Android App Inventor - More SMS Services

Since I wrote my last tutorial about using SMS services in AppInventor I have had a number of questions on the post which I thought I would expand on here.

I have added a some additional logic to the SMSTest application that will display the text message on the screen.

To achieve this I added a Label to the form called lblMessageReceived. When the phone receives a text message it will be displayed here.

I changed my IF blocks to a IFELSE block and included a block to set the lblMessageReceived.Text to the value of Message1.messageText if the messageText is NOT 'Status?'.

The image above shows the application running on emulator 5554 receiving a message from emulator 5556. You can see the label showing the contents of the text message.

This also shows the use of two running emulators to test communication application. The number in the title bar is the phone number of the emulator. This makes it very easy to test SMS applications.


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

I have added a link to the source code here.

My other App Inventor tutorials:
App Inventor - Location Services
App Inventor - Lists
App Inventor - SMS Services
App Inventor - TinyWebDB Tutorial Source
App Inventor - TinyWebDB Part 2 - Web Service Source

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/

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...

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.

My Tracks for Android

In the past I have done some mapping of the various mountain bike tracks around the Central Coast. In a previous blog post I documented how I used my Nokia phone and a bluetooth GPS dongle to do mapping.

Now I have a HTC Desire this process has now become much easier to do and I only have to carry one device while I ride.

The key to using the HTC Desire for mapping is the My Tracks for Android application. This application was built by some Google engineers in their 20% time and the results have been open-sourced for the community to benefit.

The My Tracks application uses the GPS in your Android device to record your location as you walk, run or ride. The resulting information can then be exported to either Google Documents to record the details or Google Maps to visualise the route.

Here is an example of a map produced by the My Tracks application.


View 2GO Track in a larger map

An example of the data collected and archived in Google Docs is here
.
My experience so far with Google My Tracks has been very positive and I will continue to use it for both my riding and running.

HTC Desire - Android Phone

Two weeks ago I got myself a HTC Desire. For the last couple of months I have been watching the release of various Android phones to decide which one I should get once my contract was up on my old Nokia. The winner was the HTC Desire. It was universally billed as one of the best Android phones available today.

I had decided to get an Android phone because as a developer I would like to be able to create applications for my phone. The other reason to get an Android rather than a iPhone (iOS) was that all the tools required to develop applications are freely available and run on Windows or Linux.

Over the coming months I will try to document my attempts at building some simple applications for the HTC Desire.

Google Wave is being discontinued.

According to the Official Google Blog, Google Wave will no longer be developed as a standalone product. Although the product was reasonably well received internally and by Google fans it never managed to be embraced by the general public.

The underlying technology will continue to be developed as part of other products and the site will be maintained till at least the end of the year.

For more information refer to the Official Google Blog post.

Google I/O 2010 - Session Videos

If you didn't get to go to Google I/O this year the next best thing is to watch the videos. Most come with a PDF of the slide pack to follow along.

Google I/O 2010 Session Videos

A large variety of different talks covering most of the major Google products. Something for everyone.

Enjoy.

Google I/O 2010 - Keynotes

Google I/O 2010 finished two days ago. Lots of interesting news for HTML5 and Android. Here are the two Keynotes from Day 1 and Day 2.

Google Buzz - Facebook Threat?

Earlier this week, Google started rolling out Google Buzz to all Gmail users. Google Buzz is an attempt by Google to provide a social networking facility within Gmail.

After enabling Google Buzz on my Gmail account I was presented with a new menu item in the left hand menu and a prompt to connect some of my other Google presences to my Google Buzz feed. These included Picasa Public albums, my two blogs and Google Reader. These links are used to automatically populate my Buzz stream (buzz) with items as they are published.

With these items now automatically populating my 'buzz' all I need now is for someone to read them. Unfortunately, my Gmail account is not my primary email account and is only really used for administering my Google presence. Further experimentation will have to wait until I find some friends who are using Google Buzz.

Google already has a number of social networking tools (Orkut, Google Wave). Where Google Buzz fits in with these other products is unknown. However, from my limited time using the product it is most like Facebook. You can post status updates, photos, videos and subscribe to friends posts. The difference is that it is also linked to your other Google products such as Blogger, Picasa and Reader and these products will automatically update your buzz when you post updates.

Interestingly, a group of former Google employees created something similar in 2007 called FriendFeed. FriendFeed is a social networking aggregator that was recently sold to Facebook. It has a advantage over Google Buzz in that it includes the ability to aggregate content from more than 50 services including Facebook and Twitter.

As you can see there is quite a lot of competition in the social networking world and from what I can see Google Buzz does not really offer any large advantage over the other sites such as Facebook, FriendFeed and Orkut. To really make a dent in any of these services they will need to expand the aggregation service and convince their Gmail subscribers that this is an alternative to Facebook.

Google Wave Development

I finally managed to obtain a Google Wave account (thanks Harvey!).

After playing with Google Wave for about an hour I decided to that I should try to develop a robot for Wave. I used the tutorial on the Google Wave site to create a python Wave Robot, deployed it to Google App Engine and tried it in my wave. It works!

Python however is not my language of choice and I am going to learn how to use JAVA to produce Google Wave robots. I have found an article that explains how to use the WadRobotFramework to simplify the creation of JAVA Wave Robots.

If you would like to chat to me on Wave my address is coxydave at gmail dot com.

CNET Interview with Eric Schmidt from Google

An interesting interview with Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google. Discussions about Google OS, Google Search, Android and Google's motto of 'Do No Evil'.

Google Chrome OS - An OS for the Internet Age

For a number of years pundits have been discussing whether Google would release an operating system. On the 7th July 2009, Google announced the existence of the Google OS.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.

From the Google Blog announcement we can glean the following details:

• Linux kernel
• Runs on x86 and ARM
• Uses the Google Web Apps in the Google Chrome browser
  
• New Web Apps are in the pipeline to take advantage of the platform
• Will work best with a persistent internet connection
  

The OS will initially be released on netbooks and Google has been in discussion with a number of vendors including Acer, Asus, HP and Toshiba to release netbooks with the new OS in 2010.

The Google OS will also be open-sourced later this year to allow the community to benefit from the work Google has done.

GPS Mapping

Over the last 10 years I have ridden many of the trails in the Central Coast area, often more than once. Recently, I have started to map these trails using a GPS with the aim to document them so other riders may enjoy them.

To do the mapping I use the following hardware and software.

Hardware

• Bluetooth GPS Module (GlobalSat BT-338)
• Nokia 6120 Phone

Software

• Nokia SportsTracker (BETA)
• Google Maps
• Google Earth
  

An example of the embedded map produced by this technique is below. It shows the various information available from the file produced from Nokia Sports Tracker.


View Larger Map

Capturing the Data Points (GPS Track)

To capture the data used for the KML file I use my Nokia mobile phone connected to a bluetooth GPS Module. Nokia have released an application called Nokia Sports Tracker which allows you to record a GPS track. For further information on the use of Nokia Sports Tracker visit the Nokia website.

The Nokia Sports Tracker application has the option to output the file of data points to a variety of formats (GPS, CSV, or KML). We are most interested in KML here because it allows us to import the track into Google Earth or Google Maps.

Viewing the Map

Now that we have a KML file we can open this file directly into Google Earth to check that it looks correct. If you have Google Earth installed, double-clicking the KML file in Windows will open the path and display.

To use the path in Google Maps is a little more involved as you need to host the KML file somewhere on the web. I use a folder on my hosting provider.

Once you have the KML file hosted on the web you can now use it within Google Maps. To use within Google Maps copy/paste the URL into the Google Maps Search Bar and press 'Search' button.


Google Maps will now display the path on the map with some additional information about the path from the KML file.


Embedding the Map

Once you have the map displayed you can now Print, Send, or Link to this map. To embed this map into a blog or another web page use the 'Link' menu and paste the HTML in the second box into your website code.

You can use the 'Customise and preview embedded map' to change the settings of the embedded map.

For more information refer to the examples on the Google Maps site.

Google IO 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer

An interesting talk given by Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman on the 'Myth of the Genius Programmer'. Brian and Ben talk about some of the collaboration issues that people experience on open source software projects.



Although the talk centres around open source projects and particularly fledgling projects with only small numbers of developers, some of the points about collaboration can apply to teams working on software projects within larger organisations.

Google Wave - the Future of Collaboration

The hot topic of Google IO 2009 was the preview to developers of the Google Wave collaboration platform. Google hopes that this open platform will provide a rich web based collaboration tool that
will supplement such tools as email, instant messaging and document collaboration.

The Keynote for Day 2 of Google IO 2009 was dedicated to the developer preview of Google Wave and provided an overview of the capabilities of the platform and some of the work already completed.

Some of the features demonstrated during the Keynote are:

• Message threading
• Collaborative editing
• Integration with third party tools (Twitter, Bug Tracking, Blogger)
• Image and Video Embedding
• Google Search Integration
• Language Translation
  

Although the product is not yet available to the general public, Google is actively signing up developers to the sandbox of the product to encourage development of the platform. The plan is for the platform, protocol and client code to be open sourced to encourage development by third parties. It will be possible to run your own internal version of Google Wave.

For further information on Google Wave

http://wave.google.com/
http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html
http://code.google.com/apis/wave/