London Transport Status (Android App)

So here it is… my first Android application release!

There are loads of apps that give you status of London Underground, but I never felt that they looked good enough. So having tried most of them (and paid for many too) I decided to release my own app: London Transport Status.

The app is quite simple. It gives you feed back regarding the status of each Underground and Overground lines and each line is clickable to take you to a more detailed status for that line.

It will also show you information about Strikes and stations affected too.

The released version is 0.8.0 as I wanted to get a rough idea of any issues that may arise because of my inability to test on a wide range of devices. For this reason I consider this release very much a BETA release, so try not to score the app to badly until I have had the time to update it!

I plan on adding features, so if there is anything you’d like to see, add a comment below!

Screenshots (from Emulator):

Download:

AppBrain | Market

Google Picasa

I have quite a few photos stored on my Windows Home Server at my house. I decided a while back that it was about time I stored these online also, for backup purposes.

I have uploaded a fair few of these to Facebook, but I don’t want them all on there and anyway, Facebook doesn’t store the photo as is, so I will lose the original version if something happened to my computers.

The obvious answers were Flickr and Google Picasa. As part of my broadband contract I get access to a Flickr Pro account, which means I have ample space to store all my photos. My problem with Flickr is that I don’t like the way the upload process works. I need to look for a better tool than just the Flickr upload tool (I use it from Google Picasa application). I want to be able to organise them locally and sync them as they are, which doesn’t seem possible with Flickr. I might have to get to work on a C# tool for this…

Google Picasa impressed me with its sync feature. I do all the sorting locally and tell the album to sync. I don’t know if this works the other way around (i.e. I can sync an uploaded album back to a computer – I don’t see why it couldn’t work).

My problem with Google Picasa is the amount they charge for extra storage. They give you 1GB free, but to upgrade to a usable amount is rather expensive and is a yearly cost!

My email account has 8.33GB (currently) but I am only using 0.11GB to store my mail…. can this not be shared now… it gets shared once I pay!

So it looks like I will have to stick to Flickr for now.

UPDATE:

It seems either Google read my complaint or they decided to change the storage options anyway (by coincidence!). I don’t think we need to guess which of the two it was!!

Anyway, as I said, Google have changed the pricing of their storage upgrades and I have upgraded my account now to 200GB for only £35/year. That works out less than the 40GB option I complained about above!! All my photos will now be stored with Google’s Picasa service. Sweet!

I might still sync them with Flickr too though, just as a second backup!

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Google are now giving a way a free eye-fi card with upgraded storage purchases… so not fair!! Going to email them and ask if they will back date it!

Sync Facebook events with Google Calendar

I find that I forget about events that I have been invited to through Facebook. As I use Google for Mail/Calendar/Contacts on my iPhone 3G, the ability to sync these events into my Google calendar makes this much simpler.

Here’s how:

1) Log into your Facebook profile.

2) Go to your events page by clicking the events button on the Facebook toolbar at the bottom of the page (see image below).

3) At the top of the events page click Export Events and then copy the URL in the message box that appears.

4) Log into Google Calendar

5) In the Other Calendars section of the left-hand menu system, click Add and then Add by URL.

6) Paste the URL you copied from Facebook and then click Add.

Google Mobile Sync for iPhone

Google have recently released a beta of their Mobile Sync for the iphone. This allows you to

Synchronize the built-in calendar and contacts on your iPhone with your Google account.

I had been using the free Live service from mail2web to sync my contacts so that I could always access them should I lose or damage my phone. Google’s offering seemed a much better idea as I already had a Google Mail account that sync’d mail with my iPhone.

I immediately set this service up (rememberting to backup my existing contacts as changing the sync settings will clear all existing contacts – something I learned the hard way when I first got my iPhone!). Currently it only allows you to sync the Contacts and Calendar, with mail being done seperately (not via push email).

A few days later, Microsoft were heralding the fact that they licensed their Exchange ActiveSync technology to Google to allow them to do this. Good for them! The issue I have is why they haven’t provided the same service for their Hotmail service.

I tend to use Hotmail more than Google, just because I’ve had the account longer and friends & family know that email address.

What I’d really like is to be able to sync Google Contacts with my Windows Live Contacts (i.e. hotmail, messenger). Either than or for Apple to allow me to sync more than one Exchange server with my iPhone (which is who you set up Google Mobile Sync).

Still, its a step forward!