So Android isn’t QUITE the magical open platform i had imagined. As it turns out, T-Mobile and Google are doing all they can to ensure that the specific types of things I want to do with it stay impossible. It’s early in the game yet, but it could easily be characterized as “cat-and-mouse.” Unfortunately for them, these mice are always a few steps ahead of the cat. Plus, the fact that the cat made some really stupid mistakes out of the gate makes things a bit nicer for us mice.

MY Android phone is completely open to all the sorts of things that I want to do now, with some particular clever mice having compromised Google’s latest update and used thier own security against them, but if you’ve got a T-Mobile G1 and want to have the opportunity to do some of the more awesome stuff we mice are working on, it’s extremely important that you don’t update to the RC30 update. There’s nothing new and exciting in the update anyway.

Stay tuned…

Defined tags for this entry: android, cat-and-mouse, google, hacking, phones

I don’t have much to say lately, but I need to say this:

Google’s Android mobile phone platform is freakin’ AMAZING. T-Mobile’s “G1” handset — which is the first of the commercially available Android phones — is very nearly as awesome a device as is the underlying platform.

Imagine the offspring resultant from a drunken one-night-stand between a Sidekick/Hiptop and an iPhone. That pretty much describes the G1; it is fully touch-enabled and has a wealth of downloadable applications ala iPhone, but boasts the flip-out keyboard and actual navigation buttons which are the hallmark of a Sidekick for those times you don’t feel like looking like a total tool rubbing your fingers all over your phone.

Best yet, you don’t need to deal with any of the iTunes bullcrap that every iPhone owner has to admit to disliking dealing with. If you want to put mp3s (or oggs, w00t!) on it, you simply plug a NORMAL USB CABLE into it and it shows up as a removable drive. Copy your music over and you’re good to go. Same with photos and videos. Software updates come automatically over the air, so no dealing with the endless cycle of backing up and restoring when iTunes makes a mess of things. (Or, if you’re a nerd like me, you can manually download the firmware update and apply it yourself.)

Unlike with iPhone, users can install applications that modify very nearly any aspect of the device, and are not at the whims of Apple as to whether the app will be “allowed” or not. For instance: I have an app installed that can turn on and off features when certain criteria are met. When the GPS finds that I’ve arrived at home, it automatically enables wifi. When I leave it turns it off again to preserve battery. If my battery drops below a certain point I’ve got it set to turn off GPS as well to further save battery. Try doing that with iPhone :).

Want to set an mp3, m4a or ogg file as a ringtone? No problem, support for that is built in.

All-in-all, Android has far exceeded my expectations, and is quite the anti-iPhone platform that I’d envisioned. I highly recommend it.

Defined tags for this entry: android, geeky, google, iphone, mobile phone, reviews

UPDATE: I somehow managed to break the below-mentioned Greasemonkey script before uploading it to userscripts.org. If you tried it out and nothing happened, the fault is mine. It is all fixed now.

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Remember how I was trying to get Google Reader to listen to my usability complaint re: links to articles being only at the top?

Well, this problem has not yet been addressed by the Google team…  but it has been addressed by me.

I greased up the monkey and with one fell swoop made Google Reader’s interface one gripe cleaner.  My new Greasemonkey script copies the title/URL from the top of every item and includes it at the bottom as well.

You can install it here.

If, on the other hand, you’re mystified by this whole Greasemonkey thing, I’ll give a brief explanation.  Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on that lets users create scripts that will affect the content of web pages before they’re displayed in the browser.  There are thousands of pre-made scripts to be found at userscripts.org, affecting all sorts of popular sites, and you can always badger your favorite nerds into making custom ones.  Some of my favorite pre-made scripts are:

1) AutoPagerize, which causes page 2 (then 3 etc) to automatically be inserted at the end of page one for many popular site.  Tired of ‘next’ing your way through your Google search results or Twitter timeline?  This handy script just requires you to scroll and the next bunch magically appear.

2) YousableTubeFix, this does a bunch of handy things to YouTube pages, the most handy of which is defaulting the the “HD” videos, and increasing the size of the player dramatically.  YouTube has never been so pleasant.

That ought to be enough to get you started, but with Greasemonkey, pretty much anything you’ve ever dreamed you could do with a website is possible.

Defined tags for this entry: firefox, geeky, google, google reader, greasemonkey, programming

Hey Google,

It’s me again.  Since our last conversation, I’ve realized something else you could do to make our time together in Reader more productive and less angrifying.  Know how I share lots of stuff in my “Shared Items,” despite only like 4 people seeing them?  Well, it’d be really helpful if I didn’t have to be subscribed to my own Shared Items.  I mean, I shared them.  I don’t need you showing them to me again. (Despite that one time that I accidentally saw something cool in there that I forgot had gotten there because of me, and went ahead and shared it again.  Sharing an item from my shared items… that’s classy.)  At the very least, could you make sure they actually get marked as read after I read them?  I perpetually have 11-or-so “new” items in there that I’ve seen a hundred times.

Seriously, Google.  I’m beginning to think this conversation is one-sided.  Don’t make me start writing to SkyNet instead.

Defined tags for this entry: feedback, freedback, google, google reader, open letters, rants

With the news of Microsoft possibly buying Yahoo! spreading around the internet, I’ve been hearing doom-and-gloom from people pretty consistently regarding their Flickr accounts.  Left and right I see people lamenting that they’d JUST paid for another year, but now wish they hadn’t because Microsoft is going to ruin Flickr.

To long-time Flickrers, this is nothing new.  Yahoo! “ruined” Flickr a couple years ago, yet it is still going strong.  I’m not sure how many of the complainers are pre-Yahoo! users, but their argument is pretty flimsy.  “Oh no!  A big evil company is buying the photo site I love from… another big evil company?”  If you’re fine with using a cool little photo site that’s been co-opted by Yahoo! to make as much money off it as possible (by doing sleazy things like using its users’s‘s photos in advertisements without asking), then you really have no reason to worry if some other company then wants to start making money off your stuff instead.

Look, I’m as anti-Microsoft as the next guy (OK, probably a lot more), but do I think they’re going “ruin” Flickr more than Yahoo! already did?  No way.  So quit yer bitchin’.  Chances are you already use Google Mail, Google Maps, Google IM, Google Documents, Google Analytics and Google Prostate Check and fully intend to buy a Google Phone as soon as they come out, so why all the worry about Microsoft getting into the mix?  If Google bought Flickr the entire blogosphere would cave in upon itself under the strain of a bajillion bloggers rejoicing in unity, sending waves of trackbacks back and forth, obliterating Technorati’s servers.

I don’t know how to end this post.

Defined tags for this entry: google, microsoft, yahoo

I’ve recently taken to clicking the ‘share’ button in google reader whenever I come across something I think others would be interested in.

Unfortunately, I have a grand total of 3 ‘friends’ in Google Reader, so I feel that the stuff I’m sharing is falling on largely deaf ears.  So, if anyone’s interested in seeing my shared items, they can be viewed/subscribed to here.

And if you use Google Reader and ever use the ‘share’ functionality yourself, please feel free to add jerwarren@gmail.com to your ‘friends,’ as I’d enjoy seeing new stuff.

Thanks,
management

Defined tags for this entry: gmail, google, interesting stuff, links