Released Version 1.2 of Expenses Simply

My Expenses Simply App has been updated to version 1.2.  I've added a feature to email your entries in a comma separated form (easy to import into desktop apps).

Here is the original post announcing the applications.

Apps to setup an SSH socks proxy on android

So I had a need to access a website that is on a private home network which resides behind a Linux server. The only way into this box is through an SSH connection that only takes rsa keys.

The two apps I used are sshtunnel and proxydroid. Both of these are available in the market.

My sshtunnel settings

My proxydroid settings

After that just fire up the browser and browse to the site. For quicker access I put the widgets for each application on my desktop so that I can launch them quickly.

Released Version 1.1 of Expenses Simply

So this is just a minor bug fix.  I've released version 1.1 of my Android App Expenses Simply.  Please give it a whirl and let me know if you are having any issues with it.

Replaced the screen on my Dell Streak

So I cracked the screen on my Dell Streak a couples of months back.  It was still functional but the hair line cracks all over it were starting to get really annoying.  I contacted Dell to ask what I would have to do to get them to replace it.  They said I'd need to buy a whole new phone for about $250  ergg.  I searched the web for directions on how to do this myself and came across this excellent article on XDA to replace it.  I order a screen from GadgetFix on ebay and worked my way through the guide.  All done, works perfectly took about 30 minutes to do it.  I have a big thank you to all those on the internet that made it possible for me to do this on $75.

Android Database Tutorial I found on the net

This is an extremely useful Android database tutorial I found on the net at Another Android Blog.  I had been trying to wrap my head around an easy way to use sqlite in Android and this really put me over the top.  Show the guy some love and send him a donation if it helps you.

Android in action, second edition

So I have this Safari Online account through work.  As I get more and more into my Android development hobby I find my self referring to this book "Android in Action" a lot.  I just thought I'd share it with the rest of whoever reads this blog.

10 useful solutions for Android developers courtesy of Shaman.sir

Here's a very useful article for Android developers courtesy of Shaman.sir

Video on Android UI patterns

Here's a video I stumbled soon on ui patterns from Google I/O. Its caused me to rethink a lot of my impressions.

Android project #2: My Savings

I think I've come up with my next project. My wife is a big time coupon clipper so to help her I'm planning to develop some sort of tracker for couponing. I think initially I'm going to start with calculating savings and then moving on from there. I might even add a bar code reader into it.

Expenses Simply 1.0

It's here, I've settled on an application name "Expenses Simply".  I did a bunch of Google searching and didn't see any hits on it.  It's a pretty straight forward application.

• Add expenses using the top bar.
• Delete a single item by accessing the context menu with a long press.
• Delete all items through the menu button.
• Undelete through the menu button.
• Items are sorted by date.

Please let me know if you have any issues with the application by leaving me a comment on this post.  

It should be on the android market soon. Link to application in the market.
QR code for those that know how to use them.

UPDATE:
Release 1.2 is here see post for details

Expense tracker part 2. Beginning with the interface.

So, I followed the directions to create a basic app at the android developers site. I wont more you with the details as the directions are pretty simple. To keep it simple I picked all the defaults and picked android 2.2 as my target.  I will probably be able to roll this back a bit based on the features I plan to use.

So I've decided to start with the interface and work back from there.  I've worked up this /res/layouts/main.xml based on the image from this post.

Syntax Highlighter seems to like have full close tags in it. go figure.

It ends up looking like this in the gui tool.

It doesn't look like much but the fields are all in the right location.  The alternating color listview is going to be handled programatically with a custom listview.  I can't see any other way of handling that.

I guess that's about it for this chapter.  Next I'll start on the application internals.

Expense Tracker basic design.

After getting my development environment setup using instructions from the android developers site, I have set about designing my first android app.

The main use case I have for this app is to keep track of the things I spend during the day so that they can be brought back to  my home computer and added to Quicken.

The features that I want are:

• Track date, note and amount for each purchase.
• Looks good in both layout and portrait
• preserves data across sessions of using it.
• delete single items or all items from a context menu.
• total values at bottom.

Here is a quick hack of a drawing of what I want the basic interface to look like.

Next post should start with creating the basic app and getting the data structure working.

Adventuring into Android development

So I got a Dell Streak in October.  It's an awesome device that I never seem to put down or quit tinkering on.  I'm running a custom ROM called Streakdroid. I've been itching to get into Android development for fun and profit since I got this thing. I've done a lot of Java programming in the past so this shouldn't be too difficult.  I'm going to chronicle my journey on this blog in hopes that it might help someone out there figure out what they need to do.  I am hopeful that other developers will see what I've done and give me better ways to do things as I am only a beginner at this.

For my first project I am going to do an expense tracker.  Why an expense tracker?  I currently use Quicken to keep track of my personal finances and would like a way to track what I buy during the day so that I can bring it back to the computer to enter into quicken.  If I don't do it this way I generally forget what I've bought and then have to go look in my online banking system and put it back into Quicken that way.

Again if anyone has a comment about the way I've done something please feel free to point it out to me.