I have just done a major overhaul of the site to make it more friendly for mobile devices and also less cluttered.
The other change is that I’ve added a feed to twitter so you can follow me on https://twitter.com/PlanAn .
Archive for the ‘Android’ Category
Blog site redesign
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Android apps for parents
Thursday, August 12th, 2010A couple of applications on the market have got my attention recently.
The first is ‘Talking Tomcat’ which I know has been around for a while. My son (two) loves playing with this app. Particularly giving the cat a glass of milk. Only downsides are:
- It is too easy for him to accidentally hit the ads at the top and launch a browser
- If you tap the cat it ‘punches’ him (very funny but doesn’t teach good animal husbandry – we have a real cat ;-))
Another app that got my attention is ‘Noise Alert’ which can be used as an impromptu baby monitor. I wouldn’t rely on it but I can see it might be useful as a backup if you were staying over at someones house and hadn’t taken your normal monitor with you.
I’d love to see Baby Go / Super Baby Go ported to Android. This has to be my son’s favourite app on any platform (he doesn’t spend his whole day on mobile devices I should point out!) but is only available for the blackberry at the moment. One nice feature of this is it totally locks the device out so your child can’t accidentally make calls or launch other apps. you can unlock it using a key + password combination. (Once they can work out how to unlock they are probably too old to be playing with the app :-) !).
Super Baby Go! (currently not on Android)
Little Fluffy Toys – Cycle Hire App
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010Absolutely love the London cycle hire app from Little Fluffy Toys Ltd.
http://www.littlefluffytoys.com/?p=157
Used it this morning both to find a bike and to find where to drop it off near the office. As the bike hire scheme in London becomes more popular I see applications like this becoming essential. Use of the built in compass is also great.
Android UI Stencils
Friday, August 6th, 2010Nice little piece of hardware. A stencil for mocking up android applications using a pencil and paper…
Foursquare passwords sent in clear text!
Thursday, July 15th, 2010I had a look at Foursquare recently as a few of my colleagues were using it. One of the apps I downloaded was FourSquareX .
I was really surprised by a message on the logon screen saying that passwords are sent in clear text:
I figured this might just be for the API but decided to investigate whether this is also the case on the main site and it seems it is. Running LiveHTTPHeaders you can see the following when you log on to foursquare.com (I’ve put some asterisks in to remove user identifiable stuff):
F***231419577AFW=true&F*****1419575D1V=********%40gmail.com&password=4square
(this is the same on the ‘/mobile/’ site)
And when you change your account password (in this example to ‘nothidden’):
-----------------------------*****591617307847261632891267
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="****2314598660HU"
nothidden
-----------------------------*****591617307847261632891267
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="****231459867BB4"
nothidden
I’m really surprised at this as it means a packet sniffer could easily pick out your password. It also suggests a relaxed attitude towards sending and maybe even storing users data. I wouldn’t be surprised if the smartphone apps (such as the Android one) also send password details in clear text although I haven’t tested this hypothesis.
So, if I keep using it I will definitely use a unique password for Foursquare.com and not store any sensitive data in your account. Like my erm.. email, date of birth, where you’ve been for the past few days for example…
App Inventor for Android
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010Now even your cat can program…
I was actually really disappointed that the cat didn’t start coding. Which reminds me of a sketch by Paul Merton which took the p*** out of the ‘abdominiser’ and Rap’Tou adverts in the UK. He had a piece of flat foam (the ‘abominator’) with some holes in it which claimed to be able to do all sorts of amazing things including ‘teach your cat to play the piano’.
SportyPal Pro / 2 about to launch
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010I’ve used a few different mobile apps for tracking my runs. I really like AllSportGPS on the Blackberry for the fact that it gives you a lot of feedback on the screen while you are running.
However, since I left my previous company and ditched my BB I have been using SportyPal which also works nicely and is free although isn’t as feature rich. They have just announced SportyPal Pro (or 2, they don’t seem to have decided the branding yet). I’m guessing the ‘pro’ title means there will be a charge for the product. I think up until now they have relied on advertising on their website.
SportyPal 2
Of course, if you don’t want to be hauling a device around with you then there is the Garmin Forerunner but maybe that isn’t quite geeky enough. I quite like things like the ‘race’ option on AllSportGPS where you can watch on the map where your ‘former self’ was on the run at the same time.
