Android Aalto

Life is so short, It wouldn’t be the same without games! Educational, thematic, strategy games, etc. all add their own special taste. For developers the funniest things to program, same for designers games are to express it all and let the creativity fly.

Also think of the thousands of games available online and the multi-million mobile gaming industry. It is time take mobile gaming seriously, it is a real attractive business.

And because people asked for, it is time for a real Gaming Hackathon! are you ready for this “battle” !!!!

We will have a small introduction workshop session on Friday June 1st and the core hacking will happen on Saturday June 2nd.

We will help you to go through the basics but it will be great if you could already take a look at how to set up the Android environment, you can follow these instructions: Getting Set Up for Development

This time there will be refreshments and food during the event thanks to our sponsors:

Preliminary Program

June 1st (Preparation and preliminary design)

17:00 Welcome
17:30 Intro to the hackathon – Organizing teams
18:00 – 19:00 Workshops
a) Game frameworks for android
b) Android basics
19:00 + Preparation for hacking
- create repos, design the game etc.

June 2nd (core design and hacking)

11:00  Organizing the designs and modules of the game
12:00  Implement functions, core hacking
14:30 Lunch break and teams huddle, what is next!?
15:00 More hacking
18:30 Integrate, Play with the games!!
19:30 Closing words

Remember:

Let the games begin! hackathon June 1st at 17:00 and June 2nd at 11:00 at Aalto Venture Garage!

Please RSVP at in EventBrite event: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3500872203
There is also a Facebook event page to trigger the discussion: http://www.facebook.com/events/389805417738645
For more information you can contact us:
Facebook group
G+ page
Twitter

Gapps, the coolest Finnish authorized Google Enterprise partner, is looking for an Android Developer Intern to join an upcoming project during the summer of 2012. The internship program is a part of the co-operation with Android Aalto Community, Gapps and the partner companies of the Gapps-led Google Specialist Centre. The aim of the development project is a MVP of a kick-ass Android application for the enterprise market. As an Android Developer Intern you will be a part of the Gapps team and develop the application for the Android platform in co-operation with Gapps and our partner companies. The work will be done mainly during June-August continuing partly into September.

We expect you to have earlier experience in Android development; participation in Android Aalto Hackathons or the like is a plus. Knowledge in Google Apps APIs is a plus, but not a necessity. We are offering you a working environment with talented young people in Kamppi, the center of Helsinki, tech for you to use and an intern compensation. In the project you can get also in touch with Google’s personnel and other people working within the Google ecosystem here in Finland. Finnish language skills are not needed.

If you want to learn the latest trends in mobile development, meet great people, make some money, build new relationships in the Android industry, and have lots of fun, send your application letter and CV before 23th of May to team@androidaalto.org.

Last Saturday our speakers showed us what we can do to monetize mobile applications, business models and how to use Analytics tools to better understand your customers.

Here you can find the presentations:

Also, a few weeks ago we discussed about native and web mobile applications. Later on we divided in two teams to develop the same application using PhoneGap or natively. You can see the results at our github:

• FlickrGap (PhoneGap)
• FlickrAround (Native)

You can also find the presentations we prepared as introduction to the hackathon:

What were the misconceptions that you needed to deal when looking at a Android app design? Probably most of us, have seen those funny “iOS app designer” faces saying, – “Doh, it has hardware back button!” moment.

As we want our apps to look pretty, we came up with an idea to help graphical designers avoid common Android design anti-pattern. Moreover, when doing coding, coders sometimes suffer from improperly handed-off designs, so it would cool to make those nice people RTFM in their visual language. Think of Infographics. And I can’t avoid giving credit to  LemonLabs, who has inspired us with Karri for this idea with their “iOS App Designer Guide to Developer Love“.

So, in the next few days we are going to collect ideas for the “The Guide to Android design, the cutting and the app beauty”.

Here are few ideas about what could be there:

1. Avoid fixed length screens or be super smart about it. Android has a great variety of screens that have different aspect ratios. Some phones are long (1:2 on Nexus One) and some are not so long (3:4 on Galaxy Mini, HTC Wildfire).

2. If a screen doesn’t have much content (login screen for instance), consider designing it as a dialog: it will allow reusing same screen on tablet resolution without much effort.

3. Instead of multiple progress dialogs, consider animating action buttons or other interface elements. This is just so much nicer.

4. Also, I will repeat my very old idea that you can test for 92% of Android screens by using just 3 phones.

Updated with Joonas Kukkonen input:

One of the useful tactic is to design for post popular pixel density bucket (mdpi for tables, hdpi for phones). However, you must be aware that some devices have more pixel estate than others (even in desity dependent pixels). For instance, Samsung Nexus S and SIII have 360dp compared to 320dp of Galaxy S2 or 400dp of Galaxy Note. Also be careful about notorious Galaxy Tab 7, which uses hdpi despite it has only 171dp pixel density.

If you design pixel perfect layouts and use mdpi resolution as a reference design, sizes and margins have to be dividable by 2, in order to be properly scalable to hdpi and hdpi. The same way if you use hdpi resolution as a base, sizes and margins have to be dividable by 3, if your base is xhdpi – 4 . Keep in mind that Android design guidelines recommend 8dp grid for mdpi base.

P.S. Note that having more pixel real estate, may mean more space for  Ad banners! Profit FTW.

While Android took over the leadership in the market, App Developers are still figuring out how to monetize from their apps, what alternatives and what is the optimal model, it all depends.

This keynote is open to all those enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and established companies that are planning to enter the Android mobile app and business eco-system.

Come and join us, there will be top speakers and open lively discussions.

Starting at 11:00 on 5th of May at Aalto Venture Garage!

Speakers:

• Kimmo Koivisto (Tellyo) – “Different biz models to monetize Android apps”
• Jussi Luhtasela (Google Finland) “Using Google channels to monetize good apps”
• Janne Toivola (Futurice) – “Mobile apps analytics”
• Perttu Ojansuu (Gapps) – “Monetizing in Google Enterprise solutions”, with a very special announcement about summer internships at Gapps

Thanks indeed again to our sponsors:

Please RSVP at our Facebook event: Monetizating Android Apps – Keynote

For more information you can contact us:
Facebook group
G+ page
Twitter

PS: Are you going to Google I/O 2012? Some of our community members are going! Let us know so we could meet and have fun in San Francisco! If you are staying in Finland, why not to join us we plan to make a Google I/O Extended?

Should I develop a native Android app or is it enough to use the latest HTML5 features? We think there’s room for both kind of solutions but what about you?

Next 14th April come to Aalto Venture Garage, starting at 13.30, and get to know the basics of mobile web development and Android apps.
We will have a small introduction workshop and later on there will be a competition to see which team can develop the best user experience using either native or web applications.

We will help you to go through the basics but it will be great if you could already take a look at how to set up the Android environment, you can follow these instructions: Getting Set Up for Development

This is also a special hackathon because the Windows Phone Aalto Community will join us with a similar challenge Web-Based vs. Native for this platform:

As in every Android Aalto hackathon there will be some refreshments and food during the event thanks to our sponsors:

Tentative Program:

13:30 – Welcome – brainstorming – initial discussions
14:00 – Intro presentation (Comparison among different Web Development alternatives and Native by Ramon Sadornil from AA)
14:45 – Phone gap workshop (Josep Roca and Special Guest: Antti Vuorela from Futurice)
15:30 – Break / Lunch
16:00 – Challenge 2 apps developed in both Web and windows/android native by 3 teams
17:45-18:15 Open pannel

Remember:

Web vs Native app hackathon starting at 13.30 on 14th April at Aalto Venture Garage!

Please RSVP at our facebook event: Web vs Native hackathon
For more information you can contact us:
Facebook group
G+ page
Twitter

PS: Do you wanna support us? Feel free to print the above poster and hang it in your favorite geek place!

PS2: Are you going to Google I/O 2012? Some of our community members are going! Let us know so we could meet and have fun in San Francisco!

This is a new call to all droids enthusiast to join us at the:

After the great raise of the androids on last hackathon, where DroidKino has made it into the android market.And keeping the good spirit after Mobile World Congress 2012, with so much innovation, companies and startups showing great things done in Android.

We invite to all the community, people that has joined in previous events but also to you the one that just knew recently about Android Aalto, to do NOT hesitate to come over this next Saturday at Aalto Venture Garage to spend quality time discussing, learning and sharing about Android topics.

In parallel to the main stage, Android Aalto is inviting to join us for:

• Workshop on android basics, how to build an basic app end-to-end.
• Hacking space for teams to develop and showcase their own apps.
• Droidkino evolution to enhance the app, fragment and gesture support.

Again Many Thanks to Elisa and Reaktor for their support in our hackathons!

¡Hola from Barcelona!

Mobile World Congress is keeping us pretty busy but we’d like to make a quick recap on yesterday’s hackathon that Windows Phone Aalto community and us run at the Finnish Mobile Association stand.

The teams presented 10 great ideas and apps from different platforms: 4 from Windows Phone, 2 from Android, 1 for iOS and 3 from Blaast.

The ideas were really good and it was pretty hard for the mighty jury to make a decision. Here are the results:

Winner: AaltoVation (Windows Phone) – A 9 months pregnancy guide including diet tips, exercise tips, emergency calling facility, nearest hospital information and many other features.
Team: Apurva Jaiswal, Gitanjali Sachdeva, Irena Prochkova, Maimuna Syed.
Prize: Entry tickets to Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona

First runner-up: TeamSports App (Windows Phone) – An application for the Finnish hockey league (sm-liiga) to get the latest news and updates.
Team: Arto Ahonen, Donato Sapio, Gibran Rodriques.
Prize: 500€ gift certificate from Amazon.com

Second runner-up: Android application to get extra information in prominent places like transport hubs or fashion magazines using NFC technology.
Team: Aditya Kolachana, Apurva Jaiswal, Udit Anand.
Prize: 250€ gift certificate from Amazon.com

Congratulations to all teams for sharing cool ideas and prototypes!