As you have noticed the point is not necessary but it basically means: the activity class lives in the same package of the app. So, if your app package is: com.my.package
then:
.YourActivity
means that your class is insidecom.my.package
.YourActivity
means that your class is insidecom.my.package
(same as above)..activities.YourActivity
means that your class is insidecom.my.package.activitites
.- You can even do something like:
com.my.package.activities.YourActivity
which is useful when you want to have different versions of your app and use Ant to change the references to the package automatically.