Thursday 6 December 2012

10 Application for Android You Must Have

Mobile phones are increasingly important part of our lives, and we seem to be doing everything but making phone calls. For example reading the news, watching a YouTube video, and taking photos at events like the World Cup are things we expect to do on mobile phones. Google’s mobile operating system is well on its way to bringing flashier features to Android phones. Android is a software platform for mobile devices. Then if you are a Andriod Mobile Use, you will not miss following list. We prepared 10 the best applications for android you must have. But it is just a begin, hope you can share us what you like best.



Edit and share anywhere with Adobe Photoshop Express software for Android phones.
Adobe Photoshop Express for Android


AndFTP is a FTP/SFTP/FTPS client for Android devices. It allows managing several FTP servers. It comes with both a device file browser and a FTP file browser. It provides download and upload features with resume support.
AndFTP


Scan is an Android application that finds pricing and metadata for anything with a barcode.
Android Scan


It is a todo list / task tracking system for Google’s Android platform built with your productivity in mind.
Astrid


cab4me helps you to find a cab when you need it. Start on the map and select your approximate pickup location. The map also shows you taxi stands whenever the data is available for your area.
Cab4me


This application will give you easy access to your PayPal account right from your Android phone.
New PayPal Application for Android


Improve your photos with color corrections, sharpen, and red-eye removal. Be creative with paint, word balloons, and stickers. Or have fun with distortions, cutouts, special effects, and more. It also have free edition.
PicSay Pro


Thinking Space is a Mind Mapping application for Android phones. Thinking Space is available for free in the Android Market.
Thinking Space 


Twitter for Android is a fantastic application to use, and sharing any link or photo is super simple too – just look for the share button in your favorite application and choose Twitter.
Twitter for Android


Features include radar, vertical and horizontal map display with looping, highest resolution satellite cloud imagery available, exclusive Road Weather Index, color-coded weather alerts arranged by severity, 10-day, daily and hourly forecasts.
WIFR Weather


The WordPress for Android is now available in the Android Market. The initial release has focused on giving you the ability to manage your blog while on the go.
WordPress for Android

Enjoy the So Many Advantages Of Google Android OS

Google has always lead the world with its innovations. These innovations became the necessities for the Google users. Previously, when we talked about the smart phones, there were Apple, Blackberry, etc but in late 2007 Google made a progress in smart phones as well and the product was the Google Android Operating System. There are a lot of simple mobile phones in the market but all the phones are not really smart. The hardware might look alike while looking at two phones but what makes a mobile phone really smart is the operating system.

Android was a separate brand previously and acquired by Google in 2005 making a big deal. It was acquired to attach the Android OS with the upcoming innovation by Google. It was to be a smart phone. The product was awesome when released in 2007 and came out to be the Apple iPhone’s biggest contender. This smart phone does not require to uninstall software after it has been expired just because it runs an open source operating system. The main source of this operating system is the Linux. It is because Linux operating system is totally open source and you do not have to pay for the renewal of the licenses once it has been acquired. Previously, the Linux operating system was being used in desktop computers, servers and notebooks. This was a fresh launch into the smart phone devices.


Advantages of Google Android OS

There are many associated advantages of the Android operating system. It has revolutionized the world of smart phones. Let’s have a sneak peak of some of the advantages to be enjoyed by Google’s Android OS.
  • The main advantages that makes it preferable is that it is totally free. Google has really gone a long way in facilitating the users and the manufacturers.
  • Another feature that has already been discussed is that it is an open source operating system that really helps the developers. It has opened new horizons of research for the developers. This facilitates everybody who wants to modify the features and contents of this awesome operating system as per one’s own heart. All what is needed is just to download the source code and that code can be used to tweak the Android. That goes quite fabulous.
  • Simple Java language is enough if someone wants to modify it. This is a benefit in itself. This is the mostly used developing language and most of the guys are expected to be aware of that.
  • It has the ability to support a great number of hardware and software that really makes it different from others.
  • You have plenty of options when you are looking for downloading the applications because android OS supports a lot of applications and the portals. You can download from the Google platform or form any developer’s website.
  • One of the greatest features that go with Android operating system is that it is being manufactured by many manufacturers like HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc. you have the option to select the smart phone as per your choice of brand. Moreover there is a variety of appearance and the hardware flavors that demands your attraction at the first sight.
Using the Android operating system smart phone really delivers a new experience and you would love that. Just with the launch of the Google’s Android OS, there are significant falls in the demands of the contending smart phones like Apple iPhone, Blackberry and the Windows mobiles. It has gone a long way in changing the smart phone trend of the world by capturing a big market niche.

About Author

This article is provided by John Masters who writes for http://www.uninstallersoftware.net, a site featuring different tips for Google Android users

8 Open Source Android Game Engines

Most Android game developers don’t know what to do, they always admire iPhone developers can play it with the free game engine such as Cocos2d-iPhone, and complain there are no the same one on Android. In fact, we can find some good open source game engines for Android OS. Below is 8 open source Android game engines which I know. You can build your great Android game with them, and there are also some of them be stopped to develop, but you can learn a lot from them too. If you know any others, please don’t hesitate to leave your comment here.

1. angle

This project is aimed to be a way to develop 2D games using OpenGL ES on Android providing as much speed as possible. The engine is entirely coded in java so you can overload every object for your convenience.

AndEngine is a free 2D OpenGL Game Engine for the Android platform with following features. You can find many examples from here.
  • Android-Optimized
  • Android 1.6 Compatibility
  • SplitScreen
  • Network Multiplayer
  • Live-Wallpapers
  • MultiTouch
  • Physics-Engine (Box2D).
3. libgdx

Libgdx a cross-platform Java game development framework based on OpenGL (ES) which written in Java with some JNI code for performance hungry sections.
4. catcake

Catcake is a cross-platform 3D graphics engine intended to be easy-to-use and high performance, which also supports the features for game development, such as animation, input device handling and sound playing, it runs on Windows, Linux and Android.
5. jPCT-AE

If you are already familiar with jPCT, you should have known it. jPCT-AE is an open source 3D engine for Android, it’s a port of jPCT to Android.
6. loon-simple(Chinese)

Loon-simple(LGame) is one part of Loonframework, which focus on Android and J2SE game 2D development. You can download many sample with full source code.
7. alien3d

Alien3D is a OpenGL ES based game for Android. Some samples can be found here. It seems this project was stopped since 2009.
8. rokon

Rokon is an open source game engine for Android based OpenGL ES. Unfortuantely the author stopped to maintain this project. If you only want to know something about game engine, you also can download and read the source.

But One thing i can be sure ; Once you start to learn a engine, stick onto it only.

The Best 2d Android Game Engines out there

Commercial C++ frameworks:
  • unity3D: very good (available on Android, iOS, Web, Windows, OS X) [Game: Rocket Bunnies]
  • Unreal Engine (commercial): the best engine but not for beginners [Game: Dungeon Defenders]
Open Source C++ frameworks:
  • Ogre3D: the best open source 3d engine but it is a large framework
  • Irrlicht: good performance, light framework [Game: Moblox]
  • Linderdaum Engine: open source for Windows and Android
  • Cocos2d-x: open source cross platform
Java Open Source Frameworks:
  • AndEngine (Open Source): good performance. For documentation, look examples and read source code; but it is the Free library to begin a game project [Game: Drop Block]
  • cocos2d for Android: Garbage Collector problem
  • SDL is not a good idea because it is designed for framebuffer access.
  • rokon: good performance and designed for mobile but project seems dead.
Physics Engine:
  • box2d (OpenSource): fast and easy
  • jbox2d (OpenSource): so slow on Java that I made a JNI wrapper with SWIG to use native box2d (AndEngine does the same)
  • chipmunk (OpenSource): fast but I prefer box2d
  • bullet (OpenSource): excellent 3D engine
Warning, with Froyo and JIT, Java libraries perform much better. But the Garbage Collector problems are always valid. With Gingerbread, the garbage collector is continous so no problem.

REBOOT 12 Magazine

REBOOT is an OFFICIAL magazine released by
The Association of Computer Engineering Students (ACES),
School Of Engineering,
Cochin University Of Science And Technology,
Kochi.


The magazine is a platform for Innovation, a trend setter for Teamwork and Leadership. A cross-platform including Coding, Hacking, Developing, Creativity, entertainment, gaming, and lots more...


So please SHARE!! CONTRIBUTE!! PROMOTE!! DEVELOP AND LEARN!!
and Make maximum out of it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AxP1Tv3tJ4

With Regards
REBOOT Team,
ACES CUSAT.


Video Created by Meril K Abraham (CS-A 2011-2015 Batch)

How Obsession With Ironman Turned This Engineer Into One Himself!

Iron man

Iron Man certainly has many fans all over the world. But how many of them had enough mettle and indomitability to try being like their favourite superhero?
Well, Nadir Najumal Hussain had.

This young final year Civil Engineering Student of Cochin University (CUSAT)got the brainwave from his friend, Yadhu, who said he would love to have an Iron Man costume at his home. Not long after, as Nadir was just browsing through Iron Man costumes on the net, it struck him that he could actually make a suit if he tried. And try he did.
Taking therpf.com (a movie props making community) as his reference, along with tutorials on Youtube, Nadir started making the costume. “It took me four months to complete it. Some parts were hard to figure out and finding the material was really hard.”
Along with using foam building techniques and EVA foam sheets, he used Pepakura – a 3D modeling software to make the costume. The cutouts were stuck together using Fevicol; the detachable parts joined using Velcro and buckles from old bags. As the foam sheets were too soft and useless by itself, he strengthened them by coating them with rubber adhesive. The finished costume was coated with two coats of primer grey and finally painted with trademark red and gold spray paint. The final touch was given by adding a dummy arc reactor, made using LEDs.
After months of hard work and many sleepless nights tirelessly working in his locked room, Nadir finally found his moment of glory when he saw his friends’ faces as he unveiled the costume, with himself in it.
“At times, I got really fed up. But I had given some hype to my friends that something new and innovative was going to be launched. After all, my room was always locked when I worked on the suit. So I didn’t want to give up hope and stop working on it.”
The pride and excitement in Nadir’s eyes is beyond comprehension, as he talks about his work. “My friends used to ask me what it was that I was working on, all day. All I said was to wait for it. After a while they started making fun of me. But when I revealed the final costume, the look on everyone’s face was priceless. I felt glorious.”
This aspiring youth plans to motorize his costume in the near future. He would like to make more cosplays(costume plays) and hopes to make it a business. He has already gotten clients wanting to have a similar superhero costumes in their homes as well. Not only has he inspired many teens to attempt to realize their dreams, but has also proved that anything is possible once you have you set your mind to it. “More than Iron suit, it’s your resolve that matters. To be everything you want to be.”
As Iron Man said, “Always be yourself. Unless you can be Iron Man. Then be Iron Man.”
Iron man
And Nadir chose to be the Iron Man himself, the one and only Iron Man from India.
Author : Nithin George
Courtesy : YourStory.in

Wednesday 5 December 2012

Want to create mobile and desktop games?

Following are the 8 best open source softwares

This is an translation of a very popular Chinese Blog wrote by iamsheldon on Chinese Intel Software Network.

For beginning  Android game developers, it is very common that they get lost  frequently and do not know where to  start and get their hands wet. Especially when they get problems that they can not resolve by themself, and be jealous about the free game engine  such as Cocos2d-iphone  that iphone developers have. Some start to complain that game development on Android platform is too difficult, and not even a decent game engine is handy to use.  Some even think that  using the Java language to develop games has lower ROI.

In fact,  in the real world, as Android is becoming possibily the only strong competitor against Apple IOS or even pass it,  there are for sure a lot resource that are available to Android developers, including quite a lot of Game Engines. Here I will introcude  the eight common Android game engines for Android game developers (Notes: fee based, low downloads counts, Not Open Sourced and the game engines that  I personally do not know (-_-) are not included here.).

1  Angle

Angle is a specifically designed for the Android platform, agile and suitable for the rapid development of 2D game engine based on OpenGL ES technology development. The engine are written in Java code, and you can replace the inside to achieve according to your needs. The drawback is that there are not enough documentations, and the codes available for download contains limited  sample tutorials.

The minimum operating environment requirements is unknown.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/angle/

2  Rokon

Rokon a the Android 2D game engine developed based on  OpenGL ES technology, the physics engine is the Box2D-, and therefore able to achieve some of the more complex physical effects.  The latest version is 2.0.3 (09/07/10). Overall, the biggest advantages of this engine is that  its development documentation is complete and comprehensive. And the author of the project responds to bug report and feedbacks quickly and provid fixs and solution. As a result, this framework is currently the most widely used, and lots of developers call it it called it iPhone version of Cocos2d  (logic, and coding style, did looks very similiar). Several Android Game framework are developed based on this frame (fee based, membership download only) . So we do not stereotype the claims that Fee-based engines are good good, open sourced and free are bad.

The minimum operating environment requirements for the Android 1.5.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/rokon/

3  LGame

LGame is a  Java game engine developed by China Android developers. It has two version: Android and PC (J2SE), the highest version is  0.2.6 (31/07/10). The underlying graphics LGrpaphics packaged with   Graphics API provided by J2SE and J2ME (PC version uses the Graphics2D package, the Android version of Canvas emulation for rendering). As a result, developer can directly apply J2SE or J2ME development experience . The Android version has built-in Admob interface,  and there is not need to configure the XML befort you directly hard-code Admob advertising information.

In addition to the basic sound, graphics, physics, Wizard and other common components of the engine, it alos has built-in IoC, xml, http, and other commonly used Java components package. The drawback is that   the jar size is relatively big, the PC version jar size has exceeded 1.2MB, while the Android version is around 500KB. In addition, the engine is also built-in  the J2ME Wizard class and related components that support 1:1 rending, the vast majority of J2ME games can be ported to Android or PC version. The only shortfall is that the author of the project is a very lazy guy, development documentation promised last year still not complete, and only  game example is available  for download.

The minimum operating environment requirements for the Android 1.1.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/loon-simple/

4  AndEngine

andengine is also an OpenGL ES technology-based Android game engine, physics engine is the same as the Box2D (standard III). The framwork is average on performance, and lack of development documentation. However, it has a lot of code  examples.

Download (no jar download, source code can be extracted using svn): http://code.google.com/p/andengine/

The minimum operating environment requirements is Android 2.2 or above

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/rokon/

5 libgdx

Libgdx is a game engine developed using OpenGL ES technology, and support 2d Game development for Android platform, the rendering was done by physical engine using Box2D. From the perspective of performance, it is a very power game engine for Android, the drawback is that the Wizard and other relate componments are  not simple enough and user friendly, and documentations are also underdeveloped.

The minimum operating environment requirements is unknown.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/libgdx/

6 jPCT

jPCT is a standard based on OpenGL technology development, 3D graphics engine (PC environment for the OpenGL, Android OpenGL ES), based on the Java language, has a powerful Java 3D solutions. The engine and LGame (This is a 2D game engine) is similar to, with a PC (J2SE) and Android two development versions.

jPCT of one of the biggest advantage is its amazing backwards compatibility. In the PC environment, jPCT can even run in the JVM1.1 environment, because the graphics rendering jPCT internal interfaces fully comply with all the Java 1.1 specification (and even the Microsoft VM has disappeared, even the old Netscape 4 the VM is no exception ).

The minimum operating environment requirements for the Android 1.5.

Project Address: http://www.jpct.net/jpct-ae/

7 Alien3d

Alien3d is a very small volume Android 3D game engine based on OpenGL ES technology development. In order to compress the volume, according to different functions using a multi-jar release (to include alien3d-engine.jar the alien3d-tiled.jar the alien3d-sprites.jar the alien3d-shapes.jar alien3d-particles2d.jar), in fact, it The core file is only about 40KB, the sum of all the relevant jar is less than 150KB.

The minimum operating environment requirements for the Android 1.5.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/alien3d/


8 Catcake

Catcake is a cross-platform Java 3D graphics engine, support for the PC (J2SE) and the Android environment running (has been the iPhone version of Planning). All the outstanding performance of the engine in the ease of use and operational performance, support for game development, such as wizard animation, audio processing and video playback.

The minimum operating environment requirements for the Android 1.6.

Project Address: http://code.google.com/p/catcake/