To get right to the point, due to a budgeting hiccup, I have been laid off from my employer until the next project comes online.  Since I do not like to resign my fate to others, I have officially joined those looking for new employment.

So if you are, or know someone looking for a Software Developer with Java/XML/Android/Ruby on Rails experience I would greatly appreciate if you could pass my name along.

I will also be continuing to work on my side projects and finally have some extra time to figure out my last bug or two in my current Android programs, and get my latest idea for a Ruby on Rails website up and running.  And with any luck (or a lot of luck, depending on how optimistic you are), I’ll be able to become self employeed!

Wish me luck!

 WARNING….really bad formatting follows!  I’ll try and make it a little nicer when I get a chance.

Could it be true???

This is what I got after I filled out the form with my private data.  The Merchant form is accessed off of  my main Android Developers page.  This is what the invitation looks like…

I haven’t figured out how to put a price in for an application yet, or if you can…but we are very close.  Guess I know what I’ll be doing with my free time this weekend!  The deck has been shuffled, the hands have been delt, how are you going to play yours??

(Update)

From the email I got from Android Market Support, it looks like the charging of apps will start mid next week.  I’m assuming that’s why I can’t actually put a price towards my apps yet.

From the email:

“Initially, priced applications will be available to end users in the US starting mid next week.”

Other news from the email, the Android Market will be open in Australia soon (Feb 15th) and Singapore in the coming weeks.

Also, paid apps are only supported in the US and UK Android Markets, but other countries will be coming online this quarter.  Another, quote from the email:

“We will also enable developers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, and Spain to offer priced applications later this quarter.  By the end of Q1 2009, we will announce support for developers in additional countries.”

I’m pretty syched about this code.  It took some figuring out and some hunting and asking questions on Google’s Android forum.  But thanks to the following posts

 File permissions for world read/write

SQLite3 sql command to show tables in database

I pieced together the beginnings of some code that will take an Android SQLite db and export it to XML data within a file on the SD Card.  This has a couple potential uses,

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Trying out the feature in PostBot which let’s you add an image to your post.

Thanks to @bakebrain on Twitter I’m writing this post on my HTC G1 via PostBot. Let’s see how it does.

I got the following post in my news reader from the Google Android Blog,

It’s no Cupcake, but T-Mobile G1 customers will receive newer firmware this week. Starting Thursday, February 5, T-Mobile will send subscribers an over-the-air update that adds:

Google Voice Search
The ability to save MMS messages/files
A feature that searches for system updates
Bug fixes and new features that address known issues

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Thanks to Christina’s article at Download Squad I now know that I can use the DDMS tool to capture screen shots directly from the phone.  I haven’t used the tool much because I usually just use the console and ./adb logcat to display logs.  Guess I should have dug a little deeper into what the tool can do, just shows that an old dog can learn new tricks!

Thought I’d through a question out the to all the Android Developers and ask: What syntax or parts of the development process do you always seem to forget or relearn?

I’ve got 3 that I always have to look up or when I try to debug what I’ve just done, it never seems to work the first (or second time).

1. The show() part of a Toast.

I get the,

Toast.makeText( this, “Some text”, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT )

but I just never remember the show() on the end.  Then I go and run the behavior and mull over it for 5 minutes before I finally remember.

2. Entering new Activities into the manifest file, at least this one gives you an error.

3. For whatever reason, I can never remember the Android reference syntax the first time.  Is it R.android.id or android.R.id…thanks to Eclipse code completion this isn’t to big of an issue.

So what always seems to stump you about the Android API or syntax??  Leave a comment or you can you this for fodder for your own blog.

(Updated 1/30/09 7:55am : corrected some grammar…syntax errors)

Well this post will show my ignorance towards floating point math.  So my new Android Application, which I hope to put up on the Market soon, is a shopping list which allows you to track how much you’ve spent as your are shopping.  This obviously deals with the price of the products you are purchasing so I expect the user to enter floating point values, but I convert to integers to make math functions go faster.

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Guess I’m on a book “review” kick lately.  I wasn’t planning on posting back to back about the two Android books I’ve bought, but I just received my bound copy of “Hello, Android” by Ed Burnette the other day.  Call me old school, but I still prefer a bound book to a pdf.  I’ve had a pre-release pdf copy for a couple of months now, and wrote about it in a previous post, but just haven’t been able to bring myself to get all my thoughts down on “paper” till I got the actual book.  So here’s my take…
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