After many long months of thinking, planning, and thinking some more.  The flagship application of my grand scheme is out in the wild.  MediaDroid is an Android Application Widget which allows the user to create albums and add photos to those albums.  The selected photo is displayed on the home screen and can be changed at anytime by the user by selecting a different photo.

The current version of MediaDroid in the Android Market is just a trial version, and it certainly has some performance short comings.  But I believe in release early and release often, so time permitting I will be getting updates out soon, and when I feel it’s up to snuff I’ll release a full version.  The trial version limits the user to 2 albums with 5 photos in each.  The full version won’t have these limitations and other features as well.

A full writeup coming soon, along with screen shots, for right now, it’s way to late and I must get to bed.

NoteToMe is a simple tool which helps me capture thoughts and ideas as they migrate through my brain and compete for attention.

I consider myself a pretty heavy Right Brain person, I try not to label any of my ideas are stupid or outrageous.  It seems that the more ideas I entertain, no matter how crazy,  the more ideas pop into my head.  I’ve been working awhile on a system or workflow to improve the collection and storage of these thoughts so I can action on them at a later date.

The first problem is having a place to hold these ideas so they won’t be forgetten. Enter Gmail…I use my Gmail account for lots more then just recieving spam.  I capture ideas, reminders, todos, and links just to name a few, it’s my catch all.  I’m constantly emailing one liners to myself, because I know that I have a much better chance of revisiting the topic if it’s in my inbox.  It’s certainly not a perfect workflow, but something I continue to improve.

So the next challenge is getting the thoughts from my head into my inbox. I started by having a shortcut to my email on my desktop.

This kinda worked, but I still had to enter some marking or tag to help filter the clutter and a subject.  The subject is moot in my book, it’s the meat of the message I want to get to and capture before I forget it, and move onto the next one which is bubbling to the top.  Instead I’m screwing around trying to “think” of a subject as opposed to just letting the thoughts come streaming out.

These where some of the first requirements for NoteToMe.  Quickly allow me to get thoughts out of my head, and allow me to quickly mark them with predefined tags.

So now I have a NoteToMe Application Shortcut on my main screen which brings up the app allowing me to instantly capture my todo/thought/next big thing and  send it on its way.

The current version still goes through the Gmail client so it could still be trimmed down a bit as far as number of button clicks, but it seems to be working into my workflow so far…but maybe that’ll change.

I know that NoteTeMe has lots of competition out there.  Apps that are much more feature rich when it comes to note taking or todo lists, AK Notepad, Note Everything and OI Notepad are a couple that come to mind.  But NoteToMe fills a little different niche in my opinion, kinda geared specifically to how my brain works.  So if you’re brain kinda works the same way, I hope you give it a try and let me know how it goes…good or bad.  Any type of comments at this stage are appreciated.

Click here to see more screen shots of NoteToMe…come back soon, I got lots more ideas!

And again, thanks for your support, all proceeds go towards my bootstrapping effort.

In between my new contracting gig, family life and the new dog I found room to put together a quick Android application which I just uploaded to the market.  It’s my first attempt at a paid app and more information can be seen on the app link, NoteToMe, at the top of the screen.  It’s a small one feature app, but I’ve got a couple more ideas I’ll be putting into it when time permits…bootstrapping is tough stuff!

Just wanted to put a quick message together to put out the news, thanks for taking a look at it if you get the chance.

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,

read the rest of this entry… »

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

read the rest of this entry… »

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!