Archive for the ‘How to’ Category

I recently had to reformat my computer, and I figure this would be a great start to show you how to setup the Android SDK in Eclipse.

Here goes..

  1. Download JDK 64bit.
    1. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
  2. Download Eclipse 64bit – Go with Java for Developers
    1. http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
  3. Download Android SDK
    1. http://d.android.com/sdk/index.html
  4. Extract eclipse to c:\eclipse
  5. Extract Android SDK c:\eclipse\android-sdk-windows
  6. Install JDK 64 bit
  7. Run Eclipse
  8. In Eclipse click Tools/Preferences and set SDK location
  9. Click OK/Apply both (didn’t work first time)
  10. Restart Eclipse
  11. Open Eclipse and click on Android Manager (tools) or android icon
  12. Download desired SDKs
  13. Install
  14. Restart Eclipse
—–
Now you are ready to start using Eclipse.  But wait.. theres more.
Now that you have setup the environment you either need to test on a device, or setup a Virtual Device.  There are enough tutorials out on the net on how to do this, use google.
I use my HTC Incredible, but it did not recognize my device on stock install.  I had to modify the android_winusb.inf file
  • Go into device manager, update driver point to
    • C:\eclipse\android-sdk-windows\google-usb_driver\android_winusb.inf
  • Then install the device (you will get a warning about being unsigned)
That’s it, you now have Eclipse, and Android setup with a real phone for testing.

Mark Murphy has been writing really interesting posts in Android guys about the different business models around Android platform. We have chosen the most relevant ones adding some additional information:

  • Build the app and sell it via the Android Market
  • Give a free app, supported by ads (Adsense mobile, Admob, etc.)
  • Give a free app, sell the customizations: plugins, analytics, additional features, account (e.g. RTM, Spotify), etc.
  • Sell development tools: GUI toolkits, portability tool, …
  • Develop custom applications for others (e.g. Droiders)
  • Became a trainer of Android development
  • Specialize in porting iPhone, Windows Mobile, J2ME applications to Android.
  • Promote your ability to port some critical parts of the apps to the Android Native Development Kit (NDK)
  • Became an specialist building cross-platform apps using HTML, Javascript and CSS (e.g. PhoneGap, Titanium, Rhodes)
  • Became an expert to build apps with GPS and backend capabilities of HTML 5.
  • Build an App Generator (e.g. ePUB, RSS, audiobooks) selling this generated apps.
  • Became a specialist building Augmented Reality Layers for Layar or Wikitude

Mark has done an incredible job posting these business models, you can read the different post for more information (Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6)