Saturday, April 17, 2010

Another day... Another successfull coupon applied

My wife, 2-year old son and I went out to eat at a nice little Italian place not to far from us located in a shopping center. Along with the Home Depot, Target and Walmart, there is also a Borders. That's right, a Target and a Walmart, with in a football field length of each other. AHHHHHH.... Any way, after we had dinner, we went to Borders. While my son was running around the store and my wife chased him, I told her I would be by the computer section. I was looking for a Java book. Java as in the programming language, not the drink, nor the Indonesian Island. I am not new to development (c#, VB.Net is my background), so I wanted to look for a book that was good enough for a beginner but not too beginnerish. I found Java in Easy Steps. It was only $14.99. I quickly pulled out the DROID and did a picture scan of it to get some reviews. The scan was successful, but no reviews found... Book goes back on shelf. I then found Java in 24 hours. Again, out comes the DROID, use the Shopper app to scan the cover (you can not scan the barcodes at Border since they place a sticker over it for their own code). The scan was successful and reviews were great. I look at the price, $34.99. Its a price I was not overly joyed about so I search the Droid Coupons app and WOO-WHOO "Save 33% off any one item at Borders". The phone went back on the hip and the book curled up in my arm. I then went to look for my wife and son. I walked up to the counter with my Borders card, Gift Card from Christmas and my phone with the coupon displayed. The cashier said, I see you have the coupon, I will apply it. 33% came right off the $34.99 sale price. A savings of $11.55. WOW. That is something to write home about.

Well this day-and-age "home" is a blog.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Playing time is over... Time to develop

So I have had the DROID of over a month and I am still amazed by it. Especially now that I have 2.1 with Live Wallpapers and Speech-to-Text (which could be better, or maybe I just need to speak more clearer, i dunno). Either way, It is now time to start creating apps for Android.

What do I want to create? I have no clue
Do I know how to develop apps? Not really, my development background is C# but since you can write Android apps in Java, I think the transition would be smooth, I just need to understand the API's and SDK. I started to look at the examples provided at http://developer.android.com. So far, I'M Hooked.

So I will keep you posted with my progress as I attempt to make some useful tools for the Android world.

Friday, April 2, 2010

2.1 is live on my phone... officially

The Easter Bunny came early last night and dropped off my Android 2.1 System Update for my DROID. This is the official release sent out by Verizon and anyone else that is involved. Now that I have it, its like a whole new world of apps opened update, since Android only shows apps available to your OS version.

There is one app out there called HelixLauncher. There are two versions of this app. (on for 2.01 and one for 2.1 only). I have tried both. What they do is changes your default home (application). I was not a fan of neither as they both "crashed" constantly. What is cool about HelixLauncher is that it allows you to have more then 3 home screens. The 2.1 version of HelixLauncher really only works for Nexus One and not the Droid, and this is a well documented fact, do I can not rant about it not working on Droid. I used at my own risk.

Anywho, since I just got the update this morning, I will take some time to poke around and be back with more.