Google I/O 2012 Registration News

Finally, Google has officially announced Google I/O 2012 registration start date. It starts this March 27th at 7 am PDT so that means 10 am Eastern time.

This year Google I/O is going to be 3 days instead of 2 and also the fees have increased a lot and the worst part, there is no early bird fee :(. Students and Academia ticket are 300$ and general tickets are 900$, a huge increase from last year.

Meanwhile you can also play building a Rube Goldberg machine and if it is good, it might be featured in Google I/O 2012.

Last year Google I/O tickets sold out in less than one hour so be ready for that day ;)

Who is going this year? for sure I will try to make :)

Porting Android Applications to BlackBerry PlayBook

Every mobile developer's dream is to port their apps to every platform, Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, etc at least that is my dream. Last year I did the first step by launching my Android app in the Android Market. Since then I have been busy with work and my travels but I got the time to make the next step. I finally ported my Android app to the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet :) :)

The process to publish your app in the BlackBerry App World is a little bit complicated for sure more complicated than the Android Market.

The first thing you want to do is to make sure you can port your app, sadly not everything is supported; for now you can only port Android apps targeted to Android 2.3.3 API revision 10 a.k.a GingerBread and even if your app is using that specific version, the list of unsupported APIs is long, you can check the complete list here and here.

The easiest way to test if your app is portable, is using the command line tool, just download it execute this:

apk2barVerifier <apk-dir>|<apk-file> [<Android SDK path>]

The tool will tell generate a .sum file and it tell you if you have any errors and one thing for sure is that the tool does not give a lot of information about what is wrong with your application. If it is failing, it will only tell you that it found errors and that is all, sucks, isn't it? The very first time I run it the message i got was this one:


minLaunchable-activity-count:impact=5:1:found=0
impact-summary: [5]=1; [4]=0; [3]=0; [2]=0; [1]=0;
ChmbrsNotes.apk: [5]=1; [4]=0; [3]=0; [2]=0; [1]=0;
Impact Legend: [5]=Severe; [4]=High /context; [3]=Medium /context; [2]=Medium-low /context; [1]=Minor;


It says I have one severe error but that is all. I did not know where to look, change or remove. I had to go piece by piece in my Manifest file and remove every part and test. It sucks!

Once you solve all your compatibility issues it is time to deploy and debug in the simulator. In order to debug it you can download the plugin for eclipse which also comes with the command line tool integrated it which is handy since you can check your progress every time. The plugin allows you to do a couple of things like packaging, repackaging, debug, even sign your app for the BlackBerry App World.

Before you set up your plugin I recommend getting your keys and also download VMPlayer and the image to load the simulator. Once you request your keys probably will take a couple of hours to get approved so request them with time also you will need the keys to set up the eclipse plugin and the simulator. It is weird they request keys to deploy apps in the simulator but once you are done testing you can sign your app right away. In Android it signs the applications with a debug key and once you are ready to upload it to the Android Market you create your key. So either way you need keys so i guess it is fine.

This video explains pretty much everything until this step.



What this video does not say is that it takes a lot of time to register and get approved as BlackBerry Vendor. It took like 2 days for me to get the approval and they even asked me for a Photo ID scan so I can prove my identity. You can register yourself here and probably you want to do it with time.

Once you are registered you need to sign and submit your application for approval. In order to do that you need fill out more forms, pick an application name ( if it is available) upload bunch of promotional images, icons, a nice description and decide country and carriers availability and of course if you are going to charge for it or not. Mine is free so I do not know what the process is for paid applications probably you will need to set up Paypal or any other way of payment. It took another 2 days to get the approval and once you get it you are allowed to publish your application for sale, the good thing though is that everything is free there is no registration fee or anything like that.

You can get all the information and tools in the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps web page. It is still in beta and their documentation could have been better and also the forums did not help at all with my compatibility issue but at least they have all the tools out there. I wish the could support more than Android 2.3.3, at least it is a nice start.

I guess once you see it online and ready to be downloaded you feel like you have accomplished something :)

Chmbrs NotePad in the BlackBerry App World :)

Hope it helps some one, happy coding :)

Configure X11VNC in Ubuntu 11.10 a.k.a Oneiric Ocelot

As you should know the new Ubuntu version is out almost one month already but I just got time to play with it. The upgrade  process as usual was easy. It took some hours but it was smooth. The first thing I did was to remove Ubuntu Unity. I might write an entire post about it but right now I am just going to say that I hate it!

When everything finished I noticed I could not remote desktop it using VNC as I always do then the problems started. Searching  in Google I found that this is a known issue in this version and a lot of users keep complaining about it ( myself among them ).

Looking for another options to access my server remotely I found that X11VNC was my best option. The best thing about it is its great options it has for command line control and the best thing is that even if there is no user log in into the terminal you can still start the server, this was a huge limitation about Vino-VNC (the default VNC server Ubuntu ships). First a user has to log in so the server could start, there was no way to start it from command line or ssh. It demands to have a monitor attached.

Anyways after the usual "sudo-apt install X1vnc" to install the required x11vnc packages these are the commands you need to run in order to make it work:

if there is user a user already logged in:

x11vnc -display :0

if nobody is logged in:

sudo x11vnc -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 - display :0

If you notice, you will need to run it as super user since that path needs super user privileges.

The -auth parameter needs the path to the display manger if no one is logged into, but there is a greeter login program like gdm ( Ubuntu ), kdm ( Kubuntu ), xdm ( Xubuntu) , etc running so it might vary on different platforms. You can try 2 things:

This will try to guess the path

x11vnc -auth guess -display :0

Sometimes executing:

ps wwwaux | grep auth

can show you the path to that file, in my case it did.

This tool has tons of options but one I really found  useful is the geometry option, which lets scale the screen to fit your needs or if you are connecting from slow internet bandwidth :

x11vnc -display :0 -geometry 1024x764

Once the server is up and running you should something like this:

The VNC desktop is [YOUR SERVER NAME]:0

PORT=5900

And you are all set and ready to connect using your favorite client.

Connecting to the login screen

You can find all the documentation and all the options you can use in this page and here

Hopes it helps while we wait for the bug to be fixed.

Happy coding :)

Google I/O 2012

We are not even done with 2011 and Google has already announced the dates for Google I/O 2012. Mark your calendars because next year this event will take place in San Francisco 24 and 25 of April in the Moscone Center. They haven't published the registration details yet, they said they will do it soon though :)

Me and Sundar Pichai :)

This year's Google I/O was amazing and even when they sold out in less than a hour I was able to make it :) and It was one of the most exiting experiences of this year. I met a lot of Googlers, very interesting people and I learned a lot! thanks to that I was able to published my Android app :)

You can watch the videos from the all the sessions here and read the official post here.

Who is going next year? :)

Good Bye Steve

It was just few weeks ago when we were talking about Steve Job's resignation and it was pretty clear it had something to do with his health I just thought he had more time :(

Steve was one of the best CEO's of this era. His passion for perfection lead Apple to its brightest years  and even when they said that working with was insane it was all because he really cared about details and excellence. Apple won't be able to replace him that is for sure. They knew this day was coming and they are prepared but they won't get another Steve there would a lot of replacements but never some one like him. They can teach his ideology and try their employees to follow it but that level of excellence needs to come from deep inside.

There are tons and tons of articles about this all over the web even James Gosling wrote about him and Google has a tribute honoring him on his home page and this is because Steve was AMAZING and he will be remembered that is for sure!

I still remember the first time I watched The Pirates of Silicon Valley which is basically a movie of Apple and Microsoft early days. It is a very good movie if you want to learn more about Steve and how he started everything.

And finally here is the famous speech he gave at Stanford back in 2005, really inspiring.




Good bye Steve we will miss you, thanks for everything!

More on Steve here:
MicroSiervos
TechCruch 1, 2 and 3
Engadget 1 and 2
OSNews
BarraPunto
SlashDot
AndroidCentral

200 Downloads and Posts

Today is a great day :) My Android application passed 200 downloads :) from all 200 40.8% are on Froyo, 30.6% on GingerBread and the rest Honeycomb so that means I need to work on the Tablet optimized version more which is something I am working on among other things. I can only tell it is going to be amazing :)

Besides that this is the 200 post :) what a coincidence isn't it? With almost 5000 page views  I started this blog just to share all the things I like and learn. I know the comments are under moderation but that is something I will try to remove in the future, please believe me :). I know I am not posting as much as before, but that is because of all the work trips, work projects and all that, I will get more time to keep sharing my hacking nights :)

So thanks for all the support, comments and all that I will keeping sharing as usual.

Happy coding :)