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Ask HN: What Cool Android Projects are You doing?

44 points by shareme ↗ HN
I am finishing some library frameworks for android development and attempting to pick a cool android project to complete from my list

One of the ones that stands out is maybe put a SIP/VOIP stack on top of JXTA-P2P.

What cool Android Projects are you guys and gals coming up with?

48 comments

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mks
Not sure if you want to join some OS project or you are just curious about current android scene.

Anyway I will use this for a bit of self promotion though - we have just released public alpha version of source code editor on android - http://www.touchqode.com

We have bigger goals with it - just for now we want to make code editing on mobile phones easier. It might not fit general idea of cool (for us it is definitely cool) since our post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759122 just sunk :)

spacemanaki
Downloading now! I didn't see this before, glad you re-posted. Not sure if I would ever actually use my phone like this, but there's only one way to find out...
shareme
already submit code to the Android Project itself in fact..
nfriedly
Heck yea! I was looking for something like this a couple of months ago.

Feature request: built-in ftp/sftp with upload-on-save option.

mks
Yes we are definitely planning to look into more options of how to get your source files to your phone - FTP and CVS/SVN among them.

At this moment we suggest you synchronize your source files with your development computer using dropbox. There is a writeup on what setup we use ourselves in FAQ section http://www.touchqode.com/faq.htm#synchro

nfriedly
Gotcha - I saw that after posting my comment. Cool.

Next q: Since I installed it directly from your website and not the android market, how will I know about updates? Your blog looks rather sparse.

mks
We will move it to android market soon. Meanwhile you can either subscribe for updates on the main page or follow us on twitter.com/touchqode

And promise we will update the blog as well :)

esspem
Cool idea, but why do you require permission: "Read phone state and calls"?
mks
There is an paypal library for donations (the link is hidden in the linked version) which uses this permission. More info here: https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-2532

Other than that we don't use it in any way but I understand it might rise concern.

tim_iles
Have just downloaded this - will definitely give it a try. I can imagine using this to run one-off scripts, in the way I currently use LINQPad on my laptop.

Good work!

ryandvm
It's only a little "cool", but I just completed version 1 of a live wallpaper that shows National Weather Service radar imagery.

http://www.appidio.com/apps/radar-wallpaper/

ydant
It's begging for auto-location adjustment (when I land somewhere new on a plane, I'd want to see the nearest tower for where I am). At the very least, there should be a way to pick the nearest towers to your current location easily. Bonus points for calculating what range you would need to have that tower cover your current location.

Can the range be shortened even more than 150 miles?

ryandvm
Yeah, auto-location was quickly identified as a potential future option. Though it's not quite foolproof because there are a lot of cases in which you don't actually want the nearest radar site, but rather the nearest one upwind of you.

Another feature I'm toying with is the ability to stitch together multiple images so you can pick any point in the country as the "center" of the image.

As for the radar range, there is all kinds of post processing that could be done to simulate shorter ranges, but the only images the NWS currently produces are either 124 or 248 nautical miles.

starnix17
Hard Copy - Unofficial Instapaper client: http://www.appbrain.com/app/hard-copy-instapaper-app/com.ton...

It's a fun project to get into Android with. I imagine that my pizza/date money income from the project is going to disappear now that Marco is working on Instapaper full-time (as he's probably working on an Android client).

ydant
I don't know Marco, so I don't know his motivations or plans, but he's pretty disparaging of Android on his blog. A lot of what he says I agree with, but a lot of it reads like baseless commentary from the sidelines without having used the product much. So I wouldn't necessarily count on an Android client being his top priority.

If you can make your client work exceptionally well and fit the Android mentality, you have an opportunity to be fairly entrenched and beat out the official client - I wouldn't give up.

One thing Marco does well is think out every user interface decision and add polish to the product. If you don't do that, and he does release an Android client, that could kill your app's success pretty quickly. Polish is something Android is lacking pretty heavily, and we all notice it when it's there.

starnix17
He said on Twitter that he was working with a contractor on it, but it fell through.

I think my app has polish, and it's slowly getting better, but most of it based on the official app adapted to Android UX patterns.

Either way, Marco is nice enough to allow third party clients and I've made more than I thought I would already.

haseman
I second the other comment on this thread. Android is still in wild-west mode. Don't give up!
nir
Working on KalSMS - an app that lets an Android device function as an SMS gateway: http://github.com/niryariv/KalSMS/wiki

If you live where Twilio/Textmarks/etc already cover, it's just a fun hack, but in developing nations it could be a bigger deal. Current solutions require non-trivial setup (software + cell modem) and NGOs sometimes send technicians for a couple weeks to Africa just to set up the gateway. KalSMS (like any Android app) could be installed by simply scanning a barcode - and maintenance just means keeping the phone on, something non-techies easily do already.

Looking for beta testers, and anyone who might donate/sell me a Nexus One to develop on..

ambirex
Pretty neat idea, it kind of fits with a thought I had. I type faster on my keyboard than my phone. I'd like to be able to respond and compose SMS in my IM program when I'm sitting at my computer.

As far as a device to test on, I've been looking at pay as you go services and craigslist. There are some decent deals out there.

nir
You could definitely do this with KalSMS (at least the responding part should be pretty easy). Let me know if you go for it, will be happy to help out if I can.

Do u find Nexus phones on CL/pay as you go? Pay as u go would be great.

djb_hackernews
Wow! I had this very same idea after reading about rapidSMS. Seemed stupid to devote an entire web framework like Django to the solution. Sweet. Looking for contributors?
nir
Yeah, I had it after working with RapidSMS for a while ;)

Would definitely love contributors - my Java sucks. Have tasks in the pipeline like async HTTP reqs, a request log view etc. Email me at niryariv@gmail.com and let's hack!

cludwin
I'm working on the "Finding cool apps in the Android Market is hard" problem.

Right now I am basically taking the crowd sourcing approach by asking people what their top N Favorite apps are. Once I get some more data, I intend to employ some "amazon-style" collective intelligence and create a recommendation engine.

I realize that there are other people working on this problem but to my knowledge no one has solved it yet;)

ggruschow
Maybe you could run in the background and just pay attention to what the users actually use? It seems like the pattern of use is going to be more indicative of what the rest of us should take a look at than the people-who-bother-to-rate-bias will allow. For example, a few basic things I'd like to know: if someone downloads it, tries it, and uninstalls or never touches it again after a couple days, if it force closes a lot [on a class of devices], and if people are using it consistently over time, like multiple times a week for months.

That said, I don't really need recommendations as to what to try, I just need something that doesn't present me with a zillion clearly crappy options (and this applies to Apple's too.. Stupid-compiled-pamphlet-of-information I'm looking at you). After eliminating those, there's not so much left in the Android Market that I can't go through it in a reasonable amount of time.

cludwin
Great advice I think you are on to something there...

One way to look at this problem is to create a "Best Of" app list and keep it really clean.

I'll look into that ;)

gryftir
The app market finding problem differs depending on how you intend to monetize it. Running an app means more to an app that makes it money via advertising then one which is sold. Making money from analytics is different from targeted advertising and from having a paid app.

But if you want an interesting take on it, how about figuring out which people who are downloading the popular apps first, and tracking their behavior as a cohort. Use the trendsetters to predict the trends.

tocomment
Is there a way to pull a list of apps off of someone's phone? That would be easier than having them enter each app.
cludwin
There is but I haven't looked too deeply into it yet but you can get a list of packages installed.

I haven't quite gotten to building an app for making it easy to recommend apps yet but it's next on my list;)

Another important component to this would be to ask the user which apps they actually recommend as opposed to which ones they downloaded, used once and then just left on their phone.

davidw
It's sort of on the back burner, but when I get a phone, I'll probably do more hacking on the Hecl port to Android: http://www.hecl.org
shareme
due to the quality emulator you do not have to wait for a full device..I did not..
davidw
Sure - the code is out there and it works. More than anything it's a motivational thing.
Zak
I'm curious as to whether anybody working on cool Android projects is writing them in Not Java. I've been meaning to try Scala on Android, but I don't know of anyone using it for anything beyond demonstrating that it is possible.
haseman
I've totally neglected it (and it's been in rough shape for a while) but I have a functional Geographically based Augmented Reality library. If someone's interested I'd love to hand the reigns of the project over. Right now it's very much in a proof-of-concept state.

http://github.com/haseman/Android-AR-Kit

tocomment
I wanted to do AR based on a page of text. So it would hover images over certain words. Any idea if that's possible? Any idea where to start learning about it?
haseman
You're looking for pattern based AR (unless the words on your paper have precise GPS coordinates)

I haven't look at it much yet, but you might have some luck with the new Quallcom AR SDK.

https://ar.qualcomm.com/qdevnet/sdk

tocomment
Thanks. A lot of times knowing what to search for is half the battle. I'll see what pattern based AR turns up.
Nemisis7654
I know this is nothing compared to what a lot of you guys are probably use to, but I released an app earlier this month called EasySal Calculator. I wouldn't say it is "cool", but I am new to programming so actually finishing and publishing an Android app is pretty damn cool to me.
UrLicht
Finishing anything you start is pretty damn cool.
geuis
New startup with @limedaring(same name on HN)
kno
I’m building the coolest marketing tool since the rolodex.
JangoSteve
I'm not working on it myself (yet), but I'm really excited about Ruboto, which is a project to allow you to build Android applications in Ruby. I recently saw a presentation about it at JRubyConf this past weekend and have been playing with it since.

http://ruboto.org/

SingAlong
Checkout http://mirah.org for Mirah

Can create android apps with it and get it to compile to an apk. It has ruby-like syntax but is strictly typed. It's former name was Duby. It's awesome and being actively developed. It's come a long way.

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biafra
I am currently working on a pgp encryped version of latitude. Right now its not even alpha although some of my geekier friends already use it. Its crpto is based on bouncycastles openpgp implementation. On the server side I use google app engine. The motivation is to have full control who can know where you are on the client.