Connector sample updated
The connector sample is now at version 1.0.5. Changes:
- Support for different screen sizes
- Fixed a bug when downloading GPX and not having spoiler-download enabled.
Happy caching! 🙂
GeOrg – connector sample updated
We upgraded the connector-sample to show how spoiler-downloads can work in custom connectors.
GeOrg 1.1.6 is beta / Documentation
Just wanted to tell you that we are done with implementing 1.1.6 and now starting to test the new version. There are several changes, both visible and under the hood, so this might take a few days. We began testing by taking GeOrg out for a few caches yesterday (our first night-cache this year, due to the large amounts of snow we have this winter).
Thanks to everyone, who sent in ideas and bugreports, a lot of what’s new in 1.1.6 is based on your feedback!
As always the ChangeLog is up to date with all the changes in 1.1.6. Also, the documentation for the internal/external-storage-feature is now online.
Small change to connector sample
We just updated our connector-sample. We recommend upgrading to the new one. Get it here.
Milestones and Google Market Woes …
During the last weeks, we’ve had some customers reporting problems with the Android Market. Maybe it’s time to sum it all up here:
It began when some people, who had bought GeOrg, rooted their phones and tried to reinstall their apps afterwards via the Market. Normally you’d expect to find all the applications previously bought in the market, ready to download them anew. After all, they are associated with your Google Account, aren’t they? But not on rooted phones…
When you root your android phone, typically you install some custom firmware to replace the standard OS that came with the phone. Now, if you look in the market for software, there’s some kind of filtering taking place.
This filtering is seemingly based on some kind of footprint of provider, country and firmware installed. The market keeps whitelists of “legal” clients to stop people on rooted phones from pirating apps. So far, so good.
The only problem is: What if you’ve rightfully acquired an app in the past and now want to install it on a custom baked or downloaded ROM? Chances are – you can’t. At least not via the Market.
Which apps are filtered? That depends on your location and the type of application. The two attributes that matter are: free/commercial and copy-protected/or not. Google sells applications in only a selected few countries. If you want to buy a commercial app like GeOrg and live in – for example – South Africa, you can’t, unless you root your phone, install the right ROM (see our FAQ) and switch the Market to some legal country and provider (for example with the Market Enabler).
Copy-protection – on the other hand – is something the developer activates for his app and this leads to filtering of applications depending on the phone you search for the app.
Copy-protection, as it is implemented right now, makes your bought apps reside in some private directory in your internal memory that you can’t access … unless you root your phone. Hence, Google attempts to filter copy protected apps from rooted phones. There is some mechanism in place in the Market app that segregates unrooted phones from rooted phones and only displays copy protected apps on unrooted phones. Alas, this mechanism is far from perfect.
For example, during the last weeks the Droid (or Milestone) was published. Right now you can buy the Milestone in three different flavours here in Germany. Branded with vodafone, o2 or unbranded for use with whatever provider and plan you see fit. Customers opting for the latter option see themselves stuck with a phone containing an Android Market application that doesn’t allow downloading copy protected apps. For some reason the Market doesn’t whitelist these Milestones and deals with them as if they were rooted.
Meanwhile Google is aware of these problems (link) and will hopefully fix them soon. But as always, they don’t tell us when the issue will be resolved
So, some of you might ask yourselves: Why would a developer refrain from deactivating this copyright protection if it doesn’t protect the apps on rooted phones and stops potential customers from buying the app? Sadly, there’s also a bug with the copyright protection. If you switch from protected to unprotected, there are some devices (e.g. Hero), that start to crash when using the app after the switch. This can only be cured by reinstalling the app, something you don’t really want your existing customers to go through…
GeOrg – Droid compatibility
With the availability of the new Droid devices in the USA, we were made aware of an incompatibility between GeOrg and Android 2.0, which didn’t show up in our tests with the 2.0 emulator. Sadly the sourcecode of Android 2.0 still isn’t released, the Eclair-Branch is not yet visible.
We did however find the javadoc and – with the Eclair libs existing in the emulator in compiled form – were able to deduce a fix. This was our first experience with the Dedexer. It helped us a great deal!
If you’re having problems with GeOrg on a newly bought Droid device – just upgrade to version 1.1.1!
Got Bugs?
We have had a report about crashes sent to us via the “Sorry for crashing”-dialog
that never arrived at our bugreport-emailaccount. We haven’t figured out what happened, yet. But if you, too, sent us a bugreport and got no reply from us within 24 hours: please, contact us.
GeOrg 1.1.0 is now beta
Just to keep you up-to-date: This evening we finished the last features for version 1.1.0. We’re now entering our internal beta test. Also, tomorrow we’re taking GeOrg out for some nightcache-fieldwork, our first geocaching-excursion since the 4th of october.
If all goes well and we don’t encounter any major bugs, the update will get published on the market within the next days. Stay tuned!
Small update for the sample-connector
While we are busy working and testing the soon to be released GeOrg V1.1.0, we found two bugs in our connector-sample. These are fixed now. We recommend upgrading to the new one. Get it here.
Sample sourcecode for Connector available
The sourcecode of our sample connector for GeOrg is now available. There’s an in-depth description there about how to setup your environment to code for Android and how to run the sample on your phone.