Here I’ll suggest you some way to get inspired.

Be tuned

Use a RSS client (I get on well with Google Reader) and subscribe to the feed of each designers you like. So consulting the client every day you will be updated on every new work of your favorites. In additions I’ll suggest to subscribe to the feed of Speckyboy magazine. Here there are some interesting articles and once a week there is an article dedicated to inspiration, with some gorgeous websites founded on the web.

Play basketball

Why basketball and not football? because basketball is the way of Dribbble (don’t forgot the triple b). Dribbble is the most famous community of designers, here you can find only shots (400×300 pixels) of elite designers. So is a good practice to take a tour each time you have nothing to do. As explained previously to be part of these gang of designers you need an invite.

Make a camping trip

If the basketball it’s not enough for you, try Forrst. As Dribbble here you can find some interesting shots, but because entering in this community is easier, the quality it’s not ever so gorgeous. To be part of this community infact you need three vote from other members.

Check your favorites

Another designers community is the younger Favwork. To join this you need… nothing. So as you can expect the shots (600×400 pixels) that you can find here are of every quality.

And finally, follow me

Yes follow me!

• Dribbble profile
• Forrst profile (waiting)
• Favwork profile

I’ve continued my search until I’ve found in a shop a Fabriano dot grid sketchbook unexpectedly!

This book is part of a new line 100% green by Fabriano, called EcoQua. This sketchbook has 90 A4 pages with dot matrix with 85 gsm 100% green paper. The only relevant cons are that the color of pages is not white, but (like any 100% green paper sheets) is a very clear ivory and that the binding is without double spiral (is glued on the side).

All of this for only 3€ (less than $4). It’s very cheap, are you agree?

The output could be customized by users by a little options panel. Moreover is possible to suggest words for each one of these dictionary in a very simple way.

For those who don’t know Dribbble

It’s a community where a group of elite designers publish 400×300 pixels “shots” of their current works. I say elite designers because, only who receive a dribbble invite can publish their own “shots”.

Shot example

For those who have an invite

Have you a dribbble invite? Oh please jump here!

link to dribbble.splact.com

The app localization (L10N) is one of the most important features that an application must have for be more desirable by users. An application localized only in Swedish can be fine if this is in the interests only of a Swedish public. And vice versa an app localized only in English can be fine only if it’s a little application, that brings to users only a single and simple functionality.

So if you want to spread your application over the global market, initially you have to find what will be your public, and after choose some other localization (English is a must).

Different languages

When we write Android apps, if we wants to display some texts we use values pre-written as String in the app resources (if you do not have this habit, you have to start this way), so for example in the folder res/values we have in the string.xml file something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="tale">The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</string>
    <string name="greeting">Hello</string>
</resources>

So for example, if we want to make a localization of the same application in Italian (my language), we have simply to create another folder res/values-it (it is the two chars language code for Italian) with inside the same file strings.xml with the values translated. So we have:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="tale">La rapida volpe marrone salta sul cane pigro</string>
    <string name="greeting">Ciao</string>
</resources>

This procedure can be done for any folder under res, so we can have drawable-it, attrs-it, etc.

Different regions

The L10N isn’t applied only for different languages, but also for different regions, and the procedure for doing that is the same than the previous one. For example, if we want to localize the same application in French language but in Canadian region we have to create the folder res/values-fr-rCA where rCA mean region Canada. Into this folder we can create the strings.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="tale">Le renard brun rapide saute par dessus le chien paresseux</string>
    <string name="greeting">Allo</string>
</resources>

Best way for strings

A useful way to localize strings that includes some variables is to write strings with markers for a formatted string: for example if we want to localize “When will John explode?” where John and explode are the variables, we can write into strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="phrase">When will %1$s %2$s?</string>
</resources>

At the time of usage in Java we can compile the string as follows:

String.format(getResources().getString(R.string.phrase), nameVar, verbVar)

I recommend to use this method because translating strings, the sorting of words could change, and because is more simple making only one string resource for sentence, alternatively infact we have to make more than one string resource for sentence.