We have just released a new Android course where you can learn how to build Ribbit, an app that lets users send photo and video messages that “self-destruct” after they’ve been viewed! This is the Android version of the same project for iOS, and both projects can share a common back-end from Parse.com.

In the Self-Destructing Message app we will build on the concepts learned in previous Android projects to create an app that will allow users to send photo or video messages to other users that will be deleted once viewed. The app will be tab-based, meaning we will cover Fragments, and we’ll dive further into layouts, list views, and the Activity lifecycle. The backend of the app will be built on Parse.com‘s popular cloud storage services, which will handle user accounts and file and message storage. You can also extend this project with the Android Tools project that was released a few weeks ago.

Build a Self-Destructing Message App

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At Alumni Relations, we spend a lot of time focusing on and communicating with our wonderfully supportive alums. However, we’ve decided to turn the tables and take time to get to know the people behind the scenes, the staff members at Alumni Relations who make things happen. Today we’ll be hearing from Jessie Orsburn ’14, English, the new Alumni Relations intern for the Spring 2014 semester. She’ll be contributing to the UMBC Giving blog and is looking forward to being a part of the UMBC Alumni Relations team.

Name: Jessie Orsburn
Job Title: A&D Communications intern
Focus Area: UMBC Giving blog writer
Years at UMBC: Three
Grad year (if alum): NA

Q: Where are you from originally?

A: I was born in Chicago and lived in California for several years before moving to Maryland’s 21228 (Catonsville), which is where I’ve been since I was five.

Q: What do you love most about UMBC?

A: I love the passion for learning and teaching seen from students and teachers. There is something about UMBC that just feels different from other universities. At UMBC, people care about education, about making a difference, about being a part of something bigger than themselves. I’ve always loved that about UMBC. I also love the diversity.

Q: What’s your favorite thing about your job?

A: This is only my first day on the job, but already I am intrigued by Alumni Relations and their aim to build students’ and alums’ interest and involvement in UMBC and giving back to the UMBC community. Not to mention, the staff members I have met so far are awesome!

Q: Have you ever done anything crazy or out of the ordinary?

A: I once took a missions trip to Africa where I had the opportunity to meet and work with the people of QwaQwa, a small town in the southern part of the continent. I also got to hold a baby lion cub, no big deal.

Q: If you could be a superhero, who would you pick and why?

A: I would have to say Superman; I mean, who doesn’t want to be Superman? Not only would I be able to fly, which is the greatest super power ever, but I would be able to help people with innumerable tasks and never get tired. Rescue a cat from a tree, prevent a ship from sinking, fly an elderly person across the street, remove debris and rubble from disaster areas and the list goes on.

The Web Applications Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Progress Events. The Progress Events specification defines an event interface that can be used for measuring progress; e.g. HTTP entity body transfers. This specification is primarily meant to be used by other specifications. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.

The Efficient XML Interchange Working Group has published a W3C Recommendation of Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) Format 1.0 (Second Edition). This document is the specification of the Efficient XML Interchange (EXI) format. EXI is a very compact representation for the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Information Set that is intended to simultaneously optimize performance and the utilization of computational resources. The EXI format uses a hybrid approach drawn from the information and formal language theories, plus practical techniques verified by measurements, for entropy encoding XML information. Using a relatively simple algorithm, which is amenable to fast and compact implementation, and a small set of datatype representations, it reliably produces efficient encodings of XML event streams. The grammar production system and format definition of EXI are presented. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity.

The Math Working Group has published two Proposed Edited Recommendations today:

• Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 2nd Edition. This specification defines the Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML. MathML is a markup language for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Comments are welcome through 11 March.
• XML Entity Definitions for Characters (2nd Edition). This document defines several sets of names, so that to each name is assigned a Unicode character or sequence of characters. Each of these sets is expressed as a file of XML entity declarations. Comments are welcome through 11 March.

Learn more about the Math Activity.

The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of CSS Shapes Module Level 1. CSS Shapes describe geometric shapes for use in CSS. For Level 1, CSS Shapes can be applied to floats. A circle shape on a float will cause inline content to wrap around the circle shape instead of the float’s bounding box. CSS is a language for describing the rendering of structured documents (such as HTML and XML) on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. Comments are welcome through 04 March. Learn more about the Style Activity.