android – Page 4 – Kev's Development Toolbox

August 24, 2014

Migrating Legacy AdMob to Google Play Services / Google Mobile Ads SDK

I developed my first Android app a few years back and at the time it was using Admob for mobile banner ads. Google bought AdMob a while back, and the time has come where Legacy AdMob usage is being retired this month (August 2014) and so you need to upgrade to the Google Play Services based Google Mobile Ads SDK.

First. Wow. I have to say, the steps and docs for how to do this seem to be spread over many different places. I’m not sure if all of these places actually walk you through the same steps just written in a different way, but it’s taken me a while to work out what I actually need to do. Some useful refs:

If you logon on the AdMob site, it will prompt you to complete a data migration step and update some account info – take care of that first here.

Info about legacy AdMod shutting down is here. Additional info in the FAQ.

Steps for moving to the Google Play Services based advertising seems to be covered here. I’m currently working through these steps for one of my apps, if I come across anything useful to share then I’ll post another update later.

August 24, 2014

Android API Levels

Useful list of Android API levels mapped to Android versions:

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element.html#ApiLevels

March 9, 2014

Can’t create new AVD with Android Development Tools 22.6

I haven’t done any Android development for a couple of years. I just updated to the latest ADT, version 22.6, and seems I’m run into an issue where I can’t create a new AVD. Exactly the same as this problem here. So now downloading an older version of ADT and I’ll try again.

June 28, 2013

Multi-window feature on Samsung S3 and Note 2

So if you’re like me, at some point recently you got an Over-The-Air ROM update and noticed a blue tab appeared on your screen with a list of apps in it. I wish features like this would have some additional popup help. At first I thought this was nothing but a quick-link type of thing for your most used apps, but then I also noticed the ‘Multi-window’ feature that also appeared in the pull down menu. Still none the wiser, I only just recently came across an article here that explains how it works.

In short, you open your first app from the slide out drawer. Then, drag a second app from the drawer out into the middle of the screen, and you’ll notice the top or bottom half of the screen will highlight. When you release, you now have two windows with a dividing slider in between, and you have two apps running in the foreground. Huh, that’s pretty cool! Not useful all the time, but definitely handy if you want to compare something in email with something in your browser side by side at the same time. Very cool!