What am I going on about?
Developing on the Android platform.
Whether creating ROMs, apps, or themes, the opportunity certainly exists to propel your current status into the stratosphere with just a little behind the scenes know-how. Notice I did not say Linux know-how. Reason being is that as technology has moved on, there are more ways than ever to become active in the Android ecosystem from the comfort of your tried and true Windows computer.
Say for instance you wanted to get into publishing apps to the Play Store. You’ve probably toyed with the idea of buying one of those $50 Groupons for the Android Development class. That would be a positive move but, did you know that Google also offers a FREE course specifically set-up to get you doing cartwheels in Android land? Well look at this
Only thing you would have to do is download and install a couple of free programs that are course requirements, put on your thinking cap and mash the gas. This video is a year old so keep that in mind. It was seriously the shortest one I could find.
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="
frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>In addition, there are numerous blogs, forums, threads, youtube videos, shoutboxes, and books to help guide you on this endeavor so never will you be truly alone. Remember, there is always somebody somewhere at the same point in life or a project that you can acquire knowledge from and work through obstacles with.
For my ROM developers out there, did you know that there are things called kitchens that make creating your custom ROM alot easier than spending hour after hour looking through code? I must add however, that the best ROMs are the best ROMs because the DEVs actually take the time to manually go through their code to make sure that any OS inhibiting bugs are eradicated. Making it pretty straightforward, a ROM kitchen provides you with a user interface that allows you to easily plug in all of the apps, tweaks or other changes you have in mind to make your ROM really stand apart from the rest. You can get a better idea of those kitchens .
Last but definitely not least, we come to the themers. The ones that can take that same ol’ looking interface on your phone and make it into something magical. Whether you’re into rainbows and unicorns, Star Trek, or even the Philadelphia Eagles (You like how I did that don’t you?) you have the power to make your phone look any way that you want it to and most likely, when other people see it it will be the coolest thing they’ve ever even seen on a phone as far as design goes.
Guess what though? Just like our friends the ROM developers, there is already a universal theming kitchen in place and operating right now at
.
While not totally giving you full control over each specific element of your custom UI, it does (in a very simple way) allow you to pick from previously submitted cursors, fonts, signal bars and more in a pretty much plug and play environment. The cool thing about the kitchen is that it allows you to see what the many options look like in real time on the right side of your workspace.
This is the amount of users per hour of the Ultimate Online Theme Kitchen as of yesterday. So I just have to ask, Where are you on this graph?
As you can see there are more than enough ways to get into Android easily and at little initial cost,if any, to you. The next step would be getting your name/app/ROM/theme into people’s faces. I will look into this more next time but with the information you have just processed, Do you think you can do this?
I think you can.