MOTODEV Blog

Just got done chatting with Ruth from Orange about the Orange App Clinics coming up in New York (November 6) &  San Francisco (November 13th) where you can show your app to the Orange partner team, test it on a range of Orange devices and even use the Orange UK network.  Great opportunity for developers that might not got a chance to test on the Orange network without being physically in the UK. Time slots are filing up for the upcoming events so make sure to book your time slot at  www.orangepartner.com.  

For more information about these events, Orange's Android commitment, and where to get more info, listen to our audio interview with Ruth Cattell below:

On Wednesday's podcast we talk with Michael Labowicz, who is a product development manager at Motorola involved in application design and development for DROID by Motorola and the Motorola MILESTONE. Both are recent products that were launched in the past couple weeks and Michael was knee deep in development on the software side of things. We'll be learning more about the two products and what Android 2. 0 features are most compeling in his opinion.  As always, we want to hear from you and so make sure to ask your questions in the following ways:

• Tune in to blogtalkradio.com/motodev at 9am pacific / 12pm eastern time (or below to listen to the archive version)
• tweet @motodev with the hashtag #podcast
• Join our interactive chat at http://gsnap.com/motodev/945 (includes links & YouTube videos we discuss plus our audio podcast integrated into the same UI). 

All,

We'll be taking your developer questions live on our podcast today at 1pm. Listen to our podcast below and join the G-SNAP! chat to ask your questions. If you are talking about the DROID by Motorola on Twitter make sure to use the hashtag #motodroid. Thanks and talk to you soon. Remember this podcast will be archived here.

 Join the G-SNAP! chat by asking  your questions here or calling in at 347-826-9350:

We're excited to announce DROID by Motorola, the world's first Android 2.0-powered smartphone developed in partnership with Google and Verizon Wireless.

Developers will be very excited about the following features of DROID by Motorola:

• The first device in the world powered by Android 2.0 (eclair)
• Powered by a Cortex A8 processor with dedicated hardware acceleration for a quick and fluid graphics experience. This is part of a new processor family that can actually deliver up to three times the performance of a typical ARM11-based processor. DROID runs at 550 mhz.
• Capacitive touch on a 3.7” WVGA display
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash and image stabilization.

Get more product specs on the MOTODEV web site. 

Got questions? Ask them on our discussion boards and tune in to our weekly podcasts at http://blogtalkradio.com/motodev 

Here are a few photos:

-Randy  

Remember to follow @motodev on Twitter and/or bookmark this blog.  

We continue our social media marketing chat on Wednesday Oct. 21 at 9am PT / 12pm ET with Lisa Whelan (aka @lisawhelan on Twitter).  The questions that we will answer are the following:

• What features within your mobile app would benefit from sharing?
• What is the viral loop and how does your app fit into it?
• How have other mobile applications benefitted from viral tuning?
• What is social advertising and how does it facilitate application discovery?
• What is the benefit of Facebook Connect?
• What social value can you add to your mobile users?and all of your social media marketing questions

If you were at MOTODEV Summit last week, you may have come to the Tech Lab or to one of my talks and seen the first pack of UI samples we've released, the Widget Pack.

But if you weren't there, I can clue you in. We've heard from many of you that you want to create Android™ applications that users love, but that designing and building Android UIs can be a challenge, even with the XML layouts and UI framework built in to Android.

So we'd like to help by creating sample UI resources that you can extend or adapt. These can include XML layouts, 9-patch images, source images, Java classes, or anything that would help you.

The Widget Pack is the first group of UI samples. It's now available on the MOTODEV site, on the same page where you download MOTODEV Studio for Android. The Widget Pack has sample UI pieces for a widget that displays a photo slide show, including:

• Two widget layouts, one with a frame and one without
• A main activity layout
• Sample 3-state buttons with a virtual touch area
• A custom swipe class that works well on the Motorola CLIQ™
• A Toast that responds to a long press

The non-frame version of the widget fits the entire photo within the widget area, even if the photo takes less space than the full widget area. The frame version uses the full widget area, but centers the photo and crops it to fit. Some people prefer one, and some the other.

When you tap the widget, the main activity layout opens. You can swipe to move between photos, or touch the arrow buttons, or select a button with the 5-way navigation pad.

The sample UI code runs on the Android 1.5 or MB200 emulator. But if at all possible, run it on a CLIQ to experience the light and easy swipe, the virtual button touch area, and the aliveness when you long press a full photo screen.

You don't need to build a photo widget to use these samples. You can easily adapt them to another type of application or widget.

When you download the code, please remember:

• Add some photos of your own -- see the ReadMe file for instructions.
• The code is just UI samples, not a full working widget. You'll see some hard-coded values. You can replace these with dynamically obtained content in your code.
• This is an Alpha release, version 0.9. The samples are tested on only one device, the Motorola CLIQ. We'll release a 1.0 version soon.

The sample uses the design goals I mentioned in my talk - Simplicity, Layering, Aliveness, and Relevance.

We hope you like it. If you have feedback, questions, or requests for more UI samples, post on the MOTODEV Android developer boards. You can also follow me on Twitter for more tips on Android UI design.

Copyright (c) 2009 Motorola, Inc. All rights reserved.

In the first of our two-part series on social media marketing for mobile developers, we talk with Tom Diederich (@dieds), social media consultant about how to promote your brand and product via social media channels such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.  We think this is a huge potential to for developers to get the word out about their application and the basic concepts and tips we'll cover we hope will help you.  Here is the podcast info for you to tune into:

Part I 

What: Social Media Marketing Tips for Mobile Developers  Part I 

When: Wednesday October 14, 2009 at 9am pacific / 12pm eastern

Where: Tune in to blogtalkradio.com/motodev

Part II 

What: Social Media Marketing Tips for Mobile Developers  Part II 

When: Wednesday October 21, 2009 at 9am pacific / 12pm eastern

Where: Tune in to blogtalkradio.com/motodev

Ask your questions by calling in to 347-826-9350 and tweet your questions to @motodev with hashtag #socialmedia.

Part II on October 21 at 9am pacific/12pm eastern will be more focused on why you should incorporate social media into your mobile applications and we'll be talking with Lisa Whelan (@lisawhelan). 

Both of these podcasts will be archived so if you can make the above dates no worries you'll be able to listen to the podcast at a more convenient time.   

Update as of Wed. Oct. 21 at 10:11am:

Here is the archive of both podcasts (as well as our previous ones):

-Randy 

The Motorola CLIQ with MOTOBLUR was all the talk at last week's CTIA IT & Entertainment conference in San Diego.  The MOTODEV team was there to answer your questions, demo the product, and showcase our 3rd party applications from partners Howcast, CardStar, Barnes and Noble, Dance Dance Revolution and Midomi.  For a little fun, attendees could take a photo with the Motorola droid, get a temporary droid tattoo and even get a coffee while demoing the Barnes and Noble eReader app on the Motorola CLIQ.  Here are some photos from the conference - Enjoy! 

-Randy

We'll be live blogging the MOTODEV Summit keynote so make sure to follow the below G-SNAP! chat and join in the discussion.  Either from your mobile phone or in the below widget.  

-Randy live from the MOTODEV Summit in San Diego #mds09

The MOTODEV Summit is coming up on October 6, 2009 in San Diego at the Hard Rock Hotel and we're really excited to have you all there. Because we're expecting a huge turnout and want to speed you thru registration make sure to bring a print-out of your barcode email that we sent earlier this week.  Thanks and if you have any questions comment on this blog post or tweet @motodev using the hashtag #mds09.

-Randy