Android: Fine, Then Gimme the Features Without Root

With the Droid X coming out tomorrow, there’s quite a bit of attention being drawn to the fact that the fancy new Android phone is using the same encrypted bootloader as the Motorola Milestone, rendering it very difficult to crack. According to this post at androidpolice.com, the bootloader is using a “proprietary encrypted private key scheme” which pretty much requires any ROM you’re going to install has been blessed by Motorola.

This is totally lame.

I bought into the Android platform because it stands for openness and freedom. And really, they do a pretty darned good job at it still. But the fact is that there are some things that I’ve come to take for granted on my Droid because some hacker has enabled them.

My reasons for rooting are:

• I can theme my phone UI
• I can uninstall apps I don’t want (like Amazon MP3. WTF!)
• I can turn off the LEDs behind the 4 main buttons under the screen (Seriously? I need root for this?)
• I can overclock (even though I don’t really do it since FroYo)
• I can tether (I basically never do this — no need.)

Why won’t the phone makers let me do these things?? The only one that could damage anyone on their end is tethering since the carriers actually want extra money for the feature. So restrict it!

I suppose one could cause damage by overclocking and stressing the phone too much… So add some kind of hardware indicator so it would be known if the phone was ever overclocked, and void the warranty if it was! They already do this for water damage!

I was happy not rooting for a long time, so (stock) Android does a good job of not making me feel restricted. I wholeheartedly agree with those who say the phones should all be unlocked and capable of installing custom ROMs like the developer-oriented Nexus One, but the realistic side of me is just asking for a little more flexibility in the stock offering. Why the heck not allow me to do some of these things to my phone??

JRummy’s FroYo Kangerade Rocks My Droid

For nine days now, I’ve had the pleasure of running the leaked Nexus One build of the highly-anticipated FroYo (2.2) release of Android in the form of the Cyan-themed version of JRummy’s FroYo Kangerade v1.0 (FRF57). I guess with a little modification, Cyanogen (whose rom Kangerade is based on) and JRummy can adapt a binary Nexus One build for the Droid. Kangerade v1.1 has since been released, and he is now beta-testing the next version, which will be built from the source code that Google just released through their AOSP (FRF83).

It’s excellent. Apart from the handful of nice-to-have features, FroYo’s new ability to run entirely with the JIT compiler means a real-world speed boost of 4-5 times, they say. It’s really quite a lot smoother all around: general transitions and effects, switching between apps, etc… It pretty much feels like a hardware upgrade to me. And if I’m not mistaken, I’m getting better battery life with FroYo, too!

I must say, I am very pleased with how well android is doing. Especially in the last few months, I’ve seen tons of sweet apps and mods, and hackers like Cyanogen and JRummy just keep pushing the limits.

And what’s funny is that even though there are some better-spec’d phones coming out now (Incredible, Evo 4G, Droid X), they all seem to have their flaws (weak battery, flimsy build, failing screen, *no keyboard?!*). I’m not even jealous of another phone yet!

Droid FTW!

My Favorite Android Apps

So I’ve owned the Motorola Droid for just over a month now, and I’m just loving it. Yes, the phone isn’t without its shortcomings, but many of them are getting fixed via software updates. I don’t really want to post another review since there are a bunch of good ones already, but rather list my very favorite apps.

• ConnectBot is an truly excellent ssh client with plenty of features — including easy ssh tunnel managing!
• Dolphin is a good replacement web browser with lots of fancy features.
• NewsRob is the best way I’ve found to read RSS. It syncs with Google Reader (like NetNewsWire on my Mac!) and offers a very comfortable way to navigate and read the news.
• Google Voice, if you can get an invite, is amazing: free phone calls / texts in and out, visual voicemail, vm transcriptions, call recording…
• Google Listen is a really great podcast downloader/player.
• HandyCalc is a very powerful calculator with graphing, algebra, and unit conversion features.
• Google Sky Map turns your phone into a guide to the sky. By reading from the accelerometer and compass sensors in the phone, this app shows what should be seen in the sky when looking in the phone’s oriented direction.
• Pandora, Last.fm, StreamFurious, and Jamendo are all great apps for streaming music down to your phone. Amdroid lets me connect to my Ampache instance on the server back home and stream anything from my collection.
• Qik lets me stream (and archive) live video from my phone.
• SwiFTP starts up a simple ftp daemon that I can connect to from my PC to manage files on the SD card. This is more convenient than plugging it in.
• Mythmote lets me remote control my MythTV DVR software on the TV.
• SqueezeDroid lets me remote control my SqueezeBox.
• TransDroid lets me remote control my torrents running on the server.
• Seesmic is a nicer Twitter client than Twidroid, I think. Maybe not as many features, but it’s clean, totally free, and includes bit.ly API support.
• Meebo IM is my favorite IM application of the bunch. It supports all the major networks.
• MixZing is a great improvement over the native media player, though I haven’t been playing local media much on my Droid. I wouldn’t really want to use my Droid as my primary media player. While the built-in speaker is quite good, the headphone output is not the best from a portable.

The Android user base is currently growing by leaps and bounds with the release of the Droid and other exciting new phones. It seems like every day there’s a great new app and several updates to existing apps. I’m very much enjoying being a part of it!

Miro: Internet TV Made Easy

When Miro 1.2 came out, I decided to give it another try after some previously failed attempts due to annoying bugs. Well, I’ve been using this free and open source, next generation video platform on my Mac for a while now, and I must say it’s quite nice if you fancy yourself watching some of the great, free video content available on the internet.

Miro is RSS + Bittorrent. Find sites with cool videos that interest you, subscribe to their feeds, and when new content is published, you can have it downloaded and waiting for you by the time you realize it’s there. It’s just so smooth the way I can play the first video, and all the new content plays like my personal TV station. Cmd+F throws me into full-screen mode. It didn’t used to work nearly this well, and I’m just all so very pleased with today’s offering. (It will even search and play YouTube videos.)

Ok, so you want to try this. Click the “Miro” link above and grab the player. It comes with some default channels, but I’ve deleted all but the Onion News Network. The Miro Guide appears to be a nice index of most/all of the content available for the platform, but please allow me to recommend a few of my favorites.

• Revision3 is The TV Network of Kevin Rose (of TechTV and Digg fame) with great shows like Tekzilla, Systm, and of course Diggnation. I also have come to watch the goofy Internet Superstar… I haven’t even tasted many of the Rev3 shows yet!
• Mahalo Daily is a great 5-day/wk short form (3-5 mins) show with Veronica Belmont. (Although she’s about to leave…) They visit someone and show of something… usually very interesting stuff. I like the one about the dude who makes music with Gameboys.
• WebbAlert is another daily, short form show with Megan Webb. Just a quick overview of the tech news.
• GeekBrief.TV is yet another daily, short form show with the bouncy character that of Cali Lewis. Again, it’s an overview of the tech news. Maybe a product review or interview here and there.
• commandN is a longer form (15-20 mins), weekly show with Amber MacArthur, Will Pate, and others. They talk about the news and share cool website picks. Amber’s brother, Jeff, usually has a longer segment where he usually reviews a product.
• Hak5 Is a great, long standing show with a great crew. They hack stuff and talk about it on the show.
• Cranky Geeks is a talk show with John C. Dvorak.
• DL.TV is a tech show with some of the folks from TechTV.

Also, anything from Leo Laporte is fantastic. I’m a very regular listener of Security Now, TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, Net@Nite, and Windows Weekly on his TWiT.TV (audio) podcast network. While there aren’t any regular, internet-available video shows from him yet, he’s been talking recently about a new studio he’s setting up where he’ll start doing some video shows. He’s a great personality… One to watch.

I hope I’ve captured the interest of some new internet TV consumers. Watching this web-based, independent content has really never been this easy.

Celemony to Release Revolutionary Audio Tool

Celemony is set to release Direct Note Access in Autumn of 2008. There is a nice video on the DNA page that explains what it does, but this software is able to identify and isolate different voices within a single audio recording. The user can then change the pitch of and mute individual notes without affecting the overall mix! This is the first piece of software that allows you to reach into a simple, flat audio stream and manipulate its components in this way.

It’ll be really interesting to see how artists use this product to remix familiar tunes.

Korg Makes a Synth From a DS

Holy crap this is totally awesome. Korg will soon release Korg DS-10: a music composition tool that runs on the Nintendo DS. Check out the short video for an idea what it does. It seems like it could be significantly more versatile than the Kaossilator Touchpad Synthesizer.

Link via Wired Blog

Quizzle is Live!

The project that I’ve been a part of for most of my time here at Quicken Loans has finally gone live. Think of it as a flexible financial tool. We want Quizzle to one day be your one-stop shop for learning where you financially stand against the ever-changing climates of the home markets and economy.

The most important feature for most folks seems to be the FREE credit report. You might laugh and say there’s no such thing as a free lunch (as you may have learned in attempting to get other “free” credit reports from other sites) but at Quizzle, we not only give you a completely free and easy to understand credit report, but we manage to do so without your having to provide your SSN! I don’t believe anyone else is doing this right now.

There is a lot to be had inside Quizzle apart from the credit report. A set of your incomes and debts will be You’ll receive an estimate of your home’s value

Mixxx Accepted for Google Summer of Code

Mixxx has just been accepted by Google’s Summer of Code in which students are invited to contribute to various open source projects. Also Hercules was generous enough to donate a couple consoles (the MK2 like I have and another, simpler MP3 console) to the developers, so we should see more solid support for these Hercules consoles in the near future.

This is all great news for anyone interested in this great software. Expect more good news on the Mixxx development front coming up!

Here’s the Mixxx wiki page for brainstorming ideas.

Ubuntu Edgy Eft

Ubuntu Linux released a new version of their Linux distribution yesterday. As per their goofy naming scheme, it is dubbed “Edgy Eft,” and it can be downloaded for free, as always, on their website.

Edgy didn’t even include any sort of 3d capabilities by default (probably for good reasons), but I wasted no time in installing Beryl, the community fork of Novell’s Compiz window manager. It is a seriously nifty 3d environment for your linux desktop that makes OS X graphics look old. There are so many new effects and the gui configuration tools let you tweak nearly any aspect. I must say, I’m quite impressed with what is being done with Beryl, and I look forward to see what Novell themselves are doing with their Compiz version. This YouTube video will give you an idea of the eye candy we’re talking about.

I also wanted to link to this review I just found on osnews, with plenty of screenshots. Give up windows already!

RSS & Some Good Tools

I’ve just posted on our Blogs for Learning blog here at MSU about RSS: Web News Simplified. I list a good number of RSS readers, including some way nifty web ones.