This Weeks Links

Fragmented Podcast Episode 036: Working Remotely
In this mini Fragment we touch on a highly requested topic – working remotely. Donn talks about how to ease into remote working, tools for working remotely, tips and tricks for staying sane and productive while remote and he wraps it up by discussing the benefits employers have when hiring a remote workforce.

The Google Play Awards coming to Google I/O
As a way to recognize the incredible developer community and highlight some of the best apps and games, Google is kicking off their first-ever Google Play Awards. Take a look at the nominees and get the details here!

Descent Into Databinding
Last year, the Android team introduced a new building block for Android development: the Data Binding framework. Data Binding is supposed to eliminate layout-related boilerplate. This post will show you how Data Binding works at development time and at build time, helped you to make an informed decision as to if and where you want to use Data Binding.

Develop apps faster using Data Binding – Part 1
Chintan Rathod brings you a 3 part Data Binding tutorial, aimed at helping you save time when developing your apps. Part 1 covers: How to use Data Binding with RecyclerView

Develop apps faster using Data Binding – Part 2
Chintan Rathod brings you a 3 part Data Binding tutorial, aimed at helping you save time when developing your apps. In Part 2 we learn how data binding can be used with RecyclerView.

Develop apps faster using Data Binding – Part 3
Chintan Rathod brings you a 3 part Data Binding tutorial, aimed at helping you save time when developing your apps. In part 3, we learn how to use Data Binding library with third party image loading libraries.

Approaching Outside-in TDD on Android (I)
This post covers the experience of applying Outside-in TDD to Android development. The first post reviews the basic concepts about TDD and more specifically, the outside-in approach. The next post will focus on creating the first acceptance test and will dive into the inner TDD loop.

Customizing TextInputLayout – Part 2
Customizing TextInputLayout – Part 1 taught us how to customize TextInputLayout and how to apply hint color to it. In the second part of this article, we look at the next step of TextInputLayout, as we customize this widget by applying custom Typeface to it.

Async Injection in Dagger 2 with RxJava
This post is a part of series of posts showing Dependency Injection with Dagger 2 framework in Android. Today we’re going to take a look at Asynchronous injection 2 with RxJava

Happiness Is (a) Relative (Layout)
RelativeLayout makes it super easy to describe complex scenarios without needing to do nasty nested linear layouts. However, it comes with a cost: in order to provide that kind of flexibility, RelativeLayout does two measurement passes. This article looks at why these 2 passes are needed and optimizing RelativeLayout.

Something O’Clock – Part 3
Mark Allison talks about his recently released watch face app for Android Wear. Mark says although the app itself is quite light-hearted, the code behind it is worthy of study as the final app will consist of three separate modules. Part-3 looks at creating a companion app to run on the phone connected to the Wear device.

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Android Glide Image Library – Building Image Gallery App
This article explains how to build a simple image gallery app where all the images will be loaded from internet using the Glide image library, which has some advantages over using the Volley library.

Notes about protecting https for Android/Java apps
Artem Zinnatullin provides covers avoiding system certificates completely and certificate pinning options in this post which looks at protection of https in your apps.

Creating apps for emerging markets
Creating apps for emerging markets introduces some unique challenges. Building for low-end devices and dealing with slow and unreliable networks are just two of the key factors you may need to consider when developing apps for such markets. This article looks at the challenges you may face and provides some solutions.

A library that draws transparent text in a TextView
This post will help you make TextView render its text as transparent so that you can see what is behind the TextView, for example the activity background. This technique uses the Porter’s and Duff’s transfer modes.

Droidcon It 2016 (Recap)
In this post Giacomo Bresciani recaps Droidcon 2016 and summarizes talks from: Wojtek Kalicinski, Hasan Hosgel, Benjamin Augustin, Huyen Tue Dao, Ivan Morgillo, Svetlana Isakova, Maciej Górski, Alessandro Bizzarri & Dima Kunin.

How to Develop a Shazam-Like Application
A key feature of Shazam-like audio apps is the ability to use audio fingerprinting. This is where an algorithm is used to create a spectrogram of various properties of the audio, so they can then be compared with those already existing in the fingerprint database. Of Course, this guide does not give you the exact algorithm used by Shazam but it does give you a solid overview to developing your own app with similar functions.

What Is the Best Platform For the First Launch – iOS or Android? [Infographic]
When you have an idea of a mobile application for a startup you have to decide which platform it will be created for. This post and infographic looks at the difference between Android and iOS in terms of the first launch of your application.

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App Like Instagram? [Infographic]
Many of us have thought of creating apps similar to Instagram. But where to start and which options should we include? What is more important, how much is it going to cost? This infographic aims to answer these questions and illustrate all the characteristics of the app building process.

Get Your Mobile Game Reviewed!
Looking to get your Mobile Game Reviewed? Then you are in the right place! Reviews can be used in many ways to boost your sales and audience. MobileGames.Reviews is now accepting requests to review your game!

Videos

Caster.IO Episode 60: Retrofit 2 Get Requests
In this episode you will learn:

• How to set up Retrofit 2
• Create a standalone Retrofit instance
• Send a simple GET request
• Enqueue a request for asynchronous communication

How much does it cost to create an app like WhatsApp – All About Apps by Cleveroad
The success of WhatsApp has been tremendous, but have you ever wondered how much effort its developers made to create such a smart messenger? Or how much money they spend to bring their idea to life? This video from Cleveroad aims to answer those questions.

Open Source

Retrofit 1 OkHttp 3 Client
A OkHttp 3 client implementation for Retrofit 1.

PagerSlidingTabStrip
Interactive paging indicator widget, compatible with the ViewPager from the Android Support Library.

Events

Start planning your Google I/O 2016 schedule
The first wave of 100 technical talks just went live at google.com/io, so you can start planning your schedule now!