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Google Shows Off First Android Application, More To Come

If the Android SDK isn't quite enough to guide developers through the process of creating applications for Android, Google is working to provide a clearer road map. Its new Apps-for-Android site will host sample applications that show off all that Android can do, giving developers, in turn, a better idea of what they can do with the platform.

The site will basically be a repository for Google Code, and Google will populate it with a number of sample applications that show off Android's true power -- and how to harness it. Right now, there's only one application to look at, a WikiNotes sample. It's a simple rich text editor that demonstrates how Android can be used to find specific content on the Web.

Here is a list of exactly what the WikiNotes app allows you to do:

* Multiple Activities in an Application (View, Edit, Search, etc.)
* Default intent filters for View/Edit/Search based on MIME types
* Life cycle of Activities
* Message passing via Bundles in Intents
* Use of Linkify to add Intent-firing links to text data
* Using Intents within an application
* Using Intents to use an Activity within another application
* Writing a custom ContentProvider that implements search by note title
* Registration of ReST-like URIs to match titles, and do contents searches
* SQLite implementations for insert, retrieve, update, delete and search
* UI layout and creation for multiple activities
* Menus and keyboard shortcuts

This looks like a fairly robust set of functions for a Wiki search application. Hopefully this set of tools will further help the development community grasp all that Android can do and allow it to create multifaceted applications. Feel free to take advantage!

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