There are many Android applications, the market is getting new apps every day… but there is always something missing.

I’m a big TV series fan. I see lots (!) of tv shows and it’s difficult to remember what was the last episode I saw. It bothers me when I just lied down in my bed or on the sofa to watch an episode of some serie and a few minutes later I realize that  I have already seen the episode. The solution is to have a app on my phone, that is always with me, and track the tv shows that I follow.

This isn’t an original idea. Joaquim Rocha created an app for Maemo called series finale and I can say that this concept is his idea. Because I had the chance to code an Android app during my Masters, my choice was to make an app similar to series finale but for Android. This is an app that I would/will use and that was why I made it. I’m almost reaching the release of the first version of DroidSeries. I named this release “The Pilot”.

I’m currently struggling with some Bitmap memory leaks that are slowing down the app when lots of series are to be handled. Once this is done I will add the feature to update a single television serie and update all the series that the user is following and make the release.

So what is done so far? A summarized list:

• Capability to search and add a serie to the list (needs internet connection WIFI or 3G)
  • I use TheTVDB API
• All data is saved in an sqlite database (internet connection is only needed to search, when a serie is added it is saved in this database)
• Mark a episode or a season as seen/unseen
• View series or episode details
• All the small features like confirmation dialog when deleting a serie, threads and progress dialogs, information for the next unseen episode and how many episodes are not watched, etc

To give you a feel of what I’m doing, here are some screen shots:

As soon as I reach the first version I will upload it and open the code on google code and to the Android Market. http://code.google.com/p/droidseries/ or this blog will be the places to look for it.

If you have a suggestion, don’t hesitate to make it! Let me know what you are thinking and what you would like to see in DroidSeries!

If you want to beta test the application also let me know, I’ll pass one the apk file. I didn’t make it available at this point because I believe that it isn’t ready yet, but if you still want to give it a try, let me know!

I have to thank LDV for doing a good job with the header image! Thanks!

I will try to make a screen cast soon. Keep tunned!

At this point of your life you should know about Getting Things Gnome! and how easy it makes your life!

A port of GTG for android is in my perspective far a way as there is no native python support, etc. So how can you have your GTG tasks on your android phone?

Easy!

1. Signup for a (free) Remember The Milk account
2. Activate GTG’s Remember The Milk plugin and sync your tasks with RTM
3. Install Astrid on your android phone (available on android market)
4. Sync Astrid with RTM

Signup for a (free) Remember The Milk account
Remember The Milk allows you to manage your tasks online. Just go to http://www.rememberthemilk.com and signup for a (free) account.

Activate GTG’s Remember The Milk plugin and sync your tasks with RTM
Thanks to Luca Invernizzi’s GTG plugin, Remember The Milk, it’s possible to sync GTG with Remember The Milk. The plugin is currently at version 0.3.

Plugin for synchronising Getting Things Gnome! with the web service Remember the milk  (http://www.rememberthemilk.com)
Please note that task descriptions are not synchronized in this version.
Legal note: This product uses the Remember The Milk API but
is not endorsed or certified by Remember, The Milk.

Luca’s RTM plugin is shipped with GTG so if you have the latest version you only need to activate the plugin.

Activate GTG's RTM plugin

After activating the plugin you only need to sync the tasks between GTG and RTM.

Sync tasks between GTG and RTM

Install Astrid on your android phone (available on android market)
This step is actually very easy. Just open the Android Market and search for Astrid and install it.

Sync Astrid with RTM
Open Astrid and in the Synchronization menu Activate the Remember The Milk service and also activate the Main Menu Shortcut.

Astrid's Sync menu

The Sync shortcut in the main menu comes up handy to sync Astrid with RTM with minimum effort. Then all you need is to hit the sync button.

Astrid & RTM Sync in action

That’s it. This is as simple as it can get. No more excuses for not being organized!

One more thing, by default Remember The Milk will send email notification of tasks on their deadline and it’s also a nice feature to have.

I’ll leave you guys with one more screen shot of the Astrid’s home widget that also comes in handy.

Astrid's home screen widget

Finally and for the just for those of you who are wondering, I’m using…

• … Getting Things Gnome! development version (latest trunk version)
• … CyanogenMod 4.2.14.1. I also suggest a look at http://www.openandroidteam.com for the latest android version (2.1_r2).

Recently I started to have some problems viewing flash videos, specially youtube videos. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes just the buttons in the video/flash movie didn’t work. Looks like the problem is related to some update in karmic.
The solution for this problem is to install flash-player alpha 10 (amd64) from Adobe.
There is a nice post at ubuntuforums with the steps you need to do in order to solve this issue.

That’s it! Getting Things Gnome! 2.0, code name “Gorignak”, was released this week!

I won’t duplicate the release post, it’s a great post and you can read it here!

I just installed wpToGo and I’m testing it. Looks good, maybe now I can post more regurlaly.
About that… I’m still alive and kicking! But with allot of work and extra activities.. just recently I won the election for the universities student body (vice-president).
Hope to keep the blog more update from now on…

Yet another HTC Magic Rom.
Yesterday I tested some more HTC Magic roms. One of those roms was the CyanogenMod for HTC Magic (32a) + Android 1.6.
It’s a very nice rom, very quick. It does not have the HTC Sense UI that in my opinion is great looking but not so useful.
While trying out roms I was looking for efficiency and CyanogenMod was the choice.

You can get the CyanogenMod rom here.

This post comes late. I’m using a cooked ROM on my HTC Magic for some time now.

I’m using MyHero Rom and it’s working well!

I only had to Root my HTC Magic (how to root HTC Magic) and then load a custom Rom (how to load a custom rom). It’s a very easy process.

Today I just had to code. For days I’ve been studying for my last exams (I hope!). Kevin Mehall made me the suggestion to add a preferences button on the dialog manager in order to allow a user to set the preferences/configure a plugin. The idea is based on the Gedit system. I think I never gave credit to Gedit but I actually based allot of things on their plugin system.

It looks like this:

You can read about it and how to make your plugin configurable in the plugin howto along with all the other info.

As requested and discussed before I made a notification area plugin for GTG. This allows you to click on the notification area icon to “minimize” GTG. It also has a small context menu. Keep in mind that if you minimize GTG it will minimize normally (it will not “disappear”), this plugin does not change GTG’s UI or how it works.

Anyway You should read Lionel’s article on “There’s no tray icon in GNOME!“. It is a MUST READ!

The plugin is available in the current development branch.

I’ve been using my HTC Magic/Android for the past weeks. It’s not true that it is totally Google dependent, but it was made buy Google and the google services are, of course, very well integrated. In another perspective it is very Internet dependent and if you can, subscribe a data plan. Currently I don’t have one but I’m working on that.

I didn’t change any default applications, I tried chompSMS but I didn’t see why it was better than the default one. Besides the colors, I think it’s basically the same thing. All the others are good at least from my point of view and for my usage.

I did install some additional applications:

• A bunch of CurveFish widgets
• TaskKiller free – Lets you close running apps.
• APNdroid – Prevents the phone from connecting to the internet over 3G/EDGE/GPRS
  • It has a problem, it also prevents MMS. I have been in contact with APNdroid developer, Martin Adamek, and the future version of APNdroid will support this (choose if MMS are also disabled or not).
  • I made a simple change on the code to test it and I have a working workaround, I posted the function I changed here. I have been with so little time to make the proper changes to APNdroid myself but here is a working version that does not affect the MMS APNs. Copy it to your SD and use eoeAppInstaller to install it.
• Toggle Settings
• WiFi Scanner
• Astrid Task/Todo List
• OI Shopping list
• eoeAppInstaller – SD apk installer (lists all apk’s in the SD)
• twidroid – twitter client
• ASTRO File Manager
• Babbler Lite for Facebook – full-featured native Facebook client
• EboBirthday
• SMS Popup – shows a popup dialog when a SMS/MMS is received (very configurable)
• ConnectBot – SSH client
• Ndrive
• ShopSavvy – shopping assistant
  • I haven’t really tried this one yet, still waiting for a opportunity.
• Any Cut – Allows to create home shortcuts to anything

Some other apps you may want to consider (they are said to be the best around):

• Snap Photo Pro – Camera App
• imeem Mobile – Streaming Music App
• CoPilot Live – GPS Navigation App
• WeatherBug – Weather App
• chompSMS – Communication App
• Weather Widget
• Sherpa – Location Based App

Of course and as I have commented above, I have been looking into android development. You can read all about that at http://developer.android.com. The android plugin for eclipse is nice and works very well. I only had some initial trouble with the debugger but not a big problem.

Another thing that I haven’t tried yet is WiFi with WAP Enterprise. I’ve been lazy to try it out at my university but I’ll give it a go very soon.

I have also been tempted to change the ROM version from the original to a HERO based ROM, but there are some things still aren’t working so I’ll wait.