Note: These days I'm posting most of my blog-type content over on my Medium page . If you're interested in the things I'm saying, doing, and writing, you should probably head over there. This post is an excerpt from my latest Medium post: The Cloud of Smart Things: The Future of Technology is Intelligent, Invisible, and Connected . Head over to Medium for the full article. I believe a new…
One of the biggest challenges in creating training material is capturing, and holding, people's attention. We also want to appeal to a diverse audience -- meaning a wide variety of training techniques and styles. In the past I've tried blogging , authoring books , conference speaking , and MOOC training -- this video is the first in what will hopefully become a series of narrative driven guides to…
It's a question I've heard a lot, and there's lots of good answers: Check out the Android developer Site is the most common answer, but there's a lot of documentation on DAC, and it can be hard to find a path that takes you from "getting started" to "protips" without reading everything. Read this book by that guy is one of my favorites! But book-learning isn't for everyone - and books aren't…
This year at Google I/O, I had the opportunity to present two sessions: Android Protips 3: Making Apps Work Like Magic and What's New in Google Play Services , as well as moderating the Android Fireside Chat , and interviewing Hugo Barra and Hiroshi Lockheimer . Presenting on stage in a packed room in front of over 1,000 Android developers is one of the highlights of my year. The lead up to Google…
I'm a white middle-class male working in the tech industry in the Silicon Valley, so it should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that I drive a Prius. As I told Ian during our podcast player App Clinic , the only thing missing from the stock version of this modern marvel of hybrid engineering technology is a convenient place to mount my Nexus 7 . The Prius interior is a combination of…
Every week The Friday App Clinic takes a critical look at a selection of apps in a particular category. Our focus on is to help developers learn how to make their apps magical, and we'll use these corresponding blog posts to provide links to some of the techniques you can use to make that happen. Last Friday Ian Ni-Lewis and I took the scalpel to podcast players. Up on the tablet were Doggcatcher,…
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." – Arthur C. Clarke Imagine yourself from 1990 transported to the present, and being handed a smartphone Had you handed 12 year-old me a Galaxy Nexus and a Nexus 7, and I'd have assumed they were props from ST:TNG. Show Asphalt 6: Adrenaline to a kid who's been obsessively playing Test Drive II on his 33Mhz 386, and watch him…
Once again the 1,300-seat main Android session room at Google I/O was consistently jam-packed, with attendees sitting on the floor and lining up to get in. As such, it was a real thrill to deliver my sequel to last years Android Protips presentation -- Android Protips 2: Electric Boogaloo . It's now on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. If you want a closer look at the slides, I've created this…
Professional Android 4 Application Development , started shipping today (Monday) from Amazon US - so those of you who pre-ordered should be seeing your copies in a couple of days. I'm really excited and can’t wait to find out what people think. Where to buy If you're interested in picking up a copy, you can get the paperback delivered to your door from these fine retailers: Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk…
tl;dr: Read the new Android Training Class, Transferring Data Without Draining the Battery , to learn how to potentially halve the battery life impact of your apps' data transfers based on the underlying radio architecture. One of the beauties of modern smartphone platforms is the abstraction of underlying hardware. I've been building mobile apps for almost 5 years, and had no idea how the…
2011 was a big year for me. I moved from London to the Bay Area, got promoted, wrote Professional Android 4 Application Development , and had my first Thanksgiving. In amongst all that I read some books, took some pictures, and played with some Android gadgets. Here's a little summary of the highlights. Books This year I used Google Books to store my 2011 reading list . My count was down somewhat…
I've been really impressed with the work +Trey Ratcliff has been sharing on Google+, which led to me wondering if HDR might be a way to add some "punch" to my landscape photography. My recent holiday back to Oz offered the perfect excuse to experiment. I've put my best HDR photos so far into this Google+ album . I've been working on my photography skills for a while now, but there are certain…
A distinct melancholy accompanies me as I sort through the images and artifacts of my youth. My wife and I left Australia almost 7 years ago. We lived in London and now the Bay Area, but for me home is still Perth. We're back this month—the first time in three and a half years—and I'm using the opportunity to free my parents of some of the detritus I left with them before taking off in 2005. Our…
I love product launches. It's the perfect time to speculate with no inconvenient research or history to get in the way. This goes for everything on this blog, but it's probably worth highlighting in this instance that these opinions are my own. They do not represent the thoughts and opinions of Google, the Google+ team, or anyone else who works at Google. My history of speculating on products…
I really like the photo sharing and viewing experience in Google+ so I decided to sort through my massive collection of "London" photographs and share some of my favorites. Selecting and preparing photos to share has a way of focussing your attention and allowing you to really look at them critically. As I sifted through the thousands of photographs I'd taken in London it quickly became obvious…
This is part two of A Deep Dive into Location . This post focuses on making your apps psychic and smooth using the Backup Manager, AsyncTask, Intent Services, the Cursor Loader, and Strict Mode. The code snippets used are available as part of the Android Protips: A Deep Dive Into Location open source project. More pro tips can be found in my Android Pro Tips presentation from Google I/O. Being…
If I were forced to choose between a smartphone that could make / receive voice calls, and one with Google Maps - I would choose Maps without blinking. Here Back in London, getting a reliable 3G connection is a challenge at the best of times - getting one while sat in most venues is about as likely as a South West Trains running a good service. So it doesn't help when I go to view details for,…
There's never enough time for Q&A at the end of an I/O session - particularly when the session is immediately followed by lunch. In an effort to remedy this, here are the answers to most of the questions that were entered onto the Moderator page for my Android Protips talk . Eclipse is a wonderful development tool. However sometimes it is clunky. Generic error messages, mysteriously build problems…
The short answer: I am against it . Lest I be accused of bias, that goes for every book - not just the ones that result in a couple of bucks landing in my pocket. The long answer I was surprised recently when asked via email what my attitude was towards piracy of my book, and if an online donation might work as a "last resort" way for pirates to show their appreciation for my work. For the record,…
For those of you who want to take a closer look at my Android Protips session for Google I/O, you can now enjoy the video, slides, and code snippets in whichever format you prefer: The slides are now available for viewing and downloading (as a PDF from Google Docs). The slides are also available on SlideShare for viewing and embedding. The code snippets are posted at Android Protips: The Code…
[Update 16/May: Reposted after Blogger outage] [Update 2: Working links to the sessions slides are available from here ] Another Google I/O, another jam-packed Android session room. This year they nearly doubled the room capacity for the main Android track making space for 1,000 seats. That still wasn't enough though - once again people were sitting on the floor and lining up to get in. Android…
I/O is always a great couple of days, and after last year's jam-packed Android room they've doubled our capacity and given us space for 1,000 folks in the audience. As if that wasn't enough, we're also live streaming the Android (and Chrome) sessions for your viewing pleasure. What Am I Presenting and How Can You Watch? I'm presenting Android Protips: Advanced Topics for Expert Android Developers…
So I'm working on a little project for Google I/O that requires, amongst other things, the ability to post status updates to Twitter from within an Android app. I asked about it on Twitter and a couple of people asked me to post the results (and associated code snippets) so here you go. I was hoping for a small code snippet that would let me do that without needing any third-party libraries, but…
Where to next? Mountain View in sunny California! Following this year's Google I/O , I'll be relocating to the home of the giant dessert sculpture garden , where I've been given the opportunity to take on the role of Tech Lead for the global Android Developer Relations team . It's a chance for me to focus on some more strategic ideas and to work more closely with the core Android engineering team.…
Building awesome software and having the right business contacts is not sufficient to convince the latter to hand over money for the former. There was a time in 2004/05 when, for several minutes, I thought my future lay not in compilers and debuggers, but in modelers and animation. As you can see , it turns out I don't have the skill, patience, or eye for detail required to transition from…