Android jellybean premium update 2012 Dec 29

My Samsung S3’s Android OS has just updated this morning, so I thought I’d share some of the funky stuff found so far.

Firstly there’s an updated swipe keyboard which shows a single potential word whilst you’re swiping instead of waiting until after you’ve finished.

It also seems more accurate in both the word matching and the prediction (e.g I only had swiped the pre of prediction before it appeared as the single possible option). However it doesn’t automatically show punctuation after you’ve finished a word, so adding a comma or exclamation mark takes a couple more taps now.

The camera has been changed so that you can get burst mode simply by holding the shoot button down.

There’s an updated allshare interface for streaming media, but even though I have other Samsung devices on my network it’s not picking them up. Maybe more configuring is needed.

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New options in jellybean update

The coolest thing I’ve noticed so far is the multiwindow option which allows you to split the screen and have more than one thing running on screen at once.

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Multiwindow jellybean update intro

Multiwindow jellybean update

multiwindow jellybean update with chrome at the top and facebook underneath

Kinda funky. What else is there?

Your New Year Resolution 2013 – JOIN ME!

I’m bored. Let’s do something. You and me. Let’s make something fun and educational. Something you’re proud of and enjoyed being a part of.

What on Earth am I talking about?!

For example:

Code52

Downmarker

I really liked the Code52 idea, but that succumbed to everyone involved being human and not able to actually commit to a new coding project every single week for a whole year. Very very ambitious.

What amazing things came out of code52?

  • some really wonderful pieces of open source software (Markpad, one of the first, got me into Markdown which resulted in my sublimemarkpress sublimetext plugin)
  • explained concepts such as OSS and git (or github) in a very easy to understand and welcoming way; if this didn’t get you to fork a repo and learn git, nothing will
  • got people enthusiastic about collaborating on interesting and small projects; big projects are hard to commit time to and hard to join later on

I applaud their efforts and the fact that they couldn’t commit to literally 52 projects in one year in no way detracts from their achievements. Bravo, code52, bravo.

7DFPS

What about the 7 Day FPS challenge? Create a first person shooter in 7 days!

7DFPS - Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa is a fantastic (if extremely blocky) multiplayer game, with a pretty complex city to wander around and an actual 3 team “plot” (get item – from team 1 – into briefcase – held by team 2. Team 3 must stop them. Or something)

The Plan

Why don’t we start something like that? Something a bit educational and for future reference; the sort of thing you can point your new junior developer to when they have a few spare minutes to help build their skillz up, but nothing too taxing for the contributors

Potential projects

Year of GoF

How about a project for example/reference implementations of the Gang of Four Design Pattern in various languages; one a month for all of 2013 (and almost all of 2014, if you like).

For example, January could be Strategy Month, February is Observer Month. Contributers submit example implementations in a language of their choice, and the we try to document the best in each language. The examples should all be hosted on github/codeplex

Kinect 2013

Got a Kinect for Windows? What stuff can we make with it, one a month?

RaspberryPi’13

RaspberryPi’s – what are they good for? Let’s find out. 12 projects over 2013.

Anyone fancy it? Any suggestions?