Inflatable Apps is an umbrella title that I created to allow me to brand my android apps starting with TumTum, the app from the interview. Any and all apps for the android platform that I create will be released under the Inflatable Apps name.

There’s more to it than that though. Aside from myself, I know a number of people who are interested in android development. Behind the scenes, I want Inflatable Apps to offer a collaborative and friendly environment for developers that I know to work in and ultimately publish their completed apps under. I’m hoping that by doing this our apps will reach more people and gain a reputation for quality.

The Inflatable Apps website is now live at http://inflatableapps.com. The developer community is currently at an embryonic stage, but now that the site is up there is extra incentive for others to get involved. I also have my own ideas for new apps, so if nothing else those will be going up soon.

I’m excited about the potential Inflatable Apps has to produce excellent mobile applications for the android platform. Please check the site out, and let me know what you think!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFoX1A__-zw

Instead, I’m now using a free wordpress theme called LightWord. The design is far superior to my previous attempt, if somewhat generic. However, I can now tweak this theme to my own needs without worrying too much about all the little details that I would miss if starting from scratch. This approach appeals to me because it’s an example of one of the central pillars of good programming: Code reuse. There are literally thousands of existing themes out there, so starting from scratch would mean repeating the work of many, many people. Seeing as I don’t plan on making design work part of my professional portfolio any time soon, I’m perfectly happy to borrow existing works (within the terms of their license) and bend them to suit my needs.

• Python
• Google App Engine
• Google Protocol Buffers
• Google DataStore
• Amazon’s SimpleDB
• Django templates
• Git

Feeling that my skillset was stagnating was one of the reasons that I left my last job, so being exposed to so many new ideas and methods is perfect. That’s all I have to say on the matter right now, but I’m sure I’ll have updates over the next weeks and months on any cool stuff that I do while I’m there.

It seems though that there is still interest in the plugin, so over the next few weeks I’m going to give it an overhaul. It’s been a long time coming, and since I first wrote the original code I’ve learned a lot about the ‘correct’ way to program web apps.

The current code is not very flexible: In order to implement the new features that are in the roadmap, I’m going to have to start again from scratch. This time I’m going to give the plugin a proper DB back-end, so that reaction text can be updated without resetting the count, and so that posts in different categories can have different reaction options (and a lot of other things, too!). This should also make it a lot easier to maintain and add further features to.

So, if you use wp-reactions, or are holding off until some of the features you want are available, rejoice! I expect to have a new version available by the end of the year.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been in the Wave preview for about 2 weeks now. However, things only really got interesting over the weekend.

The invites I sent out finally arrived (yay!), but even then most of the interaction I did with others was limited to  “Yay! Google Wave!”. It seemed that beyond patting each other on the back for getting into the preview, we all had very little to say. Awkward. Surely we could come up with something to do with this fancy new piece of technology?

That something happened over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I needed some advice on how to get Struts and Spring to play nice together. I have a friend with more experience in that area than I, so I asked him. In Wave.

For about 5-10 minutes he tried to explain this in regular text, just like he would have done in IM. It didn’t go very well. Then he said ‘I wish there was a drawing plug-in for this’. ‘Hold on’, thought I. ‘This is exactly what Wave is for. There must be a gadget for that!’.

Here it is: http://wave-samples-gallery.appspot.com/about_app?app_id=18016

Adding gadgets to a wave is a breeze. You just need the gadget’s xml link (provided on the page linked above) and then you insert it into a blip by using the ‘insert gadget by URL’ button when editing. It’s not entirely intuitive, but once you’ve done it once it’s very easy to do again.

The number and scope of available gadgets is growing all the time. Want some extra functionality? Chances are someone will have written a gadget for that. There are many reasons to like Google Wave, but I think this fact alone makes it well worth while.

I have watched 2 videos concerning Google Wave: The unveiling at Google’s IO conference earlier this year which is 1.5 hours long, and the following one.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

Much shorter!

I wish I actually had something to say about Google Wave other than how awesome it looks in principle. I even got an invite to the preview last week. Trouble is, none of the invites I sent out have arrived yet. This means that I have but one person on my contact list (the person who invited me). Seeing as Wave is billed as a collaberation and group chat tool, having just one person isn’t really worth it. Apparently Google is staggering the release of invites so that they can maintain stability and speed. This is completely understandable, but it’s frustrating to have access to such a wonderful new service and have no-0ne to play with… *sigh*

Hopefully some of my other friends will get in soon, and then I’m sure I’ll have plenty to sat on the subject.

P.S. No, you can’t have an invite. Sorry.

Thanks for the feedback. I’m actually the developer of the app, and I hear you on the complaints.

True, the application needs to be in the foreground to work. This is my first Android app, and I wrote it mostly for myself and to learn how to program for the Android. I haven’t really worked out the “background” thing yet. It’s the first thing on my todo-list. Also, the sound pack support is still a little experimental, so there’s only one. I’d be happy to add more, though, as time allows. The idea of allowing to choose any audio file is good. I hadn’t thought of it.

To put it in context, though, this is a weekend project and I decided to share it with the world for free. As I find more time to hack on it, upcoming versions will be better…

Best,

Guy.

Thanks for getting in touch Guy!  I really like the app, I have found it invaluable on my runs. Not being able to change the chimes hasn’t bothered me as much as I thought it would, I think seeing the option to change them leading to no real choice was what annoyed me. The no-background thing is a problem however. Right now I would give the app 3.5/5, as soon as I can run it in the background that rating would go up to 4.5 or even 5/5. Here’s hoping we get a new version soon!

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I have decided I need to get fit.

This is a variation on my semi-regular desire to ‘lose weight’. Unfortunately, these urges never last long enough as laziness inevitably gets the better of me and I go back to the frozen meals. This time though, I think I will have more success. This time, I’m using technology!

The Couch-To-5K program is a running schedule designed to get a couch-potato (or more accurately, keyboard/mouse potato) like me off his arse and running 5k within 9 weeks. Lots of people seem to recommend it, including a couple of friends of mine.

The real point of this post though is to highlight a semi-great 3rd-party app designed to help you out with the program. The C25K Android app is available on the Android marketplace. You can get it by scanning this handy-dandy QR code with your phone:

The app basically does all the timing involved in your workout for you. For example, the first week of running is made up of alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking. Having the app do the timing for me was really useful, as I could listen to music and not have to worry about missing my cues. There are only two real problems with the app.

Firstly, things keep interrupting it. It’s unfortunate, but as soon as you navigate away from the app itself, the timer pauses. This is really annoying. The last thing I want to have to do while trying to keep my lungs from collapsing is have to make sure that my timer is still going. If the phone rings, the timer stops. If I get a text message, the timer stops. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future release.

The other thing is the ‘sound pack’. The app alerts you of your progress by playing a short bell chime. Great! What if I want to change it? The only option is to choose a new ‘sound pack’. Eh? What’s a sound pack? There’s only one in the app (bells) and it’s not bad, but I’d like more variety. The creator says that more are coming, but what I’d really like is the ability to pick mp3s from my SD card to use as chimes.

Other than those 2 niggles, I’m very pleased with the app. I’ll definitely be using it on my future runs, at least until the laziness reclaims me.