Android gif-based live wallpaper & daydream app

Check out this new cool android app! Giftastic!

The first free android app to use any gif file as a live wallpaper or even daydream service!

Fixing gif files for old android devices lower then android 3.2

Using a gif file as a live wallpaper is a great feature introduced to android since version 2.1.

The Problem with some gif animations and android < 3.2

You can easily use an app like gif-tastic to use any available gif animation as a gif live wallpaper.

But old android devices lower then 3.2 have some problems displaying some gif animations.
Most gif files are kind of optimized and we have to unoptimize them. But don't worry, the animation will run at the same speed, you won't even notice a difference.

Let us use this gif animation:

If you try to use this animation as a life wallpaper, you will get some very strange results and it will probably look like this:

Displaying an optimized gif file on an old android device

How to fix these gif files using gimp.

Gimp is a great and free image manipulation software. You can download it for free at.
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ If you are using Windows, get the free windows installer here:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/.

1. Open the broken gif animation and choose "Filters", "Animation", "Unoptimize". Gimp will now quickly unoptimize the gif file and open it in a new window.

fixing a gif file for android live wallpapers

2. Thats it :) Just save the new gif animation. Be sure to check "save as animation" as in the screenshot.

be sure to check "save as animation"

You can also adjust the animation speed if you like. Although gif-tastic (TODO: link) has the option to adjust the animation speed. If you don't know what thats about, just click save.

just click save if you don't know what to do :)

Now you can copy the new created gif file to you smartphone and use gif tastic to display it as a live wallpaper. Enjoy!

The fixed gif animation in an android emulator  with 2.1

I also created a video to show you how to do this. It was quite late, so the video is not really good :)

Creating a device frame image from a nexus 4 screenshot

Its a little sad, that device frame generator does not support nexus 4 screenshots yet.
If you are lucky and have a nexus 4 device, but want to create nice device frame images, check out this  webpage where you can use your nexus 4 screenshots:

http://developer.android.com/distribute/promote/device-art.html

Its now called "device art generator" :)

Android Bandwidth Icon App

Hey guys :)

I just wanted to introduce you to a really cool app. There are several bandwidth monitor apps out there, but not app which shows the actual bandwidth usage while using another app!
Here comes Net Speed Icon.
It continuously runs in the background and notifies you via an notification about your current download rate and current upload rate.

And the best thing is, the app is for free. So get to the play store and download this cool android bandwidth monitor app.

Create screencast videos of you android apps

Hey there.

If you are a cheap ass like me and you don't want to spend any money on an android screencast app, I will tell you today how you can make a really cool video from your android apps with free software!

All you need is linux :)

Recording the android emulator
To record your screen you need istanbul.

• After you started it, you will notice a small icon on the upper right of your screen. 
• Do a right click on it and select "select window to record" and select your android emulator. 

• After this you can click on the icon to stat recording and do what ever you want with your app.
• If yo are finished, click again on the istanbul icon to stop it and save the video somewhere as "appvideo.avi".

Fixing your video
Istanbul has some problems, so you have to run the following command to fix the video file:
For this you need mencoder.

"mencoder appvideo.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac copy -o appvideo_fixed.avi"

Cropping your video
After this step you are ready to get rid of the emulator screen around your video. This can easily be done using avidemux.

• Open avidemux and load the file "appvideo_fixed.avi"
• Now on the left under "video" select "copy" and set it to something like "MJPEG". 
• Select "Filter" and choose crop filter. You can now crop the emulator out of the video. Best settings for me are left: 20, top 20, bottom 20 and right 435.
• Now click save and you are done!

Upload your video to youtube and enjoy!

To fix all videos created by istanbul, use this script:

#!/bin/bash

FILES=*.avi

for f in $FILES

do

echo "Processing $f"

mencoder $f -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 -oac copy -o "$f"_fixed

 

 # do something on $f

done

Android live wallpaper Library

Hey!

Are you looking for someone to create a live wallpaper add for android? Then you are at the right place.
I developed a simple to use library, which I would like to offer you for a small price.

Key Features:
- you need to know eclipse & adt
- no coding necessary
- just some xml editing
- very easy customizable and extendable fragments
- contains actionbar and viewpager
- create a new live wallpaper app in less then 5 minutes!
- will run on all android devices from 2.1 and up
- gif-based
- a documentation so easy, even a 11 year old could create new apps!

You can use this library to easily create hundreds or thousands of live wallpaper apps.

If you are interested, don't hesitate and contact me. I can supply you with a demonstration wallpaper app and answer all your questions.

Get some free android live wallpapers

I just found a cool website with a lot of really cool free live wallpapers. Some are just funny, some are incredible hot!

A gangnam style live wallpaper without push ads

Check out this really freaky live wallpaper  at the play store! Its free and contains no push ads!

Changing the icon size in a DraggableGridView

I love DraggableGridView. It's easy to use and looks really nice. I use it in one of my apps, called the DSO-Timer.

But there is one small thing, that bothers me. I couldn't find a way to customize the size of the icons.

So I emailed Thomas Quinn and asked him. A few hours later I received his answer:

Easily done. Just change this section of code in onLayout(...):

        //determine number of columns, at least 2
        colCount = 2;
        int sub = 240;
        w -= 280;
        while (w > 0)
        {
                colCount++;
                w -= sub;
                sub += 40;
        }

To something way simpler, like this:

        //determine number of columns for 50dp children
        colCount = w / 50;

This is the code where the size of the icons is calculated. After playing a bit around in the code, I ended up with this:

Pixel Density Calculator

A very useful tool to easily calculate the pixel per inch (ppi).

Need some screenshots with a nice smartphone frame?

Try Device Frame Generator at the Google Play Store for free. Its a little buggy, but produces nice pictures.

If I want to add a screenshot to a device frame, I always have to try it 2-3 times. The first times it just says "dimension do not match...", but after a few tries with the same image it works :)

This is an integrated screenshot of my app Net Speed Icon inside the new nexus phone.