Skip to main content

Adndroid apps don't have any borders (video)

This is the sixth in a series of videos provided by Google on Android programming.



Index:
00:00 Introduction
00:32 Zebra crossing application
01:35 Library app
02:14 A GeoSocial app which combines user GPS, user created photos, and Compass


My Takeaway:
Android applications do not have any borders. They can use data from other applicatiosns, they can use hardware available on the device such as camera, compass, GPS, accelerometer, etc, and they can also use content from the web API's.

The first application called Zebra Crossing is an application which can pull information from bar codes and QR codes. So if you photograph a product's bar code and give it to the application, it will pull up information about the book from the web. If on the other hand you give it a QR code from the back of a business card, it can extract contact information about that person which you can use to call or send email. The Zebra Crossing app also publishes intents, to allow other applications to communicate with it.

The second application is a library application which uses the "Zebra Crossing" app to add books to your personal library.

The third application, which I found to e really cool is an application which mashes together GPS, photographs, and the Compass to create a GeoSocial application. So here's what it does. Imagine you are on a vacation and want to locate cool things around where you are. You can use this application to find out all the photographs people have taken around that locality. If you find something you like, you can actually locate that thing (which was photographed) on a map and also use the Compass to get there. Cool isn't it?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Testing Groovy domain classes

If you are trying to test Grails domain class constraints by putting your unit test cases in the 'test/unit' directory, then your tests will fail because the domain objects will not have the 'valdate' method. This can be resolved in two ways: Place the test cases inside test/integration (which will slow things down) Use the method 'mockForConstraintsTests(Trail)' to create mock method in your domain class and continue writing your test cases in 'test/unit' What follows is some example code around this finding. I am working on a Groovy on Grails project for a website to help programmers keep up and refresh their skills. I started with some domain classes and then moved on to write some unit tests. When we create a Grails project using grails create-app , it creates several directories, one of which is a directory called 'test' for holding unit tests. This directory contains two directories, 'unit', and 'integration' for unit and ...

Running your own one person company

Recently there was a post on PuneTech on mom's re-entering the IT work force after a break. Two of the biggest concerns mentioned were : Coping with vast advances (changes) in the IT landscape Balancing work and family responsibilities Since I have been running a one person company for a good amount of time, I suggested that as an option. In this post I will discuss various aspects of running a one person company. Advantages: You have full control of your time. You can choose to spend as much or as little time as you would like. There is also a good chance that you will be able to decide when you want to spend that time. You get to work on something that you enjoy doing. Tremendous work satisfaction. You have the option of working from home. Disadvantages: It can take a little while for the work to get set, so you may not be able to see revenues for some time. It takes a huge amount of discipline to work without a boss, and without deadlines. You will not get the benefits (insuranc...

My first impressions of Python for the second time

I had worked a bit in Python many years back. Since then I have forgotten almost everything I learned back then. I think the phrase "Out of sight out of mind" applies perfectly to my mind. Since the last few days, I have started relearning Python, and this time I am recording my impressions of Python after having come to it from a Java background. Indentation: Python uses indentation to specify blocks of code, instead of curly braces. I like this, because we anyways indent code to increase readability, so why not achieve two tasks together. Code looks much cleaner without the curly braces. However there may be a little downside. Everyone in the team will have to set up their IDE's in the same way. Things might fall apart if some people use tabs and others use spaces for indentation. Access modifiers: Python does not have public, private, and protected keywords. Everything is public. However, private members can be specified with a leading single underscore. If we use do...