mtech

Android Developer Challenge: winners and losers notified

Google sent out emails this morning to the roughly 1788 developers who entered the Android Developer Challenge. There were two flavors of email, one for winners selected for the Top 50, and one for everyone else.

A few developers have already claimed to be in the Top 50 selected this round:

• TuneWiki is an MP3 player with synchronized lyrics and community features.
• Commandro appears to be a location-based social networking application with a live maps-based interface.
• One "emergency preparedness" application (undisclosed) from Chris Hulls
• mobeegal location-based "stuff" finder
• No others yet announced?

Unfortunately our application (mobile real estate search for Android and iPhone: Puluwai) was not selected by the ADC judges. Our guess is that the application was not considered a radical new concept in mobile gaming or social networking, and thus boring by comparison with the numerous flashy apps that were submitted. Still we're continuing to develop Puluwai and will be shipping on the iPhone and Android platforms as soon as they're released.

Google has not officially announced who the Top 50 are at this point.

Android Developer Challenge: winners and losers notified

Google sent out emails this morning to the roughly 1788 developers who entered the Android Developer Challenge. There were two flavors of email, one for winners selected for the Top 50, and one for everyone else.

A few developers have already claimed to be in the Top 50 selected this round:

• TuneWiki is an MP3 player with synchronized lyrics and community features.
• Commandro appears to be a location-based social networking application with a live maps-based interface.
• One "emergency preparedness" application (link not disclosed) from crhulls
• No others yet announced?

Unfortunately our application (mobile real estate search for Android and iPhone: Puluwai) was not selected by the ADC judges. Our guess is that the application was not considered a radical new concept in mobile gaming or social networking, and thus boring by comparison with the numerous flashy apps that were submitted. Still we're continuing to develop Puluwai and will be shipping on the iPhone and Android platforms as soon as they're released.

Google has not officially announced who the Top 50 are at this point.

Google discloses Android Developer Challenge entries

Google has announced that they received 1788 entries to the Android Developer Challenge. When you think about it, that's a pretty remarkable number. Doubtless a large percentage of these apps are simply unusable or incomprehensible, but that still leaves a huge number of potentially useful applications.

Enkin live-navigation LBS app for Android

This is probably the coolest app I've seen yet for Android. Basically it overlays navigation information and labels over live video. So as you're walking around with your camera phone, it'll tell you what you're seeing.

(Via ClubGPhone)

Simple instructions for how to reset your iPhone when it crashes

For those of you who like to develop on the cutting edge of iPhone, you might find that your iPhone crashes frequently and doesn't respond to the usual key inputs.

In that case, you can quickly and easily restart your iPhone with the following:

1. Hold down the Home key (square key at the bottom center of the screen) and the Sleep/Wake key (small thin button on the top right of the device, on the same face as the headphone jack) for approximately 15-20 seconds.
2. The screen will go dark and then the Apple logo will appear momentarily.
3. Once the Apple logo appears, you can release the buttons and the iPhone will reset normally

This procedure does not erase any data stored on the iPhone, so it's relatively safe. (However, if you were in the middle of editing something such as a new Contact, for instance, you might lose information you entered.) Note that if you want to wipe your iPhone and restore it to "factory settings", you'll need to go through the "Restore iPhone" procedure with iTunes or Xcode.

android developer challenge quietude

In a turn of events that's become all too common these days, Google has not yet released any official status on the Android Developer Challenge. No press release touting "We've received then thousand submissions!" or whatever. However, the developers themselves, the people who poured all their free time into creating applications on spec, have started their own count-off thread on the ADC discussion blog.

first android app submitted to Android Developer Challenge

Well, I just wrapped up our first android application and our sole submission to the Android Developer Challenge. It's called Puluwai, and while I don't think it's a radically new concept in mobile applications, I think it does one thing really well. (Better, possibly, than similar desktop applications.)

Next up, finishing the iPhone version of Puluwai.

Clearing or resetting your list of iPhone devices in Xcode

Let's say hypothetically you plug in your iPhone to charge on your friend's laptop. Your friend happens to be an iPhone developer and have Xcode open, and so immediately Xcode asks whether you want to use this iPhone for development. Of course you don't at the time...so you click the No button. Then, a few days later, your friend (who is very poor and can't afford an iPhone of his own) asks to beta test his fancy new iPhone application on your iPhone. How will your friend ever get Xcode to recognize this same iPhone again and use it for development?

From a terminal window:

defaults delete com.apple.Xcode XCKnownRemoteComputers

Be forewarned: this completely clears the list of devices that Xcode already knows about.

The iPhone SDK is here...and boy is it popular!

"Hmm, we're not able process your request."

Judging by how often we've seen this error message on the Apple iPhone Dev Center site the past couple of weeks, it seems that the iPhone SDK is extremely popular with developers. Either that, or developers are so confused by the new SDK learning curve, that they're hammering the dev center site seeking better documentation.

My guess is we're seeing a mix of the two. Developers who are unfamiliar with Mac OS X development have several hurdles to jump when learning iPhone development: Objective-C, Xcode, and of course Cocoa. There are of course similarities between Eclipse and Xcode, Cocoa Touch and Android, Objective-C and Java, but they're not identical.

Still, given a little time, I think most tenacious developers will agree that it's not extremely difficulty to pick up the iPhone SDK after having worked with, say, J2ME.