Author Archives: Kurt Weiske
Capitola
Upgraded
Since I last posted here, I’ve played with Cyanogenmod firmware images – since AT&T is limiting updates to my S3 to KitKat, I needed to take matters into my own hands to upgrade to Lollipop.
In order to install a Cyanogenmod image, I needed to Root the phone first. Rooting is a process where you give yourself elevated permissions on the phone.
I tried a handful of “quickroot” tools that promised a one-click root experience. None of them worked. I ended up installing a recovery ROM image using ODIN, booting into a recovery mode, then running a program to root the phone. Once that was done I was able to load the boot image and boot into my new Lollipop environment.
I like the new Material Design look and feel. Lollipop has some interesting features, like a priority notification mode.
What I didn’t realize was that one of the tools I rely on, Priority senders in email, is a Samsung feature and isn’t on the generic ROM. What I was hoping to do with Lollipop was to improve on mail notifications from specific senders and ignore everyone else. Apple does this well with their VIP feature, Blackberry did this way back when with two levels of notification.
I’m downgrading now to a stock AT&T image and NILS, my previous lock screen solution. While I’m going to miss the eye-candy, KitKat seems to have all of the features I need for work.
Upgrade time
I’ve had to replace SIM carriers in both of my phones — a Samsung S3 and a S4 Active. The S3 is stuck at KitKat, but the S4 Active is being upgraded as I type this to Lolipop. I’m curious to see the new design and see if the lock screen notifications are improved over KitKat.
Android Repairs
This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.
One nice thing about the iPhone is the SIM carrier — it’s a metal frame that holds up well under repeated SIM changes. The Samsung Galaxy S3 has a thin metal carrier that uses friction to press the contacts against the card. Between my card wearing out and using a SIM carrier adapter, my phone has lost connection with the SIM card.
On an iPhone? I’d probably need to replace the phone. With a Samsung? I bought a replacement SIM carrier online – $1.88, with free shipping. bought another battery with a wall charger, so I can swap batteries and not worry about charging on the road.
Samsung Diagnostic Codes
Samsung Cell Phones – Programmer Codes
Suggested by: GodCube, 11 Apr 2007 |Â Print version
Type these codes into the phone where you normally would make a call.
#646# then press the Call button: T-Mobile Customers only, shows minute usage.
*#06# : Show IMEI.
*#9999# : Show Software Version.
*#0837# : Show Software Version (instructions).
*#0001# : Show Serial Parameters.
*#9125# : Activates the smiley when charging.
*#9998*228# : Battery status (capacity, voltage, temperature).
*#9998*246# : Program status.
Bonus 2X
BONUS 2X. Alameda Pinball Museum.
Monochrome Ride
Sam Wo to Re-Open!
Reposted in honor of the news that Sam Wo will re-open in a new location as a restaurant and bakery – and will still be open until 4 am!
One Hour Photo
There’s a critically endangered species in the world of photography businesses: the one-hour photo shop. With the decline of film developing and photo printing, the one-hour photo niche has become the single fastest-dying business in the United States.
How bad is it? There are only 190 of the shops still open in the whole country.
[ read more on petapixel ]
Image credits: Header photograph by USAG- Humphreys
Google Play Music
I’ve got music everywhere — on my laptop and desktop at home, a subset of that music on a work laptop to sync with my iPhone, music on a USB stick in my car and music on an SD card in my Android phone. One of my biggest pet peeves with my iPhone has been the lack of expandability – I always feel like I’m running against a limit with a 16GB model.
Keeping music metadata in sync is a pain, too — trying to keep genres, albums and artists in sync, and adding new music everywhere is troublesome.
I’m thinking about picking up a Chromebook and have been playing with the Google app suite. I started using Google Play Music – they’ll let me store 50,000 songs, the bandwidth required is pretty minimal, and most importantly, I can organize my music in one place and listen to it at home, at work, in my car or on my phone — and free up 5 gigabytes on my phone I can use for Google apps and podcasts.
Chapter 12 – Android Battery Drain
This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.
I’m moving back to my iPhone for a while — while I’m loving the Android environment, I’m getting about 8 hours of idle time out of my Galaxy SIII, and that’s just not enough flexibility for me during the week.
I’ve tried Qualcomm’s Snapdragon BatteryGuru, tried removing all of the Samsung apps, turned off the motion sensors, turned the brightness down and turned the auto-brightness setting off — and still I can watch the battery icon draining. Oh, I’ve bought a new battery as well, thinking it might be a Li-ion battery going south.
Between the lack of lock-screen notifications in Kitkat and the battery issues, I’m better off with the iPhone for a while. I found a Lolipop ROM for my old Atrix 4G, I’m tempted to try it out on a rooted ROM to see if the notifications are any better in the new OS version.
Chapter 11 – I removed iTunes!
This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.
I removed iTunes from my computer yesterday, and it was the culmination of several years of frustration. iTunes does a lot of things from updating phones to tracking podcasts, providing store access, iPhone backup and restore and AirPlay streaming to other devices. As a result, it became more complicated as time went by. There were a couple of times over the years where iTunes would break and I’d have no option but to remove it completely and start from scratch.
Apple made changes to iTunes over the years and broke third-party compatibility at least twice – I used to use EvilLyrics to import lyric info into my music (which would scroll on the display while the song played) but iTunes made an API change which left EvilLyrics broken.
At one point I had over 300 songs in a compilation folder that I’d play by selecting the folder. I accidentally told iTunes to manage my media, and iTunes faithfully took my folder with 300 songs and converted them into 300 folders with one song each! I spent quite a bit of time after that working on metadata – adding genre, album cover, and artist/compilation info.
Now that iTunes is gone, I’m back to Winamp – the first MP3 player I used under Windows, and it still works just fine. I can select a folder to play, or use the media player feature to select by artist/genre/etc.
Copying music to an Android phone? Plug it in and drag/drop files. Couldn’t be easier.
Chapter 10 – All In With Google
This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.
The Google Play store has over a million apps available for download, and there are other Android app stores available. There’s no limiting you to one store, as with the iPhone. Trying to find the right app can be daunting.
I decided to try out all of the Google apps first to simplify things, then will compare their offerings to some of the other apps out there. My take on the app offerings are below.
Photo Wall
Chapter 9 – Secure Android Messaging
This is a series of blog posts documenting my switch from iPhone to Android. To read the whole exciting saga, click here.
Now that I’ve upgraded to a newer Android phone, I’m testing out secure messaging applications for mobile devices.
Open Whisper Systems make two products I’m trying out – TextSecure and RedPhone. They offer secure texting and voice calls, and both products are open source. I’ve replaced my messaging app wigth TextSecure and have a couple of contacts already using it.
A $35 computer that could change the world…
Barring a significant change in course, history tells us that the computers of tomorrow will be faster, smaller, better and cheaper than the computers of today. We began with warehouse-sized machines that were barely capable of basic algebra, and we’ve arrived at the Raspberry Pi. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s a full-fledged computer that can fit snugly inside of an Altoids tin, and it costs just $35. Contrast that with the towering beige box that millions of Americans were purchasing from the likes of Dell and Gateway a score ago, and you’ll realize that we’ve come a very long way in a brief period of time.
[more here, via gearpatrol.com ]
Intriguingly, Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 will be available for free through developer channels for the Raspberry Pi.
Moto E Review – a nice cheap Android phone?
I’m looking for a cheap 4-inch android phone with a newer OS, expansion, and decent hardware. There’s a ton of no-name import quad-band phones out there, but when digging deeper into the specifications, find out it’s got a 2 megapixel camera. Or it’s 3G only. Or it’s all plastic.
I read this review of the Moto G, and I’m impressed. My Motorola Atrix 4G which was part of my iPhone to Android experience was a great little phone, and Motorola did some interesting things with their MOTOBLUR interface.
Back to the Moto E — the current incarnation is 3G only, but the 2015 model is a solid feeling, unlocked Android phone running Android OS 4.4, 8 GB of storage, a 5 megapixel camera and selling for $119 for the 3G and $139 for the LTE version.
Dear FCC: Rethink The Vague “General Conduct” Rule
For many months, EFF has been working with a broad coalition of advocates to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new Open Internet rules that would survive legal scrutiny and actually help protect the Open Internet. Our message has been clear from the beginning: the FCC has a role to play, but its role must be firmly bounded.
Two weeks ago, we learned that we had likely managed the first goal—the FCC is going to do the right thing and reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, giving it the ability to make new, meaningful Open Internet rules. But we are deeply concerned that the FCC’s new rules will include a provision that sounds like a recipe for overreach and confusion: the so-called “general conduct rule.â€
According to the FCC’s own “Fact Sheet,“ the proposed rule will allow the FCC to review (and presumably punish) non-neutral practices that may “harm†consumers or edge providers. Late last week, as the window for public comment was closing, EFF filed a letter with the FCC urging it to clarify and sharply limit the scope of any “general conduct†provision…
[read more here ]
Android for Work program announced
We’ve all been doing it, to the dismay to some of our bosses: Employees have long been bringing their own devices to work, reading corporate mail on the same phone that also is used to run their favorite games, snap their family photos and browse the web at large. Now, Google wants to legitimize BYOD, as the bring your own device is being called within the industry, by making Android more secure for work.
The company launched a new Android for Work program Wednesday that promises to not only make new and existing work devices more secure, but also bring enterprise-strength security to more than one billion Android handsets and tablets that consumers have acquired on their own. “Every employee should have a work-enabled mobile device in their hands,†said Android for Work Product Management Director Rajen Sheth during a press briefing in San Francisco Wednesday.
The basic idea behind Android for Work is to offer enterprises and their employees a secure area within their Android phones and tablets that can be managed by a company with dedicated policies and easily accessed by a user. For example, users can access a work-specific version of Google’s email client, and then simply switch back to their personal email client. Work apps are visually set apart from personal Android apps through a small suitcase icon.
[via gigaom ]
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