Archive for the ‘android’ Category.

ShopSavvy, Compare Everywhere, and SnapTell for Android

Some time ago I wrote that I was going to start writing regular reviews on cool apps for Android. Well I got side tracked. So today I’m going to talk about 3! ShopSavvy, Compate Everywhere, and SnapTell.

ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere use the phone’s camera to scan barecodes! It’s pretty cool. I have both simply because they both have their own different databases. For example, what I like to do is go to at my local super store and see what movies I would like. I always cringe when I see an older movie for $25 or more. That’s when I scan the barcode. Now I can see where to go to get the better deal. Keep in mind that the local portions don’t do very well all the time. This is by no fault of the program or it’s writers. It’s just the way things are.

Below are screen caps from both programs. Thinking back when I did those shots, I don’t know why I didn’t check the same product to see how the results differ.

First up, ShopSavvy. (Click on the picture to see the full size!)
Picture Index:
1. Main Screen.
2. Scan the Barcode. See the Use Keyboard button. You can type in what you want to find!
3. It found the book just fine.
4. Two different local businesses were found.
5. And a local map showing where to go.
1ShopSavy_1  2ShopSavy_2  3ShopSavy_3  4ShopSavy_4  5ShopSavy_5

Now I forgot to take a picture, but ShopSavvy will take you to the website where you can see more on the product and if you really want to you could buy it right away. That part is the same as the other programs.

Ok, so ShopSavvy is pretty cool. Now check out these pictures for Compare Everywhere:
Picture Index:
1. Main Screen
2. Scan the Barcode
3. Get your local and online store options.
4. Just a scroll down from picture 3.
5. Lets check these guys.
6. Opened the browser and took me right there.
1Compare_Everywhere_1  2Compare_Everywhere_2  3Compare_Everywhere_3  4Compare_Everywhere_4  5Compare_Everywhere_5  6Compare_Everywhere_6  

Not to bad so far right? Now I want to talk about SnapTell. If my memory serves me well, this app was originally written for the iphone, but it’s the same thing in the end. The difference here is that you take a picture of the movie, book, or what ever, and SnapTell tries the find you a match. As you will see in the pictures below, I took an alright picture of the book and SnapTell still figured it out very quickly.

Picture Index:
1. The picture I took (This is an awesome book).
2. The results.
3. Took me right to the website I wanted.
1SnapTell_1  2SnapTell_2  3SnapTell_3

As you can see, all three of these programs are very cool. I use them quite often. Did you find an app like these and really like it? Let me know so I can share the information.

Use Battery Widget to fix possible battery issues after installing CupCake

Like so many out there my battery started acting funky after I installed cupcake. Mine was an automatic update and after it downloaded my battery was at about 70%. This was apparently a bad thing. It seems everyone who installed cupcake with a low battery has tried to charge it but it never seems to reach 100%. Some say to just pull the battery, some say use the phone until it dies then charge. I did both with no success.

Before I continue with how I solved the problem let me first give some information about how this all came to be. My battery would stop charging (or so I thought) at about 87%. While using the phone throughout the day I noticed that the battery level didn’t drop below 87% for quite some time. This told me that there is nothing actually wrong with my battery and must be related to the phone (I wish I realized that before getting a replacement battery from HTC, whom by the way has excellent customer service!).

So here is what I did to solve the problem. Granted I did this only a couple of days ago. The first day of charging 100%, the next, about 97%, the third, 100% (that’s today). I will keep track of the battery level throughout the next week or so and update this post. First, open your Market and search for “Battery Widget”, for me it was the third in the list. Make sure you get “Battery Widget” and nothing else. Install, then place it on your desktop. You will get an icon that looks like this.
icon
The program does add a couple nifty features. Just click on it and you get:
screen
The top and bottom option will load into new windows (these same things are found in your Settings menu.)
sound & display   Security & location
If you hit wifi, it will just turn your wifi on, it doesn’t take you to your settings menu.

Did Battery Widget fix your phone’s battery issue? Hit the comments and let us know!

UPDATE! Well it seems this really didn’t solve anything for me. Damn, I was very hopeful it would. Guess I need to either get that giant extended life battery or manually reinstall cupcake.

UPDATE! … again… Here’s the thing. If you tried pulling the battery, draining it, or running Battery Widget and none of those worked try to reinstall cupcake. I have even tried that and it didn’t work for me. Apparently I need to install an older version then to cupcake again. For me it’s not a big enough of a deal to bother going through that headache.

Check out Android Central on instructions and links. Please keep in mind that before you can install you must turn the phone off then back on using the home + power button! That will not restart it! Turn the power off then home + power for it to start properly! I wish everyone the best of luck in this matter. I just hope when my 220mAh battery arrives I won’t have any problems… and it did! I would highly recommend the battery, the case makes the back speaker quieter, but I’m sure I can fit that with a plastic tube inside the case… that is, if I ever get around to it.

War Driving with WifiScan for Android

About once a month I’m going to do a write up on an featured Android Application. I love my Android phone and I have been recommending to all my friends to get one. So The first one I’m doing is called wifiscan. Enjoy.

I’ve been a fan of War Driving for a long time. If your unsure of what War Driving is let me explain. All you do it get a good wifi card (one with external antennas are even better) and drive around town looking for open networks. Keep in mind 2 things. For starts, I don’t actually do this anymore because I have the net on my Android and an actual cell card so I get access anywhere I go. Second. Some consider it illegal to scan for networks. This is not true, as long as you don’t use the network without permission from the owner!

I use this program quite a bit on my phone since currently where I live 3G is not available and I need to use EDGE. It’s not slow, but trying to show a friend the new monitor I was to get on newegg.com takes a while to load. We are usually at coffee shops so I use wifi scan to ensure I’m connecting to the correct wifi. Also the program does have a couple limitations. When exporting a kml file (for google earth) it can cause the Android to think the program has frozen. It hasn’t. Actually the Android is just show at writing files, click wait and deal with it. Also it only scans once every 3 seconds. Most scanners you would use on a laptop scan many times per second depending on what you card can handle. Therefor this doesn’t work well when shooting down the freeway at 70MPh nor driving 25 through a neighborhood. It’s not perfect, but I still like it.

Please note that I have blurred out any information that could compromise the security of anyone’s network or location.

To start I love the speed and direction that is shown. I tried to take a picture when I got to an open stretch of road with no one near me, but the picture turned out a little blurry. I’m sure you get the gist of it.
phone1

Just so show how cool this program is I exported the kml file and loaded it in my google earth. It doesn’t exactly pinpoint the exact location (like what house it’s in) of the network, but it does a good job none the less.
ge1ge2
The red pins are encrypted networks and green are open. You can even toggle it to show only encrypted or only open networks. Here are 4 pics that should be helpful. Once again I’m sorry that my picture taking abilities are not very good.
bothoptions
reggreen
Did you see my battery drop? That does happen when I get off a long phone call and start using the phone for other things.

Anyways, even if your not a War Driver I still recommend this program, it’s a lot of fun. You can download it from the Android Market.

Check out the developers website at www.waterflea.com/android.php

Tetherbot, Android, and Slackware How to

After trying to get my Android (aka, T-Mobile’s G1) working on my Slackware laptop and having many problems I looked for help at androidcommuinity.com. Even tho they didn’t technically help me solve the problem they were still a great help, and there quick replies kept me thinking of what the problem could be, and I thank them for that. In the end it was my own fault. Here’s the story.

My laptop runs Slackware 12.0 with a new custom 2.6.28 kernel and there was were the problem was. As it turns out I failed to turn on and modularize certain USB functions, now I’m unsure of what I enabled that made it work.

First, if you think it’s a problem with your kernel check your USB device settings. I use the make menuconfig when I build kernels, if you use xconfig it may appear slightly differently.

Check under Device Drivers –> USB Support. I turned on just about everything and modularized just about every USB device, don’t forget to turn on USB Gadget Support I turned on the top 3 options, they are for debugging and also Serial Gadget was modularized. Click Here to download my .config file. This file is in the root of where you extracted your kernel (usually /usr/src/linux-2.6.28/). Be sure to rename the file from DaijoubuKun.Android.config to .config otherwise you will need to tell your kernel to use that file. Quick note: I know I have a lot here that does not need to be turned on, I like large kernels with lots of modules.

UPDATE!
Put your 50-android.rules file in /etc/udev/rules/ and chmod it to 755!
Also in your kernel build make sure you turn on USB debugging mode!!!

If you think your kernel is OK check out graha.ms. There is a lot of the stuff your going to need to know there.

Now, at this point I’m assuming you visited the link above but your Tetherbot still isn’t working. This may be because the commands google gives may not work in Slackware. I wrote 4 lines more designed in Slackware’s udev style. Below are 8 lines. I’m sure you only need one, but it didn’t hurt me none to use all 8, the bottom 4 are mine. Here is my 50-android.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="660"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="660"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"

I know it’s got to be overkill to have 8 lines in there, so if you figure out which is the one that works post it in a comment and I will edit this to show that line with credit to you.

NOTE: When you plug in your phone you will be asked if you want to mount the sdcard to your computer. SELECT NO! According to rynosaur of androidcommunity.com.

Note, to make things easier copy the files is your tools/ directory (from the android sdk) to /bin. This way you do not need to go to the download directory to run the adb program. You can also copy the libs to /bin/lib

Now run adb devices. You should get some out put like

List of devices attached
HTxxxGZxxxxx    device

If you do then we are ready to go!
If not did you remember to run on USB debugging?
Start the Tetherbot program and hit Start Socks
Now type ‘adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080‘. This will forward and thing you send to ‘localhost:1080′ to the phone.

Using nmap I found that Tetherbot uses socks 5 with no authentication. This makes things a bit easier. Once you have gotten this far you are ready to setup your web browser to use the socks proxy. I have done this in SeaMonkey and Firefox (haven’t tried anything else yet) so here are the instructions for FireFox 3.0.x (should stay about the same for future versions).

Go to Edit –> Preferences –> Advanced (top tab) –> Network (lower tab) –> Connection Settings (button).
Select ‘Manual Proxy configuration‘ and put localhost in SOCKS Host and port 1080 in port. ONLY put that information in the SOCKS Host! Do NOT put it in HTTP Proxy! Be sure to select Socks v5 and (this may not be necessary) remove anything in the field No Proxy for:
Here is a picture:
proxy settings
Once you do that everything will go through your phone. I did read that there is a 1GB per month limit on the phone. I do not know if this is true or not. I’m only going to use Tetherbot when I’m doing a service call, I need a file and there is no other way to get online.

Lastly, just as quick bit of info. I live in an area where T-Mobile doesn’t have 3G! It sucks, but I’m told it’s coming later this year. It damn well better with how much I pay every month for this thing. I ran a bandwidth test through the EDGE network (it’s like 2.5G) and below is my speed.
bandwidth test
Granted, I only ran the test once, and early in the morning. Plus I don’t think the phone was designed to have these sort of things run through it, but it will have to do for now. P.S. Thanks for the awesome speed test program Speakeasy.

Special note: I could be wrong, but it seems that after you put the required information into 50-android.rules you may need to either restart or run /etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart to restart the udev service. You may also need to replug in your phone, make sure you don’t mount your sd card as it may cause tetherbot to not function properly.

If this helped you in anyway please let me know. If it didn’t help post your problem and I will try to help.

My First Impressions of the Android G1

Yesterday I received my new Android G1 phone from T-Mobile. It’s very slick, semi decent speeds (3G is NOT available here yet). I do however have a few beefs with the phone, and I’m trying to determine if I wish to keep it or not.

First, the battery life SUCKS! If it’s used like a normal phone (ie calls, and texting) it’s pretty good (atleast that’s what they tell me, I’ll find out tomorrow). Today I used the screen a lot (15 min of gaming, and about 30 to 45 min on the web). Because the screen is SO big and touch sensitive it can and will use a lot of battery power.

Also there is a lack of flash on the phone. Apparently it was going to have it (and my T-Mobile rep said it had it), but apparently not yet… who knows when, and when flash is available will my phone work with it? I sure hope so, this damn thing is costing me a lot of money every month.

With the phone you MUST get a data plan, you don’t have a choice. It starts at $25 a month and that gets you unlimited data (I’m sure they slow you down after a few gigs every month) and 400 texts. Because it so easy to text and it keeps full threads of your conversations I’m sure I’ll be texting a lot more with it, so I may have to go upto the next plan. For $35 a month it adds unlimited texts! Oh, and a quick note. There is an IM program on the phone. Even tho that data is sent as data it will actually cost you 1 text per send or receive. So if you IM a lot you may want to go upto the $35 plan.

So far I do like the phone. Like I said tho, I REALLY wish the damn battery lasted longer. Once there is flash on it then the battery better last a HELL of a lot longer. The current battery is only 1150mAh… come on! I have AA batteries with over twice that mAh (2500mAh to be exact). Maybe if I could figure out how the charger works (like what pins are used, and if any data must first be sent to the phone) I can build a little carry charger. Put some AA batteries in and keep using your phone. I’ve seen them with older Samsung phones, I don’t see why I couldn’t.

Well that’s my rant, I’ll make a new post once I’ve played with the phone more and maybe I’ll keep it, I have 12 more days to decide if I like it enough to keep it.

Android G1