MGoDroid App?

Submitted by AeonBlue on

Two-Part Question:

1. Does anyone know if there's something in the works for an MGoDroid app? I see stuff for the iPhone and the kindle store but I haven't been able to find anything for the android platform. I'm a droid homer and this makes me sad.

2. I've been toying with the idea of downloading the SDK for android (mainly to play around with creating apps for my rooted nook) and developing an MGoBlog app would kind of be a fun little pet-project for me to start out with. What kind of demand would there be for something like this? Do we have many Android users out there?

jcgary

February 14th, 2011 at 10:37 AM ^

I would suggest emailing Brian with your offer about developing the app because he had asked a while ago if anyone wanted to develop a droid app.  He might already have an app being developed. 

mdoc

February 14th, 2011 at 10:39 AM ^

There has been word for a while that an Android app is in the works, but nothing has come out of it yet. I'd love to have one and I'd be willing to pay for it. A widget would be awesome too, but I don't know what it takes to make one. 

justingoblue

February 14th, 2011 at 10:45 AM ^

On the front page a while back Brian was offering a rev-share deal for an Android developer if someone could deliver. He said to email him if you thought you could do it.

ImHungover

February 14th, 2011 at 11:09 AM ^

In a smart phone programming class here, and he mentioned to me that his term project would be coding for a droid based MGoBlog app. I don't know how serious or how far along he's going to get, though.

elaydin

February 14th, 2011 at 11:31 AM ^

Someone is definitely working on a droid app for a class at Michigan.

I've had conversations with your friend (or a classmate of his).  I don't know for sure, but they seem to be making good progress.

I also suspect their is another, completely independent effort.  But I haven't heard anthing from that.

stubob

February 14th, 2011 at 12:40 PM ^

I'm working on one, but as a full-time programmer, I can only work on it in my spare time. I've got the basic framework for connection Android to Drupal working with JSON (and XML-RPC, I think). I'm working on adding functionality (comment, create topic, etc.), and working around through Services and Views to get there. Hopefully I can build a simple framework out of all this and put the project on sourceforge or something similar.

Can you send me an email to talk about how you've got the services/views set up? My email is [email protected] That would be a big help.

If they get theirs done first, this will be a learning experience, but from what I've seen, there's a little more learning curve than you might expect. So now it turn into "can one professional dev working on nights and weekends build an app faster than 3 students working full-time?"

elaydin

February 14th, 2011 at 12:50 PM ^

I'll send you a note.  There are a few gotchas that I can probably help with.

I think it took me about 3 ro 4 months to finish, but like you, I'm a full time something else (electrical engineer), as well as a father of 2 young kids.

MichiganBeer

February 15th, 2011 at 11:04 AM ^

I think that having shared development (sourceforge, etc) would be great. It would allow the contributors to divide up the work (connection framework vs graphical interface). Also there'd less chance of the project dying if someone burns out or their life priorities change.

If you are interested in talking let me know.

MichiganBeer

February 14th, 2011 at 11:22 AM ^

I emailed Brian back in December about developing an Android app but never heard back. Let me know if you get any response. I'm sure we have enough developers lurking mgoblog to get something put together.

Beavis

February 14th, 2011 at 12:49 PM ^

Android >>>>>> Apple.  Support the right people here folks, Google has deeper Michigan connections than Apple, and is therefore better.

thisisme08

February 14th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^

Another option mentioned the other day is an app called "Pulse" its basically a news reader but you can hav it follow any site and it does quite well tracking the main board topics. 

You can also have it follow TomVH/Tim/Brians twitter pages as well. 

VBSoulPole

February 14th, 2011 at 1:18 PM ^

I think an Android app would be cool, but to be honest, opening the site with the stock Android browser is lightning fast anyway (at least on a rooted Evo w/ Gingerbread via CyanogenMod). I'd totally get it to support the devs and Brian...but I could do without it.

M - Flightsci

February 14th, 2011 at 4:56 PM ^

An app would be outstanding. As mentioned above, Dolphin Browser HD does a good job.  I switched to xScope and then back again when I found it had trouble resizing the front page on Evo.

buddhafrog

February 14th, 2011 at 7:58 PM ^

I already +1 you just for considering the idea.  Just bought a tablet and now longer have my iphone app with which to read Mgoblog.

This year will be the year of the android tablet - so many quality tablets w/ honeycomb are coming out that have some advantages over ipad/pod/touch/phone.  

Go Bluedroid!

oneilse14

April 10th, 2011 at 5:29 PM ^

Hey everyone,

As ericktho mentioned earlier in the thread, we have been working hard on an MGoBlog Android application, and it is very close to being published on the Market. There is a beta version of the application that anyone is free to try out in exchange for some helpful feedback and suggestions.

 

tl;dr MGoDroid actually exists, and will be released shortly