Learn how to develop applications for Android mobile devices using simple examples, ready to run with your copy of the SDK. Author and Android columnist, writer, developer, and community advocate Mark L Murphy shows you what you need to know to get started on programming Android applications–everything from crafting GUIs to using GPS, accessing web services, and more!

The Android development platform, created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance, is a platform in its truest sense, encompassing hundreds of classes beyond the traditional Java classes and open source components that ship with the SDK. Some Android books race through the material, trying to cover as much ground as possible in as few pages as possible. Experienced writer and community advocate Mark Murphy shows you how to develop Android applications simply and with care.

The book includes dozens of sample projects, ready to run with your copy of the SDK–not just one huge project where you have difficulty finding the specific examples of the technique you are looking for. You can even get these sample programs online at Apress.com.

What you'll learn

• Discover what Android is and how to use Android to build Java-based mobile applications for Google Phones G1 and more phones as they hit the market
• Work with the new Android 1.x SDK
• Create user interfaces using both the Android Widget framework and the built-in WebKit-powered web browser components
• Use scripting with BeanShell
• Work with menu inflation, fonts, SDK tools, rotation events, and more
• Work with TabActivity, MyLocationOverlay, DDMS, and more
• Utilize the distinctive capabilities of the Android engine including maps, Internet access, integrated search, media playback, and more
• Use and create similar sample Android applications for services, content providers, mapping, and location-based services/events

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at people new to mobile development, perhaps even to Java itself.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!

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With Beginning Android 3, you’ll learn how to develop applications for Android 3 mobile devices, using simple examples that are ready to run with your copy of the software development kit...

A Leadership IQ study found that 47% of high performers are actively seeking other jobs while an additional 44% are passively looking. Every organization wants to retain their employees, especially their best employees. But most leaders are making mistakes. We studied more than 100,000 leaders to identify the Deadly Sins of Employee Retention. These are the five mistakes that can destroy the retention efforts of organizations and their leaders. This book will challenge some of the most entrenched and misguided beliefs about employee retention. We'll show you how to avoid the Deadly Sins of Employee Retention and teach you five cutting-edge strategies for keeping your best people. Individual leaders and entire organizations can transform their retention efforts immediately....

Push employees to their full potential with “tough love” leadership!

“Provides the tools managers need to take ‘average’ employees and create a culture of accountable, fully engaged people. Managers will learn to recognize their leadership style and understand how they, too, can become Hundred Percenters.”
Laura Christiansen, Vice President Human Resources, VTech Communications, Inc.

"Heavily-researched and loaded with tools and examples, this book shows you how to challenge your employees to achieve the kind of extraordinary results and innovations that every CEO dreams about. Every leader needs to read this book!"
Ned Fitch, CEO, Kalahari Tea

"Murphy finds that most workplaces are brimming with untapped talent. Only it's suppressed by goal-setting that discourages big ideas and leaders who focus on happiness rather than greatness."
Training Magazine

We’ve all heard the saying that a happy employee is a motivated employee. But what if that’s not true?

Leadership IQ CEO Mark Murphy says the “happy employee” philosophy doesn’t work. A study of more than 500,000 leaders and employees shows that despite the billions of dollars organizations spend to satisfy and engage workers, 72% of employees admit they’re still not giving their best effort at work. Rather, it’s leaders who focus on making their people great—not happy—who inspire Hundred Percenter performance.

If you talk to the employees behind today’s great innovations, you’re unlikely to hear, “I was inspired by a boss who coddles me.” Instead you’d probably hear, “My boss challenges me and pushes me past my limits.” Most workplaces are brimming with untapped talent— only it’s suppressed by leaders who fail to connect with and challenge employees to unleash their true potential.

Here are just a few of the big ideas in Hundred Percenters:

• The harder the goals you set, the better your employees will perform
• You should never use a Compliment Sandwich to deliver feedback
• Talented Terrors—people with great skills and a bad attitude—can destroy your company culture
• Before you can start motivating Hundred Percenters, you have to stop demotivating them
• You should never ask your employees if they’re “satisfied”

This groundbreaking book debunks management fads that don’t apply to today’s workplace and provides the facts, theories, and direction you need to become a 100% Leader. Apply Murphy’s leadership lessons and you’ll see innovation, productivity, and profits soar, while employee turnover rates plummet. Hundred Percenters will bring out the best in your workforce.

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Las Vegas, 1959. WWII veteran Joe Halliday is enjoying the good life - running Tiki Joe's Restaurant, courting a beautiful girl, and making time with stead-fast friends - that is, until the local mob moves in with demands for protection money. When the police are unable to help, Joe calls in a few old army friends, and together they decide to pay the mob off... in lead! Tiki Joe is an Ocean's Eleven-style mystery set in Las Vegas - part murder mystery, part hard-boiled thriller by Mark Murphy....