Apps & Games

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15 Best Sites Like Depop to Sell Clothes Online (iOS/Android) 2021

Check out the best sites like Depop to sell clothes online which also enable you to sell jewellery, shoes, posters, and old books too.

Here are the best Depop alternatives to sell online

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13 Best Games Like Rimworld Ps4 (2021) - archiesoftech.com

Find the best games Like Rimworld where you can get experience in deserts, forests, tundra, jungles, and more if you want to be like in Rimworld.

If you love Rimworld, then you should try these alternatives. 

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Why is Spotify better than Apple Music?

I've been using Spotify since 2016. I canceled my subscription several times but then renewed it because this is the best solution for listening to and finding new music.

Even those who have never used Spotify have probably heard of a recommendation system that accurately guesses musical tastes.

It's true. As I said before, Spotify is the perfect app for finding new music. To do this, there are several playlists in the application with individual recommendations.

These playlists are updated every day. They contain both new tracks and those that you have already added to your library.

If you listen to a lot of different music, then there will be several such playlists. I have six of them.

You can also find new tracks, but they are diluted with old compositions that you might not have heard before.

As a result, Spotify offers me eight unique playlists, while Apple Music has four, and not the best quality.

The quality of applications is on top.

The app flies on the iPhone, especially when compared to Apple Music. Perhaps for some, the lack of a light theme will be a minus, but you quickly get used to the dark one.

Spotify on iOS is divided into three sections: Main, Search, and Media Library. The first screen shows recommendations as well as recently played content.

The second tab displays a search bar and a list of genres.

The library contains all saved tracks, albums, and playlists. You can also switch to podcasts here, but more on them later.

Spotify does not save music like Apple Music. If you want to add a track, you need to like it. Albums are added in the same way, but they are saved with all songs at once. If you add only part of the songs from the album, it will not be shown in the corresponding section.

I'm not sure everyone likes this kind of logic. For a year, I could not get used to it. It's much easier with Apple Music.

On Mac, Spotify instantly searches for music, opens playlists, and adds tracks while Apple Music downloads a new album. I still wonder why Apple cannot fix several bugs moving from one version of macOS to another over the years.

The only thing that Music on Mac wins is with settings and cataloging. This is the perfect app for those who like to sort their library and are used to listening to albums.

On Apple Watch, Spotify's performance is poor, but only when compared directly to Apple Music. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I have Series 3.

The app is divided into three screens. The first shows the library, the second shows the player, and the last shows the playlist.

Although there are unique features in Spotify, there are even better alternatives to it. Like Youtube music and Musicanista is also developing really fast.

Spotify Connect - Everyone Must Copy This

I would also like to tell you about Spotify Connect. This is one of the most fantastic features of the app. With its help, you can listen to music on your smartphone and then switch to your computer (or any other device) and continue from the same place.

Thus, you do not have to listen to the song again, and you will save the playlist when you change devices.

Apple Music and other services are sorely lacking in this feature.

More information is shown on the artist page.

On Spotify, the artist page shows the tracks you've liked first, followed by popular songs and releases.

Albums and singles are shown in the same list but subheading section. Not the most convenient option if the performer has an extensive discography.

Popular playlists in which the author's music is presently present in a separate category.

At the end of the page, there is a short biography of the artist with links to social networks.

You can listen to podcasts, but it's better to use another application.

For the past year and a half, Spotify has made a big bet on podcasts.

The fact is, both three years ago and now, listening to podcasts on Spotify is a torment. There are no chapters in the app, timecodes do not work, and there is no formatting in the description. All of these features are basic to any podcast app.

If your task is to listen to a podcast, then Spotify will do just fine. But if you listen to many podcasts and need all these features, it is better to use specialized applications.

And a few more cool Spotify tricks.

#Tracks can display small videos instead of covers, which artists shoot specifically for Spotify. It looks impressive.

#Some songs have lyrics transcribed from Genius. You can immediately understand what the performer wanted to say.

#Spotify has an On Repeat smart playlist. The tracks that are played most often go there. Apple Music can also make a playlist like this.

#Soon, Spotify will provide karaoke mode, as in Apple Music.

Conclusion

There are fewer complaints about Apple Music. Unless the Android version gets updates much later and the recommendations are mediocre.

Spotify differs from its competitors primarily because it is not a massive corporation with a bunch of different products. They are a large company that focuses on only one service, and they do it well.

Spotify and Apple Music are the exact pricing. I am sure that for many, Spotify will be a great solution for listening to music. It is available on a large number of devices; it has excellent recommendations and many exciting features.

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15 Best Free Apps Like Whisper (iOS & Android) 2021

Find the best anonymous chat apps like Whisper to share your feelings. You will probably find your next crush, love date, or partner faster.

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How to make an Android app yourself

The Android platform is open source, so anyone can write their own application and distribute it through the program categories. All tools are free.

It's easy to use java as a programming language for mobile development on Android. Google is now actively promoting Kotlin as a language that can replace Java. Applications are also written in C ++. The creation of a simple application consists of several stages:

Project in Android Studio

Creation of a user interface

Adding activities

Navigation and actions

Test the application in the emulator

Required tools

The first step is to install the Android Studio program. This is the official development environment (IDE) for Android and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Also, you can use other environments besides Android Studio too.

If the Android SDK and other components are not installed on your computer,  Android Studio will automatically download them. The Android SDK is a programming environment that includes libraries, executables, scripts, documentation, etc.

The Android SDK compiles the code along with any data and resources into a .apk file. It contains everything you need to install an application on an Android device.

It is useful to install an Android emulator as well in order to run and test applications. The emulator comes bundled with  Android Studio.

When all the tools are installed, you can create your first project. But first, you need to understand the basic concepts.

Main Components of an Android Application

An Android application has four components. Each component is an entry point through which a system or user can access.

Activity (activity) - the elements of an interactive user interface. One activity engages another and passes information about what the user intends to do through the Intent class. Activities are like web pages, and intents are like links between them. Application launch is the Main activity. Service (service) - a universal entry point to maintain the application in the background. This component performs long-running operations or works for remote processes without a visual interface. A broadcast receiver broadcasts intents from an application to multiple participants. Content Provider content provider manages a common set of application data from the file system, SQLite database, Internet, or other storage.

Now let's try to make our own application for Android.

Building an Android app in Android Studio

Step 1

Select the application name, company domain, project path and package name. You can enable support for the optional programming languages, like ​​C++ and Kotlin.

Step 2

Set one or more target platforms for the build. It uses the SDK and AVD, the Android virtual device manager. The tool allows you to install packages into the SDK that support multiple Android OS versions and multiple API levels (Application Programming Interfaces).

Step 3

Select the main activity that will be launched when you click on the application icon, and give it a name.

Step 4

After a few minutes of building, Android Studio opens the IDE interface. There are three main points here.

If you select Android view from the drop-down menu, you will see the project files. When creating the project, specify a full-screen activity instead of the Main activity.

Next, you can see the file app>res>layout>activity_fullscreen.xml This is an XML layout file for the UI of the main activity.

Finally, the third important file app>manifests>AndroidManifest.xml describes the fundamental characteristics of the application and defines all its components.

Manifest content

Run on a real device

The application we created is one activity that runs in full screen mode and has no graphical elements.

We can run it on an Android device or in an emulator.

Smartphone or tablet to connect it to the USB-debugging mode, which is activated in the  Settings developer  in the menu settings .

To run the emulator in Android Studio click the button Run in the menu Run (the Shift + the F10). We select the appropriate device and OS version, portrait or landscape (landscape) orientation.

Building a simple user interface

The user interface of an Android application is created through a hierarchy of layouts (layouts, ViewGroup objects) and  widgets (View objects). Layouts control the placement of child widgets on the screen. The widgets themselves are directly UI components: buttons, text fields on the screen, etc.

The activity interface is created in Android Studio in the Layout Editor and is stored mostly in XML files.

Open the file app> res> layout> activity_fullscreen.xml .

Add widgets to the screen from the Palette by dragging the mouse.

For example, let's take a text field (PlainText). This is an EditText widget where the user can enter text.

Add buttons and other necessary elements.

Adding actions, activities and navigation

Let's say we created an activity with a text box and a Submit button. After that, you need to write what exactly will happen when you click the "Submit" button.

Go to the code app> java> FullscreenActivity .

We add the SendMessage () method to the FullscreenActivity class so that when the button is clicked, this method is called.

We create intents (Intent class) for moving from one activity to another, new activities, navigation and everything else that is necessary for the application.

And, of course, we start dreaming of how to monetize the application.

General rules for Android applications

The Android application lives in its own sandbox, which obeys the Linux security rules:

Each application is a separate user on a multiuser Linux system.

By default, the system assigns each application a unique user ID that is unknown to the application; all files are accessible only to this user ID.

All processes have their own virtual machine (VM), so that the executable code is isolated from other applications.

By default, each application starts its own Linux process.

There are exceptions to the rules:

It is possible for two applications to have a common user ID so that they can share files with each other.

The application can request permission to access user contacts, SMS, storage contents, information from the camera and other data.

Hope this is useful for beginners who are interested. Feel free to leave a comment. I hope to post regularly if you are intrested more cool stuff.