Google+

After years of speculation, Google has released details of its answer to Facebook. Google+ aims to make sharing and dissemination of information easy and targeted, no more spamming all your friends with a link only a handful will appreciate.

We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests.

 Information about the site is limited to the original blog post as well as a post on Wired describing the service. Access is limited to 'invite-only' at this time and there is a form available to register your interest.

Once I receive my invite I will post my impressions.

Links
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/

Nearmap Aerial Mapping

Nearmap is a Photomap and location-based media company that provides high resolution aerial photography of Australias major population centres. These photographs are updated on a regular basis and the historical imagery is available.

A majority of the imagery is at 7.5cm resolution. This means that each pixel in the image represents 7.5cm of the earth surface. This means these images show more detail than many other mapping services.

Sample Image from Nearmap

One of the more unique features of the Nearmap service is the fact that the imagery is updated on a regular basis. Many metropolitan areas are updated on a monthy basis and the other major population centres are updated quarterly. Once captured and processed these new images are available very quickly. As the older imagery is also available it is possible to view and compare images from one month to the next.

Nearmap also provide a Javascript API  to allow developers to embed maps into their own webpages. I have a simple example of this API here.

Overall, I find this service extremely useful. It is well worth signing up to.

Google I/O 2011 - Keynote Day 2

Here is the Day 2 Keynote from Google I/O.

Todays keynote was about Chrome, Chromebooks and HTML5.

Enjoy.

Google I/O 2011 - Keynote Day 1

For those developers not able to attend Google I/O 2011, here is the link to the Keynote for Day 1.

So far Google has announced:

• Google Music,  
• Android Open Accessory Developer Kit
• Android @ Home 
• GO Language Support in Google App Engine

More to come...

Android App Inventor - TinyWebDB

The next post in my series on Android App Inventor makes use of one the 'Not for Primetime' components. The TinyWebDB component allows you to store data on a web service. This means that the data can be accessed by the Android phone as well as a web application.

For testing purposes Google have provided a test web service at http://appinvtinywebdb.appspot.com/.  This service is a limited service and will only store 1000 entries. Due to these limitations it should NOT be used for your applications. Google provides instructions on how to create your own web service using Python and the Google App Engine.

The following example uses the application I built for the Android App Inventor - Lists post. This post will show how to store the contents of a list to the TinyWebDB web service and also retrieve the contents of a list from the TinyWebDB web service.


To begin we need add two buttons (btnStoretoWeb & btnGetListfromWeb).

We also need to add the TinyWebDB component. I have also added a Notifier component to allow us to return a message to the user when the data is stored.

 The TinyWebDB1 control needs to have the ServiceURL set to the debug URL: http://appinvtinywebdb.appspot.com/

Once the GUI has been configured we start the block editor and create the logic to save the list to the TinyWebDB.

To store a value on the web service we add the btnStoretoWeb.Click event. Within the event we call the TinyWebDB1.StoreValue method. This method has two parameters. The 'tag' parameter allows you to assign a key to the data. The second parameter is the list you are going to store.

The second event shown above is the TinyWebDB1.ValueStored event. When a value is stored in the TinyWebDB this event is triggered. I have used it to provide a notification to the user that it worked.

The next step is to retrieve the values from the web service and repopulate the list. In this case I have used a button to manually trigger the load of the list. In a production application you may want to put this code into the Screen.Initialize event.

In the btnGetFromWeb.Click event we call the TinyWebDB1.GetValue method with the name of the 'tag' we want to retrieve. In this case it is the MyStoredList tag.

Once the GetValue call is sent we need to wait for the TinyWebDB1.GotValue event to be called. This ensures that our application can remain responsive even if the call to the web service is slow to respond. When the event is triggered the application has access to the parameter valuefromWebDB. This contains the list we stored previously.

We can then store this value into the list. We also update the label to show the number of items in the list. I also load the ListPicker1 component.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful. Please feel free to comment if you need further information.

I have added a link to the App Inventor source here.

My other App Inventor tutorials are:
App Inventor - Simple SMS
App Inventor - Location Services
App Inventor - Lists

Commuting Time - Productive?

As I spend around 3 hours of my day on a train commuting I found this article by Dave Burke very interesting. It shows that with the right technology it is possible to be productive even when you re travelling.

Official Google Blog: 20 percent time spent coding in the clouds

In the past I have typically used the time on the train to read or sleep but due to the better mobile data plans I am able to login to services such as App Inventor to  develop applications for my Android phone.

Now instead of 3 hours of wasted time I can be productive.

Android App Inventor - Lists

This post will explain the use of lists and list controls in Android App Inventor.

There are three parts to this post. In the first part I will examine how to create a list and add items to the list via the GUI, the second part will show how to make use of items in a list directly and thirdly I will show how to link a list to a GUI list control to select and display items.

To create a list we go to the Block Editor and define a new variable called 'list'. We can then call a 'make a list' method which will create a blank list.

In the GUI add a textbox and button. The textbox will be where you add the value you want added to the list. The button will call the btnAddText.Click event to add the text in the textbox to the list.

The code will also update the label underneath the button to show the current number of items in the list.

The next step is to make use of this list. In the screenshot below I have added a button and a label to the screen.  The label is not visible as it is empty at the moment.

When the button is selected on-screen the btnRandom.Click event is called. This event will randomly select one of the list items and display it in the label. The call to the random function is surrounded by an IF block to ensure that the list is not empty.

Finally, the last thing to do is associate this list with an on-screen control that we can access to select items.

On the GUI a ListPicker control has been added. We also add a Label to show the returned value.

This control will display a list of values and when the user selects one it will return the value back to the user. To associate a List with a ListPicker control we call pass the list into the ListPicker.Elements method.

In our example this is done as part of the btnAddText.Click method. This ensures that the list control is updated each time an item is added to the List.

Now that we have associated the list to the ListPicker control we can use a ListPicker.AfterPicking block to show the returned value on the Label.

The following is some screenshots showing the overall GUI design with the names of the controls.

I hope this tutorial has been helpful. Please feel free to comment if you need further information.

My other App Inventor tutorials are:
App Inventor - Simple SMS
App Inventor - Location Services