Steve Rogers

So my next endeavour is to look at Android and developing apps, so I decided as I have been using Google Maps in PHP, Flex (AS3) etc it would be logical to look at Maps in Android, simple huh ?

Not at all, I tried (numerous) to follow the Map View tutorial but although it all seemed to work OK, I never got a map to display in the emulator ( and each time I re-checked the debug key/api key as well). So after trawling the net and finding a lot of others had the same problem I came across an article here. After reading through this I noticed that the manifest file had some extra "bits" put in, specifically some permissions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"></uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION"></uses-permission>

Once I had added these - MY MAP APPEARED!!!, so this is in case the info is any help to anyone else - and thanks to the article mentioned above.

I have just uploaded the first version of my Twitter Tweet RADAR (TWEEDAR). You can read more about it at http://www.sbrogers.com/consultancy/node/4, but basically it allows you to select any point in the world using a Google interactive map and then see what people are "Tweeting" about within a given radius that you can set. So it acts like a RADAR for public Tweets from the location that you set up, a MUST for all you conversation voyeurs out that - looking into someone's life anywhere in the world.

I have been looking into creating some form of calendar/scheduling module for Drupal using the Google Calendar. I have started by generating a module that displays a daily, weekly and monthly schedule based on the entries in the calendar. To do this I have used the Zend GDATA API's for Google to access and extract the calendar data.

I now have a demo version up and running which can be found at http://www.sbrogers.com/consultancy/ which is a Drupal 6 site I have set up to test the module.

Doing the development locally is fine ( I use XAMPP) and therefore I can change the php include path to suit what I need, but to be able to host the Zend Framework (it contains the GDATA API's) on an external site is another matter. But, as usual, the ISP I now host my new sites with came good AGAIN. I emailed them with what I needed and how it should be set up and they did a great job of enabling the Zend framework for me , so a big thank you to ImageLeet (and their support guys) for sorting my query yet again.

A screenshot of the weekly schedule can be seen here. It uses jquery to open and close the schedule item when the item title is clicked. The screen shot shows one of the schedule items open with the others shut.