Android – Getting apps to appear on the market

When I first started working on Asssist for Gingerbread Design we all knew that we wanted the app to be available across as many devices as possible. We wanted to cover devices with smaller screens and lower densities such as the HTC Wildfire as well as more advanced devices. Little did I know that being able to do this would take so much searching and trial and error.

And even after trying the app out the on the Android emulator with it’s settings to match the Wildfire (which seemed to work OK) when we came to launch the device in the Google Market it seemed that the device wasn’t being displayed to all users.

We were told our app didn't appear on the market
We were told our app didn't appear on the market

Then, after weeks of searching I came across a little gem of info (sorry can’t remember where)… all you have to do is include the following in your project’s AndroidManifest.xml file.


This seemed to work for me and I hope it does for you too.

Android emulator not installing apps – a solution

During my revisit to app building for the Android platform I started to notice that the emulator (when using Eclipse) was a bit hit and miss when it came to loading the freshly compiled applications onto it. After much surfing on the web I had found that some folk had seen partial succes when killing the adb server. I played with this and I too had some partial success. Then after much trial and error I struck upon a solution that works everytime… it’s not pretty but it does do the job.

The Solution – Installing apps on the emulator

So what I do is this;

  1. Start eclipse
  2. Start the emulator… let it get to the point where it is fully loaded (i.e. at the home screen)
  3. From the command prompt kill the adb server with the command adb kill-server. This adb command is in my C:Program File/Android/app-inventor-extras folder on my windows setup (your may be different)
  4. The above command will cause eclipse to try 11 times to re-initialise the emuulator link. While this is happening (and after) I click the run button… I do this every second until the output in the console tells me that my app is being installed.
  5. Voila!

And that’s it… like I said it’s not pretty but it does mean that my apps install onto my emulator. Note this only needs to be done once, perhaps to set up the link between eclipse and the adb.

PingDroid – Android App Review

PingDroid, the ping.fm client built for the Android OS is an absolute must for anyone who mixes in a plethora of social network circles by enabling the automatic cross posting of ‘Status updates’ to various communities such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, etc etc. The client itself is reassuringly lightweight and does what all good tools need to do… do something, and do it well. If you, like me, see the value in Ping then be sure to check out their igoogle gadget too.

Pingdroid Logo
Pingdroid

Ping.fm as a service is growing constantly and the number of web services that it talks to is just ever-expanding and is certainly worth keeping an eye on if they don’t at present support the platforms that you use.

PingDroid was devloped by Bryan Waters and is available via the Android Market.

Klaxon – Android App Review

Klaxon is a beautiful simple alarm clock application for the Android powered devices. To be honest there is nothing uber special about it at all; it simply has functions which should have been in the default Alarm Clock app that comes pre-installed. Features like the ability to modify the snooze time and set an increasing tone volume are just what the doctor ordered.

Klaxon
Klaxon for Android

I’ve never experienced a ‘force close’ from the application and anyone who wants more from an alarm than offered by default on the G1 could certainly do worse than give Klaxon a whirl.

Klaxon was developed by Koushik Dutta and is available via the Android Market.