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 cranked out the first functional version of my changes to ttTumblr.

My changes so far are restricted to Text and Image posting methods, but the rest will be added soon.

• a Service now makes all the http calls, so they are less likely to be interrupted by app death
• Options! - posts can now toggle the tweeting and privacy at post time in the options menu
• Multiple Tumblelogs! - set your default blog in Settings, and change it per-post in the Menu.

as a side note, the majority of my changes were written on an airplane.

This apk is signed with the debug key. it will not install if you’ve already got ttTumblr installed from the market.

sorry about the spammy posts. i’ve been working on some additions to ttTumblr.

So far, i’ve converted the Text and Image posts to use a Service, instead of just spinning off threads. Oh, and ttTumblr now appears in the “Share” menu from within the Gallery app.

code’s over at github.

Apparently Hiveminder broke my app with some unannounced changes. If you’re seeing problems like:

• the popup (toast) is blank after you braindump
• the task list appears empty, but you have stuff to do

You’re probably running into these issues. its not up on the market yet, as its untested, but here’s a qr code:

also the code can be found at github

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:

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.