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Category Archives: Reviews and recommendations

Advarsel: Spillet Wordfeud er stærkt vanedanende :-)

Jeg spiller kun sjældent computerspil, men den anden dag blev jeg anbefalet et spil som kan spilles på iOS og platformene. Spillet Wordfeud er gratis og er en ordleg en slags scrabble hvor man skal indsætte bogstaver så de danner ord. Det er ret simpelt og kræver ikke megen forklaring – lige til at gå til. Det er et multiplayer spil hvor man spiller over internettet mod en anden person – det kan være en man kender eller en tilfældig. Man kan have flere spil kørende og har 72 timer til sit træk, ellers taber man. Det er god hjernegymnastik og hvis man f.eks. starter et spil op på sin iPad og så senere sidder et sted hjemmefra og venter, så kan man spille spillet videre på sin android telefon (eller iPhone). Simpelt, sjovt og godt!

Find spillet her: http://wordfeud.com/ Her er nogle screenshoots.

 

Hjemmesiden hvor du kan få mere informationer

Her kan man se information om de spil man har igang. På billedet afventer jeg 3 spil - de andres tur

Eksempel på spil. I nederste venstre hjørne kan man se points. Rækken af bogstaver der går på tværs for neden er mine bogstaver

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Time-lapse recording using Android based HTC Legend and app “Tina time-lapse”

Tonight I did a of the Tina free for – an application which will record time-lapse pictures. Here are my comments, which may come handy for you.

Tina time-lapse, getting it and how to use

It is no problem getting the application ofcause. You may goto the Market and then search for “Tina time-lapse”. The app is for free and is straight forward to use. You simply enter a name, how often images should be take (say every 7th second), a limit for the number pictures taken may be entered and the resolution of each picture.

Doing the recording

Tonight I decided to place my HTC Legend phone in the front window and let it record the around 15 minuts drive to Aarhus (a city approx. 12 km from where I live). I did some calculating and decided to go for 540 pictures. I pushed record and drove into the night. The problem is ofcause that the phone may tilt as it is not mounted – that I will have to come up with a solution for. Anyone know of a device like which makes it possibel to mount the phone on a standard camera tripod? Please write if you do so.

When I reached my goal in Aarhus and picked up the phone I am not sure, but I think that the app intelligently stopped recording! (smart if so). The reason that I think that it did it automatically is that it only recoreded 173 frames/pictures and not the 540 which I had specified.

Converting the pictures into a movie

Well that part was actually not difficult either. I simply followed the instructions given by the Tina time-lapse developer: Wessel Rossing on his page about this app: http://wesselrossing.nl/blog/view/21 – he has recorded a in which he describes how you can get your images to your PC and convert them into a using the free program “avidemux” (see screenshoot below).

Screenshoot of Avidemux

I choose to add the audio from Madonna – “Ray of light” which in the original video actually also uses Time-Lapse recordings.

I changed the framerate to 8,5 fps, and I also added some video filters to fix the low light of the evening pictures. Here is how it looks like when you save the video:

Saving the pictures as a movie - started good

Movie encoding stalled....

The 2nd go at encoding to movie..

Well I had to try again… And this time it went fine! The encoding took almost no time, but strangly enough it ended up with a crash. The video however was okay!

The video is here:

 

 

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Emulating an Android phone directly from windows (or other supported operating systems)

I have read about emulating an from windows here: http://developer..com/guide/developing/tools/.html and here are the basic knowledge written as a guide.

Download the Android SDK

You can download the Android SDK from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html Do that and unpack it to your disc.

Open CMD window with current directory set to “tools”

We need a CMD prompt with current directory set to the “tools” directory inside the Android SDK

  • Finding the emulator.exe.
    Click the start button of windows
  • In the search field enter "emulator.exe"
  • When the "emulator.exe" appears right click on it and click "Open the location"
  • Now you click the full address of the explorer which opened. It is probertly something like this:
    C:\Users\Sten\Documents\Download\android-sdk_r05-windows\android-sdk-windows\tools
  • Copy that full address to the clipboard
  • Open a CMD prompt
    Press the [Windows-key]+[R] or enter "cmd" in the windows search textarea of the windows startmenu
  • In the CMD window enter: "cd " + right click and paste the path from above

Setup an "AVD" – Android Virtual Device

Before we can run the emulator we need to have defined an Android Virtual Device. There are a tool in the SDK which will help us do that.

The command you should use looks like this:

android create avd -n <name> -t <targetID> [-<option> <value>] …

Then <name> is well a name which you use in future when runne the AVD.

The <targetID> is used to select which hardware and OS version should be used for your virtual device. You can get at list of the currently available targets on your SDK by typing this command:

android list targets

For now lets try a simple AVD – in the references below you can find a link to the complete documentation of the AVD.

To create an Android 2.1 based AVD called “Android2.1” type this command:

android create avd -n Android2.1 -t android-7

Running the emulator

After having created an AVD we can run it from the command window. To run the AVD we created called “Android2.1” simply enter this command:

emulator –avd Android2.1

To start of with the emulator will “boot” – that may take a while, but you should see something like this:

The emulator booting

Here are some more screenshoots:

The home screenThe settings panelVisiting the m.cnn.com website

Adding a SD card

One thing which I did not thing about but was quickly aware of was the need for a SD Card in the emulator. No problem! You simply change the command to:

android create avd -n Android_2G_SDCard -c 2000M -t android-7

It may take a while to create – but when done you have a new AVD profile called “Android_2G_SDCard” which is based on Android 2.1 and has a SD card with 2GB memory.

Installing

You can install apps on the AVD. I tried simply by locating “APK” files on a website containing Android Apps. Using the browser I visited http://www.androidfreeware.org/ and located an APK file – downloaded it and installed the as seen below.

An application has been downloaded and is ready to install The game which I downloaded and installed worked fine. Even with sound :-)

Conclusion

I find the emulator included in the Android SDK very usefull! It is relatively straightforward and I guess that you can get a taste of the Android OS for free using this emulator. People who have not yet bought a smartphone have all the chances here to try out the interface – and even download some of the apps availiable for free. For an app developer it is probertly also a very usefull tool! Well done !!!

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Could an Android App make someone a fortune?

Ever since I have seen the first iPhone and I have been wondering: “How much money could someone earn on ?” are typically sold at a very small price starting around 1$ – but if you sell a lot of them at that price even one dollar can turn into a big amount! So I looked into AppBrain which is an online service on top of the Android Market adding extra which come in handy for most Android users I guess. You can read my review of AppBrain elsewhere on my blog. Anyway, I have put together a table showing just some of the apps and how much the seem to have been generating (if you can trust the figures at AppBrain).

name Category Approx. downloads Price Value from $ Value to $
Robo Defense Arcade & Action 50,000-250,000 $2.99 $149,500 $747,500
Beautiful Widgets News & Weather 50,000-250,000 $2.03 $101,500 $507,500
Tower Raiders GOLD Arcade & Action 5,000-10,000 $4.99 $24,950 $49,900
DocumentsToGo Full Version Key Productivity 50,000-250,000 $14.99 $749,500 $3,747,500
Gang Wars 250 Respect Points Arcade & Action 1,000-5,000 $19.00 $19,000 $95,000
WeatherBug Elite News & Weather 10,000-50,000 $1.99 $19,900 $99,5000

Using Microsoft excel I have created a simpel graph showing these numbers in a graph (sorry about the danish thousend seperator):

The approx. money made on 6 random Android Apps

I will let the numbers and graph speak for themself – please comment on them, and if you have earned some cash creating an app for Android or iPhone, I would love to get your comments/experiences as well here!

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“You are using Google Latitude and reporting your location”

It is nice to see when a new feature appears that the people behind it is warning you of possibel bad side effects. Like when you have your device exposing your (using the build in ). Today I recieved such a warning from by e-mail:

Hi,

To protect your privacy we would like you to know that Google is running on your Android-powered device and reporting your location.

If you didn’t enable this or want to stop reporting your location please open the Maps on your device. Go to ‘Menu’ > ‘Latitude’ > ‘Privacy’ and change your privacy settings.

Thanks,

Google Latitude Team

(c) 2009 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

Thank you Google! On the one hand you use the position information of the visitiors (first asking them if it is okay!) and on the other hand you remind people that a potential risc exists! Very cool done!

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Appbrain.com – a place to manage your Android Apps

AppBrain Android Apps
Scan this QR code using your Android based device to goto the "AppBrain Market Sync App"This site will help you find and manage for your phone. After you have created an account and have installed the manager on your phone, you can goto the site and see which apps are installed on your phone! It also shows the status of them – for instance if they have been updated. Very nice!

I tested it by searching for "Goggles" – it found " Goggles", I clicked on the link, pressed "Install" on my PC. Went to my phone and pressed "Sync with AppBrain" – it discovered that " Goggles" was a pending app. I pressed install – and sadly ended up with an error message saying (in danish) that there was no result in the Marked for the search: "pname:com..android.apps.unveil".

Conclusion

It seems like a nice place to bookmark, a place where you can manage the apps on your phone. My with Google Goggles I hope is an exception – I expect other apps to install correctly as it seems that I can’t find Google Goggles anywhere! So thumbs up for appbrain.com!

Update: I now have experienced problem with installing two apps and have written to AppBrain.com – hope to be able to post more information here later.

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