Simon Willison’s Weblog

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8 items tagged “android”

2013

Is there an application like Duolingo, but for math?

Khan Academy have a points, levels and achievements system for mathematics that is similar to the method used by duolingo.

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What is way that android connect to Oracle database?

As a general rule it’s not a good idea to allow mobile devices to connect directly to a server-side database, as it’s an invitation to hackers to figure out what’s going on and then connect to the database themselves for nefarious reasons.

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What new apps were used most at SXSW 2013, and why?

Lanyrd will be at SXSW again this year, and we’ve continued to refine our unofficial schedule guide and session planner for SXSW Interactive. Here’s our site for this year:

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2012

What is the easiest server-side platform for Android Java developers to learn?

Take a look at the Play framework—last time I looked (a couple of years ago) it seemed to be the most instant productive and sane way of doing server-side Java.

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Why is everyone so obsessed with picking faults with Apple’s new maps on the iPhone?

Because this is actually a really big deal. For a lot of people (especially those who live in a big city like London or New York) the maps app is one of the most-used apps on their phone. The new iOS maps are a huge regression, not just in terms of map quality but also in terms of search results. On iOS 6 (at least here in the UK) you can’t even type in a simple address and trust that your phone will show you a pin in the right place.

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2011

Are there any Meta APIs?

Embed.ly is a good example of this kind of API—it gives you one endpoint which wraps oembed APIs on dozens of other services (plus a bunch of custom scraping code). We use it as part of our video/slide embedding feature on http://lanyrd.com/

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2009

oauth-signpost. The Qype API uses OAuth to sign client requests with the developer’s API key, so it’s not surprising to see them release a Java OAuth signing library compatible with Google’s Android mobile platform. # 7th May 2009, 7:33 am

2008

Worst. Bug. Ever. Android phones were executing every keystroke typed in to the phone in an invisible root shell! Text “reboot” to a friend and your phone rebooted. Wow. # 10th November 2008, 10:51 pm