Posted: 05 Apr 2012 04:00 AM PDT

The words unschooling and open source often make people take a step back. But if there is any mode of learning that fully embraces the philosophy of the open source way, it is unschooling. Some even use the phrase open source learning to describe unschooling. Both unschooling and open source are revolutionary concepts based on freedom of choice. They encourage us to rethink and reassess what, when, where, how, and why we learn.

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WordPress 3.4 Beta 1

Posted: 04 Apr 2012 07:07 PM PDT

WordPress 3.4 is ready for beta testers!

As always, this is software still in development and we don't recommend that you run it on a production site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), please report it, and if you're a developer, try to help us fix it.

If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.4 in May. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version. If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs.

Here's some of what's new:

Theme Customizer with Previewer
Flexible Custom Header Sizes
Selecting Custom Header and Background Images from Media Library
Better experience searching for and choosing a theme

And some of the under-the-hood changes:

New XML-RPC API for external and mobile applications
New API for registering theme support for custom headers and backgrounds
Performance improvements to WP_Query by splitting the query (Please test!)
Internationalization improvements (improved performance and locale support)
Performance and API improvements when working with lists of installed themes
Support for installing child themes from the WordPress Themes Directory

Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you've confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (We recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)

Theme and plugin authors, if you haven't been following the 3.4 development cycle, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Download WordPress 3.4 Beta 1

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The Gmail Public Labels API

Posted: 04 Apr 2012 10:46 AM PDT

[This post is by Nadav Aharony, a product manager on the Android team — Tim Bray]

We're rolling out new developer features for the Gmail Android app: It now includes a public ContentProvider that you can use to retrieve label data. You can use this to access up-to-date unread counts for specific accounts' inboxes and labels.

To use the API, the Gmail app needs to be at version 2.3.6 or higher on Froyo or Gingerbread; 4.0.5 or higher on Honeycomb and ICS. Before using it, be sure you first check the Gmail app version; we've provided a handy GmailContract.canReadLabels(Context) method to help with this. Your app will need the com.google.android.gm.permission.READ_CONTENT_PROVIDER permission.

Finding the Gmail accounts set up on the device

The Labels API needs a valid Gmail account to build a query for per-label information. Assuming the GET_ACCOUNTS permission, the AccountManager can be used to fetch this information:

// Get the account list, and pick the first one final String ACCOUNT_TYPE_GOOGLE = "com.google"; final String[] FEATURES_MAIL = {         "service_mail" }; AccountManager.get(this).getAccountsByTypeAndFeatures(ACCOUNT_TYPE_GOOGLE, FEATURES_MAIL,         new AccountManagerCallback() {             @Override             public void run(AccountManagerFuture future) {                 Account[] accounts = null;                 try {                     accounts = future.getResult();                     if (accounts != null && accounts.length > 0) {                         String selectedAccount = accounts[0].name;                         queryLabels(selectedAccount);                     }                  } catch (OperationCanceledException oce) {                     // TODO: handle exception                 } catch (IOException ioe) {                     // TODO: handle exception                 } catch (AuthenticatorException ae) {                     // TODO: handle exception                 }             }         }, null /* handler */);

Getting and accessing existing labels

Once you've got the email account, you can get a ContentProvider URI to query against. We've provided a simple support class called GmailContract.java for constructing the URI and defining the columns and relevant constants.

You can access any label, predefined or user-defined. The predefined labels include (you have to use symbolic constants rather than these strings, see below):

Priority Inbox
Starred
Chats
Sent
Drafts
All mail
Spam
Trash

To obtain a Cursor with information for all labels in an account, your app can either query this URI directly or use a CursorLoader. Here's an example:

Cursor c =      getContentResolver().query(GmailContract.Labels.getLabelsUri(selectedAccount),          null, null, null, null);

You can query and watch for changes on a single label by storing the URI value in the GmailContract.Labels.URI column from the cursor data.

The NAME value for pre-defined labels can vary by locale, so don't use GmailContract.Labels.NAME. Instead, identify pre-defined labels like Inbox, Sent or Drafts using the String value in the GmailContract.Labels.CANONICAL_NAME column. Here's an example:

// loop through the cursor and find the Inbox if (c != null) {     final String inboxCanonicalName = GmailContract.Labels.LabelCanonicalName.CANONICAL_NAME_INBOX;     final int canonicalNameIndex = c.getColumnIndexOrThrow(GmailContract.Labels.CANONICAL_NAME);     while (c.moveToNext()) {         if (inboxCanonicalName.equals(c.getString(canonicalNameIndex))) {             // this row corresponds to the Inbox         }     } }

If you choose to use a CursorLoader, it will keep the label counts up to date as they change over time.

Sample App

You can find a sample app that makes use of the new API here. The app provides a basic readout of label and message-count information.

People care about their incoming mail; we're looking forward to seeing what you do with access to this information. We're also open to suggestions as to how to improve and extend this new API.