Expandable lists and check boxes

I got another trivial question in a comment: how to add checkboxes to an expandable list view like this one? Nothing can be simpler, you just add CheckBox control to the child view that forms the row and that's it. Except that it does not work without some tweaks.You can download the example program from here. The first bizarre thing you can notice in res/layout/child_row.xml that the CheckBox is made non-focusable. Why to do that when we want the checkbox to capture

Convert Exif GPS info to Degree format on Android

In my own case; I have no digital camera with GPS, but I have a GPS logger. The GPS info can be added into JPG file using GPicSync. But it's in the format of degree, minute, second, not GeoPoint form, as I used in my Mapper exercise. So I have to convert it by myself. Here I create a class geoDegree to handle the conversion from degree, minute, second form to GeoPoint form.package com.AndroidExplorer;import android.media.ExifInterface;public class geoDegree {private boolean valid = false;Float


Android RatingBar

A RatingBar is an extension of SeekBar and ProgressBar that shows a rating in stars. The user can touch/drag or use arrow keys to set the rating when using the default size RatingBar. The smaller RatingBar style ( ratingBarStyleSmall) and the larger indicator-only style (ratingBarStyleIndicator) do not support user interaction and should only be used as indicators. main.xmlLINEARLAYOUT android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" >TEXTVIEW...

MWC 2010: Puma Phone

Phonemaker Sagem has partnered with Puma to unveil the Puma Phone at the MWC 2010. Let’s face it, both these brands aren’t new but neither are they the most popular in the field that they both respectfully belong to. Over the past few days, Puma has been unveiling more and more video ads of the Puma Phone’s idea and now the device has finally been unveiled.

New Radioisotope Battery

Polymers, Phosphors, and Voltaics for Radioisotope Microbatteries

Are you tired of your short laptop battery life with only a few hours? Would you like the charge of your mobile phone to last a couple of months? Well, the answer to your “prayers” might be the nuclear batteries, which are been developed at the University of Missouri. They are designed especially for providing a lasting source of energy. And some people think these batteries could replace the current ones, including those used by the electrical cars. According to the creators, a nuclear battery has a very enormous capacity to generate electricity when compared to a regular one.The batteries have always been the Achilles’ heel of the mobile devices. Usually, the designers of electronic devices for mass consumption (like laptops or media players) use small displays or screens that are not very bright in order to save the scarce energy resources that are provided from the regular batteries. But the new nuclear battery would bring a solution based on a liquid semiconductor (rather than a solid semiconductor) that will produce a much longer lifetime for the battery. The reason is the solid semiconductors are attacked constantly by some radioactive elements used by other types of batteries, while the liquid semiconductor is quite resistant to these attacks. Although the term “nuclear” can be a little perturbing, the fact is that these batteries are not very different from those batteries used in, for example, medical pacemakers

The new radioisotope battery has the size of a penny and provides much more power than the traditional ones because, according to the researches, its capacity is very superior. Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri, said that the radioisotope battery “can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries”. That is to say, it provides no less than a million times more charge than any “normal” battery.
Kwon and his research team have spent enough time working to solve many problems that they have encountered when developing this type of battery. One important thing is the batteries need to be small and thin in order to be practical and useful; this way, they could be used to power watches and small electronic devices. As mentioned before, the prototype (which you can see in the picture below) has the size and thickness of a penny, but the researchers think they can achieve a thinner battery. In order to do this, Kwon has required the collaboration of another professor: J. David Robertson (chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor). Together, they hope to maximize the power of the nuclear batteries as well as reduce the size and test other materials to make additional improvements. Kwon thinks that the final battery, which would be used in commercial gadgets, could be thinner than a human hair. For the moment, the research team have required a provisional patent in order to protect the exclusive right to use this invention.

Mobile User Interfaces + Mobile Web/Widgets

Mobile user interfaces and mobile web/widgets were listed separately, accounting for two items on the list, but we think they can be lumped together. They all point to how mobile computing is rapidly becoming a new platform for everything from consumer mobile apps to B2E (business-to-employee) and B2C (business-to-customer). (Gartner did not include B2B on their list.) Modern day smartphones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, the upcoming Pre, and others deliver better interfaces for browsing the web, thus making it accessible to more people. Widget-like applications, including those that replicate thin client technology, will become more common especially in B2C strategies. Yet the mobile web still has challenges ahead. For example, there are no standards for browser access to handset services like the camera or GPS, the report notes.

Is Bloom Energy’s Fuel Cell Miracle For Real?

The interwebs are aflutter with excitement over Bloom Energy’s top secret “Bloom Box” fuel cell system finally revealing itself. For those who haven’t already checked it out (the website is still just a marquee), the company boasts that their systems could literally replace the electricity grid with dispersed, clean, and easy to maintain fuel cell boxes running on a variety of fuels, water, and oxygen, with no combustion at all. Sound like hype? Their PR team has certainly been working in overdrive…


The scoop has been leaking for a day now on the CBS website, and on others including Fortune and GreenTechMedia. However, Sunday night will be your first chance to hear real details about the Bloom Box when 60 Minutes airs a segment that with either knock your socks off, raise a lot of eyebrows, or both.

Bloom has already listed almost two dozen large companies who have been stealth testers of the mysterious device including eBay, who claim to have already saved $100,000 and such perennial sustainability favorites as Google and WalMart.