Stories

If you were ever wondering, how you could see if someone is using Google Talk from an Android device, here is the solution. In your Google Mail web interface go to Settings, select the Labs tab, and turn on the "Green Robot" extension: this will display a robot icon for the users from an Android device, while the coloring indicates the availability of the person.

It really makes sense: your friends can see, that you are logged in from your phone, so they know if you are available and do not answer, this is maybe because you do not have a free hand at the moment.

To be honest, there is still some room for improvements. The robots only appear on the web interface, and not in the Windows standalone chat client. On the other hand if you are an Android device owner, you have to notify every friend of yours, that they should enable this extension if they want to see whether you are sitting in a front of a PC, or you are on the go. This should happen somehow the other way round: you enable that your friends can see if you are on Android, and then everyone should see the Droid icon...

It is a more or less common situation, that someone has a private Google account, in which he or she uses the calendar. So when setting up Hero for the first time, this private Google account is entered. But what if we have an other Google account, for example a Google Apps account for business purposes? Can we work with both accounts seamlessly?

The answer for Hero is: partly. In case the private Google account is configured, there is no way to see both mail accounts in the GMail application as two separate accounts. It is possible to do some workaround to import the Google Apps account into the private one and flag the imported mails, but this is not really a convenient solution, as the mails will be mixed up also in the browser, where you could keep them separated easily. A second workaround could be to set up the HTC Mail app to access the Google Apps mails via IMAP or POP3.

With the Calendar the situation is not better either. However it is possible to share the calendars between the private and the business accounts, and you can enable or disable individual calendars on the phone, shared calendars do not show up on Hero. That means only the private calendar is displayed. The workaround here is to set up ActiveSync for the business account.

Regarding the Contacts the only workaround option is again to set up ActiveSync for Google Apps.

In Google Talk however, there is absolutely no way to handle both accounts.

We can expect some improvements with Android 2.0. As you can see on the screenshot, this version has built-in support for multiple accounts, but only for Mails and Contacts - Calendar and Talk will still be available for one account only.
 

Finally the ADC 2 winners are published on the official page of the challenge. There are 3 winners in each category, which include 

Every winner application is absolutely amazing, but those may be of special interest, that were able to land in the overall winners. For example the application that automatically adjusts phone setting so that one can sleep without beeing disturbed, or the security application with which the phone can be controlled even remotely, or the real-time multiplayer drawing game.

It is also worth to mention, that the leading Windows Mobile software developer company has also won with its SPB TV application port.

For the complete list of winners visit the official announcement gallery.

HelloAndroid.com has new owners. We have great plans with the site by extending both the knowledge base on android development and continuously providing fresh application reviews for you. We are also planning to extend the feature set of the site for your enhanced experience.

The main direction of HelloAndroid.com will not change. It will stay a community powered android related site with your help. You have been such a great commuinty so far. Continue to do so by helping each other with useful comments and forum posts. Share your experience about any application you use and put your ideas on the wall that other smart people can rate and discuss it.

In the past week we have been upgrading and migrating the site to a new server. The following activities happened:

- First of all we have tried to clear all the spam posts, comments and messages. Some my still hide under the carpet but we are more or less clean now.

- Update to Drupal 6.14. The site loads now much faster and has more features and usability enhancements. Site security has also been significantly improved.

- For your convenience for posting app reviews, ideas, comments or forum post, we have implemented an easy to use text editor.

- A new forum engine is in place. You can easily write a nice looking post, you can see other users online status and as requested you now have the ability to send a personal message to other users.

- We have asked Google to be our personal search assistant :) If you search the site now, it will be done by google and you know, when it comes to search, they do a great job.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to share it in the suggestions forum. We are planning a major upgrade so it is best time to tell us what you would like to see.

In case you have a message for us, use the contact form. We will answer your message as soon as possible.

Let me thank you all for the valuable contributions you have made to buid up this knowledge base on android related topics. Special thanks goes to Zach Hobbs, founder, former owner and think tank on HelloAndroid.com. Zach is not just a smart android developer, he is also reliable business partner armed with tons of ideas.

Looking forward to see you often on our site,

Your HelloAndroid.com Team