Ask the Hoff is now available for Android phones! Scan the barcode below to download it!
I have been meaning to release a mobile app for some time, but wanted to wait until a novel enough idea came along. I was impressed with the ultra-simplicity of Ask the Hoff, developed by Paul (of @twitchhiker fame) and Jon, both of Never Odd or Even LLP. Because the app was simple but not trivial, I figured it would feasible to complete development in about a day. So, after taking the Hoff's advice via my iPod, I offered to port it to Android for them. They accepted!
Despite being a keen Mac user, I've never had an iPhone, despite thinking my iPod Touch is one of the best things I have ever bought. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I actually like having a 1990s personal organiser keyboard attached to my phone. I still use one of the first G1s to come out and have been a fan of the Android platform ever since: it has evolved rapidly in the space of a year.
Android apps are programmed in Java inside the Eclipse IDE, despite not running in a JVM on the device itself. This is an environment I am extremely comfortable in. Overall, I am extremely impressed with the entire Android development experience: the IDE integration, debugger, emulator, the SDK and the extremely readable documentation on Android.com. The Eclipse integration is particularly good, although the GUI for laying out inter
faces is nowhere near the slickness of Interface Builder. I generally edited the user interface layout XML directly. I will blog in more detail on the Android development experience later.
I look forward to working with Paul and Jon again (shame I'm not called George, then we'd only be missing a Ringo...) on future Android projects, as well as perhaps releasing a few apps of my own.
Edit: Forgot to say - many, many thanks to all the people who tested various builds of Hoff earlier this week.
