kugelfish

One of the problems debugging Android apps in the field is that the system error messages are quite generic and meaningless - e.g. Application not responding or application has stopped unexpectedly. All the interesting details like the java exception stack trace in the case of crashing apps are logged to the system log. This log can be looked at by running the "logcat" command from the background debug shell, usually by connecting over USB via the "adb" command from the Android SDK. But what to do if a problem occurs in the field, when you don't have a computer handy with USB cable and Android SDK installed? I recently came across a few apps on the market which address this issue by running logcat in the background from the application, capture the output and bringing up an email message with the output to be sent to somebody - either yourself or the developer of the crashing app, who had been desperately asked to see the logs. The source of one of the Log Col...

Similar to the virtual postal address setup , we are looking to keep a virtual US phone number while being overseas. Reasons for this are to give our friends and family in the US a permanent local number to call, no matter where are at a particular point in time. Having a US number for outbound calls is can also be useful to call US based 1-800 numbers - e.g. to call a credit card company and yell at them to stop sending spam to our vitual mailbox for example... The simplest way to do that would be to get VoIP phone service from a provider like Vonage and the simply pack up the VoIP adapter and US phone and install it wherever we are - using the proper power converters. However, we are doing something slightly more convoluted. Even though Skype became famous for offering free computer to computer calling using a peer-peer, the now also offer gateways to the plain-old telephone service at a fraction of the cost of most other VoIP providers. For $9 per month, we have unlimited callin...

There are two crucial pieces information related to every change to the project's codebase: the what and the why. Thanks to using svn for version control, all the details regarding what a change is are being automatically recorded in the form of an atomic changeset which moves the codebase from one (hopefully) consistent state to another. Recording the why requires a bit more work. In this simple workflow, we are using Track tickets to document and track every single legitimate reason for making a change to the codebase - whether they are bugfixes or work items related to new features or enhancements. If every legitimate reason to change the code is represented by a ticket, then for each svn changeset there should be one or more tickets which shows why this change was made. Code changes shoudl be done in small incremental steps, but the reason for these changes may be a fairly large an complicated project requiring many small code changes. Tickets can also be used as threads for re...

We are about to move to Europe for a few years and during that time, we need to be able to maintain a virtual presence here in the US, to make going back and forth more easy, to stay in touch with friends and family and to take advantage of the greatest consumer paradise on earth, where everything is available for a buck or two. An important part of maintaining a presence is to have a US mailing address - e.g. this required to have a US credit card and to have stuff shipped to you. For certain things a PO box would do, for others you need a real street address - e.g. to accept packages. Traditional mail forwarding places have existed for a long time, basically private mailbox operators who also provide the service to periodically mail the content of the mailbox to a forwarding address. Shipping overseas is really expensive and the idea of getting a box of junk-mail sent to us every months or so does not seem too appealing. Also if something is really important, it might also be urgent ...

Today was the second occurrence of Manhattanhenge this year - both equally before and after the summer solstice (June 21). I didn't take any pictures this time, largely because it was cloudy and rainy tonight.

Android has a nifty component framework, where each screen - called " activities " should be self-contain can be called up by anybody through an event distribution mechanism called " intents ". Activities can also register to handle arbitrary intents, which allows applications to delete certain functionality without even knowing which app is going to provide this functionality. Certain intents are pre-defined - e.g. the NoiseAlert app uses the ACTION_CALL system intent to delegate the making of a phone call to the dialer app typically, or whoever can handle it. Anybody can define new intents, but to pull off useful delegation of functionality between completely unrelated apps is usually a bit harder to pull off. But here is an example of that. A while ago, a user of the BistroMath tip calculator was asking whether I could add the functionality of recording and tracking dining expenses over time. I can see this would be a very useful functionality. But I also thin...

As the number of apps on the Android Market is growing, finding interesting apps is increasingly becoming harder. Developers have a very limited opportunity to promote their apps - a name, an icon and 325 characters are all there is to tell the user what the app is about. No screen-shots, no release notes, no FAQ, no back-channel to respond to user's comments. And worst of all, there is still no web interface which puts whatever little information there is on the market online and available to search engines. However useful smart phones are supposed to be the speed, power and comfort of a full-size laptop or desktop computer are hard to beat when it comes to searching and browsing large amounts of data. The quality of the built-in search function in the Android market is a bit spotty to say the least - why not let people use real powertools like an Internet search engine to find android apps? For a while there has been Cyrket to expose the content of the market online - presumably...