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Android ORM released

14 May

So for a while now I’ve been working on a persistence layer for Android in the form of an active record style ORM. It’s been pretty successful in making database tasks a breeze while writing Android apps.

There are two apps on the market which use ActiveAndroid: Wootsi Lite and Pickrand. Wootsi Lite is a Woot notification app and Pickrand is a sample app (source) which picks random items from categories you create.

ActiveAndroid is available at https://www.activeandroid.com/. You can download a trial and the sample project.

Go check it out!

One way to reduce your apk file size.

28 Apr

I recently published an upgrade to Wootsi Lite. This upgrade included many features and fixes, one of which was a move to the ActiveAndroid ORM. ActiveAndroid references the Android library. Because of this, when I exported a signed package for Wootsi, android.jar was being included in the apk. This added over 2mb to the apk. That doesn’t seem like much, but when you’re waiting for 2mb to download on your phone, it is.

I asked around, but couldn’t get any answers about fixing this. Finally I decided to remove it manually, and surprisingly it worked!

Here’s how I did it.

  1. Export the signed package as you normally would.
  2. Open the apk with 7zip, winrar, or something equivalent.
  3. Delete android.jar from the file and save your changes.

That’s it!

This simple process reduced the file size by more than 2mb. My apk went from 2.8mb to 90k.

Wootsi 2.0 and Wootsi Lite Published

19 Nov

A new version of Wootsi has been published along with an ad-supported lite version. You can grab either of these from the Android Market.

Version 2.0 contains some bug fixes along with independently updating items. Also, you can now view items while the application is updating.

Go check it out on the Android Market. Click this link from your android phone to go directly to the app: market://search?q=wootsi

DDMS on Snow Leopard

18 Sep

So a new Android SDK came out a couple days ago. I tried opening up a trace file, but traceview complained that the swt version was not 64-bit compatible. I Googled around for a bit and found a semi-convoluted solution that worked for the 1.5 SDK. Here’s my simplified solution for 1.6.

Download and upzip the file below into “/tools/lib/” in your 1.6 SDK folder. That should do it.

SWT Fix (492)

Wootsi update published

21 Aug

I recently pushed an update to my latest Android app, Wootsi.

Wootsi goes out to woot.com and four other woot.com sub-sites to grab their “daily deal”. The app gives users an advantage to those who don’t, because they can receive periodic updates at times they choose. I have my preferences set to update every three hours starting at 7:15 AM.

Another feature is “woot off” detection, which will fetch updates at a faster rate while a woot off is happening.

The first version of the app had some major bugs, but this update fixes them and adds some new features.

Search for Wootsi on your Android phone to find out more.

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