undertakingyou

I have upgraded my Droid to the latest CyanogenMod. It is awesome. One wonderful thing with this latest edition of the best ROM ever is the latest source build of google apps. The one I have noticed the most change with is the newest Gmail app, version 2.3.2

Just a bullet list of what I notice:

• Quick button to labels
• ‘Send As’ options pulled from your google account and now available on your phone.
• Smoother composer interface including the following:
  • Drop down to change between reply, reply-to-all, forward
  • Send and Save buttons on top ‘dock’ (or locked header, whatever you want to call it)
• When replying, the option to ‘Respond Inline’ (possibly made just for Aaron Toponce? )
• Option to Mark Important/Not Important (If you use the priority inbox this could be good)

I have really enjoyed some of these new features. I would love to see better select options when looking at the inbox, or any message list anyways. Ideally this would be a select drop down with all, unread, read, starred, unstarred, important, unimportant, none. This would be a great improvement.

I have really enjoyed having a VPN so that I could remote into work. The other day though, I had to skip out on fishing because we had some computer issues and I didn’t have my laptop. It made me think, wouldn’t it be sweet if I could just use my super duper android phone to VPN into work. This is what I did. First off, an assumtion is made that you have a rooted device.

What you need is to have both busybox, and the tunnel device kernel driver, tun.ko. I am running Cyanogenmod 6 which has busybox already installed. For some reason this version of Cyanogenmod doesn’t have the tun.ko, and ones that I downloaded would not insert into the kernel. So, I installed a ChevyNO1 kernel that comes with the tun.ko driver, and we are to the races on that part. This may sound intimidating, but ROM Manager from the market makes this very easy.

Next thing to just make life easy is to install OpenVPN Installer and OpenVPN settings. They are in the market, go ahead, download it them. I will wait. OpenVPN Installer gives you the option to install all the openvpn stuff. Go ahead and run that. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, openvpn won’t work still. The problem is a bug in the shipped OpenVPN binary noted here: http://code.google.com/p/android-openvpn-settings/issues/detail?id=26 . There is a link to get the OpenVPN binary that would work.

Once you have that use the OpenVPN Settings to establish connections. It will ask where your key files are and once it knows that and your server, you are up and going. Now I can really get to work wherever I am. Wait a second, maybe I don’t want to do that …

I am looking for a good VNC and RDP client for android. Preferably this app would cost nothing, but if some money is needed no more than $5.00. Has anyone used anything that has been a really good VNC and RDP client? Is there suggestion of two separate ones, one for each protocol?

Introducing a ‘new’ blog segment where I put my thoughts on some of the best, or worst, of the android apps that I have tried. Today on the docket, Setting Profiles.

We all are on the go, we move everywhere. That is why we have a mobile phone. But I find that I have a handful of places that I am at more often than others. At these various spots I have different services or settings that I use on my phone. At home and work I want to be connected to the WIFI. At low battery state on the phone I want to shut everything off to conserve battery. When at a funeral service, or Sunday while at church I want the phone completely silent. Conversely, when not at home, I don’t want WIFI on depleting my battery needlessly. Or when not at church I want to hear my phone. What is a real pain in the butt is to set these things at each new location every time.

In steps Setting Profiles. There are other apps that also change phone settings based upon certain phone criteria, but I found them cost prohibitive. Settings Profiles only cost $3.95 and is so similar in feature set for my needs it is a no-brainer to save the money.

With Setting Profiles there are some things that very first must be done after installing the app. First, set up some Locations.When you go to add a new location it gives you a couple options, I always chose Lat/Lon which then gives you a map. You simply select where, the distance in radius that you must be from this point, and then a name. Viola, you have set a location. The really cool thing, you don’t have to be at the location, you just have to select ANY point on the map.

Next is to set profiles. When setting a profile you will then select what things should be on/off. Just go down the list and turn things on and off as needed.

Last step, is to set up a rule saying that if you are in location A turn on setting B. Once your location criteria is met Setting Profiles will change your phone settings. Once you no longer meet the location criteria, Setting Profiles will change your settings back to how they were before.

But what if you want something to happen and it is not dependent upon location. Never fear! There are many criteria choicesthat you have. Battery State, Calendar appointment title, Missed call, Blue Tooth device connected, on even just a specific scheduled time to name a few. Do you want your phone to automatically silent from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM so you don’t get disturbing calls in the night? No problem, this can do that.

What if you don’t want it to change phone settings? You do have the option of Running a program or Notifying you also.

Last points to highlight. You also can select multiple profiles at a time. It simply applies them in order. If your first rule turns on WIFI and the second one disables it, WIFI will be off. Another neat feature is the widget which allows you to quickly use aprofile, disable a profile, or use a profile on a timer. Very convenient for that meeting to be an hour. Time the profile setting with the widget for one hour and automagically your phone settings change when you are done. The widget also shows you the order that the profiles are applied in so that you can more easily refine your rule-set.

What I like: I like the convenience of just knowing that my phone settings will change when they are supposed to without me thinking about it. Very convenient to know that stuff is just magically working for me. Also, the UI is actually quite simple to use and very intuitive.

My wish list: It seems that the GPS location rules are stuck at 1/2 mile. I can’t get a 1/4 mile to work at all. I wish that all the granular options worked for this. Also, on the Calendar Items condition my only option is that for 12 hours prior to the calender item I can have some action happen. Really? 12 hours? With all our that this app can do we only get the ‘choice’ of 12 hours? I want to see options for 12 hours,  1 hour, 30 minutes, and 5 minutes at LEAST. With a more finite time interval I could set it so that when I had a funeral, or had a family arrangement or meeting of some kind it could auto silence my phone. 12 hours is just rediculous. I would also like to see a cell phone tower location option for CDMA phones. Maybe there is a technology limitation there, not sure. But it would still be nice.

All in all: I would still recommend this app to people. Not just as a cheaper alternative than Locale, but as a great option for criteria based phone settings changes. The price point is such that it really is a good value, and really, my gripes are minor. Also, the app is still under active development, which means that improvements should continue to happen (should being the operative word).

I recently installed Android 2.2 on my phone. Gotta thank the guys at cyanogenmod for the awesome ROM that they put out. Of all the ROMs I have tried they are by far the most polished and nice. Plus the ease of using ROMManager is a no brainer. So my thoughts on Android 2.2.

There are some great improvements. First, I thought that I would like having 360 degree screen rotation more. But the reality is that I move my phone two ways. After using everything for a bit I find the rotation to be more of a ‘see I can do this’ thing rather than a useful feature. But still, see I can do this!

More notable for me is the improvements in both the Gmail app, and the Calendar app. Two things in the Gmail app. The support for the color labels now. If you haven’t used this it does provide a great ‘at a glance’ showing of what is going on with your labels. Also the app UI is improved, with some buttons added for fast account switching for those of us with multiple gmail accounts, and more handy next and forward buttons. Also, just found the option now to ‘select text’. When selected you can highlight message text and when done it will auto copy to the clipboard.

The calendar app has a much needed improvement of being able to sync with multiple gmail accounts. I can’t even say how frustrating this was. I had so many people that signed up for a new gmail account, and when we added their work gmail account they couldn’t have the work calendar.

Other improvements seem to mostly be UI improvements with things like the Talk application. Changes in the ‘Car Home’ UI. Call log now has groupings so if you miss 80 calls from your boss in a row you just see one entry with a ‘(80)’ next to it. This will of course show all 80 once you expand them. Contacts now also has a quick dial button at the full list so that you can call directly rather than long pressing or going into the contact. The ‘Messaging’ app has added contacts pictures in the view messages pane and, has changed the font on the date and time stamp so you can actually read it without your microscope. Camera UI has also improved giving quick access to features such as flash, white balance, GPS location, etc. Also who can forget flash support with the betas from Adobe. Lastly, the market app has some cleaning up making it easier to leave feedback, and a dedicated tab to view comments.

Although I haven’t noticed any great speed changes all in all it is very worth the upgrade.

Some things I would still love to see in Android. Universal Copy and Paste. I mean, come on. I can copy a SMS text but not a talk chat? Why not just be able to highlight any text and copy it, paste it, etc. While the ‘select text’ option in gmail is a step in the right direction I don’t think it is enough. It would also be nice to see universal screen rotation. Some apps just won’t rotate unless I pull out the keyboard. Also, a native buzz app would be cool. Until then I will have to keep using Seesmic. Last but not least some improvements to the google voice app. Specifically ability to record calls that are initiated from the phone running the app, and multi-select for bulk actions on things like deleting and archiving.

I have wanted to blog about this a while. I have really really enjoyed my Motorola DROID. I was going to go on this walk down memory lane that talked about all my past smart phones but I will spare you all.

What was actually really cool is that I know dozens of friends, family members or co-workers that now have android based phones. Not all of these people are allured by the fact that the phone is running linux. They just wanted a phone that would work for them.

This is where linux shines. None of these people really have the exact same needs. But this linux based phone is flexible enough to serve all their needs. There is everything from some of my co-workers that really just need to make some phone calls, which is fine, and other friends that need to be able to remotely run his business. Android steps up to the plate, swing and hit. Now I want to have all kind of control over the phone. I wanted WIFI where ever I go. I need my calendar. I need to be able to hook into my OpenVPN network. etc. etc. Once again linux steps up and delivers.

The point is that linux exhibits the flexibility to fit the needs of anyone that use it. I hope that this huge push toward android on the mobile devices bleeds over into an acceptance of open source, open standards, and just a general movement to try new things and alternatives in technology.

I have been super excited about an Android phone coming to verizon. I am forced to have Verizon because I have a company cell phone and that is who our account in through. But now I am happy about it thanks to the Motorola Droid. Very cool. I was standing in line Friday morning to be one of the first to get the phone. Which is really against my usual nature. I usually wait especially on critical stuff, like my phone. But here is my thoughts so far:

Pros:
* It is Android which is Linux under the hood. Really, a huge selling point for me.
* There really is a lot of Apps and so far I have been able to do everything that I want to.
* Verizon didn’t dick with the GPS stuff like they did my BlackBerry. I can use my turn by turn GPS directions
* Syncing calendar and contacts has never been so easy. It is almost sinful.
* Touch screen is awesome, the slider keyboard is smooth and comfortable to use.
Cons:
* Battery life is just ok. I took it off the charger this morning with 100% and now at 9:00 PM I am at 60% battery. I have a 24 hour job and I really need to have 2 days of phone usage.
* When dialling: to search for contacts I go to dial and then I have to enter the contacts tab, use the keyboard to quick search a name, and then select it. It feels very cumbersome.
* It seems there are no speed dials and while I really like the keyboard, it would be nice for it to be a little more like a phone.

Well, so far that is it. I like it way better than I did my BlackBerry and Palm Centro. So far, Droid wins.