Well…. All is well here, it’s been a while since I last posted, but I don’t guess anyone’s been reading anyway. In my previous posts, I’ve been talking about my new HTC Droid Eris from Verizon, and I told that I debated purchasing a netbook from Verizon, but decided to purchase an Acer from Wal-Mart. Well, I’m sure glad I did. Verizon’s netbook costs ~ $100 and then there’s a minimum service addition of ~ $40 per month. Well, with my new HTC Eris and my netbook, I’m able to tether completely free! That’s right, I downloaded easy tether lite to my Eris and to my netbook, and here I am, in the middle of nowhere, making a blog post on my netbook 
Monday, March 15, 2010
Awesome Android
Keep your Hero locked down...
You’re probably not a Kanye fan, so you probably dont get that obscure song reference, but just humor me. [insert video of Kanye interrupting Taylor here] “Ima let you finish Apple, Ima let you finish but Android has THE BEST OS this year!!”…
Ok. That was painful. I was trying to segue into talking about security on the Hero. I’ll work on it. I promise.
Security on the Hero. Do you have any? Do you even care? I actually find that most people dont. They find it too much of a hassle to add the extra step of entering in a password every time they access the phone. To be honest I am one of those people. It’s just annoying. And frankly, I’ve never felt the need. I mean its just phone numbers right? Well yes and no. With smartphones doing more and more; more and more of our personal information is being stored on them. Things like our Facebook and email passwords, personal documents, and of course our contacts. What happens if you lose your phone? Do we really want all that info easily accessible to a stranger? I would think not.
So what do we do about it? Well there are several apps in the market that address the situation. I will be reviewing a few of them at a later date. This post isnt about them. This post is about the built in security on your Hero. Like I said previously, I am not a fan of entering a password each time I want to use my phone. Enter the Unlock Pattern. Have you looked at it yet? My first thought was “What the heck?”, but now after using it for awhile I see it for what it is… pure genius!
I slide down the screen lock, it takes 2 seconds to slide my finger in my unlock pattern and voila! I’m in. I can set my phone down and not worry about someone picking it up and snooping. AND I dont have to remember yet another oddball password! Have I sold you yet? Its the simplest thing to set up and use. Try it. I’m betting you’ll love it. JUST DONT FORGET YOUR PATTERN LOL
Ciao!
Friday, March 12, 2010
Mobile Adaptations
Did you know that Soonr can change the mobile UI based on the device used to access it? Ever since its inception our service has had a focus on mobile devices. It’s one of the things that make Soonr so unique. Today we can recognize over 817 devices that access the system with a mobile browser. In many cases, we optimize the user experience based on the kind of device you are using. If you’ve ever tried Soonr on a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, S60, iPhone or Android phone side by side, you’ve probably noticed the interfaces are slightly different in subtle ways. Each takes advantage of the uniqueness of the browser.
Native vs. Webkit browser UI
BlackBerry browser UI
On a Black Berry we use a more traditional menu link you can click on by moving the cursor with the trackball control.
About a year and a half ago, we introduced the first native Soonr application for the iPhone. It has been very well received and gave capabilities never before seen on a mobile phone. Last year the Android phones came to play. One of the key advantages of the Android OS was its’ openness. Android was designed for developers to be able to add functionality easily and we quickly took advantage of one of those features to enable you to upload and download files onto the phone.
You see, the iPhone has a pretty closed file system. You can’t easily write to or retrieve files from the phone’s memory without going through a very strict program interface. Android is different. Programs have direct access to the storage on the phone. Because of this, it’s easy to download files onto the phone and also upload photos from the phone. We’ve taken advantage of this in the Soonr native application for Android.
Note the "Download" option for the file. You only get this in the Android native applicaiton, not the iPhone.
This is especially useful for cases where you might want a document for offline viewing. Maybe when you are on a plane you’d like to look over a presentation or a sales proposal. With the Android application for Soonr, you can download those to your phone and look them over in places that you don’t have any kind of internet connection. This adds a new level of flexibility to business and persnol users alike.
No matter what phone you or your team members use, Soonr will give you a great user experience. Check out the Soonr for Android application in the Android Market place. Download it to your phone for free and have an easy and robust way to access your Soonr account which is connected to your computers and your team members.
Apple iPhone UI vs Android UI II
You know one of the defenses against Apple bonehead patent lawsuits is offense, right? So what feature. MultiTouch controller code has been posted that is backwards compatible with Android 1.5 and Android 1.6, you will find it mentioned here and the direct download link is here. It is one of the features I will be implementing to differentiate Gallerie form the default Android Gallery application.
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Finally every thing is right in my world...
It took a week but I finally have Internet again. Why was is so complicated? I have no idea, maybe because I switched from conventional AT&T broadband to AT&T Uverse Internet. All I know is that it took way too long to get connected. I never realized how much I depend on the Internet. I watch all my TV shows through Hulu.com or tv.com and I get my news from my RSS Reader. Talk about a week of feeling out of touch.
On the positive side I did learn how to teether my cell phone (an old G1 running a Cyanogen Mod of Andriod) to my computer, so I was able to do my online homeschool stuff with my daughter. But it was so much slower than I am used to, so I tried to use that trick as little as possible.
Apple's Patents Prior Art
I wonder how feasible it is for Google since they have not been sued to launch a Search for Prior Art on Apple’s Patents campaign? I do not think they could offer Nexus One’s as direct prizes but I am sure they could come up with other prizes.
But on a good note, all the OEMs attempts at new UIs gets pushed right back in the Google/OH camp to accomplish thus decreasing fragmentation. Talk about unintended consequences.
Engadget
If there’s one thing we’re pretty sure Windows Phone 7 Series will be worse at than its Windows Mobile precursor it’s in the running of various and sundry other operating systems. We’ve seen Android running on seemingly every WinMo handset ever created and more recently Ubuntu has been receiving the mobile treatment. Last month it was on an Xperia X1, now an HTC Touch Pro2 is getting a taste.
A modder who goes by the handle sebbo90 is the one responsible for this, running basically the same technique as used earlier on the X1. It looks quite easy: just download a 200MB zip, extract it to your phone, then run an exe within. A few moments later you’ll be in open source heaven, and, from what we can tell looking at the video below, it works remarkably well. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to hit up eBay to find a used handset and get hacking.
via Engadget.