skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Last week we started to look at Android, not the little robots, we mean the new Mobile Platform produced by Google.
So there are two questions your probably asking yourself at this point: What is Android!!
It's an Open Source and alternative to Symbian, Windows Mobile and even the iPhone. It allows developers to create applications and release theme to world (if they want) a lot like the iPhone and App-store. If you want more information you can check out the Google page on What is Android.
What can I do with Android??
Whatever you want. Some ideas we had ranged from just upgrading the usability of handsets as we did, through to creating a welcome kiosk for front of businesses that displays a list of employees and allowed people to type in their name - the Android system could then Text or Email or Call the selected person to let them know that a visitor is in reception for them, it could even print the visitor label for the visitor. Contrary to the headline of this article you may not be able to get Android to butter your toast - yet... but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think of Android setting off your alarm and alerting your IP based Toaster to start the cooking process, it could even text your manager to say that you've overslept again and will be late in to work.
At this point there may be a third question:
How do I get Android???
There are a few mobile devices with Android already installed on them, however, these are not yet available in New Zealand. We had to get an Okta Touch from Telecom NZ (HTC Vogue for the rest of the world) and install Android (download from here) following these instructions. Luckily the Button configurations for the build were listed here.
So far we have downloaded it, installed it on a phone (the Okta Touch), installed the development tools / SDK (integrates with Eclipse), run the emulator and deployed some of the sample applications to it. This is however only the start for us - we have big plans for Android!!!
This is what we did to get Android going:- Download android.zip from http://cs-alb-pc3.massey.ac.nz/vogue/ - link titled "Latest Version for HTC Vogue, Kaiser and Polaris"
- Unzipped android.zip to the desktop called testing
- Put a completely blank SD card in our Okta
- Connected the Phone to the pc via USB
- Unzipped Data.gz from the android folder
- We renamed the file 'data' in the new Data folder to be 'data.img' - dunno why it just works
- Copied the 2 files system.img and data.img (the data.img file could now be in a subdirectory called data) to the root of the SD card (NOTE the SD card should be clean - i.e. not even photos)
- Copied everything else from the unzipped android folder to the root folder of the Okta i.e. "My Device"/android
- Then you can just Start you Okta and go to Start > Program Files > File Explorer and run a file called "haret" that lives in "My Device"/android. When prompted to select a file just leave it as the file "default"
- This should then boot Linux and eventually boot into Android - Good work!!!! (It does take almost a full minute to get there though) .
These are the buttons that will be of interest for the build of Android above - thanks http://www.myhtcphone.com/vogue-cab-installer:- Camera button - Keyboard
- Double tap camera button - Switch between portrait and landscape
- Volume Up - Back button.
- Volume Down - Menu
- End call - Power button
- Talk key - Launch dialer
- Power - Home key when on. Brings out of standby when screen is off
Hope this helps!!!
Cheers, The Team
Respecting the "What goes on Foo camp, stays on Foo camp" mantra, this blog will detail some of my experiences at KiwiFoo 2009. As more experiences, blogs, comments etc come out about KiwiFoo 09, I'll add links as comments on this post. If your after more info now you can check out the #KiwiFoo feed on Twitter.I've now had the honour of being invited to a few of these events (Barcamp Auckland 2, and the TelecomOne Innovation Unconference). For those who aren't sure, an Unconference has no pre-set agenda; it gets decided, by the participants, just after the greeting talk. Firstly registration, where I got a very nice T-Shirt to remember the event, a drink bottle, pens , pads and everything else he could get my hands on. Then on to the normal meeting of people you've known from previous meetings and then getting herded into a hall for the pre-conference greeting talk. At the end of the greeting talk, Nat (who ran the event) opened the agenda board where there was the normal rush to post topics that people thought were interesting in the best time slots.Some of the sessions I personally attended ranged from Advertising and Business issues/ideas, through what’s new on the Technical side of IT, and even a low level session on Android - Google’s Mobile phone platform. My main issue was that there is only one of me and I couldn't go to all of the sessions, all of the time. I'd like to pass on my personal, congratulations to the people who offered the topics - they were all very good. There were start-ups who were getting different perspectives, established companies looking to connect with the technical community and independent people just interested in interesting things.It wasn't only the sessions that were interesting; the "Hall Conversations" were hugely valuable as well. I solved one of the things on our TODO list for our SMS / Txt Shopping Mall Service - it took about 15 minutes with 3 really smart people. We all then turned our heads to another attendees issue and we offered different solutions from angles - hopefully they will come off. The key things to take away from this style of conference isn't the T-shirt, pads, pens etc, it's the personal contacts, the new ideas that get generated and the new vigour for trying things outside my normal way of doing things. My head has been spinning all weekend with ideas that could be implemented and luckily, I now have a whole range of people that I can call on to help or partner with.At the closing gathering, the floor was opened up and the suggestions of different ways to improve Foo camps were offered including a ScienceFoo, MediaFoo etc - if anyone is interested contact Nat.A Special thanks has to go to the sponsors, who allowed the attendees to pay nothing for the whole weekend; Nat for organising and fronting the event; and as the song says, "behind every great man is a great woman" - Jenine who looked after the running of the event (and kept Nat to only inviting 160ish people).A great weekend was had by all. Lots of contacts made and ideas generated! Nice work everyone!! We are looking forward to hearing more about other peoples’ experiences!!Simon
(Update 10/02/2009 - The features that we talk about for Beta Version 0.8.8k are in the Version 0.9 release http://twhirl.org/download).
We here at Serendipity IT Ltd use Twitter quite a bit to connect with customers, solutions providers, and just people.
If you’re not sure what Twitter is check out http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter for a "Plain English" explanation.
There are a lot of desktop / phone based tools that makes Twitter easier, but the one we use is Twhirl. Twhirl is just about to release a new version 0.8.8 but it is currently available as a Beta release at version 0.8.8k (linked to here). Please note that if you don't have Twhirl installed then please install the normal version first from http://twhirl.org/.
One of the best features is the "Saved Searches" - this allows you to do a search (for example 'shopping mall') and when someone else mentions 'shopping mall' in a Tweet, it will get added to your normal tweets viewing list. This is a nice feature all by its self but, if you’re like us and have multiple Twitter names (@serendipityit and @5556mall) then you can log into one account and set-up a search for the other account. This means you get alerted whenever someone tweets to your identities or about them - also works wonders with product names.
This is also a really easy way to get notified of what your competitors are up to - and they don't even have to be on twitter - just add their name as a Saved Search and hey presto - you get notified what they are up to because people tweeting about them :)
Hope this helps,
The Team,
Serendipity IT Ltd
