Poynt comes to Android
I've been helping the good people over at Multiplied Media with their Poynt for Android application for a couple of months now and I'm proud to see that they have launched the application.
The team did a great job putting the application together and hopefully it will be well received by the community. Although its still being distributed and talked about here are some great features that might not be immediately apparent.
1. Look up a Contact in the White Pages Search
On 1.6+ devices, and in the countries where the White Page lookup is supported, Poynt has the ability to prepopulate the lookup fields from one of your existing contacts.
To get the function, select People from the Main Carousel, and select one of the lookup items. For this example, I will select "Lookup By Name".
Press the Menu key and there it is, "Lookup Contact". By pressing the menu item you will get your contact list to show up. Select one of the names and the menu will auto populate the fields.
Press the search icon and get the list of the nearby search results. Click on the appropriate search result and get the specific details.
Now, click the Add Contact icon on the right side, and Android will automatically merge the details from the White Pages lookup with your contact details.
So with a couple of clicks you can add the address, and phone number to your existing. contacts by using the People lookup in Poynt.
Look for more tips soon and make sure to download and try out Poynt for Android.
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Starting Android Development — READ THIS FIRST
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!
Mistakes in Programming Projects
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!
Unplugged for a Week
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
The Future of Mobile Development
It seems pretty clear that the future of mobile development will be based around smartphones. Given the success of Android, RIM, iPhone, Symbian and WinMo platforms it doesn´t look like many device manufacturers will be heading back to the old days of custom OS builds (Motorola, Sony you´ve done well with your own firmware in the past but its time now.). This report highlights the growth of mobile applications based on smart phones.
So the question is, Given that smartphone users are many times more likely to download and pay for mobile applications is there any point in developing for the mass-market phones anymore?
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Recent
- Singletons and Services and Shutdowns Oh My
- Poynt comes to Android
- Starting Android Development — READ THIS FIRST
- Android Development and the Case of the Missing Google Maps Reference SDK
- Mistakes in Programming Projects
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