Archives
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How do you get the Virtual Keyboard (aka Soft Keyboard) in the Android 4.0 Emulator?
Ok, getting the Android 4.0 emulator is not obvious. In previous versions, I had set the "Keyboard Support" to yes. I did that this time, and nothing. I played with touch support, and no luck as well. I finally had to beg to my Android contact for some help. After much discussion, he pointed me towards
turning off the "Keyboard Support" (aka setting the value to no). Really? Really? Ok seriously, I'm glad that this is now working as I thought it should, and that the virtual keyboard support actually looks right in the Ice Cream Sandwich emulator. But, this is also stupid. This value is the exact opposite of previous settings. While I am glad that this now works, the fact that the value is the exact opposite of previous settings is a hassle.
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My article on Creating a User Interface with Mono for Android
There's no doubt about it: Smartphones based on the Android OS are hot. Currently, they're generating 550,000 activations per day. Their market share is at approximately 40 percent, and continuing to rise.
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Training on MonoTouch for the iPhone and Mono for Android
I'll be in Sandusky, OH on January 9th and 10th to provide two full days on MonoTouch for the iPhone and Mono for Android. This training is open to the public. Signups can be done through SharpeAxe Training. The pricing is $999 for signups before December 1st and $1,199 December 1 and later.
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HTML5 Webcast/Webinar for ASP.NET Developers
I'll be doing an HTML5 Webinar for ASP.NET Developers for DevProConnections Magazine on October 26, 2011 at 10 am PDT.
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Charlotte .NET User Group - Mono for Android #monodroid
I'll be speaking at the Charlotte .NET User Group on September 27 (next week). The subject will be Mono for Android. Info on the talk:
Tuesday, September 27, at 6:00 PM in the Mt. Kilimanjaro/Mt. Everest rooms of the Charlotte Microsoft Campus for an introduction on writing native applications geared for the Android Platform based on .NET/C#/Mono. We'll examine the overall architecture of MonoDroid, discuss how it integrates with Visual Studio, debug with MonoDroid, and look at a couple of example apps written with MonoDroid. This session is for the .NET developer that wants to move to the Android Mobile Platform. While the session will be introductory for the Android Platform, it will be intermediate/expert for those on the .NET Platform.
Android development is predominantly with the Java Language based on the Java VM "Dalvik" using the Eclipse IDE. If a developer or company has already made a significant investment in .NET, the time to learn Java and the Android Mobile Platform is significant. An attendee of this session will be able to take their existing knowledge of .NET/C# and Visual studio and immediately apply this to writing apps for the Android Mobile Platform. The significance of this should not be understated. Learning a new language, no matter how similar to .NET/C#, results in a significant learning curve as well as a significant time investment. Add in the time required to learn Eclipse, and there is even more time required. With this session, you will learn how to develop Android Applications using Visual Studio and the Novell MonoDroid plugin. Attendees will be able to immediately begin development on Android in Visual Studio 2010 using their existing language skills and known development environment.
Bio:
Wally McClure graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) with a BS & MS in Electrical Engineering. Since that time, he has done consulting and development for companies large and small. Wally has authored books on iPhone Programming with Mono/Monotouch, Android Programming with Mono for Android, application architecture, ADO.NET & SQL Server, and finally AJAX. He is a Microsoft MVP and an ASPInsider, and a partner in Scalable Development, Inc., where we're ramping up to provide training on Monotouch and Mono for Android. You can read his blog at morewally.com and follow him on Twitter at @wbm.
Wally is married and has two children. When not writing software, Wally plays golf, exercises, and hangs out with his family. -
Mobile Software Development on Keyvan.TV - #monotouch #monodroid
I was recently interviewed on Keyvan TV regarding mobile software development. We talked a lot about monotouch, mono for android, the general marketplace for mobile, and other assorted things.
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My article on HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers is now online
I'm super excited that my HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers is now online. Hopefully, this article is helpful in getting ASP.NET developers started with HTML5.
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My thoughts on Google - Motorola in SDTimes
My thoughts on Google - Motorola at SDTimes. Overall, I think this is positive. #monodroid
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Technology and Friends Show #167 - Wally McClure on Mobile #monotouch #monodroid
Back on July 1, 2011, I sat down with Dave Giard and we talked about mobile on Technology and Friends Show #167.
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InfoQ article on #Monotouch and Mono for Android #monodroid
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been talking with InfoQ regarding Monotouch and Mono for Android (aka Monodroid). Here's the results of this interview, I hope you enjoy them. I talk about what I see in the community, the futures, and why you should jump in right now.
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Status of Monotouch and Mono for Android #monotouch #monodroid
It looks like Xamarin is now the official stewards (once again) of Mono, Monotouch, Mono for Android, Visual Studio Tools for Mono and associated Mono tools. This is really good news for us in the developer world.
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What do we do now? "It's over man, Wormer dropped the big one" - #MonoTouch and #MonoDroid
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All Technology roadmaps remain..........except for the ones that we won't tell you about
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Talking Mobile on Cloud Plumbing - iPhone, Android, MonoTouch, and Mono for Android
I was interviewed by Ryan Parsley last week regarding Mobile Computing with iPhone and Android using MonoTouch and Mono for Android. Hopefully, you enjoy it.
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Another one is "In the books" - Professional Mono for Android is now AR complete
The genesis of this book has been really interesting. It started while we were still writing our "Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch" book. We started talking about this due to the Apple self FUD starting last April. Watching the number of Android devices sold go up each quarter also helped me make the decision to go forward. Martin Bowling started as the lead author. Unfortunately, he had family issues and had to drop off during the planning stages. The other authors that joined me on this were Nathan Blevins, Jon Dick, Chris Hardy, and John Croft.
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I'm Hooked on the Cloud
My DevProConnections article on Azure is now online - I'm Hooked on the Cloud.
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Mobile Luncheon and Discussion at New Horizon's on May 11, 2011
I'll be leading a discussion at New Horizon's Computer Learning Center here in Knoxville, TN on Mobile Application Development. I'm very excited about this. Here's a description:
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Mobile Connections - Las Vegas, NV - I'll be there
I'm going to be at Mobile Connections in Las Vegas, NV. It runs from April 17-21. I'm travelling to Las Vegas, just in time for people to leave from Mix, on April 15 (in fact I'm suppossed to be taking off in 7 minutes). If you are a developer and in the Las Vegas, get ahold of me and come hang out with me and my friends over the weekend of April 15.
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Mono for Android Interview with Michael Desmond of Visual Studio Magazine
I was honored to be interviewed by Michael Desmond of Visual Studio Magazine regarding the release of Mono for Android 1.0. The interview was done this morning and he already has it up on their site.
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Turn-By-Turn Driving Directions in Android with Mono for Android (MonoDroid)
I needed to open some turn-by-turn directions in Android. I did the following with Mono for Android, and this code worked:
String url = String.Format("http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr={0},{1}&daddr={2}", lat, lon, dAddr);
Intent intent = new Intent(Android.Content.Intent.ActionView, Android.Net.Uri.Parse(url));
StartActivity(intent);
In this code, I needed to get some directions from the current latitude and longitude. -
My article on iPhone & iPad Programming for .NET/C# Developers with MonoTouch has been published
My article on iPhone & iPad Programming for .NET/C# Developers with MonoTouch has been published in the April, 2011 issue of DevPro Connections. I hope you enjoy it.
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Mobile Connections - Las Vegas, NV - April 17-21
I'll be speaking at Mobile Connections in Las Vegas, NV. I'll be speaking on:
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HTML5 Presentation from AnDevCon using ASP.NET Web Pages and Razor
Here is my presentation on HTML5 Applications from AnDevCon.
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Code Project Mobile Virtual Conference with MonoDroid
I'm speaking on Wednesday at the Code Project Mobile Virtual Conference on the subject of Android Programming for .NET/C# Developers with MonoDroid. Check it out, I think its free. Hopefully, you'll find this helpful in your mobile pursuits.
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Passing values between Activities using MonoDroid
Been doing some work in MonoDroid and found that I needed to pass a user entered value from on Activity to another Activity in MonoDroid. Here's how I did it.
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iPhone Programming with MonoTouch article in DevConnections Magazine - April, 2011
As an FYI, my article on iPhone Programming with MonoTouch for DevConnections magazine has been submitted and edited. I'm really excited about this. It will coincide with my presentations at Mobile Connections in Las Vegas in April, 2011. If you are coming to Mobile Connections, please look me up while you are there, I'd love to meet you and discuss mobile technologies.
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MonoDroid Article in Visual Studio Magazine
The February edition of Visual Studio magazine is now online. In it, my article regarding MonoDroid, the implementation of C# and .NET for Android devices, is online. I can't thank Michael Desmond enough for the opportunity. Its fitting now that Android is the most popular smartphone platform. This article is available online at:
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MonoDroid Preview 11 Logging Changes
With the latest MonoDroid Preview, the new logging functionality is:
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ASP.NET Podcast Show #149 - MonoDroid Development on the Apple Macintosh OSX
Given that I have a cast on my arm, I installed the MonoDroid Development Framework for Apple Macs today. I walked through it and found that things are pretty much the same as with the MonoDroid plugin for Visual Studio 2010. This post shows the video displaying this. This video is based on MonoDroid Preview 11.1.
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MonoDroid on the Mac
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Displaying error messages with Android and MonoDroid
One of the most annoying things when I build a desktop app in .NET is MessageBox.Show() for displaying images or using a alert() in Javascript is that I have to click on the popup dialog to make it go away. I love the little messages at the bottom of an Android screen that come up, display some text, and then go away. Its a Toast. Here's a simple call to make one display.
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Bundle identifier on iOS with MonoTouch
So, I found a couple of issues in developing with MonoTouch that I need to be aware of. These are:
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MonoDroid Article in Visual Studio Magazine - February, 2011 Edition (hopefully)
Sweet, I found out back in early December that an intro article that I wrote regarding MonoDroid will be a "featured article" in Visual Studio Magazine. I have no idea what "featured article" means, but hey it sounds good. :-)
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Logging errors with MonoDroid and Android
Error logging, its such a simple concept. When an error occurs, store some kind of information about the error. For some reason, we don't seem to do lots of it. Why? Well, its usually fairly easy to track down the information about an exception. With most web apps, you can pretty much repeat the errors as you need to. Logging on the server is fairly easy. Networks are fairly high speed and dependable items of infrastructure. Is error logging really that necessary?
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MonoDroid is publically available
The ability to program Android devices in C# using many of the libraries that you are already familiar with is rather cool. You may/not have heard about MonoDroid, which is an implementation of the Mono Framework, for Android. It has been in a closed beta. About 2 weeks ago, it became available in an open beta. While there are a number of things that it doesn't do at this point in time, you can tell that the Mono team is working towards getting many pieces working. If you are interested, check out the MonoDroid web site.
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Cool LINQ over JSON..........In MonoDroid no less
I was working on some json/rest web services written in windows communication foundation (wcf). I wanted to use the System.Json namespace to do some of this. I made an http web request asynchronously. In my call back method, I have following code doing a linq query over this json result.
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Wrapping your WCF Responses
I've got a WCF web service that exposes its data over REST. I'm calling it from iPhone and Android. The method signature is something like:
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Writing to the UI with MonoDroid using RunOnUIThread
I've been pulling my hair out over the past day or so trying to update the UI in my test app. I was having problem after problem. I finally got down to my base problem. I could not write out to my TextView. WTF could be causing that? I can write to my UI in other parts of my app. This is pure craziness. I thought long and hard and nothing was coming to me. Wait, the light bulb went on. I am in the wrong thread. Great, how do I write in the correct thread? MonoDroid supports the entire AsyncTask set of objects, but this seemed like overkill. I was reading and came across RunOnUIThread().......Bing..........The lightbulb has been invented...BlueStar Airlines (oh wait, wrong context). Anyway, here is what I needed:
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Calling a REST Based JSON Endpoint with HTTP POST and WCF
Note: I always forget this stuff, so I'm putting it my blog to help me remember it.
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How did I get here? My route to Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and interest in Mobile Devices
I get asked all the time how/why I got interested in mobile and jumped on this fairly early. I tend to give half answers because it wasn't just one thing that took me to mobile, but a whole host of separate ivents culminating in a specific event where I wasdoing market research in May/June 2008. Let me throw out the events and the facts about me:
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Getting the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service to run on Windows with Android 2.3 SDK
As I found out, DDMS doesn't run by default when you install the Android 2.3 SDK in Windows. If you start it up, you get an error message "Failed to get the adb version: Cannot run program "adb": CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified." Thankfully, with the magic of internet search engines, I figured out that I had to add the directory that contains adb to my path statement in Windows7. After that, it just all worked.
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Bytes by MSDN - Let's talk Cloud
While I was at DevConnections in Las Vegas, I was honored to be interviewed by Tim Huckaby for "Bytes by MSDN" on Cloud Computing.
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Mobile Connections in Las Vegas April 17-21
I'll be speaking at Mobile Connections in Las Vegas. The event is April 17-21. The event is a cross platform mobile event. There will be sessions on iOS, Android, WP7, Blackberry, and cross platform tools. The sessions I am speaking on are:
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Professional Android Programming with MonoDroid and .NET/C#
Professional Android Programming with MonoDroid and .NET/C# is now listed on Amazon.com and Wiley/Wrox. Here's a little bit about our book.
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Speaking on MonoDroid - Android Developer Conference (AnDevCon) - March, 2011 in San Francisco
I'm honored to announce that I'll be speaking at AnDevCon in March, 2011 in San Francisco. I've been spending a significant amount of time on iPhone and Android. I'm trying to get a startup off the ground. Mobile devices will be an integral part of this startup. As such, iPhone and Android will be our target devices at this point in time. I'll be doing an all day pre-class as well as parts of the pre-class as sessions through out the conference. I'm looking forward to this. If you are interested in Android Development, please come to this conference. If you are coming to this conference, please look me up while there.
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ASP.NET Podcast Shows #146 & 147 - WebMatrix, Razor, and ASP.NET Web Pages Oh My
Since I forgot to post these shows here, I'll post the links to the shows. Enjoy:
