Samsung announces S Pen SDK 2.3

Development No Responses »
Feb 282013

Samsung has announced the S Pean SDK 2.3 for developers. The latest version of the SDK touts the following features:

Object-related features have been added

  • A video object insertion feature has been added, allowing a user to insert a video object into the canvas and play it directly.
  • Related APIs such as object grouping, depth controlling and stroke data controlling have been added so that the user can experience greater control when using editing objects.

Drawing-related features have been added

  • A Pen gesture feature has been added, allowing you to set various gestures as pre-define commands.
  • This allows customization of the background for a more unique user experience.

Performance enhancements and stabilization have been improved.

  • The efficiency of memory usage has been improved.
  • The Signature recognition feature has been improved using pressure recognition.
  • A drawing texture feature has been enhanced.

Unnecessary and duplicate APIs have been deprecated, and the names of some APIs have been changed.

  • Deprecated methods can be used in the previous 2.2.5 version and the current version, but they will be removed in future versions

Some errors in S Pen SDK 2.2.5 have been corrected in this release.

en 02 Samsung announces S Pen SDK 2.3

By using the S Pen SDK, you can easily add various S Pen features to your applications.
It provides the necessary functionality to take 100% advantage of the S Pen, including checking if the S Pen is activated, checking coordinates, sensing pen pressure, detecting the on/off status of the side button on the pen, and handling hover events, which is supported on Android Ice Cream Sandwich or later.

Also, it provides various additional features such as a drawing environment with animation support, pen, eraser and text property settings in the drawing environment, adding image objects, image processing and signature recognition. These additional features make it easy to develop various apps that are specialized for S Pen.

You can download the latest SDK from http://developer.samsung.com/s-pen-sdk/sdk/S-Pen-SDK-2-3 and the online documentation is also available at the same link.

Happy developing…!!!!

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:32 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

Ubuntu for tablets unveiled

Development, News No Responses »
Feb 222013
Ubuntu-Logo

Ubuntu, a flavor of Linux and undoubtedly one of the most loved OSes around the globe, is all set to make it’s debut on tablets. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Continue reading »

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 8:04 am Tagged with: ,

Samsung releases patch for TV SDK

Development No Responses »
Jan 262013
AppsOnTV

When it comes to developing applications for Smart TV’s, Samsung is the place to be – they lead the market single-handedly, and work permanently on improving their developer offering. Just days after releasing version 4.0 of their SDK, they have now released a first update for it. Continue reading »

Posted by Tam Hanna at 9:47 pm

50% of mobile ad clicks caused by “fat fingers”

Development, Metrics Maid 2 Responses »
Oct 312012

Most mobile ad solutions – Microsoft’s system is explicitly excluded here – pay developers only for clicks. Obviously, this motivates coders to create GUI layouts where it is easy to mistakenly tap on an ad to drive revenue.

Pace Lattin now brings us the following interesting quote:

A new study by GoldSpot Media claims that almost 50% of all clicks on static mobile ads are actually “fat finger” clicks. These aren’t just clicks from those who visit McDonald’s a bit too much, but from the general population who accidently click on the mobile advertisement and then close the app within two seconds. This means that they weren’t at all interested in the advertisement, but instead were just trying to exit or move around.

Of course, this causes significant problems for advertisers. Low rates of user engagement lead to lack of further funding, which comes to hurt developers as the clicks become worth less and less.

Have you ever mis-clicked an ad?

Posted by Tam Hanna at 12:48 am

Android to get new build system

Development No Responses »
Oct 032012

Eclipse’s build system is not bad – if it is not enough, there always is Ant.

However, Google considers this system insufficient, and has set out to create a better approach to building Android apps. The goals of the new project are specified as following:

The new build system goals are:
Make it easy to reuse code and resources
Make it easy to create several variants of an application, either for multi-apk distribution or for different flavors of an application
Ease of extending and configuring the build

Find out more via the URL below:
http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/new-build-system

Posted by Tam Hanna at 8:09 am

Android Hackathon Mumbai on September 1

Development No Responses »
Aug 292012

Gear up developers, budding developers and enthusiast of India, the Google Developers Group of Mumbai (GDG Mumbai) has announced a hackathon to be held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai on September 1, 2012.

The event details of the same are as follows:

Google Developer Group and  WnCC – IIT-Bombay  brings Google Developer Group Android Hackathon. Come and Learn Android App Dev!! Even beginners will benefit from the talk!!. After the event we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams !! Individuals and teams that finish their projects ( Good Amount of time will be given to build apps approx. 2 weeks ) are invited to present their applications at the Google DevFest in Mumbai on 22nd Sept.

The icing on the cake is that registration is free, and anyone can attend. You can register at http://googledgandroidappdev.doattend.com/

GDG Mumbai is an open and not for profit organization, and IIT Mumbai does not need any introduction, as it is a part of the IIT family – the most elite and sought after technological institute in the world. So if you are a hobbyist, developer, student, lecturer, or a cyborg, and want to have a helluva experience, attend the hackathon and have a blast of a time.

Happy developing…!!!!

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 4:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Qt on Android – licensing concerns

Development No Responses »
Aug 182012

Recently, users of Bogdan Vatra’s Qt port for Android have started to discuss about various legal implications of using the code provided.

Konrad Rosenbaum from silmor has now posted the following to the official Qt-on-Android mailing list:

I just checked out n0.34 – the original Qt sources inside Necessitas are under the exact same license as the unmodified Qt itself: LGPL 2.1, GPL 3.0, LGPL- Exception 1.1 (you chose whatever fits best for you or you switch to the commercial license)

Most of the added sources are public domain (i.e. no strings attached). The Android platform plugin and the special qt_main for Android are under 3-clause BSD. The latter is the most limiting factor.

Meaning:
* Necessitas is free of charge
* Necessitas itself is Open Source
* your software can be commercial if you like (you must stop the users from
updating the Qt libs – just keep the default using Ministro as library
provider and you’ll be fine)
* your software can be under almost any Open Source license:
– LGPL 3.0 and GPL 3.0 are ok
– putting it under BSD is also ok
– I’m not entirely certain whether GPL 2.0 and LGPL 2.1 are ok, there might
be some interference from the 3rd clause of the BSD license (I’m also not
sure whether this is intended)
– I’m unfamiliar with the details of other licenses (Mozilla, Apache,
Artistic, etc.), so I can’t tell you for each one with certainty

Not more to add here…

Posted by Tam Hanna at 2:30 pm

Making sense of Freemium

Development, Editorial No Responses »
Jul 312012

For someone who has been in the mobile industry since the times when apps cost 10$ a pop and were sold from ESDs, the Freemium model has always been a bit confusing. Long-term follower Nicola Peluchetti has now shared two very interesting articles which should help shine a bit of light on the topic.

Freemium has run its course
Post number one, coming via GigaOm, provides an overview of pros and cons of the Freemium model. It is ideal for all those who are interested in the history of Freemium apps, and also want to decide whether the model makes sense for their products.

Three Steps from Paid to Freemium
Story number two hits us via Betable.com. They have a talk with a Monetization expert from Rovio who explains the actual steps needed to create a successful freemium app – hit it when you have decided that Freemium fits your business concept.

Any interesting links to share?

Posted by Tam Hanna at 11:21 pm

Nokia releases Qt Creator 2.5.1

Development No Responses »
Jul 302012

Qt is a pretty popular development environment for both Symbian and Android development. Given that an IDE is provided by Nokia, it tends to get used quite a lot – and has just been updated.

The following changes were highlighted in what is openly advertised as a bugfix release:

fix in Qt for text editor font rendering on Mac, which would lead to incomplete rendering updates when not using the standard font
(if you build Qt Creator yourself you’ll want to either use the Qt 4.8 branch or cherry-pick 5ac8e6ef178678f500668d67fe38d149f0821029)
fix for C++ template class completion issues
various other fixes

Hit the URL below to find out more:
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/07/25/qt-creator-2-5-1-released/

Posted by Tam Hanna at 2:56 pm

Amazon brings back pay-for-promotion model

Development No Responses »
Jul 272012

Reuters recently carried an article on how Amazon is hard at work getting a team of app store curators into work. It contained a lot of fluff – and one thing which old veterans from the ESD days will remember unfondly.

In particular, we are talking about the return of paid promotion spaces. The most important statement from the article is this:

Amazon offers free app promotion through a section at the top of the Kindle Fire’s Appstore, which is curated by editors on Rubenson’s team.

Developers can also pay to have their apps advertised and promoted by Amazon. The company has a “rate card” showing developers the cost of such promotions on various Amazon websites, the developer said.

Given that this (pay an ESD) was the most common promotion method in the old days, there is not much I can say here except that history does repeat itself after all…

Posted by Tam Hanna at 8:45 pm
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