Mobile Programming Pit Stop

MyDistress – Mobile App for sending Personal Distress Signal to Malaysian Police

The Royal Malaysian Police (Selangor state) has released MyDistress – a mobile application for sending personal distress call to Malaysian Police. MyDistress can automatically detect the location of the distress call sender and notify nearby police station of the distress.

To use MyDistress, the user are required to register the application by providing full name, MyKad number and home address. MyDistress is available for iPhone (via iTunes store – Malaysia), Android (marketplace), Blackberry and JavaME (*.jar)

Joke: How Smartphone users see each other (Android,Blackberry, iPhone)

Source: Android and Me

Video: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″ from inside out (dissected)

This video from jkkmobile.com shows the insides Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″ when it was dissected

German courts Lift ban against Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in European Union

It seems that the German court has lifted Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ bans from European Union after it was discovered that the evidence presented by Apple Lawyers are flawed, specifically the aspect ratio of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ image was mistakenly represented as closer to Apple’s Ipad 2, which violates Apple Intellectual Property rights.

The flawed evidence has given Samsung the rights to market Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ in European Union, except in Germany, where the court over there would hear a full hearing to that matter beginning on 25 August 2011.

My thoughts: Apple has all the rights to protect its intellectual property, including protecting its interests from imitation. However, the use of patents to curb competition can be seen as unhealthy as it could adversely affect innovation and consumer choice.

Install phoneME in Android to run JavaME middlets

As we all know, the Android is similar to JavaME because both runs on Java platform . However instead of executing the classfiles, Android add the extra step of converting the Java bytecode into alternative instruction set used by (into *.dex) Dalvik Virtual Machine, which makes it unable to run Java classfile (*.jar) normally used by JavaME.

Luckily, some brave soul has provided phoneME implementation for Android, which in turn enable users to execute Java MIDlet in Android. phoneME for Android can be downloaded from its website: http://davy.preuveneers.be/phoneme/?q=node/10#android

What you need to do is to download phoneME Advanced – Foundation Profile + MIDP or phoneME Advanced – Foundation Profile + MIDP High Resolution (240×320). The midlet manager provided with the distribution requires OpenIntents File Manager, which is used to browse for midlet *.jad or *.jar file.

So far, almost all core MIDP 2.0 functionality is available from the phoneME *.apk. The only incompatibilities arises from midlets that use optional JSR, which usually causes midlet manager to crash.

Android Videos: Designing portable UI for Phone and Tables

Google has released Honeycomb (3.1), which is designed for tablet computer in mind. Honeycomb comes with redesigned UI framework that helps developers create application with portable user-interface across devices that have different screen sizes and orientation.

The video detailed about UI design best practices for developers:

Easily Identify objects with Google Goggles magic (while mobile)

Google Goggles is a mobile app which can identify objects, barcodes, text, and does translation for you in a breeze. It works by analyzing the photos that you take with the app. Among the objects the Google Goggles recognize are:

• Texts
• Landmarks
• Contact Info / Business Cards
• Artwork
• Wine
• Logos

If you still don’t get what Google Goggle are for, then watch these videos:

Google Goggles is available from iTunes Store (for iPhone) and Android Marketplace (for Android) and it supports Android 2.1+

GooApple – China-made iPhone 4 Clone (which runs Android!)

Just after the discovery of several fake Apple Store a few weeks ago, now come an Apple iPhone 4 lookalike product which uses Android. The outer feature bear strong similarity to the real iPhone 4 phone. Plus, its user-interface has been customized (keypad, contact list, application icon) to look exactly like iPhone 4.

Additionally, the device is available for pre-order from its website (priced around 1700 Yuan or USD 270), there’s no information available about its official launch date though.

p/s: The device copies the iPhone user-interface and icons which is clearly Apple’s intellectual property. Apple has previously taken steps in protecting its intellectual property before (as evidenced by Samsung Galaxy Tab sales block in Europe and the fake Apple Store), I doubt Apple would sit ideally should the device is marketed.

Get the latest iftar (breaking fast) time with TimeToBuka.com

TimeToBuka.com is a mobile web application that lets you check the latest iftar time (breaking fast time – for Muslim during Ramadan month). The application detects the current user location (using Google Geocoding API) and displays the time for Iftar and Imsak for the current location.

However, the application currently only supports Malaysian and Singapore users only. But you can help the author ( Nazrul Kamaruddin ) to add support for more countries by providing him with the appropriate data.

The application is tested and confirmed to work in Android 1.6+, 2.x and iPhone

Old Joke: iPhone 4 vs HTC Evo

I know this is stale, but I update it nevertheless, After almost 2 years, I’m going to write again!