hello

howdy, fitz!

so I have gdata now giving me good info for calendar and docs - what a twisted mess

how can I help you today?

I think Google's mission is to confuse us - PERIOD

yeah, well, there are reasons why I don't use their APIs for anything much

Hello

howdy, Shawn!

can I take a project that runs as a JAVA APPLICATION - shows in Console in eclipse and convert to run as android app or is a rewrite

fitz: well, at least the UI is a rewrite

you may be able to salvage the rest -- impossible to say in the abstract

ok thanks - that is all for now

Shawn: how can I help you today?

Hi Mark -- first, nice meeting you at Google I/O and chatting for about 5 minutes in the hall

likewise!

second: I have a Bitmap that I'm creating in my app. I want to save it as a PNG

I'm using the compress() function, but it always returns false

and I can't tell why, don't know how to figure it out, etc.

Any idea?

what are you using for the OutputStream?

I tried a ByteArrayOutputStream and the FileOutputStream returned from the system

just the output of openFileOutput()

hmmm

I tried it on two devices too -- same result on both

and the source code just goes into the nativeCompress() method, so that doesn't help either

hehehe, I was just looking at the source and hit the same brick wall

yeah, beats me

*sigh*

I would have thought the ByteArrayOutputStream would be immune to problems

anything unusual about the Bitmap?

Yeah, I started with that

it's super simple -- it's just a signature

meaning you're capturing a signature via touch events and drawing it on a Bitmap-backed Canvas?

ok

ALPHA_8 seems a bit curious

isn't that purely an alpha channel?

oh yeah? I think I just copied that from somewhere

I can change it to anything, didn't think to try that

try switching that to one of the others (RGB_565 or ARGB_8888)

sure, let me try that quick, if you don't mind

I'm here for another ~50 minutes... :-)

won't take quite that long

meanwhile, I'm up for other questions

you know, I noticed that and thought to change it, but didn't get around to doing that, I believe

well damn, that's it

booya

yeah, thanks! Should have known it's the one bit of code I didn't understand

thanks!

happy to help

hah, more questions -- I should check my stack overflow list :)

any chance you're releasing this code as open source?

but they're all old questions

I've been keeping my eye out for an OSS signature capture widget

no, not open source, it's for a company

phooey

it was really not difficult

yeah, but I'm lazy

:-)

yeah, lazy answering questions, what a slacker

it's just a Path object and call lineTo() with the inform from the MotionEvent

and I already pasted the final code

yeah, well, I've done next to nothing with the 2D APIs, and not much more with MotionEvent

I don't have an immediate need for the capability

me neither. If I figured it out in a few hours, anyone can

looking ahead 6-9 months

ok

to be honest, that's by far what I need to improve

getting into more of that is on my docket for 2012

Oh, I've got another one!

scary how far out I need to project things...

I haven't dug into what's going on here, but since you're around

I've got an AsyncTask with an AlertDialog that gets shown as part of preExecute, or whatever it's called

onPreExecute()

right. Well, actually I'm using RoboGuice and their RoboAsyncTask, but I suspect the problem is the same

in any case, I'm showing it on the UI thread

then a problem occurs and I need to show another alert dialog

however, that thing never shows -- even if I dismiss the initial dialog

if I dismiss the initial dialog first

this might be a simple bug on my part, but can you think of anything offhand?

well, I haven't run into that specific symptom before

what is the purpose of the first dialog?

ok, that's what I wanted to know more than anything else, I suppose

it's just a progress dialog

it's a remote call

maybe consider switching to the progress indicator in the title bar

though that reminds me, I need to see if that still works in Honeycomb...

I haven't done much with that before -- I know that I don't have a title bar, but do have a proto-action bar

(i.e. not an ActionBar)

well, if you don't have a title bar, you can't use its progress indicator, so that's out

It seems like most apps check the title bar

maybe stick a ProgressBar in your action proto-bar

yeah, that seems to be a common approach

if I had to guess, that's the Honeycomb direction too

long-running dialogs make for crummy UX, because the user is locked down

the problem is that in this app you're moving from one screen to the next, and so the progress on the top makes it look like you can do something at this point

well, don't get me started on the crummy UX part

why not move to the next, then display the progress indicator and kick off the work?

nah, that won't work in this case either, because the remote call might fail, and need to stay on the same screen

I'll have to think about it some more

oh

But you've given me some ideas, and I know that it's not a bug that others have seen

well, others might have seen it -- I just haven't, and I don't recall running into a support question on it

that being said, there have been an awful lot of support questions, and it's not like I have them all memorized

of course

k, that's it for me! Thanks for the help, see you around

see ya!

fitz: if you come up with another question, feel free to chime in

sorry been on phone call - I should just turn it off while in here :)

so did you meet any others at Google IO fighting with how to make $ with android apps - any new ideas?

it didn't come up in any of the conversations I was in

I sat in the Android Market presentation, but it wasn't really focused on business models

I wasn't in any of the Google Ventures stuff to see if anything mobile was discussed there

went last night to San Jose Meetup at DLA PIPER - they are VC's with 4,200 layers on staff (go figure). Anyways they had 5 companies talking about the fight they have had to get to market and they still are not making $ - yet VC's are funding it - is something broken here?

these are Android and IPhone companies

if by "broken here", you mean VCs funding firms with no immediate revenue, that's been done a lot

it is just fresh on the mind so I thought I would ask if you had any new ideas on it

not immediately, but I may be revisiting the subject later this year

ya the VC's are a strange group - but I guess you need em

one of my proposals for the Android Open conference was "50 Business Models in 20 Minutes"

I think I saw a slide presentation on that online - good stuff

yeah, and that slide deck is old

ok have to jet thanks for info today

have a pleasant day!