Just a quick post to say Zolmo’s latest application is now on the Android Market, and for a limited time at an introductory price. It was a genuine pleasure to work on this, I hope you have a lot of fun cooking great meals with it. Download Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals from the Android Market.

I just stumbled across this truly excellent collection of Android UX Pattern wireframes and examples. This is certainly essential reading for anyone starting Android development as the official documentation is somewhat lacking here. http://www.androidpatterns.com

ProGuard obfuscates and shrinks .apk files, providing some added protection for your app, but you may encounter some problems using it right now, at least with ADT 9 preview 3. By default ADT creates a proguard.cfg file with every new project, so if you have an existing project just copy it over from a new dummy project. The next step is to enable ProGuard, you do this by adding the following to your default....

Google recently announced the Nexus S phone, created in partnership with Samsung. This is the latest in the developer phone range, aimed at providing a reference device for the next wave of consumer Android devices running Android OS 2.3 (Gingerbread) and higher. One of the features of this phone is an NFC chip, which is capable of transmitting and reading data at a distance of up to 10cm. It is compatible with existing systems such as RFID tags: tiny, incredibly cheap slithers of componentry able to store information and be embedded in anything from food packaging to stickers....

Yesterday Google unveiled the Chrome Web Store. In a nutshell this is an App Store for the Chrome browser and a critical component in the upcoming Chrome OS. The Chrome browser is found on all major desktop operating systems, on the enormous numbers of Android phones and tablets, and the new TVs and set top boxes from companies like Sony, Logitech and reportedly the biggest of them all, Samsung. Chrome OS is a desktop operating system replacement designed to operate entirely in the cloud, using web technologies, with almost negligible startup times for the instant-on, always connected generation....

I’ll be speaking at this month’s London Flash Platform User Group meeting (27th May) on the subject of native Android application development. The presentation will get you up and running from installing the tools to building and skinning applications. You can sign up to attend and find out more details here. UPDATE: Recording here. (Volume is very low, so without external speakers you may have trouble hearing).

Update: The code has now been updated to support jQuery 1.6+, thanks again to Zachstronaught. Please bear in mind the original date on the post below, there may be some inaccuracies due to new browser versions. I’ve just finished a jQuery extension which adds support for modifying and animating CSS3 transformations in 2D and 3D. This was based on the 2D transform monkey-patch by Zachary Johnson. I needed this for a project I’m working on which specifically targets Webkit (tablet devices), but I’m releasing the code under the existing MIT license for anyone to use as they wish....

I’ve just posted over in the Text Layout forums how I went about implementing Squiggly with “pure” Text Layout Framework… so that’s not using TLF/FTETextField or the Spark components. This is really just an overview which should give plenty to help you figure out the steps. I can’t paste the exact code because it’s embedded in a client project, but I do refer to some of the TLF functions throughout that you have to make use of, if anyone can suggest improvements, please drop them in the comments....

This post discusses the various workflows for producing SWFs with the standalone compiler that use graphical assets and animations created in Flash Professional (“Flash Pro”). At time of writing the latest version of Flash Pro is CS4, with CS5 briefly out in beta for a short while. Specifically we look at the methods that involve exporting SWCs and using the [Embed] metatag within class files. Recently I posted a bug report regarding the [Embed] metatag, which led me to write this post in order to find out whether people are happy with their current workflows and how well others receive projects when it comes to handovers and maintenance....

I was lucky enough to receive one of the first waves of Nexus One’s (N1) from Google’s direct online shop. Before I go on, the shopping experience was a little too slick IMHO. I signed in with my Gmail account, clicked buy, clicked confirm and it was shipping, if you’ve used Google Checkout before they will likely have your card details and address. You do have 15 mins to cancel the order though....