But as I understand it, the landscape keyboard features an input field that takes up the top half of the screen, no?

Rogers has the Tab on the front of the site! Lists it as an HD device


http://www.rogers.com/web/content/hd..._HOM_PRE_slot1

And here's the official page for the Tab:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/hd..._HOM_PRE_slot1

Good job's Rogers! Now get to work lowering those prices!

Best android live-wallpaper ever?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7i75rj6J2s

Just some musings about Android development.

I've been very interested in having a pen app for Android and have been looking into the API to see if this sort of thing is feasible. My intuition says that it is, but it doesn't hurt to learn a bit more.

It seems that there's a class for touch events (duh) called Motion Event:
http://developer.android.com/referen...tionEvent.html

This class allows for absolute touch events and 'relative' touch events which are of interest.

What I'm gunning for is a way to differentiate capacitive-stylus input from other touch (ie. the pad of the hand) for comfortable paper-like writing -- rather than resistive-style hovering.

It stands to reason that the capacitive tip will have a very constrained 'pressure' based on the fixed size of the tip. For light touch, it will be close to 0, but even for heavy pressure it is likely to be far less than a full on touch with a fat finger or pad of hand. However, light touch may certainly mimic the stylus tip, which would be undesirable for unwanted input (eg. the moment the pad of the hand touches the screen).

Further, in the event that that there are multiple objects touching the screen, and you are expecting pen input, it should be easy to discern (again by pressure) which is the capacitive stylus and which is the pad of the hand to be ignored. As soon as this is detected, all other drawn strokes from input should be rolled back and only the pen tip should be allowed to draw. Additionally as soon as a touch point breaches the threshold, it should be flagged as non-pen and rolled back.

Further, with each new multi-touch event, the pen tip should be 'discovered' if and only if it has been previously lifted. If it has not been lifted, then all other touch events should be flagged as non-pen and simply be ignored.

As a further method of differentiation, priority can be given to the top and/or leftmost point touching the surface as being the pen-tip (top and/or rightmost if you're right handed) with a pressure below the pressure threshold. This may require some calibration upon first use -- ie. touching the pen to the screen and asking whether the user is left or right handed.

Using these variables, it should be easy to track the tip of the pen and exclude other unwanted input that may be touching the screen with a high degree of reliability. In this way, the Tab (or any android device with sufficiently high input fidelity) can reliably behave like an active digitizer for pen input (minus the tilt found on dedicated devices -- eg. Wacom).

Further, we can also include gesture support: pinch to zoom, single/double finger scrolling, as it is now easy to differentiate pen input from finger.

The next problem is to optimize the input stroke to be fast enough to provide low latency between input and drawn stroke. In order to do this, the drawing routine should be fast, extremely fast (eg. wu-lines or some built in primitive). This can perhaps be optimized by a very simple line-drawing routine for immediate on-screen feedback, and a de-prioritized (threaded?) stroke 'class' for fancy stroke effects (ie. calligraphic pen, dotted lines, variable thickness, neon glow, paintbrush, pencil-like stroke, etc).

Add in an unobtrusive UI to select pen type, colour, eraser, background medium, etc, create flexible PNG/JPEG/PDF import/export filters, and you have one heck of a useful application for pen input!

Here are some details about the imminent Android Market overhaul:

http://www.androidcentral.com/androi...n-new-graphics

It seems that the market is getting high-resolution artwork to depict the app as well as the ability to add a youtube video for previewing.

All in all, in combination with user ratings, this should definitely help separate high quality apps from the low quality apps.

Now lets hope that it's easier to *find* applications in the market as well (as I've heard this can be troublesome)!

According to the leaked OfficeMax add, on black friday, you can get a Tab for $399 w/ plan on Sprint ($649 w/o plan). Quick check reveals 3G data only, 2gb monthly for $29.99.

Here is the Unity3D Unite keynote!

http://unity3d.com/unite/keynote-video

Very nice. They mention that the have over 1000 iOS games developed in Unity (17 top-ten games), and around 20 Android games so far with 13 that were concurrently released with iOS ! The word on the street is that it's very *easy* to port games. What's even more exciting, is that they're selling 1/3 as many Android Unity as iOS. Expect Android games to pick up in a major way very soon.

Almost as exciting is that Unity3D is supporting Chrome's NaCL very shortly, so you'll be able to enjoy all of this gaming goodness in the browser. He also hints that this will be rolled out to 'tablets' as well. Could this mean Android is getting a NaCl port?!

Stay tuned, it's getting very interesting.

Hmm if I wasn't religious fellow that would certainly be my wallpaper. Would look great on a 7 inch screen.

That whole lust thing is a tricky one...

The Tab keeps getting better and better! It's now possible to edit Google Docs directly on your handset.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAr5VoYdVBo
http://www.google.com/mobile/docs/

This should be FANSTASTIC with the Tab. It's now looking more and more like a netbook replacement. With a BT keyboard this would make a very competent replacement (assuming network connection, of course).

It also allows for voice input which is tremendously powerful in a office suite. Very nice.