I recently nabbed myself some NFC tags and I’m having a lovely time setting myself up with some nice automation.

I’ve popped one on my bathroom wall and set an alarm with Puzzle Alarm Clock which will only let me close it by tapping my phone to said tag.  But that’s not all!  I’ve also configured the tag to run a Tasker task which will automatically play a Spotify playlist I’ve created, and then open up reddit is fun for when I sit down.

The thing is, for some reason, it’s really difficult to find any sort of information online on how to get Tasker to open a playlist in Spotify and automatically play it.  So here’s how!

1. Create a new task.
2. Add a Send Intent action. (System > Send Intent)
3. In the Action box, paste the following: android.media.action.MEDIA_PLAY_FROM_SEARCH
4. In the Data box, paste the Spotify URI for your playlist. (You can get this by right clicking the playlist in the desktop Spotify client and clicking on “Copy Spotify URI”
5. Under Target, select Activity.

And… that’s it!  It’s surprisingly straightforward, yet barely documented.  Most tutorials I found seem to encourage the use of something like Media Utilities, but those methods seem convoluted and barely even seem to work.

Aviate. The intelligent homescreen that simplifies your phone

The Homescreen, Reimagined For Simplicity. Automatically organize your apps, and get to information faster than ever.

I’ve been a fan of customising my Android phone since the days of my old G1, and I recently came across (and got into) the Aviate for Android beta.  I have to admit, I was a little underwhelmed, probably since I’d been reading up on the hype whilst waiting for my key to come and gotten a little overexcited.

Anyway, while it’s not really my cup of tea, I figured I’d give away my 5 invites.  Just drop a comment on this post and I’ll send an invite your way.

It’s a fantastic app, and I can see the potential, but I’ll be sticking with Themer for a little while longer – I just love my home screen too much.

Themer by MyColorScreen - Android Themes in One Click

Themer is a free Android app that lets you theme your Android in one click. Browse our library of beautiful themes, hit Apply, and the wallpaper, widgets, and icons are set up for you.

The Android ADT Bundle has come a long way since I last used it way back when Android first came about.  It used to be a long-winded process of downloading the Eclipse IDE and then setting up the plugin, emulator and SDK levels manually.

I’ve recently been getting back into Android development, but when I tried to set up the ADT Bundle on my laptop, I encountered an issue with the Android SDK Manager – the issue being that it simply wouldn’t open.

After a quick search around, I found that it’s a common problem caused by having an incorrect PATH defined in the system variables.

On Windows 7, this can be changed by right clicking on Computer, and clicking on “Advanced system settings.”  From there, click on “Environment variables”, and find “Path” in the “System variables” list.

Once you’ve found it, double click on it to edit, and paste in the installation path of your JDK, which should be something like the following:
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45\bin

Be sure to separate it from any other paths with a semicolon!

After this is done, save and close, go back to the SDK Manager, and download the SDK versions you require!