Android Emulator

The Android SDK includes a mobile device emulator � a virtual device that runs on your computer. The emulator lets you prototype, develop, and test Android applications without using a physical device.



More: Android Emulator - Android

JDK 6 + Eclipse + Android SDK

out-dated information!!!
Pls. refer here, "Install Android SDK on Eclipse 3.5 Galileo", for update information. ~edited 2009-07-18.


One of the development platform, which I used, is (JDK 6 + Eclipse + Android SDK) run under WindowsXP.

JDK 6 is the Java Development Kit from Sun.
Android SDK is the core to develope Android application.
Eclipse IDE for Java Developers is a free Open Source IDE for Java development. Android Development Tools plugin is needed, in order to work with Android SDK.

Androidology@YouTube

Part 1 of 3 - Architecture Overview

Part 2 of 3 - Application Lifecycle

Part 3 of 3 - APIs

What is Android?

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

An early look at the the Android SDK is also available. It includes sample projects with source code, development tools, an emulator, and of course all the libraries you'll need to build an Android application.

more: Open Handset Alliance

Google Gadgets for the Mac

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Google Desktop for Mac now supports gadgets! For details, including a video demonstration, see the Official Google Blog post.

Android

Cicsco VPN Client on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5

I have been trying to set up my MacBook Pro to use for work for the last couple of weeks in my spare time. Getting applications installed, getting stuff configured etc...

So today I finally made the decision to make the switch for work. The litmus test for me is of course, the Cisco VPN 3000 client must work period. If I can't log into my work computers, I'm wasting my time. So I got the latest version from Sun and installed that to get the settings. Then found the latest version of the client on version tracker.

Everything installed fine, but after I restarted my machine I got the infamous "Error 51" blah blah, your VPN client doesn't work error.

Well I thought I was hosed, then I found this post by Anders Brownworth and it saved my bacon. Run this command to reset the client:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart


and you are good to go.

MySQL on OS X Leopard

Apparently there are some issues getting MySQL server installed correctly on OS X Leopard. So I found this page that does a step by step walk thru of compiling and installing MySQL on your machine. Followed the steps and it appears to have worked for me.

The only caveat I have for others on the article is I would skip the instructions for auto starting the MySQL server. They are way to complicated. Just use Automator instead. Much easier and should work just as good.

NetBeans 6.0 Great Ruby IDE

Finally found some time to play around with Ruby on Rails on NetBeans 6.0 beta 2 very late last night. I downloaded the Ruby specific version since I still need to use 5.5.1 for work. All I can say is wow!

You get a complete Rails development environment (except for the database) in a 20 meg download. Everything runs fast and loads fast. I had the Hello World! app created and running in about 5 minutes. Very impressive. In the past, I have run into a number of roadblocks just getting rails setup, especially on OS X. If you have been itching to learn Rails, this is the tool you need to start with.

Android?

I was too busy with work to notice the big Google Android announcement. A phone platform based on Linux and open source standards. Sounds like a good idea to me. It will be interesting to see what the SDK looks like next week.

In my opinion, the success or failure of this will depend on the openness. Will you be able to create GPS apps for it? Run Skype? Run GAIM? My iPhone is really fun, but it is too cell centric when it needs to be Internet centric. Competition is a good thing.