how hard would it be to write my own android app?
All i want to do is have a thing on screen which, when you hit it (or anywhere on the screen, not important) launches a bit of video. I only want it for personal (+a friend or two) use.

i'm looking into google's app inventor, which sounds promising, but any advice from people who even vaguely know what they're talking about would be gratefully received.

Do you know Java?

Actually it looks like you can use that app inventor software. I'm not familiar with it, but looking at the videos and tutorials it's right up your alley.

http://www.appinventorbeta.com/learn...ml#VideoPlayer

pretty easy if you're used to Java or even WPF

this google thingy is currently soul crushing me just a little bit. It's perfect for what i want to do, which would take ~30sec i think once the stupid inventor is up and running, but so far it's up and saying fu to me. I'm having a beer.

kokiri 1
google 0

may i never need to darken the door of this thread again.

While we're on the topic of smartphone apps.

I want to write a smartphone app (I would start with android, since that's what I have myself) that does the following:

* use the phone barcode scanner to scan a barcode
* check with a central DB if the scanned item is available in stock (connection made through wifi)
* if so, allow user to add the item to a shopping cart

Ultimately there would be more to it but that's the basic functionality.

This has to do with a business idea I have but before turning my life upside down I want to see how feasible this is and how much of the development I could do myself.
I have some programming knowledge/skills (java/c/c++/python) but admittedly it's been a while. I am willing to invest time into studying etc. Do you think it's possible for someone like me to write some sort of 'proof of concept' version for an app like this?

Any tips where to start? Like, really basic/practical things (I haven't written a single line of code for a few years) such as which IDE, what version of java to use, where to look for info/tutorials/...

Thanks in advance.

This would be extremely practical

The steps you would need to take is to learn how to get the Android API to scan them for you, unless you really want to design your own, which is way too much IMO.

http://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/ScanningViaIntent

Then all you have to do is add a function to make a query to a database you have set up on a server by connecting the server and executing the query and obviously displaying the query in a way that is useful to the user.

http://developer.android.com/referen...e-summary.html

Then you will have to build shopping cart functionality. This can be done by storing in your application data folder on the user's machine. I don't know if there are more efficient ways to do it, I'm sure there are. Basically store data when a user adds it to a shopping cart, display data on shopping cart page, and delete on removal.

http://developer.android.com/guide/t...a-storage.html

As far as IDE and such go, I believe google has a plugin for eclipse for android dev. I'm not familiar with it

http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

Use the latest version of java ldo, and make sure you follow a tutorial to get you started like this one:

http://www.vogella.de/articles/Android/article.html

which is focused on Eclipse, Java 1.6 and Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread


good luck sir, let me know if you have any other q's

Thank you so much, great post.

I've just written hello world for android, great success ^^

Hey,

Anyone want to work on some Omaha analysis tools with me. I am working in Java, and the parts I would most like help with are persistence (of analysis results) and GUI, but there is a fair amount of other fun stuff on my to do list.

Sorry if this has come up before, but has anyone considered writing an automatic tool to track werewolf vote counts?

I know chips has a great tool which saves a LOT of time (thanks!), but I want to make it even more automatic.

The only thing though is to do that would require that people vote for the full name of the player. So instead of just

Mewsic

They'd have to put

MewsicLovr

I know that's different from what the current rules say. But if it helps automate most of the heavy lifting a mod has to perform during the day that seems like a very small sacrifice on the player's part? In return, they'd get reliable, accurate, regular votecounts. And all they have to do is just spell out the name of the person they're voting. Over time maybe we could come up with common shortcuts or misspellings.

Another thing would be even to automate night actions, and allow the tool to know about and resolve roleblocks, angels, kills, etc. I think that would be an AWESOME thing to provide, and again the only requirement would be to put the action they're doing and spell out the name of the person like so:

roleblock: MewsicLovr

Maybe everytime the tool comes across an action or player it doesn't know about it PM's the player and asks them to clarify their action.

What do people think of this?

I think that sounds awesome, maybe it would be even easier if there was just an automated way to vote built into the site itself? is that possible?

That would be even better but would require cooperation from the site admins which I don't necessarily want to bother them with.

grrrr

but yeah writing a program would be neat, I just think it would require a lot of cooperation.

what about a script that auto-locks the thread at night?

I don't know if I've said before but I am a programmer and I'm willing to do this myself, I was just asking if there would be interest in this before I put in the time to do it, since it would mean people would have to change their behavior a bit in order for it to properly work.

This might be the wrong thread for that, but I wanted to initiate the discussion somewhere.

this is the right thread for it and you would be god if u did this

better than god

Oh, then we should talk. I have a roadmap in mind.

The more I think about it the more I think this is actually the best solution. When a person who is a member of the POG Game Mods group makes a thread, they could maybe have the option of saying "this is a game thread", in which case "magic stuff" happens so a person can vote through the thread.

Zurvan, do you think the admins might agree to this? Again, I have experience writing plugins for vb, so if I write it and send it to them for review do you think they would be willing to install it?

a pogger (ourhouse) already did this all. auto vote counts and threads that lock at night. but no one plays at usg anyways

Exact names aren't necessary. If you are a programmer, you should know this

OH offered the WW script to Mat a couple years ago. He got a flat no. They aren't interested in a plugin like that. It requires way too much changing of the site.

A browser plugin would be awesome, tho

The site is changing to VB4 at some point, maybe they'd consider adding it then?

No, they won't. They are hesitant to add well tested, widely installed plugins. They don't want anything to do with a custom one for one forum