Book "Sams Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours" by Lauren Darcey and Shane Conder

About the Book: Android is the world's #1 mobile development platform, and with the new Android 3.0, it's becoming as popular for tablets as it is for smartphones. If you are a beginner, in just 24 lessons of one hour or less, this friendly, full-color book will help you master modern Android development. You can build a fully-featured app from scratch, learning all the skills you'll need to create your own. Each lesson builds on prior chapters, providing a solid foundation for success. This edition is thoroughly updated for Android's newest features and development tools, while still supporting the popular Android 2.0. Coverage includes: Using Eclipse to write apps quickly and efficiently, Understanding the application lifecycle, Building robust, friendly user interfaces, Retrieving, storing, and using data, Adding network, social, and location-based features, Supporting the camera and other hardware, Internationalizing, testing, and publishing apps, Revised and simplified step-by-step instructions with full-color screenshots walk you through key tasks... updated Q and As, Quizzes, and Exercises test your knowledge..."Did You Know?" tips offer insider advice..."Watch Out!" alerts help you avoid problems. By the time you're finished, you won't just understand core Android concepts: you'll be comfortable writing, testing, and publishing your own new apps.

About the Authors: Lauren Darcey is responsible for the technical leadership and direction of a small software company specializing in mobile technologies, including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre, BREW, and J2ME and consulting services. With more than two decades of experience in professional software production, Lauren is a recognized authority in enterprise architecture and the development of commercial-grade mobile applications. Lauren received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Lauren spends her copious free time traveling the world with her geeky mobile-minded husband and is an avid nature photographer. Her work has been published in books and newspapers around the world. In South Africa, she dove with 4-meter-long great white sharks and got stuck between a herd of rampaging hippopotami and an irritated bull elephant. She's been attacked by monkeys in Japan, gotten stuck in a ravine with two hungry lions in Kenya, gotten thirsty in Egypt, narrowly avoided a coup d'état in Thailand, geocached her way through the Swiss Alps, drank her way through the beer halls of Germany, slept in the crumbling castles of Europe, and gotten her tongue stuck to an iceberg in Iceland (while being watched by a herd of suspicious wild reindeer).

Shane Conder has extensive development experience and has focused his attention on mobile and embedded development for the past decade. He has designed and developed many commercial applications for Android, iPhone, BREW, Blackberry, J2ME, Palm, and Windows Mobile-some of which have been installed on millions of phones worldwide. Shane has written extensively about the mobile industry and evaluated mobile development platforms on his tech blogs and is well known within the blogosphere. Shane received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California.
A self-admitted gadget freak, Shane always has the latest phone, laptop, or other mobile device. He can often be found fiddling with the latest technologies, such as cloud services and mobile platforms, and other exciting, state-of-the-art technologies that activate the creative part of his brain. He also enjoys traveling the world with his geeky wife, even if she did make him dive with 4-meter-long great white sharks, and almost get eaten by a lion in Kenya. He admits that he has to take at least two phones and a tablet with him when backpacking, even though there is no coverage, that he snickered and whipped out his Android phone to take a picture when his wife got her tongue stuck to that iceberg in Iceland, and that he is catching on that he should be writing his own bio.

My Review: This is a well organized book, very easy to follow and give you great perspective on all details of how to build an Android application. It is divided in five major parts plus a series of Appendixes. First part does a quick presentation on Android Fundamentals, Second part covers Building an Application Framework, how you implement Splash Screen and a Menu screen, as well as Help and Scores screen if you are developing a game. Third part covers Enhancing Your Application with Powerful Android Features, that deals with usage of images and cameras, as well as network features and support, and social features. Fourth part is called Adding Polish to Your Android Application and teaches how to internationalize your application,  how to develop for different devices and how to test your application. Last but not least, part five teaches you how to get ready to publish your application.
This book is a valuable tool, explaining in details on how to create the developing environment and which are the best open source tools to use.
Overall it is a very useful book, that I recommend if you want to start developing applications for Android platform.

This book was written by Lauren Darcy and Shane Conder and the second edition was Published on August of 2011. Amazon.com was kind enough to provide this book for me through their Vine Program for reviewing and I was not request to provide a positive review. Opinions expressed here are my own.

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