I received some mails today and found a post on techcrunch and the launcherpro blog that Google has locked down GMail so that my app email widget (and also many other apps) stopped working with it. You can find a technical explanation here.

That’s really sad news because it means that we have to wait for Google adding support for third party apps to access gmails 

— ADDED LATER:

I just noticed that GMail has set the access permission to “signature”, so also rooting and installing my app as system app won’t work!!

You can find a modified Gmail.apk which has the permission restriction removed here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1199598

Tags: email, email widget, gmail, problem, widget

If you experience any problems with my apps Calendar Event Reminder or Email Widget please don’t hesitate to send me a mail with some desciption about it. In some cases it is important to get a deeper insight of your system in order to be able to analyze your problem. Therefore you can use the free app CatLog from the market. Just follow the link and install it just like any other app on your phone. After that please launch it and you can see a screen with your current system logging information.

Now please hit “Menu->Record” and “Ok” to start a logfile recording session and then reproduce your problem, i.e. a scheduled alarm not showing up or any other false behaviour. Then go back to CatLog and hit “Menu->Stop Recording” and “Menu->Send->As Attachment->Your favorite mail app i.e. GMail” and send it to me. You can find my email adress in the market description.

If you don’t succeed please get in contact through the comments below.

After you send me the logfile you can delete it by hitting “Menu->More->Manage Saved Logs->Delete All”.

Tags: calendar, calendar event reminder, event, help, reminder, snooze, support

Some users of my app calendar event reminder asked me how they can use custom sounds for notifications, alarms or ringtones. This can be easily done. Just create some folders on your sdcard and place your favourite mp3s in it:

• /sdcard/media/alarms
• /sdcard/media/notifications
• /sdcard/media/ringtones

Tags: alarms, android, apps, calendar, event, notifications, reminder, ringtones, sounds

Some users reported having problems installing the skins from my skin-site for my app email widget. Here is a detailed describtion on how to install them:

1. Go the the android market and install the app AndExplorer (its free)
2. Open a browser and go to my skin site or to the email-widget site and hit the “skin-site” link
3. Push one of the download links for a skin on the left
4. Now your browser should either download the file or it asks you which app to use to open the link, choose your browser
5. Your browser should download the file now
6. Start the AndExplorer and hit the “SDCARD” button on top
7. Go to the directory “download” or “downloads”. There you should find your downloaded skin file.
8. Long-press the file until it get’s checked
9. Now hit menu->copy/paste->cut.
10. Hit SDCARD again and go to the folder .de.foobarsoft.emailwidget (mind the leading dot!)
11. Then hit menu->copy/paste->paste

Now the file should be moved to the right spot. Open your widget configuration and go to the skin-settings. You should be able to choose the installed skin now.

Please mind: If you have downloaded skin files successfully please make sure to not unzip/unpack them.

Tags: android, app, email widget, skin

You now can get my app email widget and of course calendar event reminder as well on the AndroidPit market as well. The good thing about it is that you can now also pay with paypal and click n’ buy.

Tags: android, email, email widget, it, market, software-development, widget

I recently worked on some apps for my new android mobile Samsung Galaxy S and published them on the market a few weeks ago. They are focusing on two key features, which to my surprise are not part of the android core functionality:

• An Email Widget, which shows your recent emails (Exchange, POP3, IMAP) and allowes you to open them from your homescreen
• A calendar event reminder which allows you to set a vibration pattern for nagging event alerts

The first one was really a tough nut to crack, because the android core surprisingly doesn’t provide easy access to emails stored on the phone. You have to use a private api, which unfortunately isn’t documented at all. Also this api is secured on the latest android release, so it is impossible to get the app working without rooting the phone. Additionally the mail app seems not yet technically mature enough, so many device manufacturer like HTC are providing their own implementation of it. This made it even more difficult to build the app.

Thanks to the feedback of several users i was able to improve the apps and make them more feature rich. I also created a twitter account for publishing news on recent development for the apps. You are welcome to follow me there.

Tags: android, email widget, software-development, widget

watch google’s new application “google home view”

Link: www.youtube.com

Tags: fun, fun-video, google

this is truly amazing…

Link: www.youtube.com

Tags: presentation, web 2.0

Heute habe ich mir mal die Mühe gemacht und die rund 40 Fragen des wahl-o-maten beantwortet. Erste Überraschung: Die meiste Überdeckung habe ich mit der Piraten-Partei

Aber welche Kandidaten gibt es da? Ein kurzer Blick auf die Homepage der Partei verrät etwas interessantes:

• Dennis Laurisch (Softwareentwickler)
• Florian Bischof (Informatiker)
• Axel Mehldau (Systemadministrator)
• Michael Vogel (Software-Entwickler)
• Thorsten Wirth (Informatiker)
• Dirk Hillbrecht (Software-Entwickler)
• Jan Niklas Fingerle (Dipl.-Informatiker / Softwareentwickler / Projektleiter)
• Klaus Petersdorf (Softwareentwickler)

Über 50% der Kandidaten kommen aus dem Bereich der Informatik. Ich bin ehrlich gesagt baff…

Tags: election, politics

For this year’s holiday we went to South Korea one more time. After my first trip to Korea in 2004 for only a few days, this time i took three weeks off to get a deeper impression of the country and the people and to get the head free of the stressful day-by-day business. Below you can find a collection of the best pictures of this holiday from my point of view. You can also find a google map of almost all places we visited. I added a link to the corresponding photo album for each spot within the map so you can use it to browse through the albums by location.

show holiday korea 09 on a bigger map.

Tags: holiday, korea