Crumbs!

Sometimes, writing android apps is harder than writing iPhone apps. Mostly, because android phones run on a wide variety of carrier networks, each with their own “quirks”…

For the last couple years, android apps could send text messages with the following snippet of code:

import android.telephony.gsm.SmsManager;
// some other stuff omitted.
SmsManager sm = SmsManager.getDefault();
sm.sendTextMessage(destination, service_center, "my message", null, null);

That only works because of the following assumptions: * your phone is on a GSM network * the destination specified knows how to send your message back to the proper recipient.

With the Verizon Droid series of phones, neither of those assumptions hold.

For the first, the newer android releases (>=2.1, i think), supply the android.telephony.SmsManager class, which has the same interface.

The second, i’ve found, is a bit more complicated. All email-to-sms-gateway’d messages on verizon come from the same 4-digit code “6245” (aka- MAIL on a numeric keypad). This gateway does not store any state on which messages were sent from which email addresses, so all responses must include the intended destination address.

To that end, i’ve added a new preference to Klaxon, under “Sms Settings” called “Send Destination”. If you are on Verizon, you will need to ensure that this box is checked, otherwise your messages will not arrive at their intended destination.

Reference links: Wikipedia list of Email to Sms gateways stackoverflow answer

I’ve just released the newest shiniest Klaxon yet, v20!

It only took 3 release candidates, but now its working fine, with a fully-rewritten SMS parser, which is capable of understanding 3 different formats of sms alerts. see the project site for details: http://klaxon.googlecode.com/

qr code follows:

Featuring a complete rewrite of the SMS parsing! There are now 3 different types of Sms Parser (see Preferences -> Sms Settings -> Page Parser Type).

• Standard - should work for most sms providers.
• Go2Mobile - a reasonably popular email -> sms gateway in Europe.
• Labeled Fields - some providers add labels, like “Subj:”

for more information on page parsers: http://code.google.com/p/klaxon/wiki/PageParserDetails

The most exciting thing about this change is that the page parser is now testable!! Oh, and there’s now a changelog, in the Preferences menu.

UPDATE: new Release candidate RC2 linked below. (RC1 has a crashy bug)

to install the new Klaxon v20 RC2:

In case you hadn’t guessed from my earlier Klaxon fixes, i’m oncall this week. Luckily for me, i’ve found time between pages to get a new release going. This latest release, which i think will top off v12, has a ContextMenu available for easy replies from the ListView, without having to read all those pesky details about exactly what paged you.

url: http://klaxon.googlecode.com/files/Klaxon-v12.apk
QR code:

After a lengthy hiatus, i’ve started doing some android development again. I have to say, the tools have come a long way. the management of AVD (Android Virtual Devices) is substantially easier than it used to be. Support for test projects are fantastic. Maintaining a test project used to be a huge pain, but is now much simpler. hooray!!

And with that, i’ll show you what i’ve made: a new Klaxon release!

New feature: there is now a “Delete All” option in the menu. for easily purging last shift’s pages.

http://x.nerdcircus.org/android/Klaxon-v12-rc1.apk

Below is the QR code to this url, for easy device installation.