| Activity |
The main unit of work or action in your application - usually a screen. Technically, an Activity is a class which extends the Activity base class so it implements functionality defined there, such as the lifecycle methods onCreate(), onStart() etc
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| ADC |
The Android Developer Challenge was a competition for the most innovative application for Android. Google offered prizes totaling 10 million US dollars, distributed between two phases of the competition. The first phase accepted submissions from 2 January to 14 April 2008. The 50 most promising entries, announced on 12 May 2008, each received a $25,000 award to fund further development. The second phase ended in early September with the announcement of ten teams that received $275,000 each, and ten teams that received $100,000 each.
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| Android |
Android is a software platform and operating system for mobile devices, based on the Linux operating system, developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in a Java-like language that utilizes Google-developed Java libraries, but does not support programs developed in native code.
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| apk |
This is the extension given to Android installable files, for example foo.apk. Android will install the application from this. Note that for distribution the application must have been signed. Developers can create an unsigned apk file, so it it not clear from looking at the filename alone if the program can be installed.
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| Apps |
'Apps' are an abbreviation of the word 'applications',
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| Bluetooth |
An open specification for seamless wireless short-range communications of data and voice between both mobile and stationary devices. For instance, it specifies how mobile phones, computers and PDAs interconnect with each other, with computers, and with office or home phones. The first generation of Bluetooth permits exchange of data up to a rate of 1 Mbps per second, even in areas with much electromagnetic disturbance. It transmits and receives via a short-range radio link using a globally available frequency band (2.4 GHz ISM band).
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| Broadcast Intent Receiver |
This is the handler for a global event - a trigger which fires in response to things like an incoming SMS, timer or even keypresses. Your code defines these handlers then can quit - Android registers them and will start yourapp should any fire.
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| Bundle |
A general purpose class to hold and manage disparate data types. Many java programmers end up using some kind of self-developed "utility" class to convert data types, manage their persistence and so on. This is the Android version which saves developers reinventing the wheel once again. It is keyed, so you can manage data using indexes with appropriate get() and put() methods.
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| Chrome |
Google Chrome is a free web browser developed by Google. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers.
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| Content Provider |
This is a standard for your apps to present their data to other apps. Internally it could be managed in any way, such as custom data structures or SQLite db calls, but each app will conform to the standard interface an so present a consistent data view to any consumer of its content.
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Glossary