Justin's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Android’ Category

I am always excited when I learn a new trick. There’s not much better than a new Therap/Android one, so here goes:

Did you know that you can upload photos directly to Therap from your phone without having them stored there?

Neither did I until I was hanging out with Nathan (Primecare’s Director of Nursing in Connecticut).

Here’s what you do (at least on my Verizon Galaxy Nexus)

1. Turn on your phone!

1. Log into Therap

1. Go to New T-Log (or other place you can attach)

1. Click on “Choose a Flie”

1. Choose Camera (it would work with Sound Recorder too!)

1. Take a photo and you are all done!

How cool is that?

Any tips you’d like to share?

:: Justin ::

TO:                  All ANCOR Members and Friends

FROM:             ANCOR Foundation CARES Fund

DATE:               May 26, 2011

SUBJECT:        Urgent Request CARES Fund

As you know there have been numerous natural disasters this spring:   fires on the west coast and southwest; tornadoes in Alabama, the Midwest, and last week in Joplin, MO; and flooding along the Mississippi.   ANCOR recognizes the need for cash and services following a disaster and provides organizations the ability to meet some of those needs. 

We were approached for financial support from an organization affected from the Joplin and Oklahoma City tornadoes (houmes destroyed, death of individuals, individuals displaced) which prompts me to make this urgent request for contributions to the ANCOR Foundation CARES Fund.

The ANCOR Foundation CARES Fund provides financial support to organizations assisting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities affected by terrorism, natural disasters or exacerbating conditions.   The Foundation recognizes natural disasters may cause a disruption of services or supports and stability must be quickly established.

Organizations may apply for funds to assist individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities obtain food and food supplies, medication and medical supplies, housing assistance, utility payments, and cash assistance.  The organizations may also use the funds to provide stabilization of organizational infrastructure to meet the immediate needs of the individuals supported.    

If you know of an agency supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities requiring assistance to meet the needs resulting from a natural disaster please have them contact Debra Langseth at   dlangseth@ancor.org

Please help meet the needs of people affected by the numerous disasters!   Make a contribution (tax deductible) to the CARES Fund to ensure that people with disabilities receive adequate resources to meet their urgent needs.  Please make your check payable to the ANCOR Foundation.    Please note: CARES Fund.   Send your contribution to:   ANCOR Foundation,   1101 King St., Ste 380,  Alexandria, VA   22314-2944

We anticipate significant requests for funds, so if at all possible, send your contribution by June 1.   Questions?   Contact Bill Tapp at Bill@collegeofdirectsupport.com  (877-353-2767) or Debra Langseth     dlangseth@ancor.org  (410-917-9272)  

All contributions raised in excess of current needs will be utilized for future disaster relief efforts.

Bill Tapp                                                                         

ANCOR Foundation President

The answer to this questioon is most likely “Probably, most of the time.” if you are using a current browser or an Android / iOS / WebOS phone.

The problems start to happen when you get someone like me who has tons of browsers on their computer (sometimes just to try them out and sometimes becuase I want to have multiple Therap accounts open at once while I am testing or setting somethign up).

Examples of browsers I might use include:

• Internet Explorer
• Firefox
• Chrome (probably the browser I use most though it has been causing me grief recently and with the new Firefox for Android I am really considering goign back)
• Opera
• Safari

And those are only the ones I use on my computer, when it comes top phones, tablets, and other mobile devices, there are mobile versions of each one of these!

Just the week, Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla has released Firefox 4.  Theoretically they are all moving towards standards based browsing, but any time they make an update (which they will often do weekly) they may change the way that websites and applications like Therap interact with them.

Obviously, if we were to spend all of our time on 100% compatibility with the latest browsers (not to mention the verious beta and mobile versions) you would probably never see a new feature.

Instead, we concentrate on the mature versions and address major functionality issues as we did with SComm on the iPad version of Safari.

What this says is, please let us know when you see curious things going on with brand spanking new browsers, but don’t expect instant fixes on little annoyances.

It’s very similar with phones and mobile devices.  Just walk into Best Buy or Staples to see how many there are, each with their own vagueries. We can’t possibly test every last device that is out there, but we would love to know which ones you are having success (or not) with.

I use my Android phone (a Droid 2), a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an iPod Touch and an iPad all with great success and I am sure that there is a device out there that is perfect for you (I am rather excited about the possibilities for the Motorola Xoom).

Let me know what you use.

:: Justin ::

In an update to Therap, you can now use SComm in Therap from mobile devices (we removed the rich text feature when accessing from such devices).

This should help you regardless of whether you are an Android, iOS, or Blackberry user.

In less good news, a recent update to Google’s Chrome browser (my browser of choice and the one I am writing in just now) seems to have caused an issue with launching Live Help.  We are looking into it to try and work out what is going on.

:: Justin ::

The folks who are attending our conference in Oregon are the first to try out our latest venture into the world of mobile computing.

In preparation for even more amazing things at our National Conference in Fishkill, NY in February were are testing an early release or our mobile conference website.

To see what’s on offer, go to www.TherapServices.net/or on your mobile device.

Here’s a preview:

Try it out and let us know what you think.

Do you have any ideas for what we could add for Fishkill?

:: Justin ::

Just in case you needed yet another reason to love your Android phone, you can now write your own applications using Google’s new App Inventor (a bit like it was with GMail and Google Voice, you need to sign up and wait for an invitation).

App Inventor is a graphical programming language (if you have ever programmed a Lego robot, you’ll take to it right away) that makes it really easy to write your programs.

I walked through the first couple of exercises, creating a cat that meows when you touch it and a dialer where you can choose a contact and then click on their photo to call them.

After that it was time to branch out on my own.  My first attempt is a nice little launcher that will take you to bits of Therap’s website, or call the office, or allow you to get directions.

The question is, what comes next?  Not sure yet, but I am thinking about it.  I can’t do anything that interacts with the inside of Therap (that’s kept closed for security reasons) but I am sure i can come up with something.

How about you? Why not build something and bring it to Fishkill to show it off!

:: Justin ::

This video shows a whole bunch of really cool things I can now do with my phone.

Take something like picking up my phone and saying to it “Call Therap Services”.  Done

Now, if Google we really trying to recreate the manual phone experience, I would have to say ” Pick up receiver, press 1, press 2, press 0, press 3, press 5, press 9, press 6, press 7, press 5, press 5, press 3″

I wonder which is better?

Sometimes it is the same in our documentation.  We have to bend our system so much to meet regulations that are based purely on bits of paper.

Would it not make sense to adapt the regulations to meet the technology?

Which is the better documentation of an outing, some scribbles on a piece of paper or a video shot from a time and location aware phone?

Which one would pass inspection?

Unfortunately the answers may not be the same.

Regardless, look for us to be pushing the envelope and finding new and better way to document the work you do.

:: Justin ::

Well, I finally found a new way to take screenshots of my phone to show off what I am playing with now:

Can your phone do this?  Talk about having a smart phone!  When you can have T-Girl with you wherever you go, it doesn’t get much smarter than that!

Of course the other big reason to run Flash on your phone is so that you can listen to BBC Scotland and catch the football every Saturday morning!

On the other hand, it might just be that you like changign the look of your phone every five minutes!

:: Justin ::

I recently upgraded by Droid phone to Android 2.2 known as Foyo (actually did it while waiting at the airport in Nashville).

This brings a whole pile of great functionality to the phone, but probably my exciting is the ability to run Adobe Flash.This means (among many other things) that I can now watch my T-Girl automated training on my phone!

The only downside I have noticed so far is that I can no longer take screenshots, so you’ll just have to believe me!

:: Justin ::