A friend of mine has recently released a new app which I think is promising (in fact I wish I had the same idea!). Check it out: Scale and Share Photos.

It allows you to resize the photos you take on your cellphone before sending it to your buddies, which saves both time and bandwidth.

The Loud Texter app has reached a 1,000 downloads today (hooray!) - big thanks to everyone using it and sending feedback.

As a reminder, here is the short description of what it does:

Ever had a sudden urge to express your emotions? Like when stuck in traffic next to a really nice car, or when trying to tell your friend across the room that the show is excellent (or not so much), or when just trying to say hi to a total stranger on a bus?
Now you can! Just enter what you want to convey, and this little app will slowly (or quickly, your choice) scroll your text across your phone's screen in VERY LARGE LETTERS, so your intended message target could read it even from far away.
Functions:
1. enter the text of your desired message
2. choose the color
3. choose how fast to scroll it (slow/med/fast)
4. choose if you want to display it in all caps or not (defaults to all caps)
5. hit go and tell the world all that you think about it!

Tech post alert!

While working on my next application, I have stumbled upon the problem of how to read user pictures and display them in ImageView. There are a bazillion posts and tutorials on the web, but they all are either needlessly overcomplicated, or aren't doing what is needed - for example, most of them are using ACTION_GET_CONTENT to pick and display a single image from the gallery, instead of reading them all in sequence and displaying as they come.

So, for my fellow Android developers, here is the absolute easiest and quickest way to read and display user gallery on Android phones using nothing but cursors.

1. Get the data into cursor:

Cursor cc = this.getContentResolver().query(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, null, null, null,null);

2. Get the contents of _DATA (!) field from it (not ID as some posts suggest), which contains the actual physical path to the file.

int i_data = cc.getColumnIndex("_data"); String s_data = cc.getString(i_data);

3. Decode the bitmap and assign to ImageView

Bitmap b = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(s_data); im.setImageBitmap(b);

That's it! I can't believe it has taken me so much time to figure this out, and I hope this helps someone to avoid wasting as much time as I just have.

A large update to Latest Earthquake Info app today:

• "List" button added, will display all events in the selected region in text form to make it easy to browse.
• Clicking on event in List View will isolate it on the map. To display the rest of events, click on "show all".
• The ad and buttons are now in the opposite ends of the screen so that people don't click on the ad when not intending to do so.
• The size of the icon on the map is now accurately represents the scale of the event, as opposed to 2-sized stars in the previous version (big/small).

Some new screenshots:

The app is available free on Google Play. Feedback, as always, is welcome!

G-Meter has now been confirmed working on two new phone models: Motorola Droid 4 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray, bringing the full list of confirmed tested phone models to:

HTC One V, One S, One X, Desire
Galaxy SII-III, Nexus
LG Optimus
Motorola Droid 4
Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray

If you downloaded this app and it works fine on your phone, I would greatly appreciate a quick email with your phone model, so I could update the list above. Thanks!

G-Meter is a free application available on Android Market that will use the phone's internal accelerometer to plot acceleration data on the graph and record max values.

StockMan 1.7 is out today and will hit the Market in a few hours. Changes in this version:

• Daily change dollar value will now be shown for each stock position, in addition to the total daily change for the entire portfolio.
• Low and High threshold alert reworked to be a little more easier to understand and more visible.

A screenshot of the new main screen: 

As always, feedback is welcome.

A small bug-fix change for G-Meter today. The Reset button will now clear the entire graph as well as the recorded max values at the bottom (thanks for the feedback!). A couple of small bug fixes in addition.

G-Meter is a free application available on Android Market that will use the phone's internal accelerometer to plot acceleration data on the graph and record the max values. Check it out!