Top 5 Home Screen Features For Android Developers

Android has several very intriguing components that add many dynamic capabilities to your home screen. The trend is slowly migrating towards dynamic home screens. The static screens you have been accustomed to are over. Users want access to information faster and with fewer clicks. Patent filings are a very good barometer for the future direction of mobile operating systems and home screen patents are one of them. Dynamic home screens are definitely a trend. In fact, Android provides many intriguing home screen components that you can leverage right now to create a more efficient and dramatic user experience:

App Widgets

App Widgets are small application components that you can embed on your home screen. If you need instant access to important data, these compact portlet-like components are an ideal choice.
Advantages:

• Compact design
• Provides portlet-like capabilities for your home screen
• Quick and simple to access
• Refresh frequency is configurable

Quick Search Box

The Quick Search Box is an extremely powerful feature. It is the ubiquitous Google search function available directly on your Android device. In addition to its Google Web search capabilities, users can also search their local device and applications too. The only caveat with Quick Search is that users must opt-in to search their applications.
Advantages:

• The only search function your device will ever need
• Leverages the power of Google Search
• Displays results in a consistent framework
• Available directly from your home screen

Live Wallpapers

Live Wallpapers are interactive backgrounds that are available on your home screen. Most of the current Live Wallpaper apps in this space are of the fun and whimsical type. However, if you wanted your calendar, appointments, or stock streamer available here it can be accomplished.
Advantages:

• Quick and simple to access
• Refresh frequency can be customized
• These are simply apps exposed to the background

Live Folders

A Live Folder is a real-time view of data. Live Folders can be launched from your home screen via a shortcut.
Advantages:

• Quick and simple to access
• Data is refreshed in real-time

Status Bar Notifications

Status Bar Notifications conveniently alert the user from the home screen. In addition to an icon or text notification you can also be notified via sound, vibration, or flashing lights.
Advantages:

• Quick and simple to access
• Alerts can notify users in real-time

No Fluff Just Stuff: Minneapolis Summary (Spring)

The No Fluff Just Stuff conference was back in Minneapolis. Here is a brief recap of the sessions I attended:

Encryption on the JVM: Boot Camp

Key points:

• Anything can be cracked with time, money, and hardware. The goal is to make it an infeasible task.
• The Java Cryptography Extention (JCE) within the JDK is a good library. However, JASYPT was the speakers preferred encryption library.
• Is all of your sensitive information encrypted?

Encryption on the JVM: Advanced Techniques

Key points:

• WIFI networks are not secure. There are plenty of software tools available today that can crack WIFI security algorithms (WEP or WPA).
• The unfortunate companies that are exploited for encryption vulnerabilities may appear in the Non-Encrypted Hall of Shame
• Top 25 most dangerous programming errors

Hadoop: Divide and Conquer Gigantic Datasets (Intro)

Key points:

• Hadoop is an extremely performant solution for searching enormous amounts (terabytes) of unstructured data (HTML, XML, images). The performance advantage is achieved from partitioning the search across a cluster of worker nodes.

Keynote: How (not why) Agile Works!

Key points:

• Agile works for the following three reasons:
  1. It provides continuous feedback loops
  2. Improves communication
  3. It is fun!

Grails - How to Build Enterprise Apps

Key points:

• The GORM capabilities are nice. It is not necessary to code trivial finder methods. For example, Person.findAllByAgeLessThan(16) is implicitly available. The convention works as follows: .findAllBy(). Very convenient.

Implementing Evolutionary Architecture

Key points:

• Restful Web Services are appealing because they are scalable and free.
• What is the value of leveraging Hypermedia as the engine of application state (HATEAOS)? This strategy completely decouples the server-side workflow from the client. For example, imagine we have a wizard-style workflow where the user makes decisions and clicks the "next" button as they continue through each step. As the server processes the requests, it will update the state of the workflow and respond with a list of allowable transitions (URI links) that the user may perform next. What is the advantage? If the workflow changes in the future we only have to update the workflow on the server-side. No client-side changes will be necessary because the server is dynamically driving the UI's navigation by returning the allowable URI links following each request.

Implementing Emergent Design

Key points:

• Code == Design
• Delay design decisions until the last responsible moment.
• Eliminating technical debt must be a continuous process. You may evaluate your technical debt with Sonar.
• Code analysis tools:
  • ckjm (analyze coupling)
  • x-ray (Eclipse plug-in to analyze system complexity)
  • Structure101 (Currently used on the Spring framework)

HTML 5 ... and the Kitchen Sink

Key points:

• Preview of HTML5
• Supported browsers and features
• HTML 5 GeoLocation Demo (Only works in Firefox)
• Canvas example

Architecting Code for Concurrent Execution

Key points:

• The preferred design strategy is to manage concurrency concerns at an architectural level. Traditionally, we have leveraged concurrency via Java's synchronized keyword at the method level. Successfully managing concurrency at a low level can become challenging. Instead, prefer to leverage architectural design patterns to simplify concurrency management. Several design patterns for consideration include:
  • Producer-Consumer
  • Actor
  • Map/Reduce
• Functional languages are inherently thread-safe because all their objects are immutable.

Introducing Spring Roo

Key points:

• Spring Roo can help provide Grails-like scaffolding. A valuable tool for rapid prototyping.