Smarter Alarm - Wake up to info being read to you - Android Apps and Games

Hi everyone,
This is Edward, developer of Car Locator. I just soft-launched my latest app and I wanted to tap this wonderful community to help me test it out and gather feedback before I start promoting it.
The app is called "Smarter Alarm". Basically, instead of waking up to a blaring sound in the morning, Smarter Alarm will read customizable information to you, like the morning's weather, stock prices, headline news, sports scores, your friends' birthdays and more. It's similar to Iron Man's "Jarvis" alarm clock.
I'll be adding more feeds in future updates, but I wanted to gauge interest before putting in the time =)
I'd really appreciate any bug reports, feature requests, and improvements you might have! If you can find any verifiable bugs, I'll happily reward you with a free copy of the full version of any of my other apps: "Car Locator", "Copy Paste It" and "Screenshot It".
Heres the market link: market://details?id=com.edwardkim.android.smarteralarm
Thanks!
p.s. The app is also entered in Verizon's VDC Power your app contest under the "information" category. Please vote for me! (poweryourappcontest.com/Protected/ApplicationListVote.aspx)

Sounds like a great idea! Ill keep an eye out
Sent from outerspace

I think its a great idea, but instead of voice, maybe an option to have music (or anything else playing) and instead have the text on your screen. Because currently the voice is a bit unpleasant to listen to

Hmm, interesting. I'll give it a try.

Pretty good once you install a decent voice. However, there is a big omission in features. It only supports one alarm time for every day.
Add the ability to configure a different alarm based on the day of the week. For example: Monday-5am alarm, Tuesday-6:30am alarm, Wednesday-7am alarm, etc.
Also, add the option to play user configurable music in the background while the voice is reading. Then it will be amazing. If the music volume is configurable independently of the voice, then it will be SUPERB. You only need to support a basic format like mp3 or something, no need for every format support....
A dream feature is to have the voice read like it is now BUT the app would also pick a RANDOM song from your music library and play it in the background. It will be different each time. But that's stretching it too far. Add music and different alarms for different days of the week and this thing will be irresistable.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
EDIT: Also, add in the description 1 or 2 suggestions as to what voices it sounds best with. I had to do trial and error with quite a few to get it to be decent and they were all paid apps that I had to then refund till I find one I like lol. Adding a suggested voice can help users a lot.

}{Alienz}{ said:
Pretty good once you install a decent voice. However, there is a big omission in features. It only supports one alarm time for every day.
Add the ability to configure a different alarm based on the day of the week. For example: Monday-5am alarm, Tuesday-6:30am alarm, Wednesday-7am alarm, etc.
Also, add the option to play user configurable music in the background while the voice is reading. Then it will be amazing. If the music volume is configurable independently of the voice, then it will be SUPERB. You only need to support a basic format like mp3 or something, no need for every format support....
A dream feature is to have the voice read like it is now BUT the app would also pick a RANDOM song from your music library and play it in the background. It will be different each time. But that's stretching it too far. Add music and different alarms for different days of the week and this thing will be irresistable.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
EDIT: Also, add in the description 1 or 2 suggestions as to what voices it sounds best with. I had to do trial and error with quite a few to get it to be decent and they were all paid apps that I had to then refund till I find one I like lol. Adding a suggested voice can help users a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your suggestions! Multiple alarms is definitely a feature that I'll be adding soon. I'm just getting started =).
Can you recommend to me some voices that you think are good?

Thanks for this fantastic app!
So far i've found that it works great with SVOX Classic British English Voice.
A few suggestions that were not mentioned:
Statusbar icon when alarm is enabled.
Alarm track/tune play for a configurable time before reading starts.
User configurable RSS feeds.
Enable Wifi/Data before alarm start and disable after completion (may be reaching but would be cool still).
Device: Samsung Galaxy S

tried it on my htc desire. Although the app is quite nice, however the lock screen went missing once this application is install, and lock screen is restored once the app was uninstall.

Hey guys, have you ever heard something about WakeVoice ?
It's exactly the same things but with vocal recognition to ! (Jarvis....)
Here is the XDA thread : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=743915

RMonst3r said:
Thanks for this fantastic app!
So far i've found that it works great with SVOX Classic British English Voice.
A few suggestions that were not mentioned:
Statusbar icon when alarm is enabled.
Alarm track/tune play for a configurable time before reading starts.
User configurable RSS feeds.
Enable Wifi/Data before alarm start and disable after completion (may be reaching but would be cool still).
Device: Samsung Galaxy S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
User configurable RSS feeds is a DREAM feature for me as well. And the enable Wi-Fi Data would be important as I have things such as JuiceDefender which switch them off when not in use. Specifically...turning Wi-FI ON would be the most important one since where you need an alarm, you will likely be at your house and you will likely have wi-fi there that you use everyday.
So I suppose if I had to rate features it in order of important it would go like:
1. Configurable alarm time for different days of the week.
2. Turn Wi-Fi (or data) one minute prior to alarm going off. Make a trigger that checks if there is connectivity 1 min in advance and only enable the wifi if the trigger says there is no internet
3. Music in the background. Configurable in volume and content, meaning you can select what tune to play while the voice is reading stuff.
4. RSS feeds. YOU choose the feeds and news sites the alarm will read.
5. Randomize the background music so that it's different on different days or it randomly picks a song to play in the background-that way it will sound like you're listening to the radio only it's playing YOUR favorite music and telling you only stuff YOU care about.
Voices:
SVOX Classic British
SVOX Classic US Grace
Loquendo Susan
All 3 choices work pretty nice with the program. They are not like human voices but they are at least 5-10 times better than the default Android voice and WELL worth it. Hint: You can use them for navigation and reading your texts while you are driving as well.
To OP: If you manage to implement most of those features, I think you can easily set a $5-7 price tag and this thing will STILL sell like hot bread on the market lol. . .

nice.lets try

}{Alienz}{ said:
User configurable RSS feeds is a DREAM feature for me as well. And the enable Wi-Fi Data would be important as I have things such as JuiceDefender which switch them off when not in use. Specifically...turning Wi-FI ON would be the most important one since where you need an alarm, you will likely be at your house and you will likely have wi-fi there that you use everyday.
So I suppose if I had to rate features it in order of important it would go like:
1. Configurable alarm time for different days of the week.
2. Turn Wi-Fi (or data) one minute prior to alarm going off. Make a trigger that checks if there is connectivity 1 min in advance and only enable the wifi if the trigger says there is no internet
3. Music in the background. Configurable in volume and content, meaning you can select what tune to play while the voice is reading stuff.
4. RSS feeds. YOU choose the feeds and news sites the alarm will read.
5. Randomize the background music so that it's different on different days or it randomly picks a song to play in the background-that way it will sound like you're listening to the radio only it's playing YOUR favorite music and telling you only stuff YOU care about.
Voices:
SVOX Classic British
SVOX Classic US Grace
Loquendo Susan
All 3 choices work pretty nice with the program. They are not like human voices but they are at least 5-10 times better than the default Android voice and WELL worth it. Hint: You can use them for navigation and reading your texts while you are driving as well.
To OP: If you manage to implement most of those features, I think you can easily set a $5-7 price tag and this thing will STILL sell like hot bread on the market lol. . .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your feedback again, as well as the suggested voices
I really like your ideas and I'll definitely be adding configurable multiple alarm times, music in the background, and rss feeds (1, 3, and 4). As for turning on wifi (2), I'll have to look into whether or not 3rd party apps are even allowed to turn on/off wifi without user input. I'm sure its possible, and if so, I'll add feature 2 as well.
Look out for updates in the next week or 2!

Almost forgot, my email address (for you to send the log file) is eddie dot kim at [google's mail system] dot com

Hey Edward,
Wifi control should be possible because Juice Defender does it, it may require root though (not sure).
Can't wait for the changes.

Bug report!
This is the second day it failed to "alarm" lol. Good thing I set another alarm 5 min after otherwise I woulda slept in late for work.
Ok bugs. Yesterday it gave me a Text to speech can't be initialized or similar (I was playing with voices night before so maybe thats why).
This morning it gave me some error as well. I was in a rush and sleepy so didn't remember it but from now on I'll write them down or do log cats. Point is though both times it failed to ring. Today's error was not connected with voices at all as far as I remember.
Also a different bug is: When you launch the app, it AUTOMATICALLY turns on screen rotation and then bugs itself out when it can't decide on a horizontal vs vertical layout. Interestingly enough, the rotation option remains DISABLED on my phone...the app goes crazy switching modes though and then errored out with something. It does this on being launched or running, regardless. Just flip the phone a bit and you'll see.
It's a bug report because if an alarm goes while it's doing this, the alarm errors out and does NOT ring.

}{Alienz}{ said:
Bug report!
This is the second day it failed to "alarm" lol. Good thing I set another alarm 5 min after otherwise I woulda slept in late for work.
Ok bugs. Yesterday it gave me a Text to speech can't be initialized or similar (I was playing with voices night before so maybe thats why).
This morning it gave me some error as well. I was in a rush and sleepy so didn't remember it but from now on I'll write them down or do log cats. Point is though both times it failed to ring. Today's error was not connected with voices at all as far as I remember.
Also a different bug is: When you launch the app, it AUTOMATICALLY turns on screen rotation and then bugs itself out when it can't decide on a horizontal vs vertical layout. Interestingly enough, the rotation option remains DISABLED on my phone...the app goes crazy switching modes though and then errored out with something. It does this on being launched or running, regardless. Just flip the phone a bit and you'll see.
It's a bug report because if an alarm goes while it's doing this, the alarm errors out and does NOT ring.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your bug report. Not alarming is obviously a huge bug, so I'll try to duplicate this and put out a fix asap. While the alarm is going off, screen orientation changes SHOULD be disabled so the alarm is not interrupted.

Sweet app. which voice engine is better? It gives me a choice of Pico and eSpeak
One suggestion: Add the current time. Ex: "Good <morning|afternoon|evening> name. It is <time>am|pm.

Not sure if this is a bug, or just something not fully implement yet, but when I'm setting the alarm time, the time is in am/pm format - even though my phone is set to 24h format. Other than that it looks promising and good luck with your project.
Sent from my Desire HD

This sounds really good. It reminds me of those futuristic moives where the computer tells the person everything about the day and stuff.
Sent from my X10i using Tapatalk

Awesome app! Here are some suggestions:
1) Please include an alarm clock icon in the status bar, so I know whether it's on or off.
2) Please add an option to configure what days you want the alarm to go off.
3) Bug report: current weather is given in Celsius, but the forecast is give in Fahrenheit.

Related

Tick! A convenient timer!

Hi everybody !
After a year of lurking, i've published my first app !
It's called Tick! and it's a simple timer but i've worked hard on making it easy to launch.
Since there is no wheel selector on the sdk, I've developed one to set the number of minutes wanted. With three clicks, you can launch a timer to remaind you that your pastas or your eggs are ready !
Your comments are welcome !
Since I'm new on the forum, I'm currently not allowed to post external links, so if you want to try it, search for Tick! on the market or SlideMe. I will put images, links and QR-Code as soon as i will be allowed !
RabugenTom
Nice app. Any plans on releasing the source
Any chance for an APK for those of us without data?
Nice
Good Work Buddy works perfectly on Xperia X10i
Thanks for the replies ! I've added the apk posted on the market.
I'm working on an improved version !
Agreed, Great work RabugenTom. Love the custom wheel selection.
Have to admit, though, I'm dying to have multiple timers. I'm not sure off the top of my head how they would fit in with your snazzy countdown timeline, but I'm sure it could be done.
+1 for release of the source
Love the app... Mightve been nice if it worked with 30sec increments as well but that might just be me, and there are other more robust timer apps for when you need that i guess.
One thing I noticed though... If the app is open and showing on the screen (IE - not in the background while working on something else or on one of the home screens), Tapping the app notification (in the notifications pane) will "reopen" the apps interface, and this can be done multiple times.
Basically you end up with multiple instances of the same timer... So if youre looking to go back to whatever was open before - home screen or other - by pressing the back button, youll just close the last instance you "opened" via the notification, taking you back to the previous instance of that same timer, and so on until you reach the first one that was opened when you started the app.
It doesnt seem to affect the functionality of the app in any way that ive seen, but it is rather odd.
Sort of like tapping the notification calls on the wrong "show" function, opening a new window rather than un-hiding the original.
Thanks for the feedbacks !
I'm working on an improved version with pause mode, multiple timers and 30s increments. I will maybe release the source later, after a lot of cleaning !
For the notifications, it's the behavior of android which works by intents. Theses are sort of messages send to applications. Intents depends on something they call Context. This is very powerful since you can launch (or do whatever you want to) an application in different ways, and the behavior of the application can depend on the intent. For example, when you launch an application from the launcher on the home screen, you actually send an intent to the application.
In the Tick! case, when you click on the notification, you send an intent to bring back to foreground (if hidden) or relaunch (if closed) the application GUI (which is different from the counting "engine" which is a background process called Service). The intent sent from the notification is different from the one you used to launch it, thats why it relaunch the GUI because the system thinks it is a different context (which is the case).
You can try it : launch from the launcher, launch a timer, go back to the home screen. Now, the GUI is no more in foreground. If you open the notification bar an click on the notification it will relaunch the GUI as expected, and if you continue to click on it again, it will do nothing (as expected). That's because the second time you launched the app, you did it by sending an intent from the notificiation bar, which is different from the one from the launcher.
Now, i don't find this behavior very annoying, and I don't want to write 100 lines of code to handle differents cases! A trivial solution may exist, but I'm too novice with Android to look at it. If someone knows this easy solution, it will be a pleasure to implement it !
Very nice timer. However I have found two problems:
1. When selecting the notification tone, "Default" plays my ringtone when previewing, but when used for real it plays the default notification sound instead.
2. I used Tick for a five minute countdown several hours ago, and afterwards I exited the program and cleared the notification, but it still prevented my phone from sleeping all these hours, draining the battery severely. I had to use a process killer to get my phone to sleep.
Do you really need to keep the phone from sleeping, even during the countdown? A timer is just an alarm with a countdown, and alarms work even when the phone is sleeping. You just have to update the progress every time the phone wakes up. Right?
Hi,
1-I will look on the notification problem. It is quite strange since it always worked for me. Note that the parameter are set for the notification at the launch of the counter. Every change you make will affect only new countdowns. When you exit the app, it always save the last parameters, even made during a countdown, and restore them at a relaunch. So it is strange, and since i've improved again the counting engine, I hope this will be solved in the coming release.
2-You're right, I've found conditions when the wake-lock is not released at the end of the countdown. It's set now. However, the wake-lock requested is partial and does only concern the CPU, not the screen. I've tested again your version on my unplugged G2 and it behave just well.
The CPU is required to fire an alarm even in sleep mode. Thats because i don't use the alarm service of the device which only check every new minute if there is something to do.
And when it's in sleep mode, only a tiny service is counting. The GUI is stopped and it's memory given back.
May I ask what model of phone you use?
RabugenTom said:
May I ask what model of phone you use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using an HTC Desire.
I've just added here (and on the market) the version 1.3 which resolves a lot of issues (for exemple, the service exits as soon as it's no more used, thanks to bugmenever) and adds a pause mode (long click on the button)
RabugenTom said:
Now, i don't find this behavior very annoying, and I don't want to write 100 lines of code to handle differents cases! A trivial solution may exist, but I'm too novice with Android to look at it. If someone knows this easy solution, it will be a pleasure to implement it !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im fairly certain there is something simple out there to handle this, but as opposed to you being novice with android, i have 0 experience programming for it. and youre right, its not THAT annoying, and certainly not worth most your work time at this point.
Happy to hear about all those plans though! look forward to seeing them in action
keep up the good work!

Recommend me some Apps, Please

I'm swapping from Android to Windows Phone, and was hoping if anyone is bored enough to read this they might suggest some Windows Phone Apps that might suit my needs.
In no way do I expect anyone that hops in to respond to each type, or google around for me, but I expect I'm not the first person to make the Android -> Windows phone swap, so maybe some of you will have a quick idea of ones to try out. You don't need to spend a lot of time explaining every app, if you're busy. Every platform is different though, so rather than spend 10 hours looking for something that everyone in the community already knows, I thought I would just toss out some quick questions.
1. RSS feeds. On Android I use gReader Pro. It's a pretty basic app that allows easy setup for RSS feeds and syncs them with your google reader account. Not very exciting, but it's easy to use because my feeds are already set up via google, so a decent app that can do the same would be nice.
2. Google Voice. I'd like to make and receive texts, as well as make calls on wifi (receiving calls isn't a big deal, but would be a plus). I downloaded GoVoice, which seems like it will be pretty decent, but am open to suggsetions.
3. Podcasts. I used Doggcatcher on Android, which allows you to stream, download + save, and sync podcasts. It has a decent search function to help you get started.
4. Tasker. This one is more difficult to explain, but essentially it allows you to program a set of tasks, like a macro function. Essentially I have it set up for "Off" (as in data/wifi/bluetooth/gps/gsm disabled), "Data" (same as off but wifi enabled), "Loud" (same as data but with notifications and media volumes all the way up), and "Car" (same as Loud but wifi off and speakerphone and GPS enabled). Basically I use this to change the state of the GPS, WIFI, and volumes, so that I can quickly switch a number of settings at once. Great app, if you have some patience and have an Android kicking around.
5. Astrid Tasks. A pretty basic reminder app. I'm sure there are plenty of these for Windows Phone, but any suggestion would great. If it can store backups to the computer, or sync with a cloud based system, that would be a plus.
6*. Something to show running applications quickly. I'm not sure if this is actually an issue for Windows Phone, but sometimes apps go "rogue" on Android, so being able to make sure that a particular app isn't a battery drain would be nice. I was using System Panel on Android. If this isn't needed, disregard the question.
7. A good alarm app. I was using Gentle Alarm on Android, which has a widget to show you the next alarm that will go off, and allows easy creation of various alarms, which can be set for audible, vibration, specific days of the week to repeat on, etc. You can also ensure that alarms will always be audible, regardless of if everything else is muted, which is nice for at night when you don't need an email waking you up, but need to make sure the alarm is at maximum volume in the morning.
8. Anything else you can think of that is a must have for daily use. I'm a student and don't really have a lot of time to play with the phone for games, but hey, we all have to pass the time every once in a while.
9. Onenote. I like how this app syncs easily, but I can't view my handwritten notes that I write on my tablet. Is there a workaround that allows you to see these?
------ I'm only using this Lumia 710 on WIFI, essentially as a PDA + GPS, so anything handy that can prevent battery drain is a plus, as I don't require GPS to constantly be on, and I certainly don't need phone/data(non-wifi) to constantly be on.
In short, I appreciate any input you might have, even if it's only for one of the things I have listed. The phone seems great in general, and had most of the important things already installed (the email, calendar, navigation, office, etc., is fantastic as is, which is a great bonus compared to Android, where I had to use 3rd party apps for most of the core aspects).
Regards,
--bb
Weave
Skype
Music and Video with Zune
Not possible
Ask Ziggy
not needed
Default alarm
Board Express Pro
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
---------- Post added at 06:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:14 PM ----------
Nokia Drive
Crackle
Nokia Creative Studio
Contract Killer
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------
Box
SkyDrive
MetroTube
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
pvt_nemesis said:
Weave
Skype
Music and Video with Zune
Not possible
Ask Ziggy
not needed
Default alarm
Board Express Pro
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
---------- Post added at 06:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:14 PM ----------
Nokia Drive
Crackle
Nokia Creative Studio
Contract Killer
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------
Box
SkyDrive
MetroTube
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for all of the suggestions. That should keep me busy for quite awhile. :good:
Try also fantasia painter for photo editor. Is awesome and free. The only app i am missing since switching from wp7 to android
Sent from my HTC Explorer A310e using xda app-developers app
Before I get into my list, I'm just going to run down how apps and multi tasking work on WP7 in case you don't already know.
#1: No app can truly run in the background. The only way to get an app to continue running is either to have it up and prevent the screen from turning off, or (if supported by the app) allow it to run under the lockscreen, which means when you press the power button, only the screen turns off, the phone does not enter a sleep state.
-----------------The exception to this rule is when an app is playing music. If the app dev has done it correctly, he should have handed the music playing off to the system, so once you set up the music source in app, you should be able to minimize it and use the next/previous/play/pause controls. In fact you can even go to grooveshark's beta html5 in internet explorer; HTML5 can plug in to this system media playback! I was very excited to learn that. But at least on grooveshark, next/previous controls don't work.
#2: HOWEVER each app can have a "daemon" which is essentially a set of tasks that are run periodically by the system (minimum of every half hour). So if you use google latitude, latitude apps will only be able to update your position every half hour (or at longer intervals, but no shorter). This system of background daemons is actually very very good as it encourages unique thinking from the developer side, and still gives the user the benefits of true multi tasking without the battery drainage. What a daemon can do isn't that limited, but it's the fact that no internet connection can remain active in the background that poses a lot of problems (for example, IRC clients cannot have multi tasking for this reason). Since things can only run every half hour, you don't have to worry about things like turning off your gps, since nothing is allowed to just turn on the GPS and keep it on.
#3 : Also there's still push, of course. Lemme break that down for you: push notifications can either be through the live tile (rather than having a background daemon update the tile, things are pushed to it immediately as they arrive), or push can be used through statusbar notifications. One unfortunate oversight in this system is that if you have an app that you do not pin to the start menu, and if it has a notification and you did not hear it... there is no list of missed notifications. This doesn't come into play that often; for me it only happens with eBay, where I don't want to bother having that on my start screen but I might miss some alerts.
#4: Battery Saver mode is YOUR FRIEND. You can get nearly another day out of your phone (or I can with my Titan) when battery saver kicks in. You can enable it so that it turns on when the battery is low (%20), or manually. However, it disables all background daemons and push notification in order to save battery.
#5: Multi tasking and switching between apps. Hold down the back button to see the list of the last several apps you used (or in the case of my unlocked ROM, all of the apps you have used since boot). When you minimize an app (press the start button), it gets "dehydrated" which means it's just suspended to RAM. It works like you'd expect; start typing something in one app, switch over to another to look something up and switch back to the first to resume typing. To remove an app from the list, or "exit" the app (since it isn't actually running the only thing this does is remove clutter or perhaps free up some slots), you "back" out of them. Press the back button until the app goes away.
One of the reasons, in my opinion, that windows 8 is getting a lot of negative flack is because people don't know that live tiles are good. It doesn't help that, last time I checked, there were no useful live tile apps in the 8 marketplace yet. So frustrating! People hate what they don't understand, because hating on the internet is the standard state of existence. I encourage you to think about what you do on the internet every time you sit down on your computer, and see if you can find an app with live tile to do it for you. For me, I had a routine of checking my email(s), going through a lot of webcomics, reading news feeds, etc. That was my daily routine. Now with WP7, I have each aspect of my routine as a live tile, so I can literally replace that entire process with just looking at the start screen.
The other thing about live tiles and metro that people fail to understand is that active push notifications, where unnecessary are BAD, for a few different reasons. Push notifications are "active" and live tiles are "passive". This is because live tiles do not make any noise or otherwise prompt you to look at them; they are simply there and deliver content when you pull out your phone. Let me put this in perspective: say I pull out my phone to look up something on wikipedia. I can see that I have 2 new emails, some new RSS articles and a facebook notification. Number 1: I don't feel the urge to go and clear the unread count of all of these things, as I would if they were all aggregated in the statusbar like on android (because you need that statusbar for things, and if it's cluttered and you don't keep up on it, it quickly fills up and becomes overwhelming). I can leave them alone for now and go to wikipedia. Now if this were an android/IOS device, I would have gotten an audible notification for each of those three things, and I would have taken time out of whatever I was doing IN LIFE to tend to my phone.
Some points about stressors here (and when I say stressors, I don't mean overwhelming stress you can feel, but stress in the clinical sense, which is objective): having your phone beep at you constantly stresses you; for most people it's difficult to put their phone out of their mind until they have seen what the notification was. This is not good.
Moreover, feeling the need to go and clear unread counts/managing your statusbar is also somewhat of a stressor; if it starts overflowing you'll either learn to not use things that create notifications (somewhat limiting your experience with a smartphone), give up all hope and never look at the statusbar again, or just clear it out and miss out on things you wouldn't have if the information was presented in an orderly fashion.
Live tiles, being passive, are also more efficient in terms of time spent on the phone and your phone's battery life. Notice how in my example, I observed the new content only when I was already pulling out my phone to do something else. With things aggregating in bulk, I can view them in bulk at points of the day where I was already on my phone. This is opposed to pulling out my phone every 15 minutes because something new happened... which wastes time pulling your phone out of your pocket many times a day, wastes battery when turning the screen on/off many times a day, and if you use wifi; wastes even more battery when the wifi radio is turned on/off sporadically many times a day.
So yes, live tiles are an objectively less stressful approach to mobile devices and less distracting from tasks at hand. The same concepts can be applied to windows 8; rather than having popup notifications for all your facebook, email, rss, etc bombard you while you're trying to write a paper... all of that information is silently aggregated for you in the background.
------------The List-------------------
For alarms,
627.AM
Built in Alarm app.
For task / project management
Tasks by telerik
Or just use the built in calendar app
Or use Onenote and Pin your task list to the start screen.
For RSS
Wonder Reader hands down, none of the other google reader clients are quite as fully functional and polished.
Fuse is pretty but I never got the hang of using it.
For Wifi Video calls
Tango. It's pretty limited in that the android and IOS client are updated with better features, and you can only call other people with tango... but the service itself is more efficient and more reliable than the skype app was last time I tried it. Moreover it supports push for accepting calls, something skype doesn't. Also I like the concept of not having "online / offline" states. You call someone, and they choose to answer it or not. Why would I need to log into a phone...
I used to take notes on a tablet at school, and ran into the same problem as you. Only solution I know of is to print your notes back into onenote. You'll have duplicates of everything unfortunately.
Podcast functionality is built in.
For random recommendations...
das Image (Better image search)
Image Map (Renders all of your pictures on a map based on GPS loc info)
Dynamic Background (Unlock) (Updates the lockscreen picture every half hour choosing randomly from a pool of selected images)
Battery Status (Unlock) (Live tile for current battery percent, also tracks battery usage and graphs it for you)
EnClock (there is no stopwatch built in to WP7, and you never know when you need one)
eBay
HandyScan (Helps you take good pictures of papers, backs up to skydrive. Better to keep documents in here than with regular pictures).
Keep Alive (by jaxbot, it prevents wifi from turning off)
Nokia Drive (Unlock unless you get a nokia device)
MetroPaper (Read it later / pocket)
Metrotube + Supertube (youtube apps. 1 is awesome, 2 lets you download videos and even create offline "music" playlists)
Photo2cloud (back up full res photos to skydrive independent of PC)
Supreme Shortcuts (Unlock) (Lets you pin any setting page to the start screen)
WeatherLive (There are plenty of other weather apps... but weatherlive works, it's incredibly thorough, updates live tile using GPS location, is pretty, etc)
Zite (Gives you news articles based on google reader feeds and who you follow in twitter, good for every time I go to the toilet )
If you use IRC or SSH
The SSH Client Pro
TinyIRC
And now that you are a part of the WP community, you should invest in AND pin the live tiles of each to your start screen:
WPCentral
WMPoweruser
Games! I Don't like to play serious games on my phone; I like something I can whip out at any time and turn off at any time, no consequence. That said, I make an exception for the Final Fantasy updated / rerelease for WP7
COLLAPSE (Probably my favorite mobile game. It's an easy puzzle game, but satisfying to plow through at ludicrous speed. There are some very hard rounds with special conditions though.. story mode is dumb but it has unique challenges and you need to play through it to unlock all the quick play modes).
Final Fantasy
Wordament
Fruit Ninja
Dodonpachi Maximum (Genre: Bullet Hell. If you don't know what that means then try it before you buy it. If you love bullet hell; buy this. It's by CAVE).
Wizard's Choice (A casual text adventure).
link68759 said:
Lots of good info
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the detailed response!
I've started using Onenote as a to-do list, but I made a recent post as to why that's causing me problems (or so it seems).
I seem to be syncing everything from onenote, and my device has basically filled up overnight as it downloaded my files. Microsoft told me to contact Nokia about it, and then disconnected?
It seemed like a good plan to me as well. I don't really need to see detailed graphs and notes on the phone, just a couple simple folders.
I may just reset the phone and give the other apps you suggested a shot, and not connect with my microsoft live ID at all. I went from plenty of space on the device to none, in a matter of days.
I'm not sure if podcasts were an issue as well, and how it saves and deletes them. I only stored what I would consider a small amount, maybe 200 megs or less.
Nokia drive works great. It takes up a lot of space, but I have it on my feature phone as well, and the GPS acquisition time on the Lumia 710 blows away my E5-00, and my Droid X. It's just incredibly fast at locking in.
I'll do a reset tomorrow and give the other apps a shot, and try to avoid anything that could be crushing my storage. All I really need for storage is email, nokia drive, and basic apps/news/podcasts, which on my android (nav aside) shouldn't really take more than 1 gig of space. A few small games to pass the time, and some apps for productivity, and I should be back in business.
Unfortunately I can't seem to find a way to determine what is using X amount of space, so I'll have to do a full wipe and install items slowly, to sort it out.
There isn't a proper app to view this kind of thing, is there?
Regards,
--bb
I'll reply to your other thread about one note.
You can't not connect with your live ID if you plan to download apps unfortunately.
For viewing used space, Zune does divide it up for you, I don't remember how specific it gets but it should be divided into space used by music, videos, podcasts, apps. I don't think it's possible for an app to view usage, because each app is sandboxed; that is they have their own folder on the device and they are not allowed to leave it.
Nokia Drive shouldn't need to take up a lot of space; you can just download the maps of where you live and where you might possibly go spontaneously, as opposed to your whole country XD. Yeah I've had good luck with my phones and GPS, WP7 in general does an excellent job with GPS.
Oh I forgot to mention in my first post; WPCentral and WMPoweruser are good because they do a lot of app/game reviews, usually the reviews are on new apps in the market. This is pretty much the only way I discover new apps
link68759 said:
I'll reply to your other thread about one note.
You can't not connect with your live ID if you plan to download apps unfortunately.
For viewing used space, Zune does divide it up for you, I don't remember how specific it gets but it should be divided into space used by music, videos, podcasts, apps. I don't think it's possible for an app to view usage, because each app is sandboxed; that is they have their own folder on the device and they are not allowed to leave it.
Nokia Drive shouldn't need to take up a lot of space; you can just download the maps of where you live and where you might possibly go spontaneously, as opposed to your whole country XD. Yeah I've had good luck with my phones and GPS, WP7 in general does an excellent job with GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gotcha!
I will look into setting up a new windows live account for OneNote to-do type lists. I know Office sometimes used to have issues with multiple live accounts on the same computer, in Windows 7, but I think that's mostly fixed now. I use google calendar anyways (to sync), so realistically it's not the end of the world for me to keep the accounts disconnected from my school Onenote live account.
I guess I synced all of Nokia North America at once (1.9 or so gigs of a download). I certainly don't need more than 20% of it. In fact, my whole state, now that I look at it, is only 36 megs.
Now that you've given some ideas of how to approach it, I'm liking this more than any of my other previous phones (iPhone, BB Bold, Droid X, etc). It needs some time to grow as an operating system, and Nokia really needs to put an LED notification light on future models [shakes tiny fist], but I think they're back in the game!
Thank you very much for all of your help.
//Edit: I read your other post responding to mine. I think you're right. I could probably do a wipe, use the same account, but move the basic to-do lists to a separate folder, pin them, and make sure to never ever open the school folder itself in Office on the phone. That sounds like it would work ok as well, as I must have opened a school folder that overwhelmed it and just started syncing massive amounts of pdf's, inking, and so on, along with the simple things.
I just wanted to also mention that all that you typed out would make for a great sticky. That's a ton of great info.
Thank you again for all of the feedback.
You made some excellent points about how smartphones add lots of unnecessary stresses when they're constantly distracting us with notifications, as well as how live tiles really help ease you into information you need, and information you might not, but are willing to take a brief glance at. I'm a big Windows 8 fan, and have used RP, RTM Pro (currently), and RTM enterprise. I think Live Tiles are fantastic, whether it's on my phone, my convertible laptop, or my desktop. I think you're absolutely correct about how people just don't quite understand how handy it will be yet.
//BTW: I bookmarked your post as a sort of "zen" explanation I can refer back to, or link to a friend, so they understand the unity and purposes in the next stage in Windows products.
///Afterthought: I still would like a notification LED on the phone, as long as it's customizable. On Android and Blackberry I would always disable the light for all of the nonsense things, but keep it enabled for things like a missed call (because that could be my son needing a ride, or something else that's important), or for a severe weather alert. Random emails would just have to wait until I turned on the screen.
Sorry to bump my own thread again, but I have a question about three of the apps that link68759 mentioned.
"Supreme Shortcuts (Unlock) (Lets you pin any setting page to the start screen)"
"Battery Status (Unlock) (Live tile for current battery percent, also tracks battery usage and graphs it for you)"
"Keep Alive (by jaxbot, it prevents wifi from turning off)"
By "unlock" I'm assuming he meant an unlocked bootloader, and not locked to a cellular carrier? I did the basic test today, and mine appears to be locked, which is a shame because both of those functions would be great.
As far as "Keep Alive" goes, I can't seem to find that specific app/dev combo in the market. I don't use 3g/4g data on this phone, or any phone anymore, so is that an app that is better than keeping the scanning on, or is it a battery drain? I'm just not sure I follow the concept, because I can't find a description of it.
Regards,
--bb
bladebarrier said:
Sorry to bump my own thread again, but I have a question about three of the apps that link68759 mentioned.
"Supreme Shortcuts (Unlock) (Lets you pin any setting page to the start screen)"
"Battery Status (Unlock) (Live tile for current battery percent, also tracks battery usage and graphs it for you)"
"Keep Alive (by jaxbot, it prevents wifi from turning off)"
By "unlock" I'm assuming he meant an unlocked bootloader, and not locked to a cellular carrier? I did the basic test today, and mine appears to be locked, which is a shame because both of those functions would be great.
As far as "Keep Alive" goes, I can't seem to find that specific app/dev combo in the market. I don't use 3g/4g data on this phone, or any phone anymore, so is that an app that is better than keeping the scanning on, or is it a battery drain? I'm just not sure I follow the concept, because I can't find a description of it.
Regards,
--bb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You'll need to flash a custom ROM, which you can luckily do on your 710.
The a wifi radio turning on/off takes more power than one that is idly connected. So if you use the phone frequently, it's better to stay connected. If you aren't going to touch it for many hours at a time, better to let it disconnect and turn off.
But if you aren't using cellular then you'll need wifi to update information in the background.
Some more here
Dialpad7
Handyscan
Photogram
Skype
Sleep Bug
Tango
UC Browser
whatspp= messenger
Yelp = to find nearby things

[APP][2.2+] Podcast Addict

Podcast Addict
Version 1.9
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
​
I just want to introduce you to my Podcast app available on the Google Play.
This is my 1st Android app and it's still incomplete but almost all of the basic features have been implemented.
If you watch or listen to French podcasts, you will find some of the best independant podcats embedded by default in the app.
If you do not, don't run away yet, because you can still use this app to manage all your podcasts.
Here are the main features:
• podcasts subscription
• podcasts search engine (thousands of podcasts available in different languages)
• OPML import file (iTunes, Google Reader, ...)
• new episodes notification
• automatic download
• streaming
• audio player with resume feature
• playlist support
• OPML export
• widget
• comments download feature
• episode & podcast sharing
• episode filters & search engine
• automatic episode deletion feature
• ...
Upcoming features:
• New UI optimized for tablets
• Podcast recommendation feature
• Download manager
• Internal video player
So feel free to test the app, and please, tell me what you think about it.
I know, some important features are missing, but they will soon be available
Headset controls now work on ICS and JB (since v1.8.8)
What do you do when you listen to your podcast? What do you want to do most of the times when you are going back to the app?
Every. Single. Podcast. Player. Does the same ****ing thing wrong.
Go figure it out.
el_bhm said:
What do you do when you listen to your podcast? What do you want to do most of the times when you are going back to the app?
Every. Single. Podcast. Player. Does the same ****ing thing wrong.
Go figure it out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean ?
bambou51 said:
What do you mean ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yip, bump that. Constructive helpful feedback will assist the dev to make this a better app, me thinks? Instead of cryptic comments...
Just released Podcast Addict v1.9.
Main new feature is the Playlist support.
A little bit more Holo design would be much more better. The glossy style of the bar on the top is not android like.
Also please disable the emulated menu button. The menu button must be in the Actionbar.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
WingnutStrikesBack said:
A little bit more Holo design would be much more better. The glossy style of the bar on the top is not android like.
Also please disable the emulated menu button. The menu button must be in the Actionbar.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that I'm almost having every basic feature implemented I will rethink the whole UI for the v2.0
Fantastic Podcast app! I hadn't looked for a good podcast app in a while, and I first went through and read a few sites that listed the "top 10 android podcast apps". I downloaded the top 4-5 and played with them. Eventually I realized they each have something that annoyed me too much. Usually, they were either too simple in attempts to have a clean/simple UI, or they were so complicated that it made navigation not enjoyable. I tried one out that had 4 tabbed screens of settings...
Eventually I found this one. This is the only one that I kept. I love the simple and straight forward UI and fantastic feature set. Perfect balance and no bloat. All the core features are there. The settings are simple and just make sense. The app is mostly intuitive in terms of flow - I would add a button for the subscription (using a Nexus S and having to go to options to view it was not intuitive at first). Another change, as some people have mentioned on the play store, is putting a back button -- although personally, I didn't even notice until I read the reviewsI only noticed it because a bunch of people complained about it. If you can, on the widget, please add the current time position and the max (end) time position. At last, ask people about the primary language and after that use only that language (ex of this: if you select English, when you search, there's still french under the titles)
Good luck with this app - you have created something fantastic! If you make a donation version count me in!!
ventz said:
Fantastic Podcast app! I hadn't looked for a good podcast app in a while, and I first went through and read a few sites that listed the "top 10 android podcast apps". I downloaded the top 4-5 and played with them. Eventually I realized they each have something that annoyed me too much. Usually, they were either too simple in attempts to have a clean/simple UI, or they were so complicated that it made navigation not enjoyable. I tried one out that had 4 tabbed screens of settings...
Eventually I found this one. This is the only one that I kept. I love the simple and straight forward UI and fantastic feature set. Perfect balance and no bloat. All the core features are there. The settings are simple and just make sense. The app is mostly intuitive in terms of flow - I would add a button for the subscription (using a Nexus S and having to go to options to view it was not intuitive at first). Another change, as some people have mentioned on the play store, is putting a back button -- although personally, I didn't even notice until I read the reviewsI only noticed it because a bunch of people complained about it. If you can, on the widget, please add the current time position and the max (end) time position. At last, ask people about the primary language and after that use only that language (ex of this: if you select English, when you search, there's still french under the titles)
Good luck with this app - you have created something fantastic! If you make a donation version count me in!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for your comment!
I don't understand what the problem is with the back button. You can use Android back button to go back to the previous screen. You can also press the App icon in the ActionBar to go back to the main screen. If you understand what te problem is, please tell me.
I didn't add any progress bar on the widget to avoid draining the battery, I might add a 2nd widget with a progress bar, in a future release.
As for the french in the search engine, I didn't take the time to clean the podcasts translations in the database, but I will improve the search feature in the upcoming v2.0.
bambou51 said:
Thanks a lot for your comment!
I don't understand what the problem is with the back button. You can use Android back button to go back to the previous screen. You can also press the App icon in the ActionBar to go back to the main screen. If you understand what te problem is, please tell me..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I understand it now. So the complaint (from what I am gathering from the comments) is that people don't know that hitting that icon takes you home. But that actually makes perfect sense. Some people call that "going back" by the way. Maybe replacing it with a button that says "home" would do it. Or having an "info" screen when you first install the app that tells you it's a "home" button for the app. I don't know -- honestly, this just doesn't seem annoying
That's interesting about the progress on the widget. I didn't realize they burn the battery so much.
ventz said:
I think I understand it now. So the complaint (from what I am gathering from the comments) is that people don't know that hitting that icon takes you home. But that actually makes perfect sense. Some people call that "going back" by the way. Maybe replacing it with a button that says "home" would do it. Or having an "info" screen when you first install the app that tells you it's a "home" button for the app. I don't know -- honestly, this just doesn't seem annoying
That's interesting about the progress on the widget. I didn't realize they burn the battery so much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm already thinking about adding some kind of tutorial or tips section in the app.
Widget refresh will not drain your battery, but because it will need to refresh the progress status every second, it will still add some CPU charge
Take a look, if you haven't already, at the Spotify app. You have the same clean design, and it's very similar (same player on the bottom that expands when selected). I think the only thing missing is making that top-left corner into something like what Spotify has done, which will present all the screen options (home, search, playlist, all, etc...)
Anyway, either way, good luck with this app. I really like it!
PlayList Sort
Is there a way to sort the playlist? Here is my scenario:
I have a segmented podcast that is downloaded daily... there are 15+ segments that come per day... Ideally, I would want it to automatically download the latest podcasts and automatically add it to the playlist... I would need it to play the next day's podcasts but in the proper order... basically, day 1, segment 1, then segment 2, 3, etc until day 2, segment 1, 2, 3, etc... currently, it has the days correct but the segments are reversed...
Thanks for your help... I really like your app and would love to continue using it...
oldirtdog said:
Is there a way to sort the playlist? Here is my scenario:
I have a segmented podcast that is downloaded daily... there are 15+ segments that come per day... Ideally, I would want it to automatically download the latest podcasts and automatically add it to the playlist... I would need it to play the next day's podcasts but in the proper order... basically, day 1, segment 1, then segment 2, 3, etc until day 2, segment 1, 2, 3, etc... currently, it has the days correct but the segments are reversed...
Thanks for your help... I really like your app and would love to continue using it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For now you can only reorder your playlist by drag and dropping your episodes. You can enable autodownload & auto queueing. Your episodes will then be added in the right order, but you might have other podcasts' episodes in the middle. In that case you will need to reorder manually your playlist.
Subscription issue
First off, I really like your app -- it is by far my favorite of all the podcast apps I tried. I love the feature set, but I agree with previous comments that the UI could still use some work. I feel like it could be simplified -- currently there are a lot of different screens you can be on, and no easy way to switch between them or even to tell how the screen you're on relates to the other parts of the app. I'm using on a tablet, so a multi-pane view would be ideal for me (though obviously not for phone users).
OK, here's my issue: I'm trying to subscribe to two feeds from the same content producer. But every time I add the second feed, it replaces the first one -- and vice versa. The feeds are from the Skeptics' Guide To The Universe podcast -- they do their main show in one feed, and occasional mini-episodes in another feed. I would link to the xml files, but the forum won't let me. They're easy to find on the Skeptics' Guide website.
Is there some trick I can try to get both feeds to show up? Currently my subscriptions view shows one listing for "The Skeptics Guide", regardless of which feed I've just tried to add, and the episodes available correspond to the most recent feed added. I've also tried adding them both at the same time from the search page, but that didn't work either.
Thanks for any ideas or bug fixes you can provide, and for your continued work on the app! It's great!
tedricb said:
First off, I really like your app -- it is by far my favorite of all the podcast apps I tried. I love the feature set, but I agree with previous comments that the UI could still use some work. I feel like it could be simplified -- currently there are a lot of different screens you can be on, and no easy way to switch between them or even to tell how the screen you're on relates to the other parts of the app. I'm using on a tablet, so a multi-pane view would be ideal for me (though obviously not for phone users).
OK, here's my issue: I'm trying to subscribe to two feeds from the same content producer. But every time I add the second feed, it replaces the first one -- and vice versa. The feeds are from the Skeptics' Guide To The Universe podcast -- they do their main show in one feed, and occasional mini-episodes in another feed. I would link to the xml files, but the forum won't let me. They're easy to find on the Skeptics' Guide website.
Is there some trick I can try to get both feeds to show up? Currently my subscriptions view shows one listing for "The Skeptics Guide", regardless of which feed I've just tried to add, and the episodes available correspond to the most recent feed added. I've also tried adding them both at the same time from the search page, but that didn't work either.
Thanks for any ideas or bug fixes you can provide, and for your continued work on the app! It's great!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Sorry for the late answer I didn't saw the notification.
I'm working on a new UI for the v2.0.
Regarding your feed problem, for now there's a restriction when 2 feeds share the same Podcast name...
I'll try to remove this restriction ASAP
Great App - 2 questions
This podcast app is really well done. I'm used to the UI, it didn't take much, and I love the different choices available in the settings. I have two questions:
Headset control
I'm having an issue with my motorolla stereo bluetooth headset, where after a few times pressing pause to pause and resume, the internal player eventually does not accept commands from my bluetooth to pause. Pressing the buttons no longer works. Any suggestions? I do have the Headset Controls option checked.
Removal of 'marked read'
Although I've marked many of my podcasts as read (I have it download a news segment hourly but might not get to listen for a day and no longer need the old ones), they are not getting deleted. They're still in the app and the trash can is available. Do I not have one of the settings correct? I have the Automatic Deletion option checked.
fldavem said:
This podcast app is really well done. I'm used to the UI, it didn't take much, and I love the different choices available in the settings. I have two questions:
Headset control
I'm having an issue with my motorolla stereo bluetooth headset, where after a few times pressing pause to pause and resume, the internal player eventually does not accept commands from my bluetooth to pause. Pressing the buttons no longer works. Any suggestions? I do have the Headset Controls option checked.
Removal of 'marked read'
Although I've marked many of my podcasts as read (I have it download a news segment hourly but might not get to listen for a day and no longer need the old ones), they are not getting deleted. They're still in the app and the trash can is available. Do I not have one of the settings correct? I have the Automatic Deletion option checked.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Right now there's no link between the downloaded file and the read status. So if you mark an episode read it will not delete the file.
You can delete it manually or you can delete every read episodes from the filter 'Downloaded episodes'. In the menu select the 'Delete read episodes' entry.
I will add a new pref to automatically delete an episode when it's mark read.
Regarding the issue with your BT headset is it a one time problem ? I don't have a BT headset to test it, but I'm using a 'wired' headset on a daily basis and the play/pause commands works great. I'll try to look into this problem but without some hardware to test I cant't promess anything
Notifications
First I would like to thank you for making such a great app. I tried a bunch of apps and this one was definitely the best. I have one piece of feedback about the notifications. It gives two boxes when podcasts update. One that says updates have been downloaded and another that says how many. I think the notification would be more useful if it showed one box with the app symbol then listed the podcasts downloaded. Thanks. David

[APP][4.0+][FREE] Mini Tasker

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This thread is closed. Please use this thread for news and updates on Condi: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=46657479
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Condi (previously Mini Tasker) is a free android automation app for ICS or higher.
The app allows users to quickly set up fairly complex actions when certain conditions are met, without sacrificing battery life, and with the ability to easily share tasks between users. We never poll (everything comes from a broadcast), and we're pretty minimalistic so the memory footprint is reasonable. We use google play services to detect location using low power sensors and recognize activity like walking or driving.
This is a university project, and our first android app, we're very humbled by over 30k downloads, this is very unexpected and we're very grateful for the feedback and bug reports, you're awesome!
Me and my partner made this app this summer for academic credit so we give it out completely for free, without ads or tracking.
We decided to change the name to avoid any conflicts with the original Tasker (Pent is a nice person and you should buy his app), too bad there are so many reviews already out there using the old name.
This week we finally submitted the project (after some delays), which means we can start changing big stuff (the last 10 or so releases we're bug fixes only). We're gonna push our first beta version next sunday to the beta channel, please subscribe to this mailing list to get it: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/minitasker
Your feedback is appreciated, you can email us at [email protected] or reply here.
Thanks,
Anton and Michal
Download Condi (previously Mini Tasker) at Google Play
Changes:
v0.2.13
* volume control ui bug fixed
* activity detection delay setting more visible
* UTF-8 support for task sharing
v0.2.12
* new condition - on boot
* location editor auto focuses on current location, minimal radius enforcement of 75 meters as it's unlikely the low power sensors will ever give a higher accuracy than that.
* music player song picker now uses native dialog and native addresses - support for most players that can open mp3
* music player - play pause toggle buttons now use broadcasts instead of keyboard presses - no longer crashes youtube, get's stuck on total command etc.
* activity recognition (i.e. drive walk...) upped the confidence level, and now there's a programmable delay for the end task (see the settings window).
* fixed a crash on forwarding SMS from known numbers.
* wifi still wasn't included as it wasn't stable enough for the time.
v0.2.10
* wifi crash fixed, can't send sms during calls fix
* volume control now properly mutes in all cases
v0.2.9
* Inverse locations (start when leaving a location)
* Delete actions and conditions from the edit screen
* A lot of memory leak fixes
v0.2.4:
* I messed up with 0.2.3 a bit, sms forwarding and call silencing are not using the correct values of the message and origin.
* Fixed a rare crash on the settings dialog
* Fixed a calendar condition crash when no calendars / events exist.
* Apparently a lot of times our application was killed in the background for not responding, and this corrupted the states of events and made things not run as expected, so now there's a background service that should take care of that. Memory footprint is around 5mb which is still less then Tasker.
* Superuser actions sometime hanged the app, and made it crash for ANR. This should now be taken care of
Can Mini Tasker set the network mode? ie. WCDMA only, WCDMA Preferred, LTE/GSM/WCDMA etc.
Can it enable/disable usb tethering?
network mode should be easy enough, we already play with these settings on the "3g toggle", i just need to generalize it a bit.
i'll look into the tethering thing.
i'm adding both to the next major release. it might take 2 weeks or so for our work to be graded, then i'll push it to the public channel.
if you want you can join the alpha channel here and i'll try to get something together there sooner.
more things that will be added next are:
* better calendar support (currently doesn't support repeat events)
* wifi on/off condition
* wifi near ssid condition
suggestions are welcome
Not working on Galaxy S3 CM10.1 RC2. Try to open play list when connecting any headset. But after I connected, mini tasker disabled that profile ( I have poweramp, uninstalled Apollo).
phntm said:
network mode should be easy enough, we already play with these settings on the "3g toggle", i just need to generalize it a bit.
i'll look into the tethering thing.
i'm adding both to the next major release. it might take 2 weeks or so for our work to be graded, then i'll push it to the public channel.
if you want you can join the alpha channel here and i'll try to get something together there sooner.
more things that will be added next are:
* better calendar support (currently doesn't support repeat events)
* wifi on/off condition
* wifi near ssid condition
suggestions are welcome
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for reply and info.
As far as further suggestions....I've seen "wifi near" used in several apps but never saw a "bluetooth near" option....I don't know if it's feasible but if you can specify a specific "id" it could quickly distinguish when I'm home or in the car and then enable the appropriate commands such as linking to my car/home cordless phones via bluetooth.
I'd like to try your app but I can't find it on the Play Store and when I access Play Store with a browser it says my device is not compatible. I have a nexus 7 running android 4.3
Afaik bluetooth near is not a broadcast.
It should be much cleaner to add bluetooth state changed to detect the car connecting.
The car dock condition and activity detection in the current stable are already quite cool.
My car detection is based on charger+dock. The dock is enable by another software when the bluetooth connects.
Anyway, added to the wishlist.
The app works very well on my Nexus 7 but I think I need to add a 10" screenshot to make the market consider it compatible. I'll try to arrange that now.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
I didn't test with poweramp yet, i did with Apollo.
Not all players support internal storage style urls, even Google Play music fails.
That means any app that doesn't work right now needs custom support with some sort of url hack, which makes sharing profiles almost impossible across different setups.
I'll try to tackle this issue on the next major.
For now, try adding a launch app action, and a play music button emulation action. I'll try to arrange better support for more apps soon.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
how about using incoming sms as a trigger to do the app launching etc?
oldsap said:
how about using incoming sms as a trigger to do the app launching etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's possible already but there's no ui to easily do this atm. right now you can add an action to the sms forward condition but i guess you'll want to match the text as well and also, not do the forwarding part.
added to the wishlist.
Support for tablets is now available.
Still no major changes or new features as our work is yet to be graded.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Wow, this is awesome!
No leaving location?
Tasker is missing this too, is it possible to have a "Not at Location" as an event? I'd like to be able to send a message to my wife when I'm leaving work, but there is no way to set an event for when leaving a location.
The real tasker has a concept of "end task", we do implicit end task (we automatically guess or restore to last state).
Location indeed is missing an inverse, i'll add it up on the next major release.
What you might want to do for now is 3 conditions:
Time based - evening
Location - work
Activity - driving
Conditions are combined with "and".
btw I just pushed an update to fix a regression on forwarding sms and silencing calls, also a couple of crashes reported today.
Update is avaliable now on google play.
Also you can now use the %%PHONE%% variable in the text of the send sms action when the condition is phone call silencing.
This might be useful to tell your other phone you just had a call.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
Nice app. Tried it out this morning. One thing I would have liked to do, but could not find the option... Is there a way (or could it be added) to set it so bluetooth and wifi go on when I launch Google maps and navigation? I don't see an 'at launch' trigger.
I don't run them regularly for battery reasons (HTC One's big downfall is the middle of the road battery).
Sent from my rooted Speak and Spell running OS X Mountain Lion.
Hi everyone, first of all, wow, thanks for all the kind words, we really didn't expect to be noticed so quickly
A quick update: we did fix the application-not-responding crashes almost entirely, only now there's a new problem...
We've got a couple of crashes on 0.2.4, mostly from toasts launched from the background, and like always, these only started after we published the update.
We're gonna push a fix for these real soon, keep the crash reports flowing, they help a lot.
I setup a task that "When Driving" navigates me to my home address between 15:30 and 18:30 and it repeats every weekday.
The two problems that I ran into is that is uses Waze(which is installed) instead of Google Maps. I cannot choose what app I want to use if I have multiple installed.
The second problem is that I had to travel at over 50mph before the task kicked in. I cannot choose a speed for it to kick in.
Other than that it is a very solid app. :cyclops:
Really love this app do far. Thank you and good luck - I hope you get the grades you deserve.
One question... I hope you can help me please...
I want Mini Tasker to turn off my Mobile Data connection when I get home and turn on my WiFi... I think I've managed to sort that bit.
But how do I reverse it so when I leave home it turns off my WiFi and turns on my Data Connection?
I'm guessing I'm missing something glaringly obvious.
Thank you.
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4
Fubie3 said:
I setup a task that "When Driving" navigates me to my home address between 15:30 and 18:30 and it repeats every weekday.
The two problems that I ran into is that is uses Waze(which is installed) instead of Google Maps. I cannot choose what app I want to use if I have multiple installed.
The second problem is that I had to travel at over 50mph before the task kicked in. I cannot choose a speed for it to kick in.
Other than that it is a very solid app. :cyclops:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Something else I notice is that if I'm in stop and go traffic (I have Mini Tasker turn bluetooth on while driving and biking) the bluetooth will turn back off if I'm stopped. Technically the Mini Tasker command is only to turn on bluetooth, not to turn it off when not driving or biking.
Is this supposed to happen? If so could you separate the on and off and also put it in the description that it will do so? That would be very helpful. =]
Let me try

[APP][2.2+][Free] Tasks Together

Tasks Together on Google Play
Tasks Together apk
Change way you tackle task management on the mobile device.
Task Together has been designed from the ground up to help you not only with your own personal to-do lists,
but to share and solve tasks with your friends or colleagues.
Here are a few examples where other task management applications struggle,
but these scenarios are a breeze with Task Together:
- Working on project plan of your group has never been easier.
- Sharing a shopping list with your spouse.
- Relaying a call to your secretary or colleague.
- Get notified about a task at a specific location, relevant to the task.
Feedback
Any suggestions/feedback on this task management app? I would appreciate every comment. Thanks.
Cool app, good solution to a widely known problem. Will test this further.
I will however say another thing. Check out http://asana.com
Fine App, similar to SplenDO, but not so pretty
Is there any option to sync?
AnnaKeller said:
Fine App, similar to SplenDO, but not so pretty
Is there any option to sync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disagree, this is much prettier!
You can sync your private task lists with Google Tasks (from settings). But when you send task to someone, theres no way to sync it for now.
I just installed the app, looks nice, with clean interface, which I like more than those complicated apps.
I have few comments that I'd like to see in future updates:
1- The apps misses an option for recurring tasks, sometimes I want to do the same task same time every week or month, like paying a bill or watch a TV show, etc... so it would be great if you add this option.
2- It would be great if you have more advanced reminder option, currently it just gives a notification with the default system tone, which can be easily missed. it might be better if we can assign a different tone so that when I hear it, I notice that this is the reminder for a task from your app. you might also add an alert window with some options like dismiss or remind later after 10 mins or so.
These 2 requests will make your app much better in my opinion. and I can say they are very basic, so if you want to make some Plus or Pro version these should be in the free versions, and other options can follow for the Plus one, like syncing, etc...
Good luck and thanks for the nice app
AnnaKeller said:
Fine App, similar to SplenDO, but not so pretty
Is there any option to sync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SplenDO looks fine, but I did not find the way to send tasks to my friends.
tmrbaset said:
I just installed the app, looks nice, with clean interface, which I like more than those complicated apps.
I have few comments that I'd like to see in future updates:
1- The apps misses an option for recurring tasks, sometimes I want to do the same task same time every week or month, like paying a bill or watch a TV show, etc... so it would be great if you add this option.
2- It would be great if you have more advanced reminder option, currently it just gives a notification with the default system tone, which can be easily missed. it might be better if we can assign a different tone so that when I hear it, I notice that this is the reminder for a task from your app. you might also add an alert window with some options like dismiss or remind later after 10 mins or so.
These 2 requests will make your app much better in my opinion. and I can say they are very basic, so if you want to make some Plus or Pro version these should be in the free versions, and other options can follow for the Plus one, like syncing, etc...
Good luck and thanks for the nice app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your comments.
1. Recurring tasks are on my task list. They should be in upcoming updates.
2. Good point with the custom ring tone. I'll try to implement it. Now there are action buttons in notification, where you can "snooze" the task for defined amount of time (settings). If you star the task and set due date, then no notification is shown but fullscreen alarm is displayed from where you can take action - you'll never miss that! You can try
Once again thanks for useful comments.
31 98858985
pytel said:
SplenDO looks fine, but I did not find the way to send tasks to my friends.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SplenDO doesn't have sharing tasks with friends, because it is task list for personal use only and in this case it is the best and most useful.
BTW, Still, one of the task option in SplenDO is "Share" in androidial meaning
Very nice application!
I think I found a bug though! When I try setting the location of the task on "walking"the app crashes! l have the version downloaded here on your post and I'm using a Note 10.1 on stock Touchwiz Rom android 4.1.2
pytel said:
Thanks for your comments.
1. Recurring tasks are on my task list. They should be in upcoming updates.
2. Good point with the custom ring tone. I'll try to implement it. Now there are action buttons in notification, where you can "snooze" the task for defined amount of time (settings). If you star the task and set due date, then no notification is shown but fullscreen alarm is displayed from where you can take action - you'll never miss that! You can try
Once again thanks for useful comments.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried and yes the full screen reminder is awesome .. but there is no clue for the user that it's there for the favorite tasks, I missed it .. also I dont know why you chose to make it silent with vibration. it should have sound with the custom ringtone I mentioned before.
good work though
Mr-Kappa said:
Very nice application!
I think I found a bug though! When I try setting the location of the task on "walking"the app crashes! l have the version downloaded here on your post and I'm using a Note 10.1 on stock Touchwiz Rom android 4.1.2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You found it! It is fixed now. The bug fixed version will be released soon. Thanks.
Thank heavens, shared shopping lists. Its about time. Testing this immediately! Thanks a million
Wow.. app looks awesome!! Installing now.. Will let you know how it goes after trying! Good job mate!!
Version 1.0.20
I've just released new version with some bug fixes. After several hours it should be available on Google Play
pytel said:
I've just released new version with some bug fixes. After several hours it should be available on Google Play
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm looking forward to trying this out.
When you get around to the reoccuring tasks, can you make that rather customizable?
The typical entries are:
Year/Month/Week/Day
If you could set the number, such as ever 10 days or 3 weeks, would make it able to handle a bunch of odd tasks.
maddbomber83 said:
I'm looking forward to trying this out.
When you get around to the reoccuring tasks, can you make that rather customizable?
The typical entries are:
Year/Month/Week/Day
If you could set the number, such as ever 10 days or 3 weeks, would make it able to handle a bunch of odd tasks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll try to make it simple and customizable so you can handle your every 3 weeks tasks
Unfortunately I can't guarantee you date when it will be released...
Google Tasks Sync
I installed the app and told it to sync with my Google account. It did the whole permissions and syncing thing, but then it only pulled two of my four task lists and they are both blank in the app even though they each have more than 20 tasks in them. It's been a few hours now and all of my other Google things have been syncing properly. Any ideas?
JamMasterClay said:
I installed the app and told it to sync with my Google account. It did the whole permissions and syncing thing, but then it only pulled two of my four task lists and they are both blank in the app even though they each have more than 20 tasks in them. It's been a few hours now and all of my other Google things have been syncing properly. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems that our app exceeded limit for Google Tasks API queries per day. So all sync requests will fail. We sent request for increasing the limit. I hope this issue will be solved soon.

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