Available on amazon app store

Digital photo frame is starting from now also available on the amazon app store! Currently only the ad-supported version but the premium version should be approved by amazon soon.

Version 6.0 released : transitions

As promised before, I worked on transitions between two photos for this next release. The implemented transitions are :

• Dissolve : photos fading into each other.
• Fade in/fade out 
• Zoom in and zoom out: The next photo replaces the previous one from inside or outside
• Slide left and right : The next photo replaces the previous one from left or right
• Random : any of the above

To make playing with the above transitions possible, I used a sliding menu to change the layout or transition during slideshow playback.

New photo frame version 5.6.1

Highlights of this version are:

• Transitions : Next to fade-in/fade-out, there is also a dissolve transition which shows the two photos blended together. More transitions to come ..., I'm open to suggestions.
• Completely redone recent slideshows. There is now the possibility to
• Rename the slideshow to whatever you want
• Delete the slideshow from the list
• Start the slideshow using the button next to the slideshow
• Go to the folder represented by this slideshow. This is a very useful feature if you often show photos from a subfolder of a certain location.
• The recent now has a (R) at the end to indicate it is a recursive slideshow.
• UPnP should now retrieve the photo with the best resolution instead of just the first one (depending on the server this would be an ok one or just a thumbnail)
• Unreadable photos crashed the app, this will now show nothing instead.
• Fixes the bugs introduced in 5.6 impacting a lot of users, sorry for this.

Released new photo frame version 5.5

The highlights of this version are

• Maximum delay between two photos is now 600 seconds
• If a layout with multiple photos is used, it is filled up as fast as the photos can be loaded.
• Selecting a specific photo starts the slideshow from that photo.
• Better full screen usage
• A new random layout as shown in the next picture

Let me know any additional feature you would like to see in the comments!
Also I keep a page about  the digital photo frame on google+, I've you would like to be kept up to date, click the follow button on the right.

Crash reporting android apps

I started using https://www.crittercism.com for crash reporting of my photo frame app. It only makes the app 40 kB bigger (peanuts on a 1Mb app) but sends the stacktrace automatically to their servers.
Where I normally receive one or two crash reports a day, it was soon clear to me that the problem is a lot bigger than that. Thanks to the detailed stack trace, I was able to resolve most of the problems really quick.

On a daily basis I have 300 people checking out my app but only 100 or less keeping it. Now it is clear to me why. Most of these users run into a crash that does not occur on my test devices. I hope the number of users that keep my app will be higher now and that the current users will have a more stable app.

New app : Tel/SMS shortcut

I released a new app to create shorcuts to start a call directly from your home screen or to send a predefined sms to one of your contacts. Just a little productivity tool, I use myself a lot.

Tell me what you think!

Android development tools

I created a bitbucket repository containing some unix scripts and groovy scripts I use when developing android applications. I will continue adding things as I need them. I hope somebody else gains time using these.
Let me know if you use them and feel free to add things in the bitbucket repository.

Currently it contains a conversion script from svg to png's in the different sizes needed and conversion from strings.xml location files to a csv and the other way round to ease collaboration with another team doing the translation. The wiki should explain more.