CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2012-10-11 23:33:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

There are a lot of wacky and psychedelic CA rules out there but SmoothLife by Stephan Rafler is different. Designed as a continuous version of Conway's Game of Life (using floating point numbers instead of integers), it supports a glider that can travel in any direction, as well as rotating pairs and strange elastic rope things. Don't miss the nice glider collision at around 3:12. Technical details can be found on the youtube page: SmoothLifeL

2012-08-30 01:45:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

2012-08-14 18:58:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The American hacker camp. Please share this w/ anyone attending, and tag your posts / pics / etc #toorcamp !

2012-06-27 19:49:53 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Watching Google I/O makes me want to do some android dev again, JellyBean looks pretty great.

2012-06-05 17:25:55 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-05-11 07:50:29 (1 comments, 7 reshares, 15 +1s)

2012-04-16 06:07:28 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

On Android, to use basic authentication for a http request you would assume the easiest way is to use the provided http library right? Here's a blog post describing how: http://dlinsin.blogspot.com/2009/08/http-basic-authentication-with-android.html

That's 20-something lines of code involving 14 different classes, with wonderful names like ExecutionContext and HttpRequestInterceptor.

Or, you could do this:

String auth = username + ":" +password;
String base64 = Base64.encodeBytes(auth.getBytes(), 0);
request.setHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + base64);

Three lines of code, each quite simple. It's a really bad sign when working around the library, HttpClient, is the easiest way to use it.

2012-04-13 06:56:58 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

My first contribution to open source, a rewrite of another open source project: https://github.com/onlinemediagroup/publicsuffix

2012-04-11 19:32:20 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

There has been a recent trend among new apps to use a mostly-default Holo theme and follow the design guidelines as if they were a strict requirement. I would argue that this is incorrect and is actually worse than deviating from them a bit. The Android Design Guidelines should be treated as you would a GPS in your car--it's there to navigate you along logical paths but it is still you who must do the driving.

Applications which use the stock theming on Android will never go away. With the last few iterations of the platform the default theme has gone from a disjointed plastic mess to a sleek and clean blue wonder. For this, I think everyone is thankful.

However, just because we now have a document that defines use of widgets, relative sizing, and interaction patterns as well as a pretty theme to slap on top does not mean that there is no work to be done for those writing... more »

2012-03-07 03:46:41 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

It's not everyday you get to troll Richard Stallman in person!

2012-02-22 18:51:00 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Look what came in today!

2012-02-20 22:19:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

2012-02-15 04:57:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The first Release Candidate of ActionBarSherlock v4 was just released!

Everybody keeps complaining that the compatibility library missed the ActionBar. ActionBarSherlock lets you use the cool new action bar APIs all the way back to android 1.6 (I believe). You should check it out.

http://beta.abs.io/

EDIT: Here's the official announcement by +Jake Wharton https://plus.google.com/108284392618554783657/posts/cUSpT1tHRHk

2012-02-09 01:56:19 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Does anyone know of a SDPY library for android? Google Chrome for Android supposedly uses SPDY, have any ideas how I can take advantage of it in my own apps?

2012-01-27 09:13:38 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

When we were designing Android, we knew we wanted the platform to be able to scale between different screen densities. This is why even in version 1.0 all layout dimensions needed to specify a unit and we introduced the concept of the "dp" unit (for "density-independent pixel") as the normal unit to use.

Much of the motivation for this came from experience at Palm / PalmSource. Palm device traditionally had a 160x160 screen. Later in their life, Sony introduced a 320x320 screen; this worked pretty well by just doubling the coordinates supplied by the application so (unless using new APIs) it still thought it was drawing on a 160x160 screen but the OS would convert those and take advantage of the higher-resolution screen to show sharper text and drawn shapes.

This strategy became problematic in PalmOS later however when they wanted to ship QVGA screens. These... more »

2012-01-26 01:45:12 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It took me a while to read this but it's hilarious! http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

2012-01-25 23:51:19 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Wow, this is like exactly how I talk.

Nice work +Kate Imbach and +Tom Conrad! NAILED IT.

2012-01-21 20:12:16 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

I'm at startup weekend right now and I would love it if you could fill out a short survey for me. Who knows we might even make an app out of it! bit.ly/buycongress

2012-01-18 23:05:31 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

Great quote by +Reto Meier (paraphrased)

"The curse of writing a good app is that the best apps melt away so that you don't talk about or really notice them. When I use my favorite apps I don't feel like I'm using an app, I feel like I'm using another part of my phone."

2013-01-29 00:22:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

#AndroidTip: In Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, we've added several new icons to make using your Android device faster and easier. If you ever wonder what an icon means, you can long-press the icon and the name of it will appear. For instance, when viewing a message in the Gmail app, long-press on the sealed envelope. The icon will appear against a blue background and the description 'Mark unread' will show on the screen. You can use this trick in other Google apps, such as Calendar, Talk, and Maps in Android 4.0. Learn more in the Android 4.0 Help Center: http://goo.gl/qOzz8

2012-01-12 21:53:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

#AndroidDev

A few select favorite sections of the new Android Design site:

Style: Typography — includes a download for the full Roboto family.
http://developer.android.com/design/style/typography.html

Patterns: Swipe Views — with a video I captured of swiping between tabs. If a picture is 1000 words, a video is 1000 pictures.
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/swipe-views.html

Patterns: Pure Android — how to ensure your app feels Android-native.
http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/pure-android.html

2012-01-12 06:38:23 (22 comments, 3 reshares, 7 +1s)

Android protip of the day: Use Loaders instead of AsyncTasks to load data. Otherwise users who tap quickly will bring your application to its knees while it keeps running orphaned AsyncTasks.

2012-01-12 06:35:52 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

What's up the thousand+ people who circled me today? Hold up, I'm working on some incredible android UIs that I can't wait to show off to you. You better start buying ICS devices.

2012-01-09 07:21:18 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

http://i.imgur.com/CuuXY.png

2012-01-05 08:54:21 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

"[T]echnology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it." -Vint Cerf

An eloquent reflection on our role and responsibilities as technologists. A healthy reminder that we're creating the means, not the end itself.

/via HN

2012-01-01 20:10:51 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

I'm starting to like SOPA

I'm obviously a huge fan of the internet, but there are a few parts of it that could be better, such as its reliance on centralized services like DNS.

We are nerds, it will be easy for us to circumvent any protections that SOPA puts in place, and we will build tools to make it easy for the average internet user to do the same. Although hopefully we will do more than use offshore DNS servers.

Hopefully, under a regime of unjust censorship, we will be motivated to make the internet more temper-resistant. We will start seriously working on things like Named Data Networking and P2P DNS.

SOPA might spurr innovation instead of stifling it, and I'm a little excited about that.

2011-12-29 01:14:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

http://i.imgur.com/eF47C.jpg

2011-12-18 00:36:58 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I have some cool friends! Apple never stood a chance.

2011-12-17 18:05:08 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

We're working on a crafts project....

2011-12-15 09:51:41 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/12/14/anyone-can-build-a-windows-live-messenger-client-with-open-standards-access-via-xmpp.aspx

I think... I might actually be starting to like Microsoft again?

2011-12-14 17:37:43 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://hasverizonreleasedthegalaxynex.us/

2011-12-12 07:12:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

I used to be a DJ... then I took an arrow in the bass.

2011-12-11 01:49:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

What an awesome idea. In the future our cell phones (or whatever device they become) could keep track of our heart rate and use it to give us and our doctors helpful info on how healthy we are.

source: http://medriscoll.com/post/14042364592/why-everyone-should-be-a-medical-data-donor

2011-12-09 09:11:48 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

What it feels like waiting for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus to launch.

2011-12-09 03:29:34 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

A few days ago I wrote a post trying to correct a lot of the inaccurate statements I have seen repeatedly mentioned about how graphics on Android works. This resulted in a lot of nice discussion, but unfortunately has also lead some people to come up with new, novel, and often technically inaccurate complaints about how Android works.

These new topics have been more about some fundamental design decisions in Android, and why they are wrong. I’d like to help people better understand (and judge) these discussions by giving some real background on why Android’s UI was designed the way it is and how it actually works.

One issue that has been raised is that Android doesn’t use thread priorities to reduce how much background work interrupts the user interface. This is outright wrong. It actually uses a number of priorities, which you can even find defined right herehttp:... more »

2011-12-07 23:08:26 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The Unintended Effects of Driverless Cars

Google has been working on driverless cars for a few years now. The obvious selling point is that the cars will be much safer without a human behind the wheel.

Currently, a car spends 96% of its time idle. Compare that with planes which spend almost their entire lifetime in operation/airborne. Idle planes aren't making money, and they need to recoup their hefty $120M price tag. There is an unforgiving economic incentive to make sure it is always in use.

The proliferation of driverless cars will have a similar effect. Cars will spend less time idle: why would a household buy 2 (or even 3) cars, when they only need 1? Ride to work, then send the car home to your spouse. Need to go grocery shopping, but your kid also needs a ride to a soccer game? No problem, a driverless car can handle that.

What... more »

2011-12-07 04:30:26 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

I love learning new things!

In Java labels can be used to name loops. (and blocks in general)


the_coolest_block : { System.out.println("You're in a named block") }

this lets you break from within nested blocks, and choose exactly which block to break out of.
outerloop: while(true) { while(true) { break outerloop; } }

will not run forever, it will immediately return.

source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/886955/breaking-out-of-nested-loops-in-java/886979#886979

2011-12-07 00:19:08 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Paper Camera is a fantastic (if not slightly laggy) app for android. Go buy it now!

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dama.papercamera

It's on sale right now for 10 cents, as part of Google's 10 billion app downloads celebration.

2011-12-06 23:49:32 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

December 6, 2011

2011-12-04 22:48:07 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 8 +1s)

This one shared by +Sean Vadiat

2011-12-04 10:39:23 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

How about some Android graphics true facts?

I get tired of seeing so much misinformation posted and repeated all over the place about how graphics rendering works on Android. Here is some truth:

• Android has always used some hardware accelerated drawing. Since before 1.0 all window compositing to the display has been done with hardware.

• This means that many of the animations you see have always been hardware accelerated: menus being shown, sliding the notification shade, transitions between activities, pop-ups and dialogs showing and hiding, etc.

• Android did historically use software to render the contents of each window. For example in a UI like http://www.simplemobilereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2-home-menu.png there are four windows: the status bar, the wallpaper, the launcher on top of the wallpaper, and the menu. If one of the windowsupdat... more »

2011-12-03 22:50:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Royksopp is awesome! http://soundcloud.com/royksopp

I first heard this song (with a really cool music video) in a geiko commercial, but never really got into them. Röyksopp - Remind Me

Lately I've started to love them more and more though, this song is especially cool and festive! http://soundcloud.com/royksopp/le-cantique-de-noel

2011-12-01 00:49:10 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Good morning Google Plus. #Craftidea for today- if you want creative envelopes, go to #Google Maps, map the route from your letter to the other person's mailbox. Print them up, fold them into 8 by 11 envelopes (or smaller if you are sending #holiday cards).

2011-11-29 18:36:35 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The Transformer Prime and the Galaxy Nexus are both going to be fantastic. They're coming out in "early december" but that's so far away!

My first tablet app is going to be a nice calculator. Is there already a graphing calculator for android tablets?

2011-11-26 23:41:21 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Here's a cool page that goes over how the Android File system is laid out.
http://anantshri.info/andro/file_system.html

I'm surprised that the Android Compatibility Definition Document, the standard an OS must conform to in order to be considered "Android," doesn't go over this. (http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html) That means that while the file hierarchy on a Nexus phone will probably match this page, there are no guarantees that anything else will.

Has anybody who's worked with rooted phones seen something radically different than this? I don't imagine that a manufacturer would change anything, but I also wouldn't've imagined Google using something other than the LSB (The hierarchy that almost every Linux uses)

(via HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3279996 )

2011-11-26 20:04:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The internet has a fantastic sense of humor that pops up in the best places. Look at the amazon reviews for pepper spray http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Technology-56895-Stream-Pepper/dp/B0058EOAUE/

2011-11-05 06:39:59 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Eclipse xtend and Java 8, oh my! Fun times are ahead for the jvm.

2011-10-29 22:09:42 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 6 +1s)

'A Virus Walks Into a Bar...' and Other Science Jokes - Brian Malow

2011-10-29 13:31:32 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Arch with LXDE is a breath of fresh air. Never before have I owned a system this responsive. It's taking some getting used to, having to install everything manually, but I'm loving every step of the way.

2011-10-28 12:14:53 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Today was a sad day. Neither Amazon, Google, nor Apple would sell me a drm-free ebook. I opted to buy the physical version from amazon and then torrent the ebook, it was simply easier.

Amazon Kindle seems like a good alternative at first glance. Their platform runs across practically every device out there, making the convenience argument hard to make. But if there's one thing technology has taught us, it's that new devices will appear, and I have no guarantees that Amazon will continue producing Kindle and porting it across everything for the rest of my life.