Posts Tagged ‘android’
Upgraded Android app is live
I’ve given Journalist at Large — Alex Johnson, the self-indulgent Android app I built, an upgrade. The main features are the ability to show more than 10 entries per page/tab, more feedback options and the nuking of the ad. If you like what you find here on this blog, you can find it in a handy Android version several ways:
• QR code. Snap a photo of the QR image at the right in your QR-app-enabled device.
(Eventually, you should be able to find it in the Market on your device itself, in the News and Magazines category. That takes a little time to propagate.)
UPDATE: It’s now available in the Market on devices. Just search for “Alex Johnson journalist.”
Wait … I’m an app?
Just for kicks, I thought I’d turn this blog into an Android app, partly as a test and partly for sheer vanity.
The app, JournalistAtLarge, merely present the 10 most recent posts in a pretty way, with options to star and share items and to change the theme. It uses the free AppYet service, and if I like it, I’ll probably convert it to a full app.
Until then, it’s not on the Market, but you can directly download the apk file here.
Let me know what you think!
Mobile journalism in the real world, or: How I work
My Livescribe notes from a recent (non-msnbc) food writing outing. If I tap anywhere in the notes, the pen begins playing the audio from that point.
Originally posted April 15, 2011, and revised Aug. 19, 2011, to reflect upgrades.
When I joined msnbc.com nearly 12 years ago, I made an abrupt transition at age 38 from a very traditional newspaper orientation.
When I worked at The Charlotte Observer, Congressional Quarterly, Knight-Ridder Washington and The Washington Post, I had been using the same tools for almost 20 years:
• The standard reporter’s notebook and pen.
• A landline telephone with an audio pickup to record interviews.
• A handheld audio recorder for field interviews.
• A “portable” (but actually fairly bulky) point-and-shoot camera. Later, that got traded in for an equally bulky portable camera that could shoot as much as 90 seconds of grainy video.
With standard variations for specific assignments (if you were ever a cops reporter, you’ll remember clipping a brick-size beeper to your belt), those were the tools print reporters used for decades.
I recently returned to work after having taken a couple of weeks off, during which I did nothing remotely job-related, and the tools I use now were scattered on my desk where I’d left them. I was struck by how remarkably different they are.
Live from Las Vegas, it’s …
Having worked in radio years and years ago, I had a great time doing this CES interview on Chad Hartman’s show on WCCO/Minneapolis today. We talked tablets, phones, TV and weird tech. You can download it directly here or listen to the podcast on the station’s site.
Fractured Android leaves orphans behind
If tablets are the stars at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, then the headliner is Google, whose Android mobile operating system runs most of the devices getting so much attention this week in Las Vegas.
The iPad is still the king, but Apple isn’t here — as usual. This gives Google’s little green robot command of the spotlight almost by default. Nearly every major computer maker already has an Android tablet or is debuting one (or more) at CES; by the end of the year, Android will have grabbed a third of the tablet market to go along with half the smartphone market, analysts Piper-Jaffray projected this week.
But by mid-year, consumers will have to wade through a half-dozen different Android operating systems on tablets. Those on earlier releases will essentially be stranded — Google orphans left to rely on the cleverness of an already-thriving community of hackers who fill in the holes in Android on their own. Meanwhile, developers must weigh whether it’s worth the resources to bring out yet another version of their applications for yet another version of Android.
Alex Johnson - Journalist at Large 