New external hard drive

Yesterday I had bought new external HDD. It is Iomega® Prestige™ External Hard Drive and I use it as my backup device. There aren't many reviews of this model so I will write short one. I suggest to always have good backup solution. It cost me a lot of stress when HDD in my PC start to making noises and suddenly die. I lost a lot of data including Android market key store file :/. As a result I can't update my applications because updates have to be signed with same key as original app file. So always key backup of your key store file and remember passwords to key store and keys it contains.

Now something about new disk. It is 3,5 inch model with external power. It use USB 2.0 and is preformatted with NTFS (1,36 TB). Inside there is Samsung HD154UI drive. It is quite heavy. More data you can find here.


I ran just one benchmark :



It shows that avarange read speed is 26.5 MB/s. It is standard result for USB 2.0 external hard drive. Access time may be little bit better but it is backup drive so it is not so important.

With this disk you get a lot of free software including :

-Trend Micro Internet Security (1 year free subscription)
-Iomega QuickProtect for Windows
-MozyHome Online Backup(2GB for free)
-EMC Retrospect Express HD for Windows
-EMC Retrospect Express for Windows
-EMC Retrospect Express for Mac

I will install only EMC Retrospect on my laptop and write a post about it.

If you have any questions about drive or included software leave a comment and I will try to answer all questions :).

How to sign Android apk file

After developing Android application you want to release it. To do that you have to prepare apk package. One of the steps is signing apk file. This can be done using Eclipse ADT plugin export wizard or jarsigner and keytool from standard Java distribution. I want to show you how to sing apk file using Eclipse.

Right click on your application in Package Explorer and select Android Tools -> Export Signed Application Package...

You will get this window :




Just specify project name here. Click Next.

In next window you can choose keystore. If you exporting your application for first time choose Create new keystore, select name for keystore and your password. Remember that password! It is very important because you won’t be able to update your application if you loose you key or forget password. Google check if your update is signed with same key that was used to sign earlier release. If not user won't be able to update and the only way to upload your application to Android market is change package name and release it as a new product.



Next step is providing details about your key. You should use one key to sign all your applications. Just fill this window with information about you. Remember to choose long validity (for exemple 30 years). After you finish click next.


Here you have to choose destination of apk file.



When you click finish you will get apk file which is ready to upload to Android market.

Hello World :)

Hi everyone!

My name is Maciek, I'm from Poland and I want to start another blog about Android programming. What you can expect to find here? Mainly how to code and how to use tools to develop Android applications. Some posts may be about programming in general. I also hope that I will learn something from you. If you have any comments or suggestions about this blog fell free to leave a comment. So I hope that both you and I will enjoy. Let's start!