Camopic is now live!

My new app, Camopic, is now live on Google Play (only $0.99! cheap!). Camopic uses steganography to hide a picture inside a different jpeg image. You can then share that image with another Camopic user, who will be able to reveal and view your hidden image. This basically sums it up: Google Play: Camopic $0.99 »

Using Roboto on Fedora

Using Android’s Roboto font is pretty easy on Fedora (or any other Linux flavour). Just download the Roboto zip, open it up, copy the ttf files into your ~/.fonts dir, and refresh your font cache. From there, you can use the font in any program (though you may need to reload it first). Here are the steps: `` wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/design/Roboto_Hinted_20111129.zip unzip Roboto_Hinted_20111129.zip mkdir ~/.fonts mv Roboto_Hinted_20111129/*.ttf ~/.fonts fc-cache `` »

Retrofitting drop shadows into existing Android layouts

I had some UI elements in an Android application I’m working on that felt as if they should be above (pushing out of the screen, rather than to the top of it) the elements that followed them in the UI. A good way to indicate this is with a drop shadow, similar to those on Android title bars or Action Bars. An existing method didn’t work for me, as my UI is relying heavily on weights to keep proper size ratios between the elements I wanted to add a drop shadow to, and the element they would be casting a shadow on. »

Android ProGuard and Git Tip

If you’re obfuscating your Android applications using ProGuard, make sure to keep the proguard/ directory at the root of your Android project under revision control. This may seem contrary to what you’d feel like doing, as the files are autogenerated, but it will help if you ever need to debug a stack trace from your published application. Typically when I’m ready to release, and after I’ve done every other change, I will bump the revision in my AndroidManifest.xml and generate a new .apk from eclipse, then test it out on my device. »