Trapster, the popular speed trap alert service, has recently been acquired by NAVTEQ. If you haven’t used Trapster before, it’s an application that lets users share tips on conditions and speed traps with others across multiple platforms. Trapster’s user base is already close to 10 million and NAVTEQ is looking to increase this already huge number. NAVTEQ is also on a mission to bring more features (like parking availability) to the application and also to improve and fine tune the core features that made Trapster such a popular app. Combining the Trapster application with NAVTEQ’s map expertise is sure to bring a great app to you, and the other 10 million users out there. Trapster is free of charge and they want it to be known that they have no intention to change this. It is availbable for a variety of BlackBerry devices.
Are you a developer struggling to move those 1-3 stars to 4 and 5 in the Android market? Just not satisfied with the way your app looks, feels, and functions? Google’s taken a moment to round up all of the different ways you can make sure your app meets the quality standards that your users should rightfully expect.
They go over everything from user interface design to performance, stability to system integration, and a lot more. If you’re a developer, you’ve likely already glanced over the many topics they link to, but it’s a good resource if you’re new to the game and need somewhere to start. Go ahead and check it out now at the Android Developers blog.
Any good programmer can tell you writing code is an art form, and as with most art forms, the key to success is good habits and lots of practice.
The Ruby Learning blog recently posted an interesting list of ways to improve your code quality and, perhaps more importantly, develop habits that will lead to better code creation. Developer James Schorr’s tips range from the obvious, like using a good version control system, to the more subtle: “realize that just because we “can” doesn’t mean that we “should”… anything’s possible, but not everything’s advisable.”
The article is broken into the three major parts of any programming workflow: pre-development, development and post-development. There are a number of great suggestions in each, but our favorite parts are the fourth category: Enjoying Your Development. Almost any project is fun and enjoyable in the beginning, but then there seems to come that point at which the fun evaporates and we get bogged down in the grunt work of writing code. Schorr has few tips to help break you out of those boring stretches:
Give yourself time to think and rest. There are some days where I just can’t write code well; other days where it’s just flowing. This is due to how your brain functions. You need sleep and a change of pace and scenery now and then.
Walk away for a while. It’s easy to get “tunnel vision” and think that you’re close to solving a problem and to think that more effort will solve it… You would be surprised at the ideas or solutions that will spring into your mind as you are thinking about or doing other things.
Head over to the Ruby Learning blog to read some of the other helpful tips and tricks for producing quality code.
The Android Developers Blog has a nice breakdown on a tool called Traceview that Android developers can use to improve performance on their applications. I could go into detail but Tim Bray does a good job on the blog of breaking it down. He explains how to use the logged data to find out what what part of your app is taking up the most time, then drilling down to find the likely culprits of code causing any mischief.
I’m sure many of you developers may already know about this tool, but just in case, it’s good to spread the word. Nobody wants buggy, laggy apps bogging down their Android device. Hardware can only go so far and even then, all it takes is one bad app to eat up your battery or crash your phone.
Yesterday I wrote a post listing the 20 things I love and 5 things I don’t in regards to the Nokia N8. I personally love the fact that Nokia personnel reached out to me regarding the things that I personally don’t like at the moment as it shows me they really do care and are listening. I don’t consider myself that important for Nokia to pay so much attention to, but appreciate their assistance.
After Chanse Arrington reached out to me via Twitter to offer the following comment, I tried what he said and would like to give him a hug
For the best experience on N8 in landscape keyboard options turn on word completion, prediction, and text correction to “show suggestion”
I figured out how to enable what he suggested and saw that I had just tried the prediction on method at first and found that to be a failure. I will list the exact steps below because it isn’t as simple as you might think and IMHO the N8 units should come setup like this out of the box.
You might think you just go into settings and find something for keyboard to make these selections, but you would be wrong. The hidden settings sprinkled throughout the operating system is one area that Nokia needs to address in the future, but since I am a geek I know to keep hunting until I find what I need so here is what I recommend you do with your N8:
Launch Notes and tap to create a new one.
Rotate your N8 into landscape orientation. This MUST be done to access the proper settings.
Tap the 3 line key between the forward arrow and return key.
Tap Input options>Activate prediction.
Again tap the 3 line key.
Tap Input options>Settings.
In here tap to turn on word auto-completion, text correction level to high, and text correction mode to show suggestion.
I am not positive about the correction level at high, but it sounds good. I have to admit that after making these selections the landscape QWERTY keyboard is indeed much better.
However, I tried to make it clear in my post that the keyboard itself isn’t that bad, but it is the way it is implemented where you have to jump into a completely different keyboard entry area out of apps to enter text and there is no smaller QWERTY in portrait mode.
Budding photographers who are looking for some readily accessible tips would do well to download Photo Caddy HD for iPad.
It functions like a social strategy guide, with a collection of advice and strategies for improving photography in multiple locations. While generally you are better off getting longer-form reading materials through iBooks or the Kindle app, Photo Caddy HD does a nice job of offering photo-centric tips that are easy to follow. (…) Read the rest of Improve Photography Skills with Photo Caddy HD
Mozilla has announced a new Labs project, dubbed Prospector, which will help improve Firefox’s search tools. Although details are thin so far, and there’s no code to play with yet, it appears Prospector will extend the Awesome Bar, which first arrived in Firefox 3.
Rather than a single add-on or tool, the Labs blog calls Prospector “a series of experiments,” some of which will be add-ons, while others will be “deeper explorations.” The plan is to take a look at the Awesome Bar and extend its search powers to focus on “analyzing, experimenting and prototyping improvements on how you search and discover content with Firefox.”
Firefox 3.0 introduced the world to the “Awesome Bar,” which turned the previously neglected URL bar into a powerful history and bookmark search tool. In fact, the idea was so compelling that Google’s Chrome web browser launched with the very same feature. You can also launch web searches from the bar in both browsers. Internet Explorer 9, due next year, will also have a unified URL search bar.
Type a keyword in the Awesome Bar and Firefox will pull up URLs to sites you’ve visited and sites you’ve bookmarked based on their page title or URL. The Labs blog calls the current Awesome Bar “just the first step” and wants to combine history and bookmark searching with “websites you have visited, tabs you are currently viewing, and pages you haven’t visited yet.”
The first two goals sound a bit like the current version of Awesome Bar, but the later is intriguing and would seem to imply some combination of internal Firefox data and external web searching — perhaps a bit like what Google has done with the URL search bar in Chrome.
Judging by the announcement Prospector will also take advantage of Firefox’s new, lightweight Jetpack add-on framework, promising the Prospector experiments will won’t require a restart and will work with Firefox 4.
Although Prospector’s goal is to eventually enhance Firefox’s search tools, don’t look for it to make its way into Firefox for some time. While experimental Prospector add-ons are no doubt in the works, the Labs blog cautions that “Prospector is a Mozilla Labs exploration and thus not part of the Firefox roadmap.”
OK, since news is a bit slow as we approach Nokia World (you do know I will be there, right?) it is a good time to see what is cooking over at Nokia Beta Labs. We are at the tail end of the summer here in Washington State and I am finding that mobile phone photos are not turning out very well with all of the background light. I just read on the Nokia Beta Labs blog that there two new applications for the Nokia N900 that look to take the camera to the next level. The HDR Capture application is designed for those situations when you are taking a photo with an open window with light behind the subject. The Lowlight Assistant is designed to help in situations when there is light, but not enough to give you a good photo.
Check out the samples and more details on the Nokia Beta Labs site. You can then sign into your Nokia account and download the apps.
Well renowned handset manufacturers have turned to an unusual method for perfecting their handsets. They have hired design professors to help in improving their devices user interfaces. Samsung has turned to the expertise of Jung Ji-hong as vice president of its Mobile Design Group. Mr Ji-hong is a visual design professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea. LG has hired Lee Kun-pyo as their executive vice president of Design Management Center. Mr Kun-Pyo was formerly the dean at the Department of Industrial Design at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
From AndRS Studios, the developer of AutoKiller, comes a new app appropriately named AutoRun Killer (v.7 ) which is designed to help reduce the amount of unnecessary apps the start on boot-up, improving your boot times and improving the overall performance of your device.
Review
How does Autorun Killer work?
Autorun Killer lists all installed apps which are intended to start at boot, if you click on any of the apps you can disable it, that will kill it when it starts at boot time.
I have disabled an app but it is still started after boot, why?
Some services are written to automatically restart themselves if they are killed, this is marked on bottom right/app as !!self restarter!! (after reboot)
Running on a 1st generation device myself ( T-Mobile G1), I see the need to reduce the amount of apps that are eating away at what little RAM I have, so I’ve personally been running AutoStarts for this purpose for the past few months. However, I found AutoRun Killer to be much faster and more user-friendly than AutoStarts, making it an easy switch in my book. Its shows you the services, background apps, and foreground apps that are running on your device, and you can choose to uninstall that app, disable the start-up of that app, or find out more information about the process in one long touch-press, all with very little loading. The free version has ads, although I barely notice them, and a “donate” version, with no ads and some additional features is available within the app (Settings).
Its currently free, its extremely useful and effective, and its certainly a must-have app for any 1st generation device like the G1 or myTouch, and a good app for all Android devices in general. I Highly recommend it. You can grab it on the market, using the link or QR code below. Android Market Link (from your phone)
Are you one of the early adopters who snagged an EVO 4G on release day? Well you probably haven’t had enough time with it to notice, but depending on what you’re doing on it, the battery life can be less-than-expected.
Google has announced a new Font API and a collection of free, open source fonts anyone can use in their site designs for free. The Google Font API allows you to embed any of the new Google fonts on your website using CSS.
The fonts themselves are quite nice, with a range of script, serif, sans-serif and monospace typefaces. They can all be used to style text via @font-face. There are only eighteen fonts available — so there’s probably no need for Typekit to worry that Google is muscling in on its territory.
In fact, Typekit has partnered with Google to announce WebFont Loader, a JavaScript library for improving the web font experience. Typekit will also be adding Google’s new free fonts to its collection, so there’s clearly still a lot of love there.
The WebFont Loader is an open source library of scripts that Typekit developed to help eliminate the “flash of unstyled text” page load hiccup that we’ve mentioned before. The WebFont Loader offers a number of JavaScript events which allow developers more control over when their fonts load.
Even though things have been progressing quickly in the world of type on the web, with advancements in CSS, HTML5 and the rise of services like Typekit, inconsistencies in browser support and implementation have stopped some from making the move to web fonts. The new WebFont Loader gives hope to those still on the fence by providing a consistent way to handle what the browser does while the fonts are being loaded.
“The WebFont Loader does for @font-face what jQuery has done for JavaScript,” says Typekit co-founder Jeffrey Veen in an e-mail to Webmonkey. “For people who really care about about the speed and user experience of their web pages, the WebFont Library gives them much more control. It essentially moves us a big step forward in the evolution of fonts on the web.”
Veen also praises Google’s decision to keep its work open source and free.
“Getting fonts technically ready for web use is a lot of work, and using the open source model allows anyone to contribute their expertise to a core set of fonts.” he says.
You can use WebFont Loader with fonts on your own server, with links to the just-announced Google Webfont API, or with your Typekit account.
As for Google’s new Font API, well, it’s so simple its hardly an API. You just need to add a link to Google’s stylesheet in the head tags of your page and then apply that font to some element in your page.
The syntax looks like this:
Then, in your stylesheet, you can apply that font to any body element. For example:
h1 {
font-family: 'Font Name', serif;
}
Google’s new Font API will work in any browser that supports @font-face (which is pretty much all of them). If the Google fonts happen to strike your fancy, the API is certainly easy to use. If you’re looking for a broader selection, check out Typekit.
Typekit offers Google’s new open source fonts, Veen says, but Typekit also offers access to a library of over 4,000 commercial fonts of professional quality. Typekit is currently the only source offering these high-quality typefaces for legal use on the web.
Disclosure: Jeff Veen is a former Webmonkey editor and a former Wired.com employee.
Ok, so we’re sure you’ve heard by now… Twitter has released an official Android app. With every 1.0 version of an app comes room for improvement. The biggest issue we see standing in the way of massive Android dominance is the fact that it relies on Android 2.1 or higher. Everyone has their favorite client, be it Seesmic, Tweetcaster, Twidroid, or Touiteur. If you’ve had a chance to play with the new official application, we’d like to hear how you’d improve it. Bigger buttons, multiple accounts, changed layout…
How would you improve Twitter for Android? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
Budding photographers who are looking for some readily accessible tips would do well to download Photo Caddy HD for iPad.
Google has announced 
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