January 2010

I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don’t feel guilty if you skip this post.

- Make sure your system is up-to-date:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade


- Install Java

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk


- Switch Sun to be the default version of Java. It’s much faster than the built-in version, at least when I tried it.

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun


- Make a directory, e.g. mkdir ~/android

- Download Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ (I chose the “Eclipse Classic 3.5.1″ version). Move the code into that directory, then unpack it. Unpacking is enough–the software runs in place and doesn’t have to be installed onto the system other than unpacking it.

mv eclipse-SDK-3.5.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz ~/android
cd ~/android
tar xzvf eclipse-SDK-3.5.1-linux-gtk.tar.gz


- Download the latest Android SDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and move it into that directory, then unpack it. I believe unpacking is enough–the software runs in place and doesn’t have to be installed onto the system other than unpacking it.

mv android-sdk_r04-linux_86.tgz ~/android/
cd ~/android/
tar xzvf android-sdk_r04-linux_86.tgz


- Edit your ~/.bashrc file and add a line to the bottom:

export PATH=${PATH}:/home/matt/android/android-sdk-linux_86/tools


Okay, now Java, Eclipse, and the Android SDK are installed. Now you need to install the Android Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse.

- Run Eclipse. If you installed Eclipse in ~/android/eclipse then you can cd to that directory and run ./eclipse to start the program.

- Install the Android Development Tools (ADT) for Eclipse. Follow the excellent instructions at http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html to get and install the ADT. Don’t forget the “Window > Preferences” step to tell Eclipse where the Android SDK is, so when you click “Browse…” you might navigate to /home/matt/android/android-sdk-linux_86 for example.

- Next, I installed a bunch of packages. In Eclipse, click “Window->Android SDK and AVD Manager.” In the resulting window, on the left-hand side will be an “Available Packages” option. I clicked on that, then clicked the checkbox beside the “repository.xml” package to select all available packages and then clicked “Install Selected.” 12 out of the 14 packages installed for me.

- Now you’re ready to create your first Android program . You’ll discover how to make an Android virtual device (AVD) along the way.

- If you want, you can get custom skins, e.g. a Nexus One skin for Android. You can unpack the .zip file in <your-sdk-directory>/platforms/android-x.y/skins/nexusone for example. Then create a new Android virtual device (AVD) and select the Nexus One as the skin.

- If you want to run your Android program on your own Android device, you’re pretty close. Follow step 10 of this walkthrough. When you’re done and the phone is disconnected from your Ubuntu machine, you’ll still have the executable, called an “android package” or .apk file on your phone. So you can show your friends your “Hello, World!” program.

Some resources that I found helpful (other than the official Android developer site) are below:
- http://www.futuredesktop.org/developing_android_apps_on_ubuntu.html
- http://www.softwarepassion.com/setting-up-android-development-platform-on-ubuntu-linux-904/
- http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-google-android-sdk1.0-on-ubuntu8.04-desktop
- http://androidforums.com/developer-101/2321-installing-eclipse-android-sdk-ubuntu-8-04-8-10-a.html
- You might also want to watch this O’Reilly video or some of the official videos.

If you found this post at all interesting, you might also be interested in Google I/O too. Google I/O happens on May 19-20, 2010 in San Francisco.

Microsoft has reported its Q2 2009 earnings (Q4 for many other companies) and the news is mixed for their online services division. Revenues improved over the previous quarter, but came in at a 5% loss year-over-year.

Specifically, online revenues for Q2 came in at $581 million, compared to $609 million the year prior. Q2 losses came in at $466 million compared with $320 million in Q2 2008.

The loss was blamed on a decrease in overall online advertising revenues. However, the silver lining was that Bing brought a growth in search revenues for Microsoft.

If Bing continues to grow, then Microsoft will do well to capitalize on its strengths to build a stronger online services division. Of course, the deal with Yahoo! should help as well.

If you have an AdWords campaign set up to reach searchers using Google’s mobile search, you’ve got a new feature to enhance your efforts. Google is enabling click-to-call phone numbers in the ads that appear on mobile web browsers.

Smartphones allow users to click on phone numbers and a call is automatically generated. If a smartphone user is searching for a local pizza place on their mobile device, then they can now simply click on the phone number and order up their favorite pie.

Google’s mobile click-to-call ads are generated based on location. So if your company is a chain, an ad will be served up with the closest location to a user – and will contain the appropriate phone number.

In order to add click-to-call in mobile AdWords ads, simply set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Then make sure your campaign is set up to appear on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. The video below shows you how it’s done so you’ll know what to do when you’re in AdWords:

Social search engine Scour has launched a new local feature. Simply click on the new “Local” tab over the search box. Then, type in what you’re looking for and the location you’re interested in, and click “Search.”

The results page features listings down the left side and a map on the right. As you scroll down, the map travels with you – very handy.

Here’s a couple screenshots. Click on either image to enlarge or head to Scour to try it out for yourself.

Whether you’re snowed in or enjoying sunny weather this weekend, take some time to read up on these Google updates:

Google Custom Search has made some changes to the hosted home page.

Google Analytics has made annotations available for all accounts.

Google Maps now offers personalized suggestions.

Google Image search for mobile has added Popular Image browsing.

The Google Research team blogged about building cluster applications.

Google Books updated their Home Page and Library.

Social bookmarking site Delicious has updated the ability to filter viewing options – plus added a new way to browse your bookmarks that is very StumbleUpon-like.

First up, there’s a new display options menu tucked into the top right corner of your bookmarks display. This is for when you’re viewing “My Bookmarks” – not on the main page. Here’s what it looks like:

Delicious also gave the option menu treatement to the tags section on the right sidebar in “My Bookmarks.”

Last but absolutely not least, there’s a new option to “Browse these bookmarks.” Again, this is for your own bookmarks. When you click it, you’re taken to the most recent bookmark – but there’s a toolbar frame across the top. Click arrows to browse through your bookmarks. This is very much like the new StumbleUpon – except your just browsing your own bookmarks. It will be interesting to see if Delicious expands this capability to truly compete with StumbleUpon in the future.

Look for the “Browse these boomarks” link in a blue box in the top right corner:

Here’s one of my bookmarks with the Delicious browsing frame at the top (click to enlarge):

Connect with me on Delicious, screen name nlj.

In honor of yesterday’s International Data Privacy Day, Google published its five privacy principles. They are:

1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. Search history informs personalized search, but users can opt-out.
2. Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. For example, you can chat on Google Talk “off the record” so the conversation isn’t saved.
3. Make the collection of personal information transparent. Last year, the Google Dashboard was launched to show you what info Google is collecting on you.
4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy. You can report privacy issues related to Street View. Google often blurs faces, for example.
5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold. Google doesn’t sell data to other companies.

You can view the published web document on Google’s privacy principles here.

We’re at the height of the 2010 cruise wave season and there is still time for marketers to squeeze out incremental bookings by tweaking their online strategy.
Last week, Compete and Google co-presented a webinar based on a recent study of online cruise shoppers and bookers. Using Compete’s dataset of the online behaviors of 2M US [...]

CES 2010 has come and gone, but perhaps the biggest consumer technology announcement that week came before CES even kicked off, with the announcement of Google’s Nexus One on January 5th. This new device ensured that the Google brand would be in the CES news coverage all week long.  Nice job grabbing some attention early!
However, [...]

On Hacker News, Melvin, from Web Design Company, had a great analogy on the Mahalo business model

Let’s use a different industry to illustrate what is happening.

Let’s say a band named The Beatles records a new album. The local radio station gets a copy of their album and plays their song. The listeners love it so they play it more often, but they don’t mention who the band is and on their website, they put up a link to download the song… but without any credits. Their audience grows. They get advertisers to advertise to their audience. They say, “hey, playing good songs gets us more listeners and more listeners gets us more advertisers, which gets us more $$. Let’s do this more often.” So they go do this 500,000 times, and each time never mentioning who the artist is. They grow and prosper while the artists starve.

Oh, in the mean time they call the artist scum.

In the above metaphor, the artists are the bloggers whose content Mahalo is using. The radio station ripping off the artist is Mahalo. The Federal Communication Commission is like Google, who is allowing all this to continue because the radio station is giving them a cut from the advertising revenue.

Hope this helps make it a little more clear why what they are doing is wrong, needed to get exposed and needs to get fixed.

The analogy isn’t 100% perfect…but it *is* pretty darn close.

Jason is not 100% Jim McCormick, but he isn’t 0% either.