Wow! It has been quite a while since I’ve posted here (or even looked here). Things have dramatically changed over the seven months. And they’ve all been for the better. I think it’s about time I get back into the swing of posting here just for the hell of it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my millions of four readers.

Now go on and get back to your lives. I’ll be rippin’ and tearin’ in the meantime.

One of the biggest caveats when it comes to downloading any application onto your Android device is the permissions that an app requests. An application can be programmed to do just about anything that it wants. This includes, but is not limited to, send SMS, intercept phone calls, send private data, etc. All of this can be set to be performed unbeknownst to you. However, in order for the apps to do so, they must be granted the permission to do so. Although the lack of initial moderation on the Android Market may be as much of a problem as it is a benefit, any app that has requested permissions that tie into any type of personal data causes a permission warning to display before you can install. So what kind of things should you look out for when installing a new application in order to avoid potential trouble and billing catastrophies? Read on to find out.

I won’t cover the details of each available permission that an app can request. This post over at Technically Personal covered them amazingly well (a very highly recommended read if you’re an Android user). In all honesty, the easiest way of staying safe when it comes to app permissions is to just use some common sense.

Here is an example: let’s say that you have just found a new jigsaw puzzle app that you want to try. You go to install and you are given a permission warning. The items in the top section displayed in orange are the ones that spark the system into displaying the warning. Many apps (mainly free ones) may request coarse location and internet access. This is relatively common as it is used for in-app advertisements such as AdMob. But if that same application is also requesting the permission needed to send SMS, make phone calls, and/or read contact data, you might need to think twice before you hit that install button. If an app that has absolutely nothing to do with SMS communication is requesting the permission to send SMS on your behalf, it could easily be a rogue app designed to invisibly send SMS to services as a means of collecting spam data or charge you astronomical fees associated with pay-per-use services.

But as stated within the Technically Personal post above, some of the permissions can be tricky when it comes to whether they should set off a red flag. Full internet access, for example, is needed by many apps in order to communicate back with a host server to transfer legitimate app data. But if that app has also requested contact data but does not have any type of sharing feature (to share scores or invite friends), it has no need to be requesting such data and there is a slight chance it is stealing your contact data.

This post is not intended to draw fear into Android users nor is it meant to discredit apps that are requesting the features for legitimate purposes. I just suggest using caution when installing a new application that could be questionable. Those of you who have no issues reading from logcat could always use that method to make sure no inappropriate activity is being done by an active application after its been installed. But those who are familiar with logcat and use it probably already watch their app’s permissions.

For example purposes, I decided to go searching the Android Market for an app that takes these warnings to the extreme. So to do so, I decided to venture into the questionable list of adult applications by using search term “adult”. No, I have no interest in adult apps. But anyone familiar with these types of rogue apps knows that the adult market is one that is a huge target of its distribution.

After a bunch of app permission reviewing, I came across this lovely piece of scam potential. The app is designed to supply you with dirty jokes. Should be a simple app with no need for personally identifiable permissions, right? Well, click the pictures below to see them in their full scamming glory (and if you come across this in the Market, do NOT install it. Report it as inappropriate like I did).

While I don’t want to see the walled garden approach that Apple has with their App Store, I think it would be wise to add basic moderation of submitted applications before they are published. For example, apps that request the permission to use “services that cost you money” should require a simple review by a moderation team. This way, developers still have the freedom to submit their apps without fear of extreme moderation and control but consumers can feel just a tad more safe when browsing the market.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know.

The U.S. smartphone market has changed so dramatically over the five years. There is no doubt about that. Motions have shifted and the current reigning kings in the industry are iOS, Android, and BlackBerry. There are also the obvious runners up such as WebOS and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 (yes, a runner up because it has built enough hype to get it there but doesn’t have the chance to earn top status until release).

TD Bank, the bank known very well for its convenient hours and exceptional customer service, has finally released a much anticipated mobile application for customers on the go. Immediately after seeing the advertisement online, I downloaded it onto my Nexus One. It works great. But then I noticed the available device list and saw that it is only available for iOS and Android. So where’s the BlackBerry love?

Before anyone says “they do have a BlackBerry app!” and refers to this app, let me point out that it does not work for TD Bank customers here in the states (I know, I’ve tried). It is specifically for TD Canada Trust, TD Waterhouse, and TD Insurance. So why would TD Bank not release an app for the platform known notoriously for being the supreme being of mobile security? I wish I had an answer.

There could be many reasons behind it. One, a lack of quality BlackBerry developers on the TD Bank employment team. I doubt this is the case because I doubt a company such as theirs would have any issues finding someone looking to take on the job. Two, no interest. I doubt that as well because I can’t fathom the possibility that a company so big on customer service would not have any interest in catering to a huge chunk of their business clientele. Three, it’s on its way. Maybe it just wasn’t ready for release right away and this whole post is unnecessary. Four, TD Bank is seeing the huge uprising in the touch-based app-centric platforms that are causing iOS and Android usage to spike higher and higher by the day and made a business decision to put their primary focus into that market.

I don’t have an answer. I’m just a customer, not an employee. And I am more than likely just over thinking this whole thing. But it got me wondering. As more and more customers hop on the iOS/Android bandwagon, are corporations hot on their tail?

For those who might be asking “why the rainbow Andy?”, take a look at the Google logo and then I think you’ll realize why I colored him like that.

Are you an Android user who uses Google Apps as their e-mail service? If so, you too have probably experienced the frustration of multiple services not being able to authenticate properly with your Google Account that shares the same credentials. The issue is a known one that has been acknowledged multiple times.

Is it enough to make me give Google and Android the middle finger? Absolutely not. I understand the complexity of the separation of their account types. But that doesn’t mean I can’t rant about it! After the break is a rant I posted over at Android Central and I just felt like sharing it here.

Aye yay yay! Sorry people, I need to rant for a second regarding Google’s lack of a fix regarding their account type fragmentation and the effect that it has on Android apps. The reason that I am posting it in this forum instead of general chat is because it directly relates to Android applications. Mods, if you don’t want it here, I fully understand if you move it…

As I’ve reported on before, Google has a serious issue that has been acknowledged on multiple occasions which prevents people who use Google Apps as their Gmail authenticator from using their “Google Account” that is registered to the same e-mail address for a multitude of services.

For example, anyone in that situation (unless they use a “workaround” which I find unacceptable) cannot buy anything from the Android Market. They get put into an endless loop of “You need to add an account for Google Checkout” which they already have tied to their Google Account. (I can buy the phone itself through Google Checkout using the account but can’t buy apps using the exact same one?).

Then there are other examples:
1. Google Listen will not authenticate because it recognizes it as a Google Apps account and won’t let you tell it otherwise.
2. Google Voice will not work when you choose the account from the screen. But thankfully, selecting the option to use another account and then just re-inputting your credentials will allow it to work.

There are others. Those are just the ones that really bother me. But now there’s a new one….

Chrome to Phone

I had downloaded the Android app previously and at least in this case, it tells you that it doesn’t work with Google Apps accounts. In my opinion, this should be fine and dandy if those account credentials are ONLY Google Apps credentials. In my case, my Google Apps account and Google Account share the same credentials. I was hoping that that would be fixed by the official release. But nope! Since nothing within Android or supporting apps lets you tell it which type of account you want to use, Chrome to Phone becomes yet ANOTHER feature that I cannot use on my Android phone.

I am fully aware that the separation between Google Apps and a Google Account will always be there (even with the announcement recently of opening services to Google Apps outside of the standard ones, it’ll still have its issues) but there is no reason why Google can’t fix this simply with a preference/option to allow us to tell the system which method to use to authenticate on the application level.

For example, if I go into the Market to buy something, I can understand if it sees my primary account (which it recognizes as Google Apps). But when that fails and I’m asked to input a Google Checkout account, they should have it so I can put in my username, password, and a small dropdown of what type of Google account it actually is. This way, I could manually input my credentials again and tell it how to authenticate.

Sorry, had to rant. I’m not one of those “OMG!! This is horrible! Fix or I’m getting an iPhone!!!” people. But it is something that definitely annoys me and many others.

Well, having had an extremely busy week, I will admit to not having thought of an idea for this week until today. So this weeks #ttt is a very quick and obvious one. But it is one that I was surprised that many people who work in command prompt or terminal aren’t even aware of.

This week’s lesson: how to very quickly navigate to a new directory in command prompt or terminal.

I was really surprised to learn that a colleague of mine who spends a lot of time using command line was still cd’ing down into subdirectories one by one. There really is no need to. Here’s all you have to do…

Within command prompt or terminal, input the cd command followed by a space. Then, from an open Explorer/Finder window, just drag a folder into the command line. The directory path will be transferred for you so you can quickly get into it.

This can also be used in many other useful ways but definitely is a huge help for directory navigation.

Has this tip or any Tech Tip Tuesday post helped you in your tech environment? Or do you have a question you’d like to see answered in a future installment? If so, please let me know in the comments or by using the Contact page.

And just like that, it is official. As reported last week, RIM and AT&T renewed their vows to celebrate the birth of the Torch line into the BlackBerry world. With the Torch line now joining the series rankings which also include Bold, Curve, Pearl, and Tour (RIP), there’s definitely a good variety of device styles within the family.

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 sports a 480×360 display with 512MB of RAM. Standard features carry over into the new BlackBerry 6 world such as BBM, media capabilities (although with new WiFi media sync!!), Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, etc. Standard world traveler capabilities apply with its quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS. One new item that comes along with BB6 that seems to have many excited is the new social feed functionality where a user will be able to update their Twitter, Facebook, and BBM status all in one shot.

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 will be available at your local AT&T store on August 12th for $199 with a two year contract. Who will be on hand that morning to pick one up?

[ RIM ]

It’s Tuesday night and the mood is right. Gonna have some fun, show ya how it’s done, Tech Tip Tuesday.

For that line alone, I could be quite possibly the biggest loser to ever blog…

But back to the point of this post. If you are managing a Windows-based infrastructure that is handing out IP leases using DHCP, you more than likely will have a few workstations that are going to need static IP’s. This could be for a number of reasons such as, but not limited to, software/sites that will only validate themselves with pre-authorized IP’s. In these types of situations, I recommend setting DHCP reservations.

Recently, I’ve had a couple of tech friends ask me what to do in this type of situation. Some of them had used the method of assigning a local static IP directly on the workstation within its TCP/IP settings. Will that work? Absolutely. But it is not practical in the long run. Not only are DHCP reservations much easier to manage since you control them all within one centralized location, but you also prevent the possibility of network issues under certain circumstances such as a laptop user attempting to work off the network remotely.

To setup a DHCP reservation, first you need to be logged into your server that is handing out the leases. From there, access your DHCP snap-in from the server’s Administrative Tools. Your window should look similar to this one:

From there, right-click on Reservations and select “New Reservation…”. You should now be presented with the New Reservation popup as seen in this post’s header. My preferred method for the reservation name is a domain-style name with the workstation ID but you can name it pretty much whatever you’d like. The IP address should be the static IP you wish to assign. For the MAC address, enter the MAC address of the workstation that will be using this reservation (do not input colons). The description is just for your own organization so feel free to put whatever you’d like.

For the supported type, you can choose whether you want this reservation to apply for systems using either DHCP or BOOTP as their network protocol. Leaving this option as “Both” will cover both grounds. If you choose one over the other, make sure you are choosing the appropriate protocol for your network. In my case, I would choose DHCP but am setting it to Both for simplicity.

After the reservation has been added, you can test it by doing an IP release/renew on the workstation and seeing if it pulls the newly assigned static IP. You will also see in your DHCP snap-in whether the reservation is active or not within the address leases.

Has this tip or any Tech Tip Tuesday post helped you in your tech environment? Or do you have a question you’d like to see answered in a future installment? If so, please let me know in the comments or by using the Contact page.

The date has been set, the invitations have been delivered, and the reception has been prepared. On August 3rd, those special attendees will be given the pleasure of witnessing AT&T and the BB6-toting BlackBerry 9800 tie the knot in the bonds of cellular matrimony.

Earlier today, invitations were sent out to various tech journalists, popular blog editors, and other media representatives to invite them to a special press event where it is expected that the BlackBerry 9800 (the heavily leaked slider) will be officially announced. Oh, and no, I was not one of the invited. I’m just passing on the news.

While it is not confirmed that the event is for the 9800, all logical signs point towards it. During my six-year tenure in the mobile industry, I had attended numerous events such as these. Based on previous experience, an event being promoted in this fashion always points towards a milestone of some sort. With that in mind, it would be a wasted event for the Bold 9700 refresh or the Pearl 3G release. We already know based on the flyer’s 6 located in the bottom left (see one of the source links for the full flyer) as well as the BlackBerry6-specific icons that this event coincides with the first official release of a BlackBerry6 device. That scratches the Pearl 3G off of the list. That leaves the Bold refresh and the slider. The world’s first BlackBerry slider sporting the world’s first official taste of BlackBerry6 on the “nation’s fastest 3G network”? Yep, that’s a milestone worth celebrating.

The event will be held on August 3rd at 11:00 AM in New York City. I know that I, for one, am looking forward to loading up my RSS reader next Tuesday.

[ Via BGR and PocketBerry ]

Alright techies. Here’s a simple one for ya. But if you’re a sysadmin/netadmin, it’s one that you should know without any hesitation. And that is the shutdown command.

If you don’t know why this might be helpful to you, the shutdown command will give you the power (assuming you have proper admin rights over the machine the command is being run for) to perform various functions in regards to the machine’s current power state. This includes, but is not limited to, remotely shutting down workstations and servers that are not responding well to local GUI methods.

There’s really not a lot to this tip so this is going to be a relatively short post. Bottom line, the shutdown command can be used in conjunction with various parameters to perform a multitude of functions. Without parameters, the command will log the current user off of the local PC. But if you follow the shutdown with the -m parameter to specify a workstation name, the command will apply to the remote machine.

In the screenshot below (as well as the post’s header), here is the command I would use if I wanted to remotely restart a remote workstation named “hellopc”, have it force close any applications (helpful if an app is currently frozen), and have it begin the process immediately. To clarify, the -m parameter followed by the workstation name tells it which workstation to perform the action on, the -r parameter tells it to restart the workstation instead of shutting it down, the -f parameter is telling it to force any applications to close that are currently open, and the -t parameter followed by a time in seconds tells the system how long to wait before performing the action.

The following is a list of the parameters directly from Microsoft:

1. -l : Logs off the current user, this is also the defualt. -m ComputerName takes precedence.
2. -s : Shuts down the local computer.
3. -r : Reboots after shutdown.
4. -a : Aborts shutdown. Ignores other parameters, except -l and ComputerName. You can only use -a during the time-out period.
5. -f : Forces running applications to close.
6. -m [\\ComputerName] : Specifies the computer that you want to shut down.
7. -t xx : Sets the timer for system shutdown in xx seconds. The default is 20 seconds.
8. -c “message” : Specifies a message to be displayed in the Message area of the System Shutdown window. You can use a maximum of 127 characters. You must enclose the message in quotation marks.
9. -d [u][p]:xx:yy : Lists the reason code for the shutdown.

Ok, I know that was a simple one. But simple doesn’t mean it’s not useful.

Has this tip or any Tech Tip Tuesday post helped you in your tech environment? Or do you have a question you’d like to see answered in a future installment? If so, please let me know in the comments or by using the Contact page.

I will start this post out with one very important fact in order to clarify that this isn’t a bashing in any sort of way. I love Foursquare. I’ve been an active user for a quite a while now and have “checked-in” hundreds of times (as of this post, 328 times). As long as you use it wisely, it is a great method of social networking. But I have been getting on my last nerve with it lately and have slowed my use down to simply to checking into existing places I had used it at previously. No more do I use it when going to new places and I am letting my amount of mayorship diminish. And I just don’t care.

So why am I slowly letting go of my love for Foursquare? Simply put, it’s becoming more and more of a cluttered mess everyday.

I remember the glory days of using Foursquare. When I could load it up and it would show me the list of all of the venues in my local radius. I could check-in where I was and also look at what was around me. On multiple occasions, I had used it to find other places to go. “Oh, I didn’t know there was a *fill in the blank* around here!” was a phrase I had used with friends a few times. We’d venture over, have some fun or buy some things, I’d check in, and the fun would continue.

So what’s the problem? Well, I just can’t do that anymore. Foursquare has always allowed users, whether new users or not, to create new venues to take the service to a whole new level. This was great when it was in it’s infancy and growing days. But now, it has created a giant problem. There has been no moderation on the venues created outside of ones that were explicitly reported. Almost everywhere I go now, my local venue list looks like the following:

Home
Home
My Home
Boyfriend’s apartment!!!
Mi casa!
My bathroom
My place

The major reason for why I personally think this cluttered mess is going to bring Foursquare down is because they don’t seem to be doing anything about it. I can’t even tell you how many times I have marked random venues such as those as closed so that the Foursquare staff and/or appointed moderators could see them and clean things up. Not a single one has ever been closed. Yet at the same time, I have come across many legitimate venues that had been closed without reasoning even though I had been shopping at them at that very moment. And a quick look over at the Foursquare getsatisfaction board shows that most of the time, it becomes more hassle than it’s worth for them to get re-opened.

Long gone are the days of pulling up Foursquare and being able to browse all the venues around you to find new places. No more are the times when you could expand your social network by seeing what the popular spots are in your area. Because at least for me, the “popular spots” in the area are someone’s “My Boyfriend’s place!” that they have checked in to 438 times.

I have a few suggestions for Foursquare. Because as I said, I love the service (or at least what it used to be) and would love to see it cleaned up:

1. Limit the ability to have new venues become public immediately to members who have met certain criteria or who have been deemed “senior members” by staff or the moderation team.
2. Add venue filters to automatically require venues with the words “home”, “house”, etc. to go into a moderation queue no matter what type of member adds them.
3. Using those filters, if a member creates a venue called “My Home!”, have the popup confirmation state something like “Thanks for the new venue! In order to keep Foursquare’s venue list clean and accurate, this check-in will be counted towards your statistics once the venue has been approved by our moderation team.

Those are just a couple methods at cleaning things up. There are plenty of other methods that I’m sure could be used as well.

Foursquare, I love your service. And while the current method of letting the community build up your database without any type of pre-requisites and moderation worked great as the site was building its reputation, the service has become large enough that it just doesn’t work anymore.

I don’t want Foursquare to fail. I just want to be able to use it again for what it was designed for without having to flick and scroll through tons of garbage. Your home is not a venue.

And for the record, I have had this same discussion with multiple other people who have agreed with me 100%. So while I know that not everyone will share the same opinion as me, I know I’m alone in these thoughts.

Your experience may vary especially depending on population density in your local area.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.