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MythTV vs XBMC vs Blusens WebTV

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged internet media center mythtv tv xbmc on by

I used for many years MythTV and XBMC, and as now I own a Blusens WebTV, I will do a feature comparation between this three media centers. I will rate some features from one star (*) to five stars (*****) based on my personal opinion.

MythTV XMBC Blusens WebTV
Movie library w/covers and info no yes no (but there is an app to build an HTML interface to your movie library)
Music library w/ covers, artists, genres… no yes no
TV tuner yes no yes (there is a cheaper LITE version without tuner)
PVR & time-shift yes no yes (no on LITE version)
TV and radio streaming  to other computers yes no yes (but TS streams, needs a low of BW, probably will not work over your WiFi)
Transcoding (converting between audio/video formats) yes (on records and streams!) no no
Web interface **** **** ****
Interface design **** (skinnable) ***** (skinnable and has great themes like Aeon, MediaStream…) *** (not skinnable)
Installable apps QT plugins (no app store, needs manual install) Python HTML & Javascript, Webkit powered
Killer apps Emulators (MythGame) Netflix (not on Spain), Emulators (with some work on the Launcher plugin), IMDB queries… Online Films and Serials from cinetube.es, peliculasyonkis.com…
Web browsing ** no **** (Webkit , no Adobe Flash, identified like an iPad)
Ease of setup * *** (if installing on a PC, if you buy a Boxee will be *****) *****
Ease of use **** **** ****
Android remote app *** ***** (shows movie & music library on the mobile) ***
Price of packaged solution No packaged solution 200€ (Boxee) 150€
Web http://mythtv.org http://xbmc.org, http://boxee.tv http://blusens.com

Now I’m using the Blusens WebTV because it’s a silent and small device (much more than my old PC running MythTV/XBMC). I solved the emulators part (that I had working on XBMC) with some Wii homebrew…

Upcoming Android Gadgets at Blusens  

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android internet market mobile tv on by

LED TV Assembly Line

Last week I was invited by Miguel Silva Constenla to the Blusens HQ at Santiago de Compostela. Blusens is a Galician consumer electronics manufacturer with worldwide presence.

I had a great expectation because Miguel said that was going to show us their upcoming Android devices. He received us at their administrative office, but soon we went to their I+D facilities.

There I was impressed with a production line where their LED TVs are assembled, he also show us their logistic office (with their famous “Orgy of the Senses” poster), call center, repair center, and engineering offices. Finally we went to their showroom where their upcoming android devices were waiting.

First one is an 7″ Android tablet. This is a cheap low-end Android device with something different: a cover with an integrated keyboard. This keyboard is plugged by USB to the tablet. It will be available in about two months by about 160€.

CONS:

  • Resistive Touchscreen: Miguel said us that a capacitive touchscreen will increase the price about 50€, but the experience with the touchscreen was quite bad.
  • Android 2.x: (in the release date is going to be Android 2.3). This low-end devices do not support Honeycomb.

7

  • Lack of Android Market: This device is not certified by Google and then it cannot include the Android Market app (among other things, because it would need hardware buttons: this tablet has software buttons are placed on the notify bar). The ROM installed on  the prototype had the SlideMe market, but I don’t consider it an alternative. The solution is to install manually the Android Market (copying GoogleServicesFramework.apk and Vending.apk from other device to the /system/apps dir), but needs some Android knowledge…

PROS:

  • 160€ is a very low price, I think that this kind of devices are very appropriate for children or for people in countries where people cannot pay 400€ for a computer.
  • Elegant cover with embedded keyboard: great for fast text input, answering emails on the go, etc… Transforms the tablet in a kind-of-netbook and compensates the bad experience with the touchscreen.
  • Local repair center and customer support: you can buy a chinese tablet by this price, but you will not have the customer support and repair center in europe.

Blusens Android STB Prototype

The other device is an Android Set-top-box. Blusens has a great experience with their web:tv device and they are investigating to release a similar Android based device. They showed us a prototype running Android 2.2.

This device will include a remote with a complete keyboard and the pointer will work like the WiiMote, pointing with it to the TV. Some optional accessories will be a TV tuner and a webcam.

It seems an aggressive proposal when GoogleTV is not yet on the market, but I think that it’s great to have Android apps on the TV.They also have plans to integrate something similar to this device on their upcoming TV models.

Finally Miguel had a present for us: a Web:TV device! What I like of this device are the continuous firmware updates and HTML apps powered by a Webkit-based browser (ok! media player and PVR are also great features).

Mobile 2.0 Open Ideas  

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android java mobialia mobile on by

This year I was invited to organize a workshop at the Mobile 2.0 Open Ideas event at Barcelona, on 16-17 June. With my experience developing Android apps at Mobialia and the social media integration on Martin Varsavsky’s RadioMe, I proposed the workshop:

Bulding Social Media Enabled Android Apps

This will be a 1-hour workshop In which I’ll provide some examples on how to integrate social media on Android apps, from the simple “Share” button to more complex integrations like using Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook APIs, including logging-in with social media, the “Like” button, etc.

I will try to do it interesting for developers and also for app designers who want to add cool social features to their apps. Slides and code samples will be available from the day of the event.

Mobialia en Canal TEA

This entry was posted in General on by

Esta semana invitáronme a participar nun programa da televisión local de Ponteareas (Canal TEA). Falamos un pouco dos fundamentos de Android, das aplicacións de Mobialia, tablets, MiFis etc. Foi unha experiencia moi interesante e a primeira vez que vou a unha canle de Televisión.

My London travel tips  

This entry was posted in General and tagged travel on by

This easter we were on London, it was a great experience and I want to share with you some travel tips:

AIRPORT

I arrived to Stansted Airport. Try to get a fligth to Heatrow or Gatwick. Stansted is 1 hour away by bus from London city center.

There are many bus companies from Stansted to London, the cheapest and fastest is Terravision (15£ with return, 14£ if you book online) but National Express (9£ single) has free WiFi.

CURRENCY

There are many currency exchange offices, but the best is to get cash on an ATM with you credit card. If your bank charges a small comission (ING Direct charges only 2.5%), is cheaper than the exchange offices.

BUS & UNDERGROUND

The city is divided into zones, all the city center is zone 1-2. You can get a “Day Travelcard” for zones 1-2 by 6.60£ (cheap compared to the 4£ of a single travel). You can buy it on the automatic machines at the entries of the tube (allows payment with credit card).

This travelcard also allows you to use the city bus on this zones (only showing the card to the driver). A great tip is to get the bus line 11, you will get a sightseeing arround the touristic zones by the price of a Day Travelcard.

CYCLE HIRE

One funny thing that you can do is to hire a bicycle on one of the many points along the city. You can do it with your credit card. First you must pay 1£ for the access to the cycle hire for 24 hours. Then, you get a cycle by obtaining a printed release code from the machine. This code is composed of “1”, “2” and “3” digits that you must type on the cycle dock to release it.

When you dock the cycle again the system charges you card with an amount depending of the time that you used the cycle. One hour costs 1£ and the prices lower as you use it more hours. By only 2£ you can get a cycle by one hour.

MUSEUMS

The British Museum and other public museums are free so don’t miss them. Quite curious that you can’t take photos with flash on the underground but the British Museum is full of unconscious tourists taking photos with flash and touching pieces from the ancient Egypt.

WIFI

It’s quite hard to find free WiFis on London, but there are lot of BT-FON spots, my advice is to became a FON member before traveling to London, buy “La Fonera” by only 39€ at http://www.fon.com and share your home ADSL. As a FON member you can use this WiFis for free.

HOTELS

We were on a Easyhotel room but I can only say that it was cheap. Easyhotel thinks that a “room with window” is an underground room with a window to a corridor without natural light. It’s also quite surprising to make fit a bed and a bathroom on 6m2.

SobrosoParty 2011

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android mobialia on by

Hoxe sábado ás 18 horas repetimos o laboratorio de Android “A Miña Primera Aplicación Android” na SobrosoParty no Pavillón Municipal de Ponteareas. Neste taller usaremos como exemplo a aplicación WikiPlaces para explicar cales son os pasos da creación dunha aplicación Android, dende a instalación do SDK e a configuración do Eclipse ata a súa publicación no Android Market.

Esta aplicación ten moitos exemplos de cousas típicas na programación de Android:

  • Deseño de layouts
  • Obte-la ubicación
  • Amosar un mapa e usar overlays para representar información sobre él
  • Amosar unha lista utilizando adapters
  • Obter datos de servidores externos
  • Usar intents para lanzar outras aplicacións dende a nosa
  • Introducción de Anuncios de AdMob
  • …

Tentaremos condensa-lo taller en dúas horas que é pouco tempo, xa que no último LabAndroid en Málaga seis horas non chegaron para moito, pero como creo que non vai haber nen enchufes nen ordenadores para todos tentaremos facelo un pouco máis xeral.

Para asistir a este taller non fai falta estar incribito na SobrosoParty (que ten só 300 plazas), con dicirlle a persoa de seguridade que se vai asistir ó taller de Android non debería haber problema en pasar.

Notas de prensa:

Using styles on Android layouts

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android xml on by

A very cool feature of Android that many developers do not know (at least me 6 months ago) is the possibility of using “styles” on Android XML layouts. This thing is similar to CCS on HTML and provides a method to simplify the XML design.

First, let’s see an example of a XML layout without styles, you can notice the need to repeat attributes and the difficulty of reading the XML:

<LinearLayout
 android:layout_width="wrap_content"
 android:layout_height="wrap_content"
 android:orientation="vertical">
 <TextView
  android:text="@string/text1"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:textStyle="bold"
  android:textColor="@color/white"
 />
 <TextView
  android:text="@string/text2"
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:textStyle="bold"
  android:textColor="@color/red"
 />
</LinearLayout>

But we can define styles grouping this attributes on the file res/values/styles.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
 <style name="VerticalLinearLayout">
  <item name="android:layout_width">wrap_content</item>
  <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
  <item name="android:orientation">vertical</item>
 </style>
 <style name="WhiteText">
  <item name="android:layout_width">wrap_content</item>
  <item name="android:layout_height">wrap_content</item>
  <item name="android:orientation">vertical</item>
  <item name="android:textStyle">bold</item>
  <item name="android:textColor">@color/white</item>
 </style>
 <style name="RedText" parent="@style/WhiteText">
  <item name="android:textColor">@color/red</item>
 </style>
</resources>

Note te possibility of  inheriting styles, in this example “RedText” is inherited from the “WhiteText” style changing only the text color.

Our XML layout, with styles, gets reduced to:

<LinearLayout style="@style/VerticalLinearLayout"/>
 <TextView style="@style/WhiteText"
  android:text="@string/text1"
 />
 <TextView style="@style/RedText"
  android:text="@string/text2"
 />
</LinearLayout>

Finally,  you can see that I’m using colors (@color/white and @color/red) which must be defined on the file res/values/colors.xml (in a similar way to strings):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
 <color name="white">#ffffffff</color>
 <color name="red">#ffff0000</color>
</resources>

My Firefox 4 setup

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged firefox internet on by

After two weeks since the  Firefox 4 (FF4)  release, I decided to switch back again to Firefox from Google’s Chrome. But I miss Chrome a lot, so I configured FF4 almost like a Chrome… ¿how? using those themes and plugins:

  • FXChrome Theme: this theme claims to work only on Windows, but I’m using it on Linux without any problem
  • Movable Firefox Button: Converts the FF4 menu to a button that you can place on your navigation tab (to the right, like on Chrome)
  • Omnibar: Joins the address box and the search box in only one box
  • Titlebar Tweaker Plus: Hides title bar on Linux, on Windows you can use better options like “Hide Caption Titlebar Plus”, but on FF4 this last doesn’t work on Linux
  • Close Button: Without the title bar, I need a button to close FF4, I put it to the right of the tabs, (If using the  “Hide Caption Titlebar Plus” you don’t need this)
  • Barlesque: the new FF4 addon bar occupies all the window bottom, this extension collapses this bar on the bottom right (configurable), having much more space for browsing

And I also recommend this plugins:

  • AdBlock Plus: Removes ads from web pages
  • Speed Dial: Shows your favourite site on dials like Opera
  • FaviconizeTab: Adds a contextual menu on tabs to show only the favicon instead of the title on the tabs
  • Download Statusbar: Shows the downloads on the status bar
  • Echofon: a small twitter client, I miss the TweetDeck Chome app, but it seems that soon will be avaiable for FF4
  • Cutyfox URL Shortener: I use it to fast-shorten URLs with bit.ly
  • DownloadHelper: to download videos from Youtube and a lot of video sites
  • User Agent Switcher: some apps (Ok, JDEdwards) need to change the User-Agent header to work properly, also a good tool to test mobile web browsing

That’s the result:

A small problem with the facebook Android SDK  

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android facebook java on by

At Mobialia the lasts weeks I was involved on the development of a social app using , among other social networks APIs, the facebook API.

For me it was easier to implement Twitter API access using only the signpost library, for facebook they recommend to download their Android SDK, and I did so. First we need a class attribute with the Facebook object:

Facebook fb = new Facebook(appId);

The problem is during the autentication process: we must call the fb.authorize method…

fb.authorize(this, PERMISSIONS, ACTIVITY_CODE, this);

And wait for the result of this called activity on our onActivityResult method

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    fb.authorizeCallback(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}

But, here is the problem, under heavy memory requierements (like testing on a old HTC Magic) the caller activity may be killed, and the status of the Facebook object is not maintained so the call to authorizeCallback is going to fail.

Then I need a method to mantain the Facebook object status, and here comes the hack. I added this method to the Facebook object:

public void setStatus(int mAuthActivityCode, DialogListener mAuthDialogListener){
    this.mAuthActivityCode = mAuthActivityCode;
    this.mAuthDialogListener = mAuthDialogListener;
}

And I call this method on my onActivityResult:

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
    fb.setStatus(ACTIVITY_CODE, this);
    fb.authorizeCallback(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}

Note that the DialogListener is the same Activity. Other solution may be to avoid killing of the caller activity, but I don’t figure how…

Using two location providers on Android

This entry was posted in General and tagged android java on by


Android has two kinds of accuracy on location:

  • Fine: provided by the GPS, needs some time to be obtained
  • Coarse: location determined with the cell of the mobile network

This location methods can be enabled or disabled by the user on the preferences or with some widgets.

Initially on our apps we used only one LocationProvider with “Fine” accuracy:

  • If the GPS was disabled it used automatically network-based location
  • But if GPS was enabled, the location used it needing some time to be determined

As the data couldn’t be obtained until the location is determined, the app didn’t showed data, receiving this kind of error reports from some users.

The best solution that I found is to mantain two separated providers, with different precisions and receive location updates using both.

LocationManager manager = (LocationManager) getSystemService(Context.LOCATION_SERVICE);
Criteria criteria = new Criteria();
criteria.setAltitudeRequired(false);
criteria.setBearingRequired(false);
criteria.setCostAllowed(false);
criteria.setPowerRequirement(Criteria.POWER_LOW);       

criteria.setAccuracy(Criteria.ACCURACY_FINE);
String providerFine = manager.getBestProvider(criteria, true);

criteria.setAccuracy(Criteria.ACCURACY_COARSE);
String providerCoarse = manager.getBestProvider(criteria, true);

if (providerCoarse != null) {
    manager.requestLocationUpdates(providerCoarse, 5*60000, 100, this);
}
if (providerFine != null) {
    manager.requestLocationUpdates(providerFine, 5*60000, 100, this);
}

You can also check if providerFine and providerCoarse are the same provider. When receiving location, the one received from providerFine must take precedence over the one from providerCoarse. Location’s provider can be obtained with location.getProvider():

public void onLocationChanged(Location location) {
     if (location.getProvider().equals(providerFine)) {
     ...

This is a trick that we are using on our Gas Stations Spain app and also on Wikiplaces (open sourced).