2Lines Software

After releasing a couple of products into the Android marketplace you get a little more familiar with the OS and framework. Looking back you start to realize that Android has a number of methods and tools that, if you took the time to learn them first you would have saved yourself a ton of time.

Search after search related to problems I ran into always seemed to direct me to one page. The page didn’t always have the answer to your problem but more than once it indicated that maybe I’m asking the wrong question in the first place!

Well here it is the single most important page in the entire Android framework!

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html

I can’t stress this enough. Read this page in its entirety. When you are finished go back to the start and read it again. Don’t do any coding until you understand how your program gets executed!

The Android Developer site has moved a bunch of links around to remove a lot of the Google branding from the community. Technically speaking Google drove the project and owns a lot of the development but it is an open-source community and probably should avoid proprietary and company specific codebases within its structure.

That at least what I assume they were thinking when they yanked the com.android.maps reference documentation from the site. For instance if you were looking for the MapController reference you would run a Google search for it and the first link is this:

http://code.google.com/android/reference/com/google/android/maps/MapController.html

Which returns a bug fat 404. The proper link is at:

http://code.google.com/android/add-ons/google-apis/reference/index.html

Android/Google get it together! At least put a redirect page up on old links!

Hopefully that saves you some time with the SDK.

This should be required reading for any Software Project Manager.

http://www.stevemcconnell.com.nyud.net/rdenum.htm

Although for you jaded and older programming types you should play the “Been There” Bingo with that page. I’ve been on projects that scored well over 20/36!

I just got back from Heli/Cat skiing at Chatter Creek, B.C. http://tinyurl.com/b7s5wv. It’s great to be skiing all day and equally great to disconnect from the internet for a while. I’m back now and look for more posts.

I’m away part of the week at a conference on the Role of Media in Supporting Informal Science Learning. It should be a good conference and their is a strong lineup of participants. I’ll be posting the summary when I return later this week.

Thanks,
John

Like I´ve been aluding to on twitter,

See more here

John Carpenter Appointed CTO of Calgary-based Mob4hire to Enhance Their Crowd Sourced Mobile Application Testing Online Community

Mob4Hire Inc., the leader in crowd sourced mobile application testing and virtual market research, today announced the appointment of John Carpenter as it’s Chief Technology Officer.

Calgary, Alberta (PRWEB) February 6, 2009 — Mob4Hire Inc., the leader in crowd sourced mobile application testing and virtual market research, today announced the appointment of John Carpenter as it’s Chief Technology Officer.

As a long-time mobile developer himself, John’s expertise will help us continue to refine our collaborative testing processes with our global community of testers Mob4Hire is uniquely suited to testing Location Based Services, so we’re also excited that John’s background will help us drive ground breaking global innovation in that area of our business.

John is an accomplished Geomatics Engineer and a pioneer in Wireless Location and Location-Based Services industries. He was instrumental in helping to create North America’s first mobile location based game, “Swordfish(tm)” and continues to win awards for mobile games and applications.

John was most recently the Architect of Geoservices at Useful Networks. Prior to that, he was Director of Technology at KnowledgeWhere Inc. before it was acquired by Useful Networks.

John is a prolific industry and technology evangelist, posting frequently to his blog 2LinesSoftware He’s sought after as an excellent speaker who can bridge the gap between technology and commercialization; his next speaking event is the 2009 National Science Foundation Conference on Media and Education in March.

“As a long-time mobile developer himself, John’s expertise will help us continue to refine our collaborative testing processes with our global community of testers,” states Stephen King, CEO of Mob4Hire. ” Mob4Hire is uniquely suited to testing Location Based Services, so we’re also excited that John’s background will help us drive ground breaking global innovation in that area of our business.”

The irony that Stephen King and John Carpenter are working together shouldn’t be lost … “If you use Mob4Hire, mobile application testing won’t be a horror story.”

About Mob4Hire

With over 2,191 handsets on 233 carriers represented in 87 countries worldwide, Mob4Hire is the leader in real-world, crowd sourced mobile application testing and virtual market research. A Web 2.0 online community, Mob4Hire materially reduces mobile application testing costs and accelerates time to market by connecting developers with eager, less expensive, crowd-sourced testers and focus groups around the globe. Mob4Hire is a Cambrian House Ideawarz winner, is one of Backbone Magazine’s top 20 Web 2.0 firms, won an Under the Radar “League of Their Own” award, and is nominated for both the GSMA Top Innovator award and Mobile Monday Peer award at this year’s MWC Barcelona in mid-February. Mob4Hire is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with offices in Victoria, British Columbia, and London, U.K. For more information, visit Mob4Hire Blog, or contact Allen Poutanen, VP, Business Development, allen@ mob4hire.com.