that show how it works:

Soccer Scores Pro: all the soccer scores on your phone

Soccer Score Pro is a free application that provide many informations about the most important soccer tournaments all around the world.
Live scores, notifications when the results change, matches' statistic data, league tables and schedules and rich news section.
A nice user interface completes this very good products.
The list of leagues includes:

• Premier League;
• Championship;
• Ligue 1;
• Ligue 2;
• Eredivisie;
• Serie A;
• Serie B;
• La Liga;
• MLS;
• Europa League;
• Champions League;
• Euro 2012;
• World cup;
• Mexican League;
• Scottish League;
• ....

The application is available for iPhone and Android 

 

A research unveils when we use mobile applications on Android

The results of a research done by the German firm DFKI (“Falling asleep with Angry Birds and Facebook and Kindle”) and presented at the Mobile HCI 2011 unveils which mobile applications are used and when.

The research has been done using AppSensor that is able to record which applications run, the time (start and stop) and the place in which they are used. The library has been installed on 4100 Android phones and the data have been collected in anonymous way.

In 4 months, around 22000 applications have been monitored with around 5 million of recorded sessions.

Some of the main achieved results:

• The average execution time is 71 seconds and the total time of usage of mobile applications is 1 hour per day;
• The "Alarm" application has a peak of executions between 6am and 8am: I would say that this is not a surprise at all!!!
• During the day the communication applications are the most used. The games win in the interval between 6am and 9am and around midnight. During the morning the news applications are the most popular;
• The social network applications seems to be used a lot at the end of the day: for example Facebook is used a lot between 8pm and 11pm with a peak around 10pm. Twitter has a constant usage with peaks around the lunch and dinner time.