Fun with Android at Google London

Last week we held a 2 day Android hack session here in the Google London office (January 7th and 8th to be exact). Google supplied the space, the wifi, the cookies and most importantly, the coffee!

We had technical people from various companies show up and join in on the fun. It was a pretty relaxed event, more in the style of an "unconference." We had a few presentations about particular aspects of the Android SDK that people might not otherwise know about. Then we spent the remainder of the time hunched over our laptops, exchanging information and trying to avoid spilling the coffee.

I was lucky enough to sit next to a graphic artist from last.fm who created an awesome icon for a blogger app I'm writing that will allow Bloggers to blog from their G1 (big thanks Matt Brown!)

If you own a G1, I've posted an incomplete version of my Android blogger app in the Android Market under Applications | Social | A-Blogger otherwise stay tuned to this blog and I'll share the source code once it is relatively complete (software is never fully complete though, is it?)

My Blogger app was written entirely using publicly documented APIs, if you're a software developer, you can check out the Blogger API at http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol.html and code your own app!

One tip I thought I'd share with all those Eclipse users out there, if you download the Android source from http://source.android.com/ and look for 'View.java.' Copy that file to
/sdks/android-sdk-mac_x86-1.0_r2/sources/android/view/View.java (assuming your Android SDK has been installed at "/sdks" on your computer) and the next time you are in Eclipse
working on your Android app, you can "control-click" (or "apple-click") on the word 'View' where you see "extends View" in your code and Eclipse will open up View.java. (word to the wise, the View.java that is opened will probably be slightly newer or slightly older than the version that was used to build android.jar in the SDK, but I have found that incredibly useful anyway)

All in all it was a pretty fun event. At the end of the second day, a few of us went to the pub around the corner ("The Victoria") and had quite a few laughs and discussed the general awesomeness of The Peep Show (being a transplanted Canadian, I only just discovered this wonderful TV show over the holidays). We are hoping to have lots more informal hack sessions this year and hope to see you there. Stay tuned for info on upcoming events.

Mike Jennings
Android Developer Advocate