Reto Meier at Google Blogoscoped has written an Android tutorial on his experiences creating an application for Android which merges the maps, location api (GPS), contact book and phone dialer together. His application, Where are my Friends (WamF), leverages the core GUI and location API to figure out and map where your friends live in relation to where you are at the moment. This is an application idea suggested in Mike’s Androidology videos on Youtube, and it has quickly been achieved here in practice.
Rob also gives some basic insight into the development environment, his chosen setup of Eclipse in Windows, and a general overview of Android foundations, so that any new Android developer can get a basic understanding of how to use Intents in Android to request and deliver information to each of the Android components that are required to perform your tasks.
Tutorial Link: Where Are My Friends
fantastic idea! also it would be nice to have some application on the “friend’s side” to inform, that some mobile friend (friend in motion, I mean travelling) is near by, it would be achieved by trying (on android side) to somehow broadcast own position to some extern database,
for example if I registered in service like classmate, and I havenot seen some colleagues for ages, and I know he is travelling somewhere around, I would give him/her a call (based on the location provided on some website) “hey, are you somewhere around? let’s meet!”
anyway enjoy android,
best regards
January 16th, 2008