MayFlower Software

Category Android

The Amazon Appstore for Android lets you try out an app on your computer before downloading it. It is a fantastic simulation of the way the app will look on your device. It supports screen gestures, like finger swipes, by using a mouse drag across the screen. In my tests, it worked identically to how it works on my Android device. Brilliant!


How do they do it?  I wasn't sure, so I checked on the Amazon website and found this:

Clicking the “Test drive now” button launches a copy of this app on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), a web service that provides on-demand compute capacity in the cloud for developers. When you click on the simulated phone using your mouse, we send those inputs over the Internet to the app running on Amazon EC2 — just like your mobile device would send a finger tap to the app. Our servers then send the video and audio output from the app back to your computer. All this happens in real time, allowing you to explore the features of the app as if it were running on your mobile device.

Here is my Heian Shodan karate app with the Test Drive Now option (click anywhere on the graphic to go to the test drive).






Here is a short video of the "app simulation" directly from the Amazon App Store. The "finger" on the screen is actually my mouse moving left to right.

Posted by Frank Paolino At 4:02 PM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (8) |      

Category Mobile Computing

A project I started to see if I could improve the tools available for Karate training is continuing to grow. I have now ported the Heian Shodan kata app over to the Android platform. It work identically to the iphone / ipad  version.

Heian Shodan Shotokan karate kata shows the kata move by move by swiping a finger. It also lets you look at the kata from all four sides to see the moves from different directions.  With your Android device, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad in your hand, you can review the moves of the kata in slow motion, then practice at full speed. There are buttons to repeat a move, go backwards and start over. Here it is on the Android Market:   Here it is on the Apple App Store:     Next up will be Heian Sandan, Heian Godan and some Iaido kata from Barry Poitras.

Posted by Frank Paolino At 10:47 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (0) |