I’m a big fan of Android. I got my first Android phone (an HTC Hero) just over a year ago and it ran the 1.5 (Cupcake) version of Android. I’m now on my second phone (Orange San Francisco aka zteZTE Blade). They’ve both been rooted and had custom ROMs installed. It’s incredible how far Android has come in the last 12months and the capacity to customise is neverending. A couple of weeks ago I managed to get hold of an Advent Vega Android tablet from the limited stock that has been made available so far. 2011 will undoubtedly be the year that Android Tablets go mainstream.

Here’s a quick rundown of the essential apps that have fought for space on my homescreens over the last year…

LauncherPro

Customisable alternative launcher

Google Maps (with Navigation)

When the Google Maps website was first launched for desktop browsers it was a quantum leap forward compared to the competition at the time (multimap anyone?). A few years later and the launch of StreetView had people across the world clicking down their own street on their computer screen. That all of that functionality and more besides is now available in the palm of you hand is a sign of how quickly the state-of-the-art marches forward. Turn-by-turn directions, with voice guidance has some fantastic features, streetview works incredibly well and the latest version 5 update adds some really useful features (compass mode ensures that the map is always oriented to the direction that you’re facing). A must have, and worth updating if you don’t have the latest version.

Swype

Swype keyboard

Touiteur (now Plume)

Touiteur (now renamed Plume)

My Tracks

If you’re a keen walker or cyclist then this could be a great app for you. Start it recording and it will track your movements using your phone’s GPS and provide a map showing a track of where you’ve been. It also shows stats of how far you’ve travelled, average and max speed, elevation changes etc. When you stop recording the track can be uploaded to Google Maps, or saved to the SD card as a GPX file which is a standard file format for GPS tracks which can be used in many different applications. I use it when I go out taking photographs to record my location automatically as I take my pictures, I then have software on my PC (GeoSetter) which uses the GPX file to geotag each picture. For joggers there are probably better apps () which give you more useful information about your current and target pace.

Retro Camera

Slick UI but slow on some phones

Produces beautiful photos

Handcent

Great alternative SMS app

Pocket Racing

Days of my life have been lost to PocketRacing

Word Feud

I always hated scrabble... until I got it on my phone

Friction Mobile

Ideal for casual gamers

³(aka Cubed)

An alternative music player with an innovative navigation interface. Albums are displayed as the faces of a cube, flicking up or down with rotate the cube an move through your library artist by artist. Flicking left or right will move through the letters of the alphabet to allow your to quickly jump to the album you want. It sounds slow and cumbersome, but it works incredibly well. Screenshots don’t do it justice, you need to see it action to really appreciate it.

Shazam

You’re sat in a bar and a song starts playing. Your mate says it’s Tracy Chapman, you say it’s a cover by one of those girls from the Sugababes. Who’s right? Fire up Shazam on your phone, let it listen to a few seconds of the song and it will tell the track title, artist and release date. That might be how you use the app, or you might just use it with songs that you know just to amaze your friends and how good the app is! It works surprisingly well even in noisy environments.

]]> http://droza.net/blog/2010/12/23/best-android-apps-2010/feed/ 0 http://droza.net/blog/2010/12/14/zebra-striping-with-css3/ http://droza.net/blog/2010/12/14/zebra-striping-with-css3/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:39:00 +0000 tdroza http://droza.net/blog/?p=491

What is it?

Zebra striping is when alternate rows in tabular data are shaded in different colours to make the table easier to read as shown in example below:

To implement this, we need to be able to identify the alternate rows and use our stylesheet to format them differently from the other rows. There are a few different ways that this can be achieved:

• Add a css class name to alternate rows when generating the HTML server-side
• Use a plugin for your favourite javascript library (jquery, yui etc)
• Hand code your own javascript to iterate through each row of the table and add css class to alternate rows

Experimenting with CSS3 recently, I  found the nth-child() pseudo-class selector. This makes it possible to write a style definition that will only apply to every 2nd row (or 3rd, 4th etc as you see fit) instead of applying to every matching row. So with CSS3 we don’t need to mark up our HTML with special class names that only apply to the look and feel and add no semantic meaning to the data. Now we can zebra stripe our tables (or divs, spans etc) using nothing more than CSS, like this:

tbody tr:nth-child(even) {
   background-color: #eee;
}
tbody tr:nth-child(odd) {
   background-color: #beb;
}

Note that the odd and even keywords are shorthand for 2n+1 and 2 respectively (ie. every second element, offset by one element, and every second element).

Is it really that simple?

Well no, it’s never that simple is it? This is a lovely elegant solution for browsers that support CSS3 but it doesn’t help all your IE6, IE7 or even IE8 users because those browsers (and others) don’t support CSS3. So what to do? Well, we could argue that zebra striping is UI frippery which users of older browsers can manage without, so why do anything at all? In time all our users will update to a better browser, right?

Another solution would be revert back to JQuery which has a similar selector but which works in all browsers. In fact JQuery defines odd and even filters which are shortcuts for nth-child(odd) and nth-child(even):

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('tbody tr:odd').addClass('odd')
});

Personally, I wouldn’t want to include the Javascript/JQuery method in modern CSS3 browsers where it’s not needed because that would mean downloading extra code over the wire to the browser and performing extra DOM processing on page load. My preference would be a compromise where the above JQuery code is loaded in a Javascript import that is specific to non CSS3 browsers, and then combine the stylesheet definitions for the CSS3 and Javascript techniques into a single entry (so that when you want to change the highlight colour, you only have to make updates in one place), like this:

tbody tr.odd, tbody tr:nth-child(even) {
   background-color: #eee;
}

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work because IE will ignore the entire definition if it encounters a selector that it can’t parse. So as far as I can tell, you’re stuck with defining the style twice, once with the CSS3 selector and once with the table row + class name selector. So all this makes me wonder whether it’s worth using the CSS3 selector at all? Going forward, I think I’ll use the CSS3 approach in cases where I don’t have to provide an identical experience for older browsers, otherwise I’ll stick with the tried and tested approach of adding a class name to alternate rows (either server-side where possible, or in Javascript on the browser).

Is there a better approach? If so please let me know in the comments.

One more thing…

I found out about the nth-child() CSS selector by reading The 30 CSS Selectors you Must Memorize. There were several selector types that I wasn’t aware of, and it’s well worth reading and bookmarking.

Augmented reality, or AR, apps work by annotating real world scenes with information gathered from the virtual world. Imagine wandering around a foreign city as a tourist and as you look up at a historic building, your view of it is enhanced by information scoured from the internet about the building’s designer, construction style, its cultural and historical significance and comments left by previous visitors. Then as you turn around, information about a dozen other tourist attractions is added to the scene infront of you so you can choose your next destination. In future this could involve Jordi-la-forge style headsets; data projected onto your spectacles or even tiny displays on a chip embedded inside the eye. If you have an Android powered mobile phone or an iPhone, then augmented reality needn’t be a futuristic dream as there are apps for both handsets available now.

I got a HTC Hero running Android 1.5 just before Christmas, and have been playing around with two augmented reality apps: Layar and WikiTude. Both apps work by pintpointing your location using your handset’s GPS receiver (or cell location) and its inbuilt compass to detect the direction that you’re facing. The apps then trawl a variety of online sources for information about your surrounding area, from Wikipedia (for historical information), panoramio and flickr (photos), twitter (general chatter), and foursquare or brighkite for comments from other visitors. As you hold your camera in front of you, all of this information is added to your phone screen on top of the image seen by the camera in real time. Its already a very impressive application of geotagged information on the web being delivered over the mobile internet to a powerful computing device in your hand but I can see a wealth of other interesting opportunities that this could be applied to in future…

For example, homebuyers in the market for a new build house might wander around a building site where only the foundations have been laid, but through the camera on their phone they see what the buildings will eventually look like, how close together they will be, how the public spaces will be landscaped etc. A new immersive take on the 3D fly-throughs often rendered by architects. Imagine wandering around the site of the Olympic Village in London and seeing how it will look two years from now (or wandering around at the opening ceremony in two years time, and seeing how it looked before the bulldozers moved in).

This could have great applications in education too: Last year I visited the Port Arthur former penal colony in Tasmania. Lots of old crumbling buildings that were used as cells, work houses, staff accommodation etc. Today visitors wander round with a paper leaflet or follow a tour guide to learn about the site but the experience would be much more immersive if the information was delivered to my phone screen. Imagine students seeing how the buildings would have looked 180 years ago or looking at archealogical sites and pointing their phone at the ground to see what lies beneath.

Another application of AR is for giving directions – your AR display becomes your own personal signpost. Hold it in front of you and it shows you what is North, South, East or West of your current location, or which direction you should travel to reach your destination. I can see this being used in theme parks, festivals and large campuses as well as for general directions from A to B.

Current apps overlay text or thumbnail images, but I see no reason why they couldn’t also overlay video – avatars of a tour guide, or locals from 100 years ago in period dress acting out their daily lives – the display screen becomes a portal that allows you to see the scene in front of you as it would have been at a different point in time.

I’m a Formula1 fan and I can imaging walking around a Grand Prix circuit and using AR to point out the names of different corners of the race track, significant events that happened in previous races at the spot where I’m standing and even show replays on the screen of my phone, overlaid on the image of the track in front of me.

Current augmented reality apps are still in their infancy and one of the problems I’m already seeing is that there are more and more apps becoming available and there’s no compatibility between them. If I want to see London Underground stations I have to install Layar, if I want to see flickr photos I have to install Wikitude and so on. In order to stop the fragmentation of augmented reality apps we need standardisation of the data format used for delivery geotagged data to the AR app. I suspect that the app developers are reluctant to standardise becuause they see “their” data as their USP (although wikitude now let users create their own data via the wikitude.me site. If the app developers can crack this, then there should be an exciting future ahead for augmented reality.

Well it had to be done really. The promise of a decent cup of tea and some delicious cakes was too much, as well as the opportunity to try the Singapore Sling at the place where it was created, and we headed off to the Raffles Hotel for High Tea. On the way, we stopped to take a look at the statue of Mr Raffles himself and also for a quick visit to the Asian Civilisations museum.

High Tea consisted of tea (obviously), cakes and crustless sandwiches as well as a hot buffet. We decided to have a Singapore Sling with ours, not exactly traditional, but it was the last  day of our trip afterall.

After High Tea, we did a short boat trip on the river before returning to the hotel to prepare to be transferred to the airport.

So that’s it. It’s all over. Back to reality and English weather tomorrow. Boo Hoo.

Arriving in Singapore at 7pm, we were struck by the humidity (This is not good hair weather). By the time we had got to the hotel and checked in, there was just enough time for a quick wander before bedtime.

The following morning, we had been booked on a sightseeing tour. This took us to various places including the Marina…

Chinatown…

the Botanical Gardens…

and Little India.

We decided to stay in Little India for a very [Tom: very, very] nice Indian lunch at The Banana Leaf [Tom: where you eat your food from a banana leaf rather than a plate] followed by a Mango Lassi before heading off to the Singapore Flyer.

The flyer is like the London Eye but 30 metres bigger making it the biggest big wheel in the world. This experience would have been improved if we hadn’t had to share the capsule with 5 or 6 irritating children. We could barely hear the commentary.

Then it was back to the hotel for a quick rest before heading out to the Night Safari, which is basically a zoo with animals that come out at night. First we went round in a tram seeing rhino, giraffes and lions amongst other things and then we walked around the walking trails. It is quite frightening how close you can get to these animals without anything obvious to stop them from eating you! [Tom: In places they have things like moats to stop the animals from getting too close but in other places there is nothing and you're not in a powerful 4x4 with a ranger armed with a shotgun in case anything goes wrong! In places there were animals right next to the tram (which has no sides) and we were warned not to use flash photography. That's my excuse for the rubbish photos].

Today we’re heading down to the colonial district for a look round, high tea at Raffles and a ride in a boat before returning to the hotel to transfer to the airport. They say that “if you haven’t been to Raffles, you haven’t been to Singapore”. We’ve a long flight ahead of us before we get to Heathrow.

Spending a few weeks away from the normality of home and work life and it’s easy to forget the mundane but nevertheless important things that are still going on. One thing that has been impossible to miss though is the furore over Nick Griffin appearing on the BBC’s Question Time program. Impossible because it has been reported on local news in Australia and Singapore (where I am now as I write this). My access to TV news and the Internet has been sporadic but when I got online this morning and checked my twitter feed, it was dominated by the bbcqt hashtag from last night. The same when I checked my Facebook newsfeed, so although I haven’t seen the program I managed to get a reasonable feel for how it panned out (thanks to @darrenb for his realtime tweets).

A couple of things I find either odd or misguided about the whole thing (and let me preface this by admitting that my understanding of the political system in our country is not nearly as good as it ought to be): The political output from the BBC should not favour one particular party and exclude another nor should the BBC censor the voice of political parties. Like it or not, Griffin and his party have received a substantial number of votes and therefore must have some degree of support and should be given a voice. I would hope that in the case of Question Time, Griffin is challenged by a competent set of panelists that show him and his party as ignorant racists (and that certainly seems to have been the case from the commentary I have seen).

Secondly, I think that the efforts of all those who protested against the BBC’s decision would be better spent targeting the people who voted for the BNP at various recent electiosn. Just like we were always told as children: if you ignore him, he’ll go away. If the BNP had no support, then nobody would be interested in hearing their views and the BBC would never consider broadcasting them.

From what I’ve read today, I can’t believe that Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question time has done him or his party any good at all. Which is a good thing.

Anyway, now that I’ve got that off my chest I can get back to posting photos from my holiday. Which is probably why you came here in the first place.

Our last full day on Hamilton Island (and in Autralia!) and we started with a sea kayaking trip. There were 7 people in our group plus the guide and we started by paddling out of the calm protected water of the marina and out into the bay past Titan Island (the smallest inhabited island in the world, it’s owned by a single family who paid $400K for it over 10 years ago and it’s now valued in excess of $12million!).

We then paddled across rougher ocean to Dent Island which is owned by the same person as Hamilton Island and has a newly opened golf course that has taken 8 years to build. We landed the kayaks further around Dent Island on Yahoo Beach and had a chance to try some more snorkelling. I found it much easier today in the calmer water and could have spent hours floating in the water except that the water was a little murky so there was nothing to see (something to do with the tides apparently).

We then  got back in our kayaks and paddled back across the sea to Hamilton Island where we paddled along the coast through the mangroves and back to the marina with aching arms having travelled about 5 kilometres in total.

After lunch we went back to the marina to board a small boat that would take us parasailing (strapped into a harness attached to a parachute that is tethered to the back of a boat). There were three couples on the boat and we were the last so we had chance to watch the others before we had our go. It’s not actually as scary as you might think, and it’s actually quite a smooth flight. The view is rather good too.

Off back to One Tree Hill now for more sunset drinks and a glass of bubbly to mark our last day in Oz before heading to the marina for fish and chips.

It’s an early flight tomorrow as we head to Singapore, arriving there at about 7pm local time.

This morning we were back at the airport, but this time for a helicopter ride over the Whitsunday Islands and out to a pontoon about 30miles off the coast in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to take the front seat and pretend to be co-pilot which meant I got the best views over the islands. It was the first time either of us had been in a helicopter and I was surprised by how smooth it was but also how noisy until you put on your headset.

After about 20 minutes flying over the islands, including the famous Whitehaven beach, we started the 15 minute flight out to “Reef World”.

The helicopter lands on a small pontoon and a boat comes to collect you and take you over to Reef World which is a big floating station with cafe, showers, changing rooms, viewing decks and all the equipment for diving and snorkelling.

We went snorkelling first and then had a ride in a “semi-submersible”. You don’t wear a wetsuit for snorkelling but they do advise you to put on an anti-stinger suit (which is a fancy sounding name for a lycra catsuit) to protect you from jellyfish and other stinging creatures and to make you look like a power ranger (or like you’re about to compete on Hole in the Wall). The ones in my size were a lovely pale yellow! Snorkelling takes a bit of getting used to as I found that when I put my head under the water my natural reaction was to hold my breath rather than to breathe through the snorkel and I was a bit apprehensive about getting water in my mask at first because I was wearing my contact lenses. It was quite a windy day today which didn’t help because you’re really out in the middle of the ocean so the water was quite rough. We only had about 45 minutes in the water because we wanted to fit everything else in and I was just starting to get the hang of it toward the end. There’s a huge number of brightly coloured fish just below the surface though and they swim right up to you.  (Tracey – We did have our picture taken in the water with some fish by a man from Yorkshire, but in true Tom style, he had his eyes shut so we didn’t bother buying it.) The coral reef is quite impressive too but it was quantity and variety of the fish that I was most impressed by. I’d love to go snorkelling again and learn to get the hang of it better – we probably should have done it in calmer water for our first time. I had a waterproof camera bag for our compact camera so wanted to take loads of pictures under the water. It’s a bit fiddly to operate the buttons through the waterproof case though when you’re trying to stay afloat and you’ve got pretty big waves coming towards you. That combined with the fact that I’d used most of the camera battery in the helicopter meant that I only got about 6 shots in the water.

After lunch was the semi-sub ride. It’s like a boat where you sit in the bottom of the hull and the sides and floor are made of glass so as it sails around you can see the fish and reef. On a normal day it would be quite impressive but it wasn’t as good as the snorkelling so I’d recommend skipping the sub and spending longer in the water.

Tomorrow is another action packed day on and above the water…

An early (07:25) flight from Cairns to Hamilton Island on Monday meant an early alarm call but we got most of Monday on the island. (By the way, it was a prop-engined plane, but the Dash 8 aircraft was still a pretty big plane). Just to maintain our track record with the weather, it started to rain as the plane taxied down the runway in Cairns even though it apparently hadn’t rained for months! We’re staying in the Palm Bungalows which means we get our own little self-contained chalet – we’d been advised by friends to reject an upgrade if we were offered it because that means you end up in the multi-story hotel complex but no upgrade was offered anyway (I think you need to have confetti in you hair to get an upgrade!).

It’s a beautiful island but I can’t help feeling that someone found a paradise island and thought it would be a good idea to turn it into a paradise “resort”. It’s sort of like a big campus or a massive Butlins camp. Although there are people who live here, everything is geared up for tourists. There are no cars here just a mix of petrol and battery driven golf buggies which make an amusing sight on the roads. We started our day by organising some trips and activities for the next couple of days (more on that later), and then went for a walk to explore the island.

We went to the main beach “Catseye Beach” and sat in the sun for a while. At certain times of the year they don’t recommend that you go in the sea because of the risk from potentially deadly jellyfish so there’s also quite a cool pool that looks out over the sea and has a bar in the centre so you can swim over to order your cocktails.

Later we walked to the marina and checked out some of the massive boats and snapped some pics of the exotic birds while we had lunch. There’s also an estate agent so we tried to pick which house we’d buy if we ever have between $1 and $2million to spend on a holiday home.

Later in the afternoon we caught the free shuttle bus up to the One Tree Hill lookout to watch the sunset over the other islands with a cocktail before going back to the marina for dinner.

Tomorrow we have an exciting day that starts with a helicopter ride!

On Sunday I did a bungy jump at the AJHackett centre in Smithfield just outside of Cairns. AJ is one of the people who “invented” bungy jumping and did the now famous jump from the Eiffel tower back in the eighties. It was good fun and I quite enjoyed it (despite the look of terror in one of the pics – thanks for capturing that one Tracey). Although you definitely feel it when you stop falling and the rope starts to take the strain it isn’t a massive jolt – I would do it again at some point. Here are the full set of pics: