With most modern Android phones, just saying the phrase “OK Google” will launch the Google assistant app, which is capable of answering simple questions, or functioning as a app launcher. Following up with “open g mail” will launch the Gmail app on your phone, or saying “navigate home”, will open the Google Maps app, with […]
android
Android M(y Adventure)

At the I/O 2015 conference, Google announced Android M, gave developers access to a preview release to put on their Android Nexus devices, and released Android Studio 1.3, thereby allowing development for Android M. One of the highlights of Android M is the support for Fingerprint and Payment APIs; watch Maya Ben Ari, a product […]
Google Cloud Messages

In the new world of micro-services and micro-applications, push notifications are an important and sometimes even the exclusive way to get information to mobile/wearable applications. The term Micro Application is not fully established yet. I use it here to describe an application that is deployed on a mobile or wearable device with the purpose to […]
E*Trade Mobile – Voice Commands

ETrade provides a great mobile app experience on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. I think it’s almost expected that the feature-set provided by the dedicated native mobile applications are not quite the same. The Windows version and especially the one for Blackberry fall far behind what ETrade has to offer on Android and […]
Android and OCR

I’m still remembering it well, the first piece of software I wrote when I came to the US was a de-skewing algorithm. Deskewing an image helps a lot, if you want to do OCR, OMR, barcode detect, or just improve the readability of scanned images. At the time, I was working for a small software […]
Photo Printing on Android

I always find it interesting to watch the 4x100m Sprint Relay at the Olympics and Track and Field Championships. It’s the fastest and most technically difficult of all the relays. Demonstrating true synergy, a well executed relay transports the baton around the track faster than the sum of the individual personal best 100m times. Synergy […]