After a bit of panic, we realized that we could work around this problem by breaking our app into multiple dex files, using the technique described here, which focuses on using secondary dex files for extension modules, not core parts of the app..
via How Facebook dug deep within Android to fix its mobile app | Ars Technica.
Created by a startup called ProtoGeo, Moves is free and currently available only for the iPhone (the company plans to release an Android version but hasn’t said when). The app’s precision and power consumption need work, but I’m convinced its simplicity represents the future of self-tracking.
Line gives you free voice calls (like Skype or Facebook’s new overhauled app). Then there’s basic messaging, but Line is a bit goofier with sillier emojis and stickers. There are teddy bears juggling eggplants, bunnies with flames of anger in their eyes, and a shy balding man surrounded by little sparkles and flowers. (Yes.)
Japanese trends do sometime take off here in the US. 100M is quite a large set of users. Facebook has about 1000M users.
Note that Snapchat is holding the No. 9 spot, and is clearly slipping in popularity, and Google is sitting pretty at both No. 2 (Maps) and No. 5 (YouTube). Even Pinger’s free texting and calling app is right up there at No. 6.
Staff examined hundreds of apps for children and looked at disclosures and links on each app’s promotion page in the app store, on the app developer’s website, and within the app. According to the report, “most apps failed to provide any information about the data collected through the app, let alone the type of data collected, the purpose of the collection, and who would obtain access to the data. Even more troubling, the results showed that many of the apps shared certain information with third parties – such as device ID, geolocation, or phone number – without disclosing that fact to parents. Further, a number of apps contained interactive features – such as advertising, the ability to make in-app purchases, and links to social media – without disclosing these features to parents prior to download.”
However, the popular texting alternative WhatsApp still has a major security problem. Attackers can compromise other users’ accounts with relative ease, and send and receive messages from another user’s account. In this respect nothing has changed – heise Security was able to successfully repeat its test this morning (Tuesday).
via WhatsApp threatens legal action against API developers – The H Security: News and Features.
WhatsApp Inc. has, however, been in touch with the developers behind the GitHub project WhatsAPI, an open source implementation of the WhatsApp protocol written in PHP and Python. The company has threatened to take legal action against the developers if they do not take the project offline. heise Security has been told by one of the developers that they have decided to acquiesce to this request and to cease working on the API.
It’s possible to sync Google Docs to Dropbox, automatically send Gmail attachments to Dropbox, play music in a browser from your Dropbox music files, encrypt your Dropbox, easily host a website or blog in Dropbox, collect URLs and web clippings to Dropbox and to automate file syncs between all of your social networks and Dropbox. You can even view all of your Dropbox files alongside your Google Docs, Box files and FTP files in the one web interface. If you want to know the best apps to do all of these things, then read on.
via 10+ Best Apps For Your Dropbox.
Here‘s another top 12 list.
I thought DropBoxFiler has potential in that it makes using the cloud transparent to the user. I’m not sure how well it works in practice however and this seems rather trivial to implement on a nix box. So far no Dropbox apps stand out as having much value added over the standard Dropbox UI.
So how does it work? Well, Dropboxifier simply fools applications into reading and writing directly from Dropbox! Saved games and profile data can be placed in Dropbox, a symbolic link put in its place (which is kind of like a shortcut at the file system level), and applications/games won’t even notice – they will read and write directly to your Dropbox folder.
According to Gartner’s “Market Trends: Application Development (AD) Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016” report, cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested, and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in development priorities.
“The trend is compelling enough to force traditional AD vendors to ‘cloud-enable’ their existing offerings and position them as a service to be delivered through the cloud,” said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner.
via Application Development Now Worth More Than $9 Billion Globally | Dr Dobb’s.
First they proposed five types of developer, and you won’t find it hard to recognize them:
- S0 – the innovator always builds apps with a wide range of novel features.S1- the milker who implements slight largely unnecessary variations on a single app.
- S2 – the optimizer who simply releases improvements on their most successful app.
- S3 – the copycat simply copies the best apps in the market.
- S – the flexible developer who adopts whichever strategies seems good at the moment.
via The Artificial Life of the App Store – the Best Strategy to Succeed.
Turn your phone into a Walkie Talkie
Hmmmm. Again with the walkie talkies.
Voxer is a Walkie Talkie application for smartphones. Voxer lets you send instant audio, text and photo messages to your friends (one or more!). Messages stream live as you talk and your friends join you live or listen later.
Voxer is available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android devices.