What the heck is happening here?

Android Nirvana Through Music

2015-08-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

For the moment, I am content. This has been a long time coming, as I've been trying to replicate the best features of gadgetry in my life with new bits I find along the way to enable my "phone" to perform tasks seamlessly with little interaction needed on my part, while managing to increase my overall quality of life. Today, I'm going to talk about music.

If I look back at my earlier life, I've loved having music with me at all times. Much of my leisure time was spent curating my music collection, and while I haven't dedicated nearly as much to that pursuit in the last few years, my wife and children have helped fill in the gaps. What I have now are a few apps that help make my phone a musical monster. I've got tunes on as I'm typing this, in fact, pumping through some of the finest headphones you can get for a reasonable price.

My preferred jukebox is Google Play Music, because I can administer my music from any web browser and download any of it to my phone at any time. I'm sure there are others that many would argue are better for any number of reasons, but I value it's level of portability most after spending many hours with various playback devices and media storage schemes. As in many features I have configured for my phone, I have done my best to get the actual software out of the way so I can simply enjoy the music, wherever and whenever I want.

Just as there are many choices for media playing apps, there are many choices for sound enhancements. Some integrate their own equalizers and effects, while others ignore this completely, leaving it to the device manufacturer or user to fuss over such details. My go-to app for universal sound enhancements on the "phone" is Viper4Android. There is a price to be paid for this free app, however, in that it needs root privileges to be installed and is further complicated when you are running the latest versions of Android. We'll get into that in a bit, however. The point right here is that Viper4Android can replicate any effect you can think of, even going so far as supporting profiles for specific models of headphones to help correct for their shortcomings. It is flexible enough to offer separate settings depending on the output being used (headset/phone speakers/Bluetooth/usb dock).

Many effects apps offer convenient ways to change the mode of operation, but Viper does not, so in order to maintain such audible clarity and flexibility I've had to come up with with my own scheme to interact with it. I use Tasker and AutoInput to enable and disable the headset EQ depending on the device connected to my "phone". I haven't figured out a way to give Tasker complete and seamless control of Viper (still looking, if you have any tips), but AutoInput simplifies the process greatly by sensing the context of visible controls to make sure Viper is driven appropriately.

Tasker is also the glue used to start and stop most media playback and associated volume control changes. Whenever a cable is attached to the headset jack, the phone comes to life and gives me activity choices based on the connector inserted, then adjusts the volume and EQ settings as needed to begin playing music.

The last piece of the puzzle is something occasionally supported by phone manufacturers out of the box, long pressing the volume keys to navigate tracks. I became very attached to this feature years ago, thanks to Sony Ericsson, but I've found it is much harder to find with Android phones. My experiments with custom ROMs have shown me that there are plenty of other people that value this feature, though. While I'm using a custom ROM at the moment, it is based on parts from stock LG ROMs, so by default the volume buttons start the note-taking app or camera. The way to get around this is to install Xposed, an app that allows access to features buried deep in Android that are normally hidden away. Developers can write modules for Xposed that allow new or different functions than what was originally provided by the ROM. The module I am using has had a few iterations and names, but is now known as Physical Button Music Control. After using the option provided by my ROM to disable the default volume button shortcuts, PBMC lets me assign short, long, double, and triple presses to different media functions.

Having finally found the right combination of theses apps, I'm never far from my music, and that makes me happy.

Google Play Music
Viper4Android
Tasker
AutoInput
Xposed

STRINGS is here!!

2013-10-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the release of STRINGS, by Allison M. Dickson (a brilliant lady I know, she lets me fix her appliances), I thought it would be nice to release a little extra promotional material that people could carry with them.

As my latest obsession on my phone was to optimize productivity and minimize any unnecessary clutter, I've been going through a number of apps that allow you to set up your own self-created widgets, since most that I've found don't quite do enough. My first was Minimalistic Text, which is great with all it can do, but a pain to set back up when you flash new ROMs on your phone as much as I do. I believe I've found a happier home now with UCCW (Ultimate Custom Clock Widget), which allows more functionality in a single widget, as well as being able to display graphics. The best thing for all the STRINGS fans though, is that it allows me to take the skin I made for STRINGS and put it on the Google Play Store for you to install and enjoy!!

There are a few things to cover in setting this up on your Android home screen:

You need to install UCCW first before you can expect to do anything with my app.
Simply installing my app won't get you anywhere, as you can't run it and expect something to happen. It's only a skin for UCCW, basically a few images and instructions to tell UCCW how to make a home screen widget the way I want it made.
The first part of UCCW that you will need to concern yourself with in order to get this all up and running is the app portion, where you run it from your App Drawer and configure the weather settings to feed the right weather service data, temperature measurements, and rate of updating the current weather information.
The second part of UCCW to work with, after installing the STRINGS skin is to set up your home screen widget. This can happen any number of ways, depending on your phone or tablet's launcher. Some can be selected from the home screen with a long-press on an open piece of desktop, others let you select them from the home screen by pressing your Menu button, and others allow your to select them from the Widget section of the app drawer. In any case, you need to select UCCW, then UCCW will ask you what size you want the widget to be. A good default is 4x3 (Columns x Rows), but feel free to make it what you have room for on your screen. Once you have selected the size, UCCW will present the list of skins, which is where you will find STRINGS with a BIG picture, waiting for your selection.
Once you have made your selection, you'll be taken back to your home screen and you'll see a hand inviting you to touch the screen to start the widget.

Now, you should have STRINGS on your home screen waiting for you to enjoy both its form, and function. The colors of the 3 red circles and 3 gray circles can all be independently set. Pressing the "hidden button" (in light green below) toward the top of the right-most (darkest) red circle, will open up the UCCW editor, where you can change the colors AND functions of the hotspots to better fit your needs.

I hope you enjoy the skin, and recommend it to your friends to help spread the word about STRINGS!!

STRINGS in the dark...

2013-10-24T20:12:00.001-07:00

Because sometimes you want to help promote a book without ruining your night-vision.

New Home: New Home Network...

2013-02-24T07:33:00.001-08:00

Here's a little bit of home networking history for my household. Somewhere around 1998, I had the opportunity to switch from using a Dial-Up Modem to a Cable Modem, and as with most people, the world became a different place. When I met a nice lady kind enough to consider marrying me, and we bought a house (in 2000), I used the awesome Internet Connection Sharing feature built into Windows (98 and/or 2000) to get the second computer we had onto the internet. This quickly became a problem, so we went and looked for an appliance to manage the internet connection for both computers.

We found the SMC Barricade, device for which there is no elegant way to physically arrange (due to its having connections or switches on ALL 4 of it's shorter sides), but was well equipped for the time and I still have in case of emergencies. Not only was it a capable network router for broadband applications, it was also equipped with a parallel port for printer sharing and a serial port that you could configure for a Dial-Up Modem (which we did use for a stretch when our first child was on the way). The Barricade saw us through a brief stint with 802.11a wireless networking, when we bought an SMC access point and PCMCIA wireless card to get our laptop connected from the living room, when we had all of our computers and other devices in the bedroom previously. Sometime around 2003, when these early wireless devices became a little too problematic, and everything seemed to be shifting away from 802.11a, we went looking for a router that not only was faster, but had an 802.11b/g access point built in.

Enter the Linksys WRT54G. Not only was this a very capable router right out of the box, but it ran Linux. There was a growing number of people dedicated to making it better and adding new capabilities. This router saw us through our times with Vonage after we dumped the local POTS, and helped us fool our DirecTivo into thinking it still had a phone connection to connect back to DirecTV. Later it moved with our cable modem from our bedroom/office to the entertainment center in the living room, where it could be directly connected to our Tivo HD ,XBOX 360, Powerline network adapter (for our other PCs in far reaches of the house), and Home Theater PC. The WRT54G served us for many years and still hasn't completely croaked on us (even though it tried to on a few occasions). Currently, it serves most of those same devices, in addition to a number of laptops, Android devices, a network All-in-One printer, a Blu-Ray Player, and occasionally our TV. It has had a long and full life.

Now (2013), on the verge of us moving to a new (bigger) house we are probably going to need a second access point to fully blanket the house with our WiFi signals. We would also like to be able to take advantage of the HUGE speed increases we have been largely ignorant of in both wired and wireless networking. So we're getting a new router, but one that can run the same custom firmware as the trusty WRT54G, called DD-WRT. The new router is the TP-Link TL-WDR3600, and not only is it bigger/faster/stronger (gigabit Ethernet and dual band 300Mbps wireless), but it adds back some expandibility we've been missing in the form of 2 USB ports, which can be used for printer sharing or storage right out of the box. We'll see what other tricks I can set them up for later on. For now, it will become our main router, and the WRT-54G will retire to a lighter load as auxiliary access point and network switch. We'll be able to have the same interface to administer both, and shouldn't have any issues connecting to WiFi at the end of the house furthest from the router any more.

New Life-Partner

2011-12-10T19:22:00.001-08:00

For the better part of the year, I've been without my Sony Ericsson K850i. I'm okay with that. Allison and I dropped our feature phones and hopped on the Android bus, and we're both quite happy about it. While I had been well invested in hacking, mods, and generally wringing every last ounce of usability available from my K850, it was getting long in the tooth. It held up well with its compact form factor, great camera, and integrated posting to Blogger. I even found a great (free) bit of GPS software that I could use for geocaching and mapping my hikes.

We have slowly become aclimated to the Android way of life, checking the free app of the day from Amazon, and finding new tweaks to change the ways our phones do things. I've rooted both of our phones (I have an HTC Inspire, and she's got a Motorola Atrix) , and have flased some serious mods on mine.

This post was going to be a long review of all the features we love about our phones and our favorite apps, but after sitting on the first two paragraphs for about two weeks and not getting any further, I can see it needs to be broken up. Stay tuned for more. I'll be discussing the advantages of rooting. finding te right apps for what you want to do with your Android phone, and MAXIMIZING BATTERY LIFE.

This should be fun!

Commitments

2011-10-13T09:21:00.001-07:00

I feel very bad for taking so long to post anything here. I've got a lot to share. Some here, and some on The Quest For Gainful Employment.
As my opportunities for un-muddied walks during lunch dwindle, I'm going to so my best to remedy the emptiness.
I'll see you again in a day or two!

Substitutions

2010-09-11T10:11:00.001-07:00

You may have heard that I love the Flock web browser. You may not have heard that Flock has changed the browser their product is based on from Mozilla's (for 2.x) to Google's (for 3.x).
I'm trying to adapt.
In the process of moving from one version of Flock to the other, I have to find Chrome extensions to match those that I used with the 2.x version of Flock, along with the features no longer built into Flock 3.x.
One of the features that keeps me on the Firefox side is the offline blog editor that integrates that version's drag-and-drop clipboard, which does wonders for quickly adding photos to a new post. I just found this new Chrome extension called Scribefire, which is a blog editor of sorts. I'm still looking for some sort of clipboard, but may be completely out of luck.
Onward and upward, if not a slight bit to the left!

I need your help

2010-09-06T12:17:00.001-07:00

I'm making some playlists to keep handy on my phone, and I would like your help in making some suggestions. As I receive suggestions, I'll add the songs to my playlists. I'm looking for three categories of music, all of which I would like to make me want to move in some rhythmic fashion, however strange and clumsy that may be.

Our first category is the classic Cowbell. Why Cowbell? I want to be prepared in case I happen to run across Bruce Dickinson and I need some way to break the ice.

Secondly, we have the Harmonica. It is a simple instrument, but one nearly as versatile as a piano. I can't get enough Harmonica, fast or slow.

Last, we have Brass. I've always had an affinity for brass instruments, and still regret not staying with the Cornet longer. I love the rumbling bravado of the Tuba and Baritone, the blaring screams of the Trumpet and Cornet, and everything in between.

If you have any favorites that fit in these categories, I'll gladly add them to the playlists, so we can all benefit.

Thanks for your help!!

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The Latest Adventure of Note

2010-08-25T13:39:00.001-07:00

This entry is a bit complicated, and could be a bit long winded (for me). Monday began as many have, combing through recommended job openings and looking for new ones. I hit a particularly productive streak, where the jobs I applied for were similar enough to ones I'd previously prepared my resume for that I didn't need any more preparation for them. within 40 minutes, I had completed applications and submitted different resumes for 8 separate jobs, and was feeling pretty good about myself.

I spent the rest of the morning looking for others and took a break in the afternoon, entertaining the idea of repurposing my brother-in-law's old iPhone as an iPod touch. I was happy to see this could be done, just not with my current SIM card.

Not long after, I got a phone call by somebody who was looking at my resume. I was elated to have such a phone call not started by myself. The guy was calling about one of the eight positions mentioned earlier, an MDT Technician.

For those of your who don't know, and MDT is a Mobile Data Terminal, and can be used for any number of data collection/availability activities. Any time you sign for a package from UPS or FedEx, it's on an MDT. Many retail stores use them as well for tracking merchandise. They come in many sizes and shapes, so there's no telling exactly what it is in this case.

The gentleman wanted to bring me in for an interview THE NEXT DAY, which of course I agreed to. That day would also be the first day of school in Ohio for the kids. No big deal, right? He wanted to meet at 3:00pm (ummm... Bye, kids!), and started trying to give me directions for roads I had no familiarity with. I tried to cut to the chase and asked for the address. He didn't have the address for the particular building he was in, but gave me the address for their corporate headquarters, saying they were located across the highway from there.

I thanked him kindly for the appointment, said goodbye, and set out to look the place up. I hadn't been able to quite make out his name or the name of the company, but the address was sure to be of help. Allison and I set out to track down some information, along with figuring out what we were going to do the next day. We found out the address belonged to what was originally a local delivery company, now claiming to be among the premeire LTL carriers around (I didn't know what that meant, either). The company listing the job appeared to be unrelated, so we figured they were merely a placement agency, but even more curious, looking through the job listings for the trucking company we were unable to find any relevant openings!

After Allison got off the phone from telling her mom the news, she told me Lisa had offered to pick up the kids from their bus stop. This would allow Allison to go with me to the interview, which I was very happy for. I had never been to the city of Wilmington before. There was much discussion of which route to take to get there. I was happy to leave it in the hands of the experts.

***

Tuesday came along, and we walked the kids to the bus stop for their first day of school. After seeing them off on the bus, we delivered their school supplies to the school, shmoozed with their teachers, and caught them at the door to take them to their classrooms. Allison took me to the barber, as I was begining to be in need of a haircut once again.

We got back home to prepare for the trip to Wilmington, and found a cute little flag in our yard, indicating that our gas had been turned off for maintenance. Oh, really? We both took care of showering and such without running out of ot water, which at least felt like some kind of victory. After carefully selecting my wardrobe for the day, it was decided I needed a new tie. We left for Meijer to look for one on the way out to Wilmington.

Guess what? Meijer doesn't have ties in stock for "the season" yet. They just got their dress shirts in. Hmmm... T.J. Maxx had what we needed, and so we were off to Wilmington.

We found the company headquarters after a fairly pleasant drive out to the "country." The place was impressive, with a well tended water feature out in front. I walked through the revolving door into the lobby to ask for which way to their Tech Center, and was very politely given the proper directions. The place was easily found and we had about two hours to spare, but it was getting close to lunchtime.

We had lunch at the local convention center. Yes. The hotel had a convention center and a Max & Erma's built in. Our server was nice and we had fun eating our food and wasting time. Eventually the bad cable news became too overpowering and we had to leave. We found a parking spot at our destination and Allison and I discussed a few interviewey things.

When I got around to making my way to the building, I still had about 10 minutes before the appointment. I called the extention for my contact at the door and he came out to meet me, took me to a conference room, then left me with a job application while he finished up a meeting. He came back about 15 minutes later, with a few coworkers and the interview began.

We discussed where I had been, why I was in Ohio, why I wasn't with Intel any more, all kinds of different things they were looking for and how well I could fit those functions. I'm happy to say I believe I exceeded everything they threw at me, and I we all shook hands with smiles when the interview was over. After that I got to tour their shop and ask questions, which was also a lot of fun.

I left with a great feeling, which I'm still carrying with me the next day. Even if I they don't hire me, I'm rooting for them from the stands. They have a small operation, but they are quick and agile because of it, and they work with all kinds of gadgets all the time.

When we got back on the road. Allison heard from her mom that there had been some severe school bus snafus, and the kids were very late getting home. This gave me an idea for what could be done to make it simple for parents to find out where their kids were, or at least how long until the bus arrived at the stop, using technology simliar to that being built by the company I just interviewed for. Hmmmmm...

In any case, it was all very exciting and I had great fun! I hope I get the called back with an offer, as I would LOVE to work there.

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Get out there and go Geocaching!

2010-03-16T16:17:00.001-07:00

While I've been aware of it for a long time, Geocaching has never felt like a very compelling thing to do, until we had to come up with a an on-the-spot birthday gift for my step-dad. He's been wanting to start geocaching for a long time, asking my sister to keep an eye out for a deal on one with the features they want for both car and trail use.

So while I was pondering what to get him for his birthday, I was reminded that I actually owned a (very old) stand alone GPS of my own, a Garmin GPS II. I got it out, replaced the batteries, fired it up, then sat it on the window sill while I finished shopping for a book to complete the perfect (and now less expensive) Geocaching starter gift. After finding the best book for the job (The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching, 2nd Edition) and placing the order, I check out the GPS II and saw that it was indeed grabbing a few satellites. Ron was gonna be in business.

Somewhere in the process of looking for gifts, and trolling about the Geocaching website, we caught the fever as well. I was amazed to find that there are a few hundreds of caches just in our humble city of Lacey, Washington. I was still using my former phone at the time, which had proven its usefulness as a GPS previously, so I poked and prodded it a bit to see if it could be useful for geocaching.

It turned out to be very useful. As a member of AT&T Wireless' App Store Beta Site, I had some extra software already installed, in the form of Trimble Outdoors. Previous to this, I hadn't found a real use for it, but it made things VERY EASY to get started. Once you have registered your phone on Trimble's website, and registered your account on the Geocaching website, you can send any geocache's information directly to Trimble, and then download that information to your phone later. We used this method to find our first four caches. The only problem? This phone was not made to run any add-on software, having very little RAM, to the point that recieving a text message while doing anything else could be a major pain.

Replacing the Nokia phone was already in the works, but also left our geocaching adventures temporarily in the lurch because my replacement phone didn't have a GPS, and we weren't exactly prepared to shell out more money for whole other unit. Thanks to TrekBuddy, I have found a way to use my new phone (a Sony Ericsson K850i) with a bluetooth GPS reciever (a Holux M-1000)that we picked up for much less than a stand-alone unit would have cost. The end result is VERY simple to use, and costs very little to enjoy.

Installing Trekbuddy is a snap for most non-smartphones (if you have a smartphone, you probably have MANY OTHER apps to choose from). If you don't have a data plan, you can still download it to your computer and use your USB cable, memory card reader, or bluetooth to get it to your phone and install it. If you have a choice, install it to run from your memory card to facilitate the adding of LOC or GPX files.

Trekbuddy is actually very simple to use, but my problem with it was that it was too simple. It starts by showing you a map of the entire earth. How was this going to turn into something useful? It really didn't. This map is just a graphical placeholder. If you want, there are a number of tools available for grabbing various maps of different sizes and types to show instead of the global atlas view. I grabbed a map of Lacey using GoogleMaps 2 TrekBuddy and dropped it in the \TrekBuddy\Maps folder on my phone's memory card to give me some street references. You don't have any zoom control, but TrekBuddy allows you to build atlases that include maps of varying detail for just this purpose. My take on this is that you really don't NEED that sort of detail for simple geocaching. Once you get close, you'll pretty much just need the Compass display to get you in the vicinity of your intended cache. This brings us to the question of how you get the geocache location information into Trekbuddy.

If you are too cheap to pay for Geocaching.com's premium membership (like me), you can't get access to the downloadable GPX files that contain all the handy information available on their website for each cache, but you can have the LOC files which contain the bare essentials. TrekBuddy can deal with either one of these. Simply find the cache(s) you want to look for on the Geocaching website, download the GPX or LOC files, then drop them in the \TrekBuddy\wpts folder on your phone.

Now that you have the basics, give it a try when you have some time and decent weather, and remember to keep an eye out for Muggles.

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Become a Guru, and Win!

2010-03-11T09:48:00.001-08:00

So you may have noticed that I'm a user of GetGlue.

If you haven't noticed, please take a moment to gaze over to the left of this page. At the top of the sidebar you can see a cute little "Enhanced with Glue" sign. There. Now you have surely noticed.

You may be asking why you should care, and you may be wondering why you are still reading this, but I'm hoping to answer both of these questions for you very soon.

AdaptiveBlue's GetGlue leverages the power of popular shopping and informational websites (that you probably already use) to allow you to share, and leave comments for, things you like or dislike without leaving the web page you were originally on. Glue also makes use of Facebook and Twitter to share your accomplishments with your friends. I've decided to throw a little self-promotion in as well. When my wife was writing Haikus about movies, I used GetGlue's comment capability to post links to her work for each movie.

One of Glue's most recently added features is called Guru Giveaways. When you have demonstrated your interest for a given book, movie, or music (or just chatted people up a lot), you may become a Guru for that item. Once you have become a Guru, you are then eligible to receive free promotional giveaways for your particular Guru topic, or one related to it. The eligible topics are determined by the giveaway's sponsor and the folks at GetGlue.

I was a winner of a $20 Fandango gift card to see The Wolfman for being a Guru of a related topic (I don't know which one, as my Guru status has been dwindling of late). All it took was a few clicks and comments using the GlueBar that popped up when I browsed a couple of IMDB, Amazon, and WikiPedia pages.

So give it a try! It's easy to use, and doesn't take any extra time. Maybe you can get a free book or album for leaving a few words about things you love.

To see the most recent list of Guru Giveaways (from March 8th), click here: http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=4377

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And now you know.

2010-03-04T11:36:00.000-08:00

I've decided this is the reason I haven't been blogging in a while. I was preparing for (last year's) National Procrastination Week!

kEnny's Rant

2010-01-27T19:48:00.001-08:00

I have an email problem. A stupid email problem.

Many years ago when so many of us thought it was cool that America Online allowed access through it's service to the internet, I was an AOL customer. Once I had graduated from AOL, I kept my AIM account active to chat with my family. I did not know at the time what a stroke of genius this would turn out to be. Despite all my best efforts to shut my profile away from wandering eyes, I seemed to be attracting the attention of many curious young people (mostly underage girls). One of these curious young people eventually turned into my wife, which was the only good thing I could say about AIM at that point.

Flash forward, a bit. In an attempt to keep the man from perpetually sticking it to us we dropped our POTS for VOIP from Vonage. Vonage had many class leading features at the time, including one which I exploited to the best of my advantage: Voice mail. In the "olden" days of Vonage, you could email your voice mail audio files to a single email address, which was pretty handy if everyone using this single phone line could get to that same email address. I used a private Google Group as the destination for the messages, which could distribute the incoming messages to the other "members" of the group: Our individual email accounts, and the SMS email address for my phone (we could have done Allison's too, but she already had too many people chatting her up). Our cell provider conveniently removed the attached audio file, so the message going to my phone consisted of a time and phone number, which was better than nothing as the WAV file didn't make for a valid MMS, either.

When I got my first Sony Ericsson phone, the K790a, I was very excited to learn that it was able to log into POP and IMAP accounts all by itself. Aside from being able to email full size 3.2MP photographs taken by it's camera, this also meant I could actually go so far as to send complete voice mail messages to my phone for remote listening. The cool thing about Sony Ericsson is that their phones support IMAP's Push feature, so if you have an email provider that supports the same feature, you don't have to wait for whatever time interval to pass before finding your new message in your inbox. I set out to find an appropriate (read FREE) email provider supporting IMAP's Push.

In those days, Gmail was still in it's infancy, and was still having trouble supporting IMAP, so it wasn't even in the running. I looked high and low for free providers, and couldn't find more than one available in the US. Which one was it? That's right: AOL/AIM Mail. I was able to log right in and set it up with no problem. It worked really well. There was NEVER any spam. All I ever got was the messages I emailed to it, and the voice mails from Vonage.

Not long after this semi-utopia of voice mail retrieval was set up, my phone was sent through both the washer AND dryer.

Since that time, I went through a couple of phones, including WinMo and Symbian devices, neither of which could support IMAP push. They sucked. Then, we dropped Vonage. It just wasn't very useful to us any more, especially with Google Voice supplying each of us with extra phone numbers. I still kept the AIM email account so that I could email videos from the my phone to Facebook. In December, I got this email for AOL's President of Consumer Applications, Brad Garlinghouse:

Dear kEnny,

Today marks a very important milestone in AOL’s history – and future. As we separate from Time Warner and become an independent company, we mark the beginning of a fresh start and open the door to new opportunities. I believe this is a perfect time for rebuilding trust, confidence and passion around AOL and the products we bring you.

I realize that – at times - over the past few years, it’s been challenging to be an AOL Mail user. I’ve heard your feedback and we’re going to start making changes with a renewed focus on you. We can and will make our free AOL Mail product world class!

We’re starting today with three simple (but important) changes:

1. Significantly fewer ads
2. An easier AOL Mail sign-in experience
3. A new message reading pane that helps you get through your email faster

I know that some of you are comfortable with your current email experience. So, wherever possible we’ll provide you with the choice to disable new features and keep the classic email product.

This is just the beginning. I’m truly excited about what’s to come in 2010 so please stay along for the ride. Our promise going forward is to keep you well informed of the changes we make and the new features we launch. In the meantime, please continue to send us your feedback or suggestions as we work to build a world class email experience – focused on you.

Thanks again for choosing AOL Mail!

Sincerely,

Brad Garlinghouse
President, AOL Consumer Applications

Since then, I've gotten a few spamessages a day. Yesterday, I recieved my latest Sony Ericsson phone, and was able to see, in real time, what a turd this service has become. I think they've come a long way in making things better. Thanks, AOL!

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Want to play with Google Wave?

2009-12-02T08:01:00.001-08:00

I haven't done much with it yet. If you have some ideas you'd like to try out, and for some reason don't have a Wave account yet, feel free to sign up below!

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Long Term Notes: Nokia 6650 Fold

2009-11-14T15:14:00.001-08:00

After having used my free phone for a few more months, I thought I'd jot down a few more details on its state of being and what has and hasn't worked out.

The best thing about the newer smart phones is that once the manufacturer gets the hardware and software stable, a lot of the best things about your phone come from new and exciting ways to utilize its features through new software. This has largely been the case with my 6650 Fold, so the majority of my discussion will be about the trials of various software solutions to my problems, some of which I never knew I had.

The only real complaints I've had about this phone have been about the button layout, which I discussed in my ealier post, and apparently haven't bothered doing anything more about since then. I did purchase a USB cable, but haven't yet felt the need to actually attempt to make the changes so that I'm not always tapping the key to open the AT&T Navigator. Maybe later...

One thing that has changed since I first wrote about my 6650 Fold, was the addition of an internet data plan. This has allowed me to augment many of my favorite text-only services with new features.

The biggest shortcoming I've found with this phone is that it lacks a comfortable amount of RAM. There is a great web browser for S60 and WM phones called Skyfire, which I could only run after rebooting the phone or it would protest that there was not enough memory available. SInce installing another helper application, I can't even run it after a reboot, but it was fun to use while I could. If you have a data plan, and an S60 or Windows Mobile device, compare Skyfire to your packaged browser. I'm willing to bet Skyfire will take you places you never thought possible from your phone.

Similar to Skyfire's problems with running short of memory, the same can be done with my built-in browser from time to time, so my browser of choice for this phone is Opera Mini. I use the full screen interface, almost exclusively, and it hardly ever malfunctions. The Opera Link feature allows me to manage bookmarks and notes from my desktop, then synchronize with the browser on the phone later. I only wish I could use it as my default browser. Unfortunately, I have not found any way to do this yet.

Google has a full suite of applications for S60. The ones I use are Search (accessible by pressing the C key from the idle screen, and now featuring voice recognition), Maps with Lattitude, Sync (SyncML or Exchange ActiveSync), and YouTube. From Opera, I use Google Voice, Calendar, Reader, and iGoogle.

I would like to make special note of the Google Sync features for a couple of reasons. The first is that being able to access your contacts and calendar features from your phone AND anywhere you can access the internet, is very, very handy. The second? Something strange was happening when I was synchronizing both contact and calendar information that was causing the birthdays of my contacts to drift, making them all a few days younger! Disabling the calendar sync has not helped, so I'm going back to the SyncML method. Google? FIX IT!

The music application works well, and can be accessed with the phone either opened or closed, and there are many playback options to configure to your taste. There isn't any 3.5mm headphone jack, so you're options are limited to using the somewhat proprietary 2.5mm headset jack or Bluetooth. I'm using bluetooth, and it works great. This phone does not appear to have any limitation as to what sort of audio is being listened to in order to pump audio through the bluetooth connection. One of my previous phones required a headset that supported A2DP in order to play back .wav or .mp3 files, or it would play throught the phone's speaker. Nokia does not have that limitation.

One of the features not included with this phone is picture GeoTagging, but it can be added by installing Nokia's Location Tagger software. This is built into many of their phones, but is not included with the 6650 fold, probably due to RAM constraints again. It loads up when you start the phone, grabs your location with the GPS, goes to sleep, then wakes up the GPS when you launch the camera application. Any pictures taken after the GPS has reaquired your location are geotagged.

In closing, I have to say again that while there are a lot of limitations to what this phone comes with, there is plenty it can do if you know where to look, and while there are many signs saying Symbian might not have much longer to live in this world, the fact is that it allows for plenty of added functionality for a very cheap (and fairly durable) flip-phone. Thank you, Nokia 6650 Fold, for being a great temporary measure.

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Evolving dyamics of entertainment and power usage...

2009-09-23T10:17:00.001-07:00

I can see this being quite an interesting area as we add more entertainment functions to devices, which in turn need more power to run, even if they replace 5 boxes that would need even more energy to run.

in reference to: FAQ: Can flat-screen TVs make the efficiency grade? | Green Tech - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

So I guess I've been busy

2009-08-15T14:24:00.001-07:00

What have I been doing, that would keep me from my most favoritest of blogs? A few things.

Allison and I started dieting the South Beach way, and have each been losing weight in a steady fashion. Along those lines, I've been using my new phone to keep track of the miles I have been walking or riding on my bike. Nokia Sports Tracker is my weapon of choice. I can use downloaded maps from Ovi Maps, or grab them from an active internet connection and see where I've been. After the workout, I can check my stats and compare them to other workouts on the phone, or upload them to the website and do the same thing. You have a number of privacy options for the workouts you upload, so you can share with your friends, or everybody, or nobody. The other nice thing it does after uploading your trip is it offers to scan your phone for any pictures or video you may have taken during that time. It then places those pictures on the map of your route, similar to geo-tagging. I love this phone.

We sold my car, Ellie, which had served us for many years. While it made me sad to see her go, the money we are saving on insurance has gone to adding Internet service to our phones, which is kinda nice. Since we already have unlimited family messaging, and neither one of us has a "smart phone" it only costs us an extra $10 per phone, per month. I've been taking advantage of the weather and biking to and from the vanpool most days. Good times!

We took a trip to Ohio to see Allison's friends and family for the part of July. We had LOTS of fun, and of course it was with faces full of tears that we left to come back home. We flew out of Portland, so we spent a little bit of time with my family before and after the trip. We did lots of hiking and exploring and generally had a great time.

I have graduated to keeping the books for the Vanpool. I actually have a legitimate use for Remember The Milk besides just for my own personal purposes. I set up monthly reminders for processing the vanpool log, collecting fees from the riders, and sending the reports to Intercity Transit. I can access the reminders and check them off from anywhere.

I think you are up to date for now. I'll be writing more about my experience with my phone later.

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A new toy in my pocket

2009-06-08T11:52:00.001-07:00

I got a new phone. Not one of the ones I've been aspiring to reacquire from Sony Ericsson, but an upgrade nonetheless. I was going to hold out and just purchase an SE model this summer, but was tired of being frustrated by the Samsung Blackjack I had been using. The Blackjack has lots of features, but is overall very unsatisfying.

My new phone is a Nokia 6650 Fold (not anywhere close to the original 6650), from AT&T Wireless, which is different yet than the regular 6650 Fold you might find from other networks or independent dealers. AT&T wanted to make it a little different, to show off their navigation software and PTT features on this phone, so it has a few more buttons to mess with.

Part of my agenda with this phone is to undo some of the crap AT&T has done to make it "theirs," and make it a little more my own. Symbian is a new beast to me, so I'll be learning for a long time to come, but I am already enjoying some of the benefits of this phone.

Bluetooth: I can conclusively say that bluetooth reception and transmission on the Blackjack sucks. I went back to trying out my Sony Ericsson over-the-ear headset for this phone, because it is the best sounding, least intrusive, and most comfortable headset I have. This headset had a problem with the microphone not always working with the Blackjack, and I still need to test this out. The other problem I saw with this headset was in being able to keep it connected to the phone. This is no longer a problem with the 6650 (hooray!!). The NEW feature with the Nokia is that it pings the headset when a message is received, so I can set the phone to complete silence and tell from the headset when something has happened.

Flexibility: The phone's menu system can be presented in a number of ways, and I still haven't decided what I like more. The addition of touch sensitive buttons for the external display allows for some nice features. I can scan text messages without opening it up, and have access to the calendar, stopwatch, timer, camera, and music player!

The funny thing I see with this phone is that it is running what is normally recognized as a smart phone operating system, but because it isn't from Microsoft or Apple, and only has a numeric keypad, it has been given access to the cheaper data plan from AT&T. I love that.

What I'll be doing next is adding some applications to use the GPS built into it. The phone comes with the AT&T Navigator software built in, but that costs money for the service and data (separately). There is navigation software available that can be used with map data stored on the memory card, which is preferable right now, as I only want to be able to see how far I'm walking at lunch, or whenever else. I would also like to see if it has any geotagging options.

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This is a test of the emergency FlockCast system

2009-06-05T13:15:00.001-07:00

If this were a real emergency, you would not have had a chance to read this bulletin, because at least one of us would have been busy running for our lives.

In case you were wondering was FlockCast does, it allows you to send a link to Facebook for just about anything you are posting somewhere else with Flock.

Sometimes this is extremely handy, but might have a tendency to get very annoying as time goes on. Please use at your own discretion.

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A Blatant and Probably Useless Plug

2009-04-15T13:13:00.001-07:00

My topic for the day is a subject that may sound a little sticky. It is called Glue, and it has a plugin for Firefox based browsers (my favorite is Flock) that can connect you to other web surfers in new ways.

At its core, Glue invades your privacy by monitoring your activity on certain websites and allowing you to show your enthusiasm for different noun-based objects (people, places, or things). That alone is not all that great, and has been most of my experience so far.

What makes it better is the networking capability it has. You can instantly add other glue users to follow from your Facebook friends and those you follow on Twitter, in addition to following other Glue users that show up in the Glue Bar when you visit a site monitored by Glue. Once you happen across more people, you can comment on the comments they have left, see what they like or where they have been.

I consider myself lucky to know a few BIG movie buffs, and would love for them to start using Glue to show me which ones they like or dislike by slapping a link to their review of said movie into the "2 cents" Glue comment section. That might also promote more reading of their reviews. Ha!

I have only done a little bit of this so far, and most of it has been on Yelp, recommending local restaurants. I look forward to doing more, and seeing what my friends can do to tell me about what they like, whether it is books, movies, movie stars, music, recording artists, gadgets, restaurants, stocks, TV shows, or wine.

Now if only I could motivate them a bit more...

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New Blog Features for kEnny!

2009-04-01T08:44:00.001-07:00

Part of what keeps me active on this blog, is a desire to understand how to appply new and nifty applications and gadgets. Whenever I hear of new features or hacks being made available for my favorite sites and tools, I'm all over it. Almost every gadget in this blog's sidebar is a result of that pursuit. To that end, I'm officially introducing two new features to my blog today.

The first can be seen at the top of the main column, where you should see "Click here to leave your answers!" This is a Wall gadget from Google Friend Connect. This is not my first time using gadgets from Friend Connect, but it is the first time I have put something interactive like this on my own blog. It is there for whatever you would like to use it for. If you would like to tell me how super green my blog is, or how i could do something to make it easier to read, or if you want to ask a question for me to answer in a new blog post, go right ahead!

The other new gadget is my label cloud in the sidebar. I've been looking for something that makes better use of the humongous amount of space taken up by Blogger's default label list. You can find tag clouds all over the web, but it is near to impossible to find one that works with Blogger's Labels. I found one, and it is fairly easy to implement. Let me know if you want the details.

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New Fun!!

2009-03-14T23:01:00.001-07:00

Hi again! I've got my new laptop from work, and it has been a lot of fun getting it set up just the way I like it. This thing is a monster, and definitely falls into the Workstation class of laptops. The hardest thing to come to grips with so far has been the screen. While not outrageously huge, it can be an eyeball burner because of the number of pixels it packs in. I've had to do some major tweaking to make things large enough to comfortably read.

This is coming from someone who is still living life without assisted vision. I consider myself pretty darn lucky to have been able to last as long as I have without needing corrective lenses. I can see the writing on the blurry wall when I look at things FAR off in the distance, but I have been able to keep things from getting too bad through a regular ocular exercise regimen.

Back to the Beast. This might be the fastest single processor system I've had the pleasure of using. I've got as many eye-candy inducers as I can get to run without causing trouble for each other as I can on it, running Windows XP, and it doesn't ever miss a step. I'm also very impressed that the Bluetooth software is suitably capable, and can handle just about every type of function there is.

The keyboard is very comfortable, mostly because HP didn't have to squeeze any keys to fit inside the "constraints" of the chassis. I'm very happy to use it, and am still amazed to have been able to get it, considering how much my employer is trying to squeeze all they can out of every last cent. Thanks, Intel!!

The most fun I've been having of late is working on the development of a new team blog for a fictitious person originally established on a Facebook fan page. The idea came about shortly after Facebook's "Like" feature popped up. Allison mentioned that she wished she could "Dislike" things, and that started the ball rolling toward the birth of H.A.Ters. It has been a rather therapeutic platform for venting about stupid things you see, and finding a few other like-minded folks. We only have 14 fans at the moment, but we are determined to grow. :^)

Once the idea to branch out from the Facebook page was broached (again by Allie), I set up a twitter account and twittermail address so that H.A.Ters' ghostwriters, of which there are currently six, could all tweet directly to their (currrently singular) followers. This was followed by a Google Group for the ghostwriters to discuss the blog setup, and hold the information concerning the ins and outs of the H.A.Ters universe. I started another Google Group to allow more of us to monitor H.A.Ters' email inbox, which is still a little problematic. We have pretty much launched the new blog now, and it features a few imported rants from our previous adventures in blogging, to fill the toddler-blog out in its infancy. The nice part about making this a team blog is that we can each contribute what little we can to make for a more frequently updated blog.

With H.A.Ters' blog and twitter account running, I was able to add RSS feeds from both back onto the Facebook fan page, and added the new blog to Facebooks Networked Blogs app. From Networked Blogs I was able to take a blog following gadget and add it to the blog to go along with all the Google Friend Connect gadgets on the blog, so it is really "socialed out." You can sign up to follow the blog through Blogger or Facebook, and you can leave comments and videos on the page as well as leaving comments on the blog posts. It has been a lot of fun, even if we are the only ones to get much out of the exercise.

My last bit of news has me VERY excited. I just read that Google is finally unveiling a closely guarded secret for the last year. What was once known as GrandCentral, a company Google bought not much before GrandCentral stopped showing any outward publicity, has now become Google Voice. This is going to be an interesting ride. Google Voice will take all of the features from GrandCentral, and integrate the phone book with that from your Gmail account's contacts, and makes your Google Voice phone number available for SMS and email. They have added message transcription, which is an amazing feature all by itself, and usually can't be found for free. We will most likely be dropping our Vonage line very soon. Vonage, I love ya, but you can't keep charging me the small pittance you expect if you can't keep up with this.

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My latest adventures!

2009-02-23T18:01:00.001-08:00

To start with, our new GPS has arrived and now that it has seen a bit of use around town, I can say that it does a fine job. While our Sony NV-U44 is certainly not the navigation and multimedia powerhouse that some units are, the frugal side of me says "Hey, you got a LOT of features for your $70!!"

And I think it's true. It features Text-to-Speech, lane guidance (as seen in the picture on the left), fast satellite acquisition, and gesture recognition, which allows you to wipe your finger across the screen to activate some features instead of needing to divert your eyes from the road. There are many features missing from the unit, my favorite of which is traffic updates and internet connected features, but we don't live in an area where we are all that likely to benefit from them either. Despite being made fun of by my wife, I'm going to continue to use it as we drive around town, just to familiarize myself with it more.

The second event of note is a continuation from my last post, about the resurrected Acer 2010 laptop. The one remaining weakness the system had was a broken right-side lid hinge, which would pop out of the plastic cover when someone would try to adjust the screen angle. I was trying to adjust it back to a usable angle and squeezed the screen a bit too hard. The glass cracked, rendering about 80% of the screen unreadable, but still very colorful. I set about disassembling the lid, which came apart without too much drama. The Sony Vaio laptop, whose screen I was hoping to steal, was not giving in so easily. I was afraid that if I pried too hard I might end up doing similar damage to the one remaining usable part from the Sony.

After sharing my work laptop with my sister for a week and a half, Allison said she wanted to give it a try last night, and while she did crack the bezel around the screen a little bit, it really wasn't anything to worry about. I was very happy that the two laptops we had gotten for her were so similar that they could share so many parts. The new screen went in, and I got it all put back together without the misbehaving hinge. Now it works the same, but we can close the lid again (woohoo!!!), and it has a glossier and brighter screen.

Now Allie can get back to her Ubuntu lessons. Maybe she'll want to work on importing some of her old blog posts to our new blog, as well.

The next bit came as a bit of a surprise to me last week, as I received an email at work indicating that I am scheduled to get my laptop replaced at the end of THIS WEEK!!!! I'm pretty stoked, as it will be my first laptop that wasn't WAY outdated by the time it got to me. The one I'm using now, is the third shell replacement and second hard drive image of the IBM T42 I received new a few years ago. While it is a well-built machine, and not too heavy to carry around, I have longed for a wider screen for some time (especially now that I use Flock).

My new system will be an HP Compaq 8510p, which has a high resolution screen, updated processor and chipset (Centrino Pro, even), and a SATA hard drive! I'm looking forward to burying Windows on another machine.

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After talking The Talk, I finally walked The Walk.

2009-02-01T18:35:00.001-08:00

I'm writing this blog entry from a newly resurrected "laptop" computer, which has just recently been imbued with the powers of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex, if you are curious). This was the first system bought for Allison to use as her own, and served us well for a while, but then bad things started happening to it. The right side screen hinge anchor broke, the keyboard lost some functionality, and it got replaced with a slightly updated Sony Vaio. It was also having intermittent hard drive issues, which were ended when I used it to experiment with digital video capture from the DVR, and forgot to limit the file size. The hard drive was not usable after that.

When Allie's Vaio up and died before we had fully scoped out her replacement laptop, we had nothing better to do, but to see if we could get ANYTHING up and running for her. This effort serves multiple purposes: It gives us our first stab at using Linux (our router doesn't really count) for determining if we can use it on the next laptop, it "bridges the gap" until we purchase the next laptop, and can perform as a computer for the kids later on. What it needs (and is on the way now) is a new keyboard. I'm using the wireless "lapboard" stolen from the XBOX, which had originally been used for playing Half-Life 2 on the TV with the old HTPC, sitting atop the laptop's built in keyboard. When the replacement keyboard arrives, it may grace somebody's lap once again. It has a few upgrades inherited from the Viao: like a faster processor, and twice as much RAM.

Ubuntu has been a joy to use for the most part. There have been a few hickups, but I haven't had to undo anything. The biggest pain in the butt has been figuring out how to correctly administer permissions. For those of you who might be unfamiliar, the common model of usage with Linux is that you don't USE anything with root (overlord master of all) permissions, and those permissions are only invoked when specifically needed. I can understand that just fine, but have had a hard time finding the CORRECT instructions for my particular needs. The hardest thing for me to do has been to get Flash working on Flock. It is a simple process, but was hard for me to find the right set of instructions, so there were a lot of wrong instructions for me to try out first.

Of course I now have Flock set up with all my favorite Firefox Add-ons, and have installed WINE to enable some of our favorite Windows games from Silvercreek Entertainment (Solitaire, Hearts, Spades, etc.), so in the software sense we are good to go. Ubuntu has set up ALL of the hardware available to the laptop with a minimum of effort, including our networked all-in-one printer. All I had to do was tell it to look for a printer, and it was immediately found ALL BY ITSELF!!! I don't know if Windows Vista can do that, but I know Windows XP can't. Similarly, the scanner was already known when I opened up the scanning application. I can't shout enough praises for these last two, as we have had a good amount of trouble from the HP software for Windows. This rocks!! The only other little nibble was that the volume control keys were not mapped to the correct device. This problem was fixed rather quickly though, as it was simple to find the correct control to change.

So for anyone wondering if they can make the leap, and isn't attached to proprietary devices and files they are worried about losing (Hi, iPod. I'm looking at you), try out the latest release of your friendly neighborhood linux distribution. You don't have to commit to it, as you can run many distributions from the CD to try it out.

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The Internets, Complacency, And Me.

2009-01-18T10:15:00.001-08:00

This entry has been baking for a long time, while I have been gathering evidence against myself in observing my lack of new adventures on the world-wide-web. While my writing upon the subject may not be all that lengthy, I think it bears some scrutiny even if only for my own self examination.

The leading indicator of my home-grown personal epidemic lies in the lack of new bookmarks and websites I actively use to check the pulse of the Internets. There was a time when I would check in on up to 20 different websites in the course of a single day, and most of those were "news" sites, featuring a short blurb and a link to the actual content on other websites. Now? I only have 3 sites I chick with any regularity:

CNET's News.com
The Inquirer
My personal iGoogle page.

Granted, my iGoogle page has multiple tabs, and each tab has lots of gadgets and feeds, but there are only a few links from there that actually get clicked on in any daily fashion.

A lot of the reason for my compressed internet schedule is due to my own changing habits. I no am no longer worried about how to get the ABSOLUTE MOST game out of my computer. I'm wowed more by the new tricks on the TiVo and XBOX 360, for which my computer may be considered a conduit, but other than that isn't really used with the same regularity.

Another reason for the lack of adventurous reading comes from many of my former favorites either being bought by other sites (possibly changing the style), disappearing off the map, or maybe I just don't feel I need it any more. For instance, I used to check PCMag.com (when I wasn't subscribing to their magazine) on a regular basis, but then CNET bought them. I had already been a regular user of various CNET sites, so with the exception of checking in on John C. Dvorak on occasion I don't have much use for PCMag.com any more.

So tell me, Internets, where my new adventure? What's the next Holy Grail for me to search for? I'd like to know.

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