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  • Faisal Abid 6:54 pm on January 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , best games, design patterns, game center, immersive experience, MatchFuel, Startup   

    Android apps don’t have to look the same 

    For the past few months I’ve been extremely busy in giving life to MatchFuel, Android’s Game Center.

    When we started MatchFuel, we laid down some ground rules that spawned from the experiences we had with AndSpot.

    1. It must not look like a traditional Android app.

    2. It must follow (if possible) all of the Android design patterns, and change a pattern only where absolutely needed.

    3. It must be easy to use; fast, stable and lastly, an immersive experience.

    As you can tell, 2 of the 3 main rules we followed were design-based. Users expect a great UX today, gone are the times where you can have a “crap” ui and yet leave a good impression (there are however exceptions such as news readers and other apps which are very content focused rather then being app focused).

    With that in mind, we gave birth to MatchFuel, which in my opinion (putting aside my biases for developing the entire thing single handedly) is Androids most slickest application to date. The app is available as a beta on the Android Market ( http://market.android.com/details/id?=com.matchfuel.platform ) and is a very easy way to find the best games on the Android Market.

    One thing that I feel that we have proven, is that Android Apps can look as good or even better than their iPhone competitor.

     

  • Faisal Abid 7:37 pm on October 18, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Extreme Ventures, ExtremeU   

    AndSpot looking for Team Members 

    It’s been a wild ride with AndSpot, and now I can officially say that AndSpot is part of the ExtremeU program by Extreme Ventures. Whats really cool is being mentored by the top industry leaders.

    At this point we are working on some really cool technology that we are going to launch shortly and so we are looking to expand the team.

    The following positions are available :

    1) Android developer
    2) PHP developer (or equivalent – Ruby/ColdFusion)

    If you are interested then email team@andspot.com with your information!

    • Faisal
     

  • Faisal Abid 5:48 pm on October 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Beginning Android Development Workshop – Thoughts and Files 

    Yesterday I was privileged to teach a group of smart young developers how to get started with Android Development. The group went along with the samples and while some stuff I did was a little advanced for the beginner group they quickly caught on and understood the basics. I wish them all the best and I can’t wait to see what they build!

    Here is the download link for the source code to all the android goodness we did :) : http://uploadrobots.com/Yxw3CC

     

     

     

  • Faisal Abid 5:32 pm on September 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: begining android development, workshop   

    Beginning Android Development in Toronto 

    If your looking to get a head start on Android Development then attend my 2 Day workshop on Beginning Android Development : Going From Zero To Hero!.

    Youll start off knowing nothing about Android and end up with an app possibly on the marketplace!

    http://beginningandroid.eventbrite.com/

     

  • Faisal Abid 2:27 am on September 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Scotch On The Rocks,   

    Speaking At Scotch On The Rocks 

    I’ve been chosen to present at Scotch on the Rocks! This is one of the coolest ColdFusion Conferences out there and its being hosted in Scotland this year. Ill be posting more information about my topic and stuff soon.

     

  • Faisal Abid 12:13 am on August 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Meet AndSpot at FITC Mobile 2010. Discount Code For FITC Mobile 

    AndSpot Co-Founders, myself and Ash will be at FITC Mobile 2010. You can meet up with us and share the AndSpot and Android Love.

    I will be talking about Advanced Android Development so be sure to catch that talk.

    FITC Mobile 2010 Discount Code: thiswillbegood SAVE $50

     

  • Faisal Abid 5:04 am on July 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Java Exceptions – An Amazing Analogy 

    Over on stackoverflow “Sake” asked a very interesting question with a very very clever answer. To paraphrase Sakes question was how he doesnt like the way Java coders handle exceptions with e.printStackTrace(). He wants to be able to handle them in a differnt way , you can read the entire question with the link below BUT read the answer first ;) It is one of the funniest analogies I have ever read! Kudos to OscarRyz

    I have always thought, that’s similar to the following scenario:

    “One man get’s shot.

    He, hold his breath and has strength enough as to take a bus.

    10 miles later the man gets out of the bus and walks a couple of blocks and die.”

    When police get to the body, they don’t have a clue of what just happened. They may have eventually but it is much harder.

    Better is:

    “One man gets shot, and the dies instantaneously and the body lays exactly where the murder had just happened”

    When the police arrives, all the evidence is in place.

    If a system is to fail, better is to fail fast

    Addressing the question:

    1. Ignorance.
        +
    2. Sloth

    EDIT:

    Of course, the catch section is useful.

    If something can be done with the exception, that’s where it should be done.

    Probably that is NOT an exception for the given code, probably it is something that is expected ( and in my analogy is like a bulletproof jacket, and the man was waiting for the shot in first place ). And yes, the catch could be used to Throw exceptions appropriate to the abstraction

    Full question and answer here : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/921471/why-java-people-frequently-consume-exception-silently

     

  • Faisal Abid 12:44 am on July 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Advanced Android at FITC Mobile 2010 

    I will be speaking at FITC 2010 on AndSpot and Advanced Android development. Learn about the coolest android tricks!

    http://www.fitc.ca/events/presentations/presentation.cfm?event=109&presentation_id=1315

    FITC Mobile 2010

     

  • Faisal Abid 4:16 am on June 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Facebook, Security,   

    Possible Facebook Login Security Issue -Facebook tells you if the password you used was an old password- 

    Facebook's Old Password page

    Facebook's Old Password page

    A couple of hours ago, my roommate was trying to get into my friend’s Facebook account when he surprisingly guessed the “pseudo”-right password and it took him to a screen I had never seen before.

    The screen basically said something like , “You are using an old password, did you know this” (Screenshot attached). My roommate clicked yes, and guessed a password similar to the one he just tried and eventually after another try or so he got in.

    My issue with this feature is how a potential hacker would respond in this scenario. Now I don’t know the password changing habits of the general population, but among a couple of my friends (whos passwords I happen to know) I do know that their old and new passwords are related in some way. So this really comes down to the hacker being clever enough or the hacker being someone the victim knows.. Keep in mind that while it is great to tell the average user to use a mixed case and numbers and letters, the fact is that many users will use a password that is “easy” to remember and relevant to them.

    However, while I do understand what Facebook is trying to do with this feature, but I think that its put in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead this should be an automated email that is sent to the user’s email address saying either “Someone has tried to login to your account multiple times” or “Someone has tried to login to your account using an old password” depending on what the situation is.

    All in all, while this is not a severe risk to all facebook user’s who have good password habits, there is still a possibility that someone may gain entry to your account through this knowledge of an old password.

     

    • Pradeep 4:57 pm on February 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      Yahoooo too has this :)

    • Lola 9:09 pm on October 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      How do i get another password cse fb is saying i used an old pass word but i didnt change it

  • Faisal Abid 4:42 pm on June 16, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Deacon, Meteor   

    Deacon Project, Push Notifications for Android 

    I’ve been privileged to be one of the first contributors to the Deacon project (http://deacon.daverea.com/), a project started by my friend Dave Rea. Essentially Deacon in a nutshell is a way to do push notifications on the Android with ease. Its free and open source and works on all versions of Android.

    On the server side , Deacon needs the wicked fast Meteor web server to do its realtime processing. This web server is truly phenomenal, i think its the smallest web server in the world and its just amazing. (http://meteorserver.org/).

    What are you waiting for? Go try out Deacon and Meteor and let me know what you thought!

     

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