Justin's Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘Android’

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 ::

Given Allison and Tony’s recent fawning over the iPad 2 and all things Apple, I thought it was about time I did a little on the things that are interesting me just now.

Top of these at the moment is some of the stuff that Amazon is up to.  I am a huge fan of shopping there, one of my rules in life is that if it is not sold by Amazon it probably is not worth having.

Then they started doing their video streaming service which include just about all my favourite old BBC shows like Blackadder, Red Dwarf, and Dr Who.

Then… they brought out their own Android App store to which my initial reaction was “eh?  what’s the point in that?” but it’s actually really quite fun.  Apart from the fact that they have a piad app for free every day, it’s a bit like having multiple record shops in your high street.  It’s nice to be able to choose where to shop and look at similar stuff presented differently.

And then…  they beat both Google and Apple by bringing out Cloud Drive it is wha you have always wanted from a music service.  You can upload your CD collection or buy music on Amazon.  Then you can listen to your collection from anywhere or download it onto any supported device.  It works like a dream and has very quickly replace Winamp as my music player of choice on my phone and computer.

It’s a fun time to be in the cloud.

:: Justin ::

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 ::

One of the great things about Therap being a browser based application is that it really doesn’t matter what device you use it on, as long as the device has a compliant browser then Therap will work on it.  There are obviously some strange things that pop up from time to time on specific devices/browsers (like SComm on an iPad, but we’re looking into that).

However anyone who has used an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android phone knows that it is much easier when a website or application has been specifically designed for that smaller screen format.

Here at Therap we are committed to implementation of mobile applications (there will be a range of premium mobile applications and features as we move ahead).  As usual we are starting small and looking for beta testers who are interested in getting in on the ground floor with all the benefits that brings.

Our first mobile tool (T-Log reader for iPhone/iPod and Android) is up and running and will be available for beta testing shortly.  As you can see from the screenshots above it looks and works great on both Android (my preference) and iThings (Masum’s choice).

If you are interested in being one of the cool kids, get in touch and we can add you in as a beta tester.

:: 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 ::