Stalker: Demographics

So what's more creepy than an Android application that stalks your Facebook friends for you?  The fact that Facebook itself, is stalking the users who install it!

Apparently Facebook keeps track of a lot of the API usage for applications, and one of the more interesting pieces of data is the "Demographics" statistic.

Stalker has only been out for about 20 days, so here's what Facebook has recorded so far of all the folks that have installed it:

Stalker 1.1

The next version of Stalker is now on the Android Market - and it's sporting a whole new (iPhone inspired) look!

Introducing: Stalker for Android

Don't miss out on someone else's important life event again!

Tired of continually opening the Facebook application on your phone to check the Facebook status of a few people? Is your girlfriend on a trip to Wine Country, and you want to live vicariously through her adventures? Is there someone you just met at a bar and are anxious to find out if they find you "interesting"?

Stalker is just the app for you!

Stalker will connect to your Facebook account and notify you anytime a select list of friends has updated their status (or when they have anything happen on their wall)!



Stalker is free and ad supported. You are limited to only stalking a single friend unless you purchase the Stalker License application ($1.99) from the market. Once you have the Stalker License application purchased all ads will be removed, and you can stalk as many friends as you would like.

Market Link

Externalizing Android strings in Eclipse

The Android SDK documents highly recommend the practice of externalizing all of your strings to an external XML file (strings.xml), instead of hard coding them in java or other XML documents.

Why? So its easier for you to provide translations for your app down the road if you want.

For a long time I have put off doing this in any of my Android applications, as its a hugely time consuming task with seemingly little benefit to me.. until recently when I discovered a handy feature of the Android ADT plugin for Eclipse: Refactoring Android Strings!

Highlite any string, click on Refactor in the main Eclipse menu, Android, Extract Anroid String.

It will automatically extract your string into the strings.xml file, and it will generate the necessary API call in place to load your string!  Handy!