With the successful completion of my latest contracting gig, I find myself with the opportunity to investigate freelance work.  I’ve decided to take a couple of weeks to see if I can move into freelance development for the Android framework instead of looking for a full time position.  I have no idea if this will work and in the end I may have to start pushing my resume again, but I’m willing to try.  Don’t get me wrong, if the right opportunity for a full time position cames along, I’m certainly interested.

So, if you or someone you know needs a Android developer, I’d love to hear from you.  Email me at michael@mgmblog.com and I can send you my resume and let you know the initial rates I’m looking for.

Also, if you are currently freelancing (for either the Android or iPhone market) I’d be grateful to hear what has worked for you when it comes to looking for gigs or working with your clients.

Here’s some links I still have laying around in my RSS reader I still need to get to, hopefully you may find some of them useful.

Development

5-Minute CSS Mobile Makeover from Perishable Press

I’m hoping there is some general WebKit info in Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by Jonathan Stark

General Mobile Information

Haven’t had a chance to read Developing Games for Android from Gamasutra, looks like some good information about the business side of game development on the Android platform.

Justin Pratt does an awesome job breaking down the numbers in his article Earning a Living as an Independent Mobile Software Developer

Core Values: The silicon Behind Android from Engadget

Bonus

OK, not about mobile development specifically, but it’s easy to get discouraged during development…

How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated  from Zen Habits

I’ve been meaning to get a post out about the Android apps I’ve purchased since I first asked people to buy more Android apps.  I put out a couple emails to companies and developers who’ve built apps for the Android Market and Bendroid was the first ones to respond.  I’m not sure if I’m going to request questions for all the apps that I review, but I thought it’d be a cool way to start.  It also gives me a way to ask successful Android developers questions that will hopefully help me be more successful also.

Onto the review!

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Marco Arment has a great post on his blog  about the two App Stores…no not the Apple and Android app store.  But the two sides of the Apple App store and expectations that developers of mobile games and applications should have when positioning their apps.

He makes some great points about “one-hit wonder apps” vs sustained apps, lessons I believe can be utilized by developers in other “app” stores as well.

I’m moving away from using the Android email client in Note To Me, but wanted to share the snippet to launch the client.  And who knows, maybe I’ll add it back in if people want it as an option.

        Button sendBtn = (Button) findViewById(R.id.send_btn_id);
        sendBtn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            public void onClick(View v)
            {
            	Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
            	emailIntent.setType("text/html");
            	emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL,
                  new String[]{ sendToAddress } );

            	emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, subject );
            	emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, msg );

            	hideKeyboard();

            	NoteToMe.this.startActivity(emailIntent);
            	NoteToMe.this.finish();
            }
        });

I know this is just fanciful dreaming, and this sort of thinking is one reason for the internet bubble in the late 90’s and burst in early 2000…but it’s fun anyway!

Given the following numbers

• According to Engadget the Android market share could hit 14% by 2012
• Current number of smart phones world wide is 235.6 million according to this article from Yahoo
• Android’s market share is currently less then 2% (according to the Engadget article)

I think I can safely make the following pessimistic calculation:

read the rest of this entry… »

Although Dan Grigsby speaks about iPhone development and the iPhone app store there is a ton of advice which easily carries over to the Android platform as well.  I plan on implementing many of his suggestions into both MediaDroid and Note To Me and the ways I go about promoting them.

* UPDATE - Full and Trial version of MediaDroid now have fixes for Android 1.6 layout issues I was having.  Check them out in the Android Market and let me know what you think!

Just got updated to 1.6 from T-Mobile. I love the new searching capabilities and the Power Control Home screen Widget.

But it looks like I have some work to be done for one of the layouts for MediaDroid.  Not sure what’s wrong yet, but it looks like the layout for the Manage Album screen isn’t configured correctly and the buttons have been force out of the screen.  Hopefully the fix isn’t to hard and I’ll get a new version of MediaDroid out soon!

This is my call to arms for all Android users…buy more apps and talk about them, show them to your friends family and co-workers, blog about them, tweet about them, post pictures, let’s talk this shit up!  Everyone is comparing Android to the iPhone or Palm…you’re wasting your time, let’s spend those valuable keystrokes talking about how awesome the apps are on Android market and not trying to make comparisons to other platforms.  The more marketing buzz we can create about Android apps and how hard the single developers or small dev shops are working to create these products the better it is for all of us.  Not only do I want my apps to be successful but I’d love to hear about Phil Symonds making a million bucks on Abduction or how the college students who developed Heat paid their way through college developing Android apps.

So, show some love, and make sure to spend the buck or two for the app which that guy or gal spent many’a hours creating and testing…and let others know also.  I hope all this doesn’t sound to much like self promotion, but I really believe that it behooves all of us to have a vibrant and profitable Android app market.

Using a Service and ACTION_SCREEN_OFF  I’ve successfully added a new feature to MediaDroid which cycles the images in your photo album.  Every time the screen is put to sleep, the next photo in the album is placed in the photo widget on the Home screen of your Android device.  Here’s a code snippet…

public class ChangeImageService extends Service
{
	private static final boolean LOGD = Constants.LOGD;

	private BroadcastReceiver _receiver;
	private static final String LOG_TAG = "ChangeImageService";

        @Override
	public void onCreate()
        {
		super.onCreate();

	    _receiver = new BroadcastReceiver()
	    {
	        public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
	        {
	        	loadNextImage();
	        }
	    };

	    IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter(Intent.ACTION_SCREEN_OFF);
	    registerReceiver(_receiver, filter);
	}

....
}

A couple of gotchas you have to watch out for… The ACTION_SCREEN_OFF Intent does not get picked up from the AndroidManifest.xml file so you have to assign it in code as shown above.  Also, I put the assignment in the onCreate method because the Service can get killed off.  If the Service is killed off, Android will schedule it to restart, but in order to catch the Screen Off broadcasts the Service must sign up again in the onCreate method…at least, this is what worked for me and all seems to be going well.  As always, the docs are a little sparse and I had to go through some trial and error to figure it out, but I’m pretty happy with the results.

The new feature (along with a bug fix) is available in both the Trial and Full version of MediaDroid in the Android market…check em out and let me know what you think!