08
Oct
adt

Android Users Can Now Control Their ADT Home Security Systems From Anywhere Thanks To ADT Pulse (Beta)

Posted by in Applications, News
Last Updated: October 10th, 2011

ADT's mobile home security offering, ADT Pulse, has been available for iPhone for some time now, but has recently made its debut on Android. ADT has released its Pulse Beta app into the Android Market, bringing highly sophisticated security controls to the palm of your hand.

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ADT's Pulse Beta not only allows you to arm and disarm your ADT security system, but includes very impressive controls for lights, security cameras, and even thermostats. For those concerned with the security of having control of their home security system on their mobile, it is worth noting that the app requires users to log in before accessing any security features.

27
Sep
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Android Developers, Listen Up: ADT 14 And SDK Tools r14 Previews With Much Needed Improvements Are Now Available For Download

Posted by in Android OS, Development, News

As an Android developer, I don't think I've been this excited for an ADT and Tools releases in a long time. The Android tools team (Tor and Xav) just dropped off the latest ADT and SDK Tools at the Android Tools download site, bringing both up to version 14.

Among a sizeable list of improvements I'm mostly excited about these (and by excited, I mean ecstatic):

  • Improved incremental builds. Resource compilation is run much less frequently. It is no longer run when strings are edited, or when layouts are edited(unless a new id is introduced), and it is no longer run once per library project.

11
May
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Watch The Keynote And Android Sessions From Day 2 Of Google I/O 2011 Now On YouTube

Posted by in CR-48, Development, Google, Google TV, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Revue, Videos

Ahh, Google I/O, how we'll miss you for the next 365 days or so. The last 2 days have been filled with anticipation, knowledge, surprises, excitement, and fun - the perfect recipe for happy developers. As a developer myself, I've picked up heaps of new information, especially from the SDK Tools and ADT session by Tor Norbye and Xavier Ducrohet, and viewing the keynotes was simply a blast.

As you may have seen yesterday, day 1 keynote and sessions were already posted last night, and now the same fate reached the sessions and keynote from day 2. As before, you can view the whole list by visiting the YouTube page of GoogleDevelopers or simply watch the embeds on this page.

22
Feb
honeycomb

Google Releases Final Honeycomb SDK, SDK Tools r10, And ADT Plugin 10.0.0

Posted by in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

It's definitely an exciting day for Android developers - first, Motorola confirmed that their XOOM tablet will be open for development, and now the the final Android 3.0 SDK is available. Additionally, the SDK tools and ADT plugin have been updated to versions r10 and 10.0.0, respectively, with the following improvements and additions:

  • UI Builder improvements in the ADT Plugin:
    • New Palette with categories and rendering previews. (details)
    • More accurate rendering of layouts to more faithfully reflect how the layout will look on devices, including rendering status and title bars to more accurately reflect screen space actually available to applications.

26
Jan
SNAGHTML23f9ea99

For Developers: SDK Tools r9 Now Lets You Edit Properties Of Existing Virtual Devices (AVDs). Finally!

Posted by in Development, News

Ah, what a breath of fresh air. After today's SDK Tools r9 and ADT 9.0.0 update that I talked about earlier this morning, I noticed another new feature in the SDK Manager that has been requested for years. As if the near-instant AVD restart support due to the new snapshotting was not enough of a present, developers can now edit properties of existing AVDs!

Before this update, once you've created an AVD, the AVD Manager did not let you touch any of its properties, forcing you to create a brand new virtual device for any tweaks. This was a giant pain for developers who needed to change or add a property, such as density, resolution, allocated memory, or API level.

26
Jan
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For Developers: Google Releases ADT For Eclipse v9.0.0 And SDK Tools r9, Now Offers Near-Instant AVD Restarts [Hands-On]

Posted by in Android OS, Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

If you are a developer, you will want to fire up SDK Manager right now and perform an update. Besides the Honeycomb SDK preview that we'll talk about separately, Google also unleashed the next version of Android Development Tools, or simply ADT, for Eclipse as well as SDK Tools r9. I've been using ADT versions 9.0.0 preview 1, 2, and 3 for a number of weeks now, and I can tell you that 9.0.0 is a huge step up to where a serious set of development tools needs to be.

What's New?

Numerous improvements to the Visual Layout Editor, "go to declaration" hyperlink support for quicker navigation around declarations, near-instant AVD restarts (holy crap!!!

15
Dec
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For Developers: Live On The Edge - Upgrade To The Latest Eclipse ADT (Currently v9.0.0) Before It Is Released [How-To]

Posted by in Android OS, Development, Gingerbread 2.3, News, Tips & Tutorials

We, Android developers, spend our days staring at a computer screen, most likely at one of Eclipse's windows. Eclipse is an amazing IDE in theory, but it never quite feels complete and polished, mostly due to the fact that it's powered by open source enthusiasts and is based almost entirely on plugins (if you want to get it to do anything useful, that is).

Being Android developers, the plugin we are using every day is ADT - Android Development Tools, written by Google engineers, mostly @tornorbye and @droidxav who I've been conversing over twitter lately and annoying with filing numerous ADT bugs (hi, if you're reading!).

06
Dec
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[Updated] Google Announces 2.3 Gingerbread! Here Is Everything You Need To Know

Posted by in Gingerbread 2.3, News
Last Updated: December 10th, 2010

The moment we've been waiting for so many months - it's finally here! I can hardly contain my excitement as I'm writing this, but both Gingerbread and the Samsung Nexus S were officially announced 30 minutes ago. As expected, the new OS bears the version number 2.3 and brings updates to the SDK and the NDK as well SDK tools and the Eclipse ADT plugin.

As expected, a lot of the OS improvements are under-the-hood, which will result in better gaming, responsiveness, and overall Android experience.

New Features/Enhancements

OS/SDK/NDK

The new OS features and enhancements include:

  • enhancements for game development, including a new concurrent garbage collector, more native APIs, faster event distribution, updated video drivers, and new sensors (gyroscope) - this is amazing for developers; expect gaming to get a lot more responsive and versatile
  • lots and lots of attention in the above bullet point has been given to the NDK - the Native Development Kit.

16
Nov
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ADT (Android Dev Tools) Source Code Commits Suggesting Imminent Gingerbread SDK Release?

Posted by in Gingerbread 2.3, News

Today, I was looking at the Android Development Tools (ADT) commit history, as I normally do on a Tuesday morning at 3am, and I noticed something that made my heart skip a few beats. But let me back up for a second.

Every Android SDK release is normally accompanied by an ADT release that adds support for the new functionality and fixes existing bugs. ADT, in turn, is an Eclipse plugin, which is essentially a set of developer tools for one of the best free open source editors out there (that's Eclipse), which also happens to be the IDE of choice of Android core developers.

09
Nov
image

For Android Developers: Next Version Of Eclipse ADT To Include Auto Formatting Of XML

Posted by in Development, Gingerbread 2.3, News

I was browsing the Android commit tree, as I like to do at 3:20am sometimes, and I just saw a new commit by Tor Norbye with the following description that made my heart skip a beat: "Add autoformatting of XML." This little update may not mean much to the regular folks, but to Android developers, like myself, this has been a long requested feature.

About a year ago, I wrote this article: Auto Formatting Android XML Files With Eclipse, which described how easy it is to achieve uniform, formatted XML files in Eclipse while doing Android development. Since XML files comprise a very large portion of an average Android project (the whole app layout is XML based), keeping XML files tidy becomes a very important, but mundane task.

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