Even last week was a little slow and holidays already here, here is again another selection of Android applications. The most original project this week is probably Hecl, which is a scripting language written in Java. Hecl could do for Android, what Python did for Symbians. But until we reach that level, there is a lot of missing things in Android platform itself.

CallFreq, Dialer that knows better

Sadko Mobile is one of the companies created after Android launch to create applications both for mobile devices and for desktops and servers interacting with such devices. Their first application CallFreq is small but useful. It allows using filters to list the contacts that you have most frequently dialed, instead of listing all your contacts. It’s a kind of Journal, but I find it very well shown especially with your contact’s pictures and filter to display by hour, day, week, or month. CallFreq is already available for download, but not sources available.

Connect4 game for Android

AndroidCan just opened its doors on December 13rd and promised to provide more games and fun for Android. Their first game is the classical Connect4 with four level of difficulty is already available for download. Sources not available also.

Hecl, Mobile Scripting language on Android

The Hecl Programming Language is a high-level, open source scripting language implemented in Java. David N. Welton, creator of Hecl, have just announced that an alpha version of Hecl is already available for Android and could be downloaded from Hecl website. Hecl will participate in the Google Android Challenge, so if you are interested you can start by joining their mainling list.

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After the second Android SDK update, here is another collection of Android applications. Some of the missing features in Android are really limiting developers from being more creative. For example, until today there is no API for Bluetooth, Camera, and GPS. The reason why many developers have to deal with the existent part of Android only until all features will be available.

Dodge Ball for Android

Ryo Ichinose have written Dodge Ball for Android, a fun game where you have to move a spaceship and avoiding falling balls from the sky. Code source and video demo are available.

CameraSource, Live Camera Previews in Android

While there is no camera emulation currently available for Android, here is the first unofficial solution provided by Tom Gibara to work with local and remote camera sources. The code is public domain and consists of four classes CameraSource, GenuineCamera, RemoteCamera and WebcamBroadcaster. This is more experiment than real application but CameraSource is very useful to get camera emulation working on Android platform.

Android Feed Reader

To follow Android news and your favorite blogs, here is the second RSS/Atom feed reader for the Android platform. Currently the project came with the very basic features of an RSS reader, and a basic UI … There is a lot of To-dos, but it’s already a good start. AFR uses the ROME + JDOM libraries for parsing feeds, and the java.beans module from Apache Harmony, which is required by ROME.

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In the latest interview, Brendan mentioned that SDK releases have slowed down and here is today the official Android blog announcing the immediate availability of the new release m3-rc37a. Highlited features in this release :

• The ability to inject SMS messages into the emulator, which will allow you to more easily test IntentReceivers for incoming SMS messages (Telnet to Android then run: sms senderPhoneNumber senderPhoneNumber)
• Android Debug Bridge (ADB) supports multiple emulators on one host computer
• The audio problem with the emulator on Windows should be fixed
• There’s a new emulator control panel that you can use to control network events like radio state changes and incoming calls.
• The Eclipse plugin now does color syntax highlighting on the XML files, such as AndroidManifest.xml
• The new default skin for the emulator is HVGA, portrait mode. That’s the one you should focus on for your submissions for the Android Developer Challenge.

It seems there are problems with com.google.android.providers.media in this release, others are reporting that many applications are not running such contacts, maps, browser and even Xmpp settings. Here all applications are working fine and I’m able to emulate phone call, but not sending sms. We’ll try to update you as we get more information on the subject.

More changes on the release notes, and you can download the latest Android SDK release from Google code. Be sure to update the ADT Eclipse Plugin as usual, instructions available for upgrading the SDK.

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Some of the very cool tools that popped out from Android developers, a Java applet called DroidDraw, which aims to provide a complete GUI creation tool for developers. OHM had an interview with Brendan Burns, who is behind the DroidDraw and Android-GL projects.

OHM : Can we know a little about yourself ?

Brendan : I’m a professor of computer science at Union College in Schenectady, NY. I just graduated a year and a half ago from the University of Massachusetts with a PhD in Robotics. Before grad. school, I worked in the software industry for a couple of years; mostly web-apps. I’ve done a bunch of different development over the years.

OHM : So you have a PhD in robotics, and you are interested into mobile development also ?

Brendan : I like to code. My term ended in the middle of November, and I wanted a project to keep me busy.

I had just taught graphics as my fall course and so I thought I’d play around and port some of the code from the class over to Android. Since I’d never done OpenGL on an embedded device, then I was thinking about building an app for the Challenge and I realized it was really annoying to build a GUI in XML. So I wrote the GUI builder.

OHM : Are you entering the challenge alone or in a team ?

Brendan : I’m not sure, probably by myself. I’m not 100% committed to entering. I have to come up with a really good idea, and so far my ideas are only ok.

OHM : So what about Android-GL, are you planning to build something with it ?

Brendan : I was thinking about it, but the renderer still has some bugs in it. While I was working on that I found a reported and number of them and I’ve seen reports from other people as well.

Also, I’m not 100% convinced that 3D plus mobile is the best solution, since most devices still don’t have accelerated graphics

OHM : how did you find coding on Android platform ?

Brendan : Its pretty easy I think. Its very similar to J2SE, more similar than J2ME which I did a little coding for.

There are some major differences between the OpenGL ES API and the regular OpenGL API - no glBegin(…)/glVertex(…)/glEnd() - that took some getting used to, but that’s the direction that the regular OpenGL API is headed also as far as I’ve heard. I think OpenGL 3.0 does away with that style of 3D coding. So it wasn’t a bad thing to learn more about.

OHM : so Java before Android was not much different than after Android ?

Brendan : Yeah, I think so, because I’m not in the mobile industry, and I don’t have a strong sense for the use of Java in that market. So I don’t really know if Android will mark a major shift toward Java or not.

One thing that is interesting about Android is that after two quick SDK releases, its slowed down !

You can tell that there are internal releases being developed, because the release stamp on the bottom of the docs pages keeps changing (Today its: Build m3-rc31 - 04 Dec 2007 17:47). So I’m curious about Google’s SDK release plans/schedule.

OHM : Which feature are you waiting for in the next release ?

Brendan : I’m waiting for Bluetooth support to be activated, So I can drive my Lego NXT Robot from Android !

Thanks Brendan for your time.

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Monday December 10th, the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) completed the release of 1.0 specifications, to targets interoperability and marketability of Linux-based mobile phones through shared open standards and implementations. LiPS forum have been founded in 2005 and include operators and services providers from France, Italy and UK, in addition equipment and Chip manufacturers, and software vendors.

With Android release, LiPS published an FAQ on the differences between their standardization effort and OHA :

LiPS and Android both seek to reduce fragmentation among Linux-based mobile platforms. LiPS seeks unity through open standards, while Android/OHA does so through shared code.

Effort for Mobile linux stardization isn’t new at all, and beside the LiPS we count also the ELC Mobile Linux Initiative (MLI), Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo), the embedded linux consortium, and the Gnome embedded initiative. There are also many others individual efforts by companies acting in the linux mobile business. According to ABI research, by 2012 there will be approximately 127 million Linux smartphones shipped each year.

It’s true that OHA and Android are boosted by Google, so should the LiPS profit from Android or should Android learn from the LiPS ?

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