Lose It! is an excellent service that helps people lose weight by monitoring calories intake. It integrates with variety of devices so I was curious if I can display my user data on Pebble smartwatch (to make sure I can have another piece of cake or not).
Unfortunately LoseIt doesn’t have a public API. There had to be another way. Continue reading →
A while back I described how you can receive Stack Overflow notifications on your phone and smartwatch by reading RSS feed provided by StackOvedlow API (v1) and connecting it to PushOver push notification service (and their Android app and ultimately Pebble Smartwatch via awesome IFTTT.
Since then Stack Exchange retired version 1 of their API (and besides it didn’t provided all the information needed, e.g. total reputation points) so I was looking for an alternative. Fortunately StackOverflow API v2 provides very extensive set of functions. One call I was looking for is
api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users/[userid]?site=[site]
Where [userid] is your Stack Exchange User ID and [site] is the Stack Exchange site you’re interested in. For example for me call to
https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/users/961695?site=stackoverflow
provides a nice JSON output: Continue reading →
Using it you can have your Pebble watchface to display weather, location, temperature, of course date and time, etc. etc. in highly customizable formats.
One cool thing it allows you to show – next calendar events from your Google calendar. As with everything else it’s a highly customizable entry. For example three (out of much more) options are:
%a – abbreviated day of the week
%R – start time of the event in 24-hour-format
%ET – event title
So if you format the calendar field as "%a %R: %ET" your Pebble will display something like "Mon 12:30: Visit from Elvis". Unfortunately if calendar event is an all-day event (e.g. national holiday) – start time of the event (%R) always displays as “00:00” making your event look like "Tue 00:00: Day of the Tentacle". It would be really nice if we could hide the time for all-day events.
Fortunately one of the things Canvas allows you to do is conditional formatting. It does this in a form of {text1#condition#text2} where if condition is true – text1 is displayed, otherwise text2 is displayed (which is optional and can be omitted).
I noticed that for all-day events, event duration (represented in Canvas as %ED) is always 24 hours (duh). So I replaced the above format for calendar event with this one: %a{ %R#%ED<24}: %ET. The code in braces means “if event duration is less than 24 hours – show event start time, otherwise don’t show anything”. And the result is in images above.
As you may have gathered I am a frequent participant of Stack Overflow Q&A board for coders. On that site everytime somebody responds to your question or comments – a notification is displayed in the status bar. Ditto when your reputation points change.
I became curious whether I could receive these modifications on my phone. Stack Exchange released their own application on Google Play store that does send push notifications when a reply is received, but no notifications on reputation changes. Also it’s still a little rough around the edges and besides I realized I didn’t want a full blown Stack Overflow application (when I do use SO for questions/answers I prefer the full site on my laptop). There should be another way. Continue reading →
This is actually very cool, the company called Locket had a very novel idea: What do million of Android users do most often with their phones? Play games? Browse the Web? No! Unlock the phone.
That Lock screen is a prime real estate and they decided – why not display beautiful ads there? And the ads are very good indeed, a lot better than most wallpapers I’ve seen. And for every unlock swipe you get 1 cent. You’re doing it dozens times a day anyway – why not get paid for it?
Locket is an Android app that replaces your lock screen.
From the site:
Here’s How Locket Works:
Open your phone, and you’ll see an ad.
Swipe Left
to engage with an ad, claim a deal or watch a trailer.
or
Swipe Right
to go straight to your phone like you always do.
Either way, you get paid. Because the lock screen is the most valuable space in advertising. And you own it.
Join the club! Get Locket.
If you use Microsoft Skydrive application on your Windows machine, you know that besides syncing local dedicated Skydrive folder to the cloud it allows accessing your PC files directly (without uploading them to the cloud) from remote location. Unfortunately this feature is available for desktops only, mobile apps are “by design” missing it.
But what prevents you from logging into Skydrive Website directly from a mobile Web browser?
After authorizing yourself with security code you’re in! Albeit this is not as convenient as a native app would be, but until “design” changes this approach allows you to access your PC’s files without installing any additional software on the PC and without downloading any additional app to the device.
It is a well known fact that Adobe is willingly shooting itself in the foot stopped supporting flash on Android devices. If you run Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) it is not even available on the Google Play. Oh and speaking of Google – unlike its desktop counterpart Chrome for Android doesn’t support Flash either.
So.. is this the end of the era?
Fear not. Just download and install this handy Flash APK and install it on your device. Voila! Your mighty tablet/phone now has Flash. It still won’t work in Google Chrome, but other browser (Stock, Dolphin) will happily use it.
And the saga continues. Tired of Ice Cream Sandwich I decided to step up. Turning my Kindle Fire into a Jelly Bean device (same Android version run by Google’s Nexus 7) is a snap. Just go to this XDA thread and download bright shiny new CyanogenMod 10.
It runs much smoother than ICS, seems a lot faster and more streamlined. There’re a lot of small things (like lockscreen trailing your finger) that make everyday tablet use a lot more enjoyable.
Got a few new features as well, Google Now being one of the coolest one. As you continue to use your tablet, it learns your ways and begins supply you with useful array of information – from weather and traffic of your commute, to appointments and your favorite sports teams.
It doesn’t support Flash anymore, but with the advance of HTML5 Flash becomes more and more irrelevant in such areas as gaming and video. Major apps (Google Chrome, ROM Manager, Titanium Backup etc.) love Jelly Bean and runs perfect under Android 4.1.
Even new Optimum app released exclusively for Kindle Fire runs fine under Jelly Bean (yes sometimes I get so lazy so even finding a TV remote seems as too much of an effort and on Kindle I can watch my cable without getting up).
So, if you haven’t already done so – do yourself a favor and turn your Kindle fire from nothing more than an Amazon shopping cart into a full blown Android tablet, capable of many amazing things.
Disclaimer: Do it at your own risk. I am speaking from personal experience, but I am not responsible if you brick your device.
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Those coding wizards from XDJ-Developers have done it again! After years of supplying us with huge amounts of amazing custom ROMs for even huger amount of Android devices they performed yet another miracle which is akin to splitting the atom, since it separates what was formerly considered inseparable: Apple hardware and software.
They ported iOS to Kindle Fire.
Don’t expect it to be the latest version though (iOS 6 as of time of this post) for that you will have to wait couple hours. For now be content with 5.1 – it’s well worth it. iOS 5.1 runs very smoothly on Kindle Fire, in tests pretty much everything lives up to high standards we used to expect from Apple, just about only app that wouldn’t run is Fruit Slice, I can’t imagine why.
Being an early beta build, it still has a few quirks. For example sometimes, if you launch iTunes, you end up in Amazon MP3 Store and on very rare occasions in some place called “Tower Records” (must be phantom growing pains) but XDJ-Developers are hard at work to eradicate those.
So rejoice closet Apple fans! No longer you have to pretend to like cupcakes, donuts, eclairs, froyo, gingerbread, honeycombs, ice cream sandwiches and the rest of those high calory desserts. Time for a healthy diet of fruit!
