Add LogCat view pane in Eclipse, HOWTO

Easy :


Window - Show View - Other


Wondering how to read & write to LogCat : 
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/debugging/debugging-log.html

Google's Android now has more free apps than Apple's iPhone

Android Market now has more free apps for download (134,342 apps), than Apple's App Store for iPhone (121,845 apps). At the same time  it is also important to mention that the number of paid apps on the Android Market is about one third of the total number of paid apps available in the Apple App Store for iPhone, according to app store analytics provider Distimo.

Source : http://www.techspot.com/news/43568-googles-android-now-has-more-free-apps-than-apples-iphone.html

courseApp presentation, INF5261

Evaluating performance of Android platform using native C for embedded systems

A very interesting article discussing the speed of running code on Android while using Anroid Java SDK running on Dlavik Virtual Machine vs. native C. Down here you can read the article abstract :

The Android platform used for mobile devices can be applied to embedded systems, such as robot control systems. Developers should create applications by using Java language provided by Android SDK for embedded systems operated via Android platforms. However, in many existing embedded systems, developers have written applications for controlling the system by using C language. Android NDK makes it possible for developers to easily reuse such legacy code written in C/C++ languages. In this paper, we show the difference in terms of performance between an Android application using native code library from C source and an Android application using the same algorithm written in Java language only. We conducted an experiment on five parts: JNI communication delay, integer calculation, floating-point calculation, memory access algorithm, and heap memory allocation algorithm. This paper presents a guideline for an effective way to use native code libraries in Androidapplications. [more]

Android NDK

The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android application model does not change.
Wnat to know more : http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

UML Diagram

UML diagram

Wonder Document Two

Update 18.03.2011 23:59 : Wonder Document 2, Published :-)

We are currently working on publishing our Wonder Document Two to publish a report on development process of our current project.

Parsing XML database at UiO, done :-)

Our code can now read inforamtion from UiO XML database(Document Object Model Tech.) and show the result on Android screen. Soon will update the post with source code.

Set background for your Android Applicaion, HOWTO

Very good tutorial which can teach you how to set a background for your android app :
http://androidforbeginners.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-tile-background-image-in-android.html

Permissions and Android

One of the most important things to remember while programming for Android is to remember to ask for permission before doing things :-) If you do not ask for permissions to use different features on the OS, your program will crash without a very sensible error. You can ask for permissions in AndroidManifest.xml file.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE" />

  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CHANGE_WIFI_STATE" />

App Design

What is CourseApp ?

This weblog is dedicated to a semester project at a course called "Development of mobile information systems and services" at IFI, university of Oslo. The project is planned to become an application on mobiles with Android OS, which can help students have better access to the course pages at institute for informatics at university of Oslo. 

There is also hope to be able to eventually subscribe to the desired courses through the StudentWeb with our application, but this will be dependent on the level of cooperation from StudentWeb developers as we might be needing a direct access to the database. We have thought to have following functionalities on our program(numbers show also priority).

1. My courses
2. Latest messages on course page
3. Warning on Email
4. Integration with Android Calender
5. Friends taking same course

Read more about our project at our wonder document.
Project page at INF5261 course page : http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5261/v11/studentprojects/android/