Posts by Stick

Mobe hackathon contest spits out Wi-Fi-by-bonk app wonder

Impossible with QR...?

Surely an Android app with a QR scanning library could grab a "username" and password from a QR code too, then configure the WiFi adapter in the same way? Even if the usernames / passwords are generated per-person, the QR could be displayed on a screen.

I'm not trying to knock the team's achievement, as I think NFC is a useful technology and they've shown plenty of ingenuity, but describing something as "impossible" is usually asking to be proven wrong :-)

Just like a real computer: Android gets Android IDE

Given that they've already got AAPT and the Dalvik toolchain working, hopefully it's only a matter of time! I imagine that there's a lot more dependencies with the NDK though; sh, gcc, make, etc.

Could be useful during my commute

I've just had a go, and it's really cool! I've wanted something like this for ages.

(And also annoying; I've been working on something similar but mine's in the really early stages.)

Reading this? You're probably planning to skill up on HTML5 in 2012

Re: Re: Erm...?

For games, it's possible to write all the rendering, logic, layout code, etc. in C++ / OpenGL ES and use a thin wrapper for each supported platform.

Since none of the native widgets are needed for games, this works quite well on iOS, Android and Symbian/Qt. We've not tried bada yet though, and WinPhone7 is out of the question, of course, since it supports neither C++ nor OpenGL.

For native-look-and-feel apps, something similar might be possible, but I feel it would be a lot more effort.

Re: Trying to avoid wheel re-invention

Oh, I certainly agree that HTML5 is the future. I'm also particularly excited about WebGL and WebSocket. I'm just not sure that the future is quite here yet, and for better or worse, native apps and games will be kicking around for a while yet.

Erm...?

What about Objective-C for native iPhone, Java for native Android, and C++ for native bada and Symbian development?

Yes, HTML5 has moderate support under most mobile platforms at the moment, but it will be several years before it is widespread and performant enough to replace the majority of native apps.

UltraViolet passes million download mark

Finally!

It seems like Hollywood is finally catching up with the times. This sounds like "Steam for films", which I would use in principal if it's available in the UK, reasonably priced, and gives me some kind of guarantee of ownership of my purchases if it ceases operation in the future.

Google befriends Microsoft with WinDroid tablets

Interesting...

Whether this turns out to be a good idea or a terrible one, this highlights one interesting advantage that Google has with Android over its OS competitors - its flexibility to try out crazy things like this.