Woooaah … truckloads.

There are 1001 blog-worthy things to blog in my blog about.

Sadly, time (lusty and blithe) is at his apogee.

In brief, I have:

• Had a shave, since the last blog post;
• Upgraded The Surgery WordPress blog from 2.8.3 to 2.9;
• Moved WordPress blog from Fedora 9 machine with crappy dynamic IP address (it was killing me) to shiny Fedora 11 machine with static IP address;
• Marveled at my ability to upgrade WordPress, SQL databases and move them across Linux machines, AND make grown-up changes to DNS zone files – am surely a guru of such things now and legend in my own lunchbox;
• Undertaken 2 of 8 Tech Talk Radio Summer Series productions, time-consuming but rewarding;
• Upgraded the HTC Dream / Google phone to the next Android operating system, very successful;
• Teetered on the brink of e-mail bankruptcy;
• Ordered a new PC for Christmas;
• Ventured inside an Apple Store for the very first time, and escaped by making only a minor purchase (a new iPod Touch); and
• Just today, assisted Mrs Dr Ron in restoring her iTunes library, after she deleted all the music files from her PC’s hard disk  - successfully achieved restoration by using a third-party app called iRip which we’ve spoken about on Tech Talk in the past (thanks JD, saviour of Dr Ron’s marriage).

I have also Tweeted mercilessly about our well-intentioned (yet incompetent, foolish and mis-informed) Senator for Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy.  In case you hadn’t caught up with the news (which the good Senator saved until after the last live episode of Tech Talk for 2009), Australia will be ranked highly with the United Arab Emirates, Iran and China in its foolish deployment of an ISP-based Net Filter.

Adam Turner has had a lot to say about this, and made a clever analogy with a different type of infrastructure.  His blog posts here and here in The Age last week should be mandatory reading.

I’ll blog in more detail about these and other things soon.

I hope you have a great Chrissy and a safe and prosperous New Year.

#nocleanfeed · adam turner · andorid · apple · apple store · blog · fedora · Google Phone · HTC Dream · ipod touch · irip · linux · net filter · news · stephen conroy · tech talk · Tech Talk Radio · the age · the age tech · updates · what's happening · wordpress

For many months I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Google’s next version of the Android operating system – code-named Cupcake.

I was excited this morning when I turned on the handset, to be greeted with a simple upgrade message:

“Android OS 1.5 (Cupcake release).  This is an update for your HTC Dream.  Enjoy several new features such as on-screen soft keyboard, video recording, faster browser and more.”

Okay okay, you don’t need to prompt me twice.  Of course I did what every other self-respecting Google-phone owner would do: I tapped ’Upgrade’ with gay abandon.

In just a few moments I was sucking-down 44 megs of the best, all via the ‘3′ data network.

The installer prompted me to restart the phone twice, and within a few minutes I was running Android OS 1.5 on my HTC Dream.

What’s new?

There are lots of User Interface (UI) improvements.  In the ‘locked’ screen, the network type (3G or Roaming) is displayed, along with the carrier you’re connected to, and the date and time.  Also the phone’s wallpaper is displayed under the lock message which looks nice, instead of just a black screen.

Importantly, all my applications were still installed and all of my user data and settings were left intact. Good work Google.

On-screen keyboard. This is great, and long overdue.  Just tap wherever data-entry is required, and an on-screen soft keyboard appears, much like the Apple iPhone interface.  Press the hard back / return key to hide the on-screen keyboard.  It looks small, but seems to be quite accurate.  There’s also a predictive spelling option which works well.

Video recorder. At last!  A new application called ‘Camcorder’ lets you record audio and video.  There’s a setting for high-quality (to write to the SD card) and low-quality (for quick snippets intended for MMS’ing).

Accelerometer. The in-built acceleromter was never used in first incarnations of Google’s Android.  Now there’s a setting which automatically switches between landscape and portrait modes depending on the angle of the dangle.

Other tweaks and improvements.

Contacts. The Call Log, Contacts and Favourites menus are more polished.  Contacts’ image thumbnails appear in your favourites, which is nice.

There are also new menu options to edit sync groups, and import contacts from your SIM card.

Calendar. More UI changes: nice, more polished.

Browser. Again, more UI changes.  Looks good and loads everything a bit faster.

Battery Life. The much-bemoaned appalling battery life of the HTC Dream is said to be addressed in this release of Android.  All I can say, after one day of experimenting, is watch this space!!  The thing hasn’t died on me yet, but I’ve only made half-a-dozen calls today and haven’t given the Bluetooth or wireless features a good hammering.

Conclusion?

In my “HTC Dream – first impressions” post in March this year, I listed several things which irked me:

Battery Life – see above.  Stay tuned.

FM Radio – well that’s not going to happen in a software patch, is it?  Actually I’ve been using a 3rd-party app called StreamFurious to listen to on-line radio stations.  It works really well, and even has a bandwidth counter which runs in the foreground, so you’re always aware of the application’s ‘bandwidth footprint’.

Camera – video now supported, see above.  The lag’s still there.

Microsoft Integration, File Browsing and Notepad - No, no and no.

Google Latitude – fixed in a ‘point release’ about two months back: see this post for details.

All in all, I’d say that Cupcake is a good effort, and worth the upgrade.  The ability to record video, and tap an on-screen keyboard will be warmly welcomed.  Support for the in-built accelerometer is also a nice improvement.

Google, keep the updates coming.  Apple, pay attention to your competitors, I don’t think they’re that far behind.

android · android os 1.5 · Google Phone · HTC Dream · t-mobile g1

What’s Tethering?

If you have a laptop or netbook, chances are you might want to access the internet.

If you’ve got a blue network cable handy, then that might be useful.  If not, and you’ve got WiFi built-in to your laptop, or a WiFi adapter, AND you’re in a wireless hotspot, then you might be able to connect to the internet via wireless.

If you’ve purchased a data plan from one of Australia’s several mobile telecommunications service providers, and you’ve also purchased a data modem which plugs into a USB port, or a PCMCIA broadband card, then that’s a good option too.

But if you’ve got a data plan and your mobile telephone already operates on one of Australia’s 3G mobile networks, then surely you can use your telephone as a modem and connect to the internet through your mobile telephone?

Yep, you can.  That’s tethering.

Is it easy?  Technically, yes.  Practically, no.

Why not?

Because Australian telecommunications carriers want you to spend more money and buy their network adapters.  Like these.  IT Wire journalist and Tech Talk Radio’s Adam Turner explains it well in this article written for The Age Digital Life.

The Australian Android Market has no tethering applications and isn’t likely to in the near future, for reasons explained by Adam.  But is it mandatory to have applications listed in the Android Market, in order to install 3rd-party software on an Android-powered device?

No, not at all.

Introducing… Android Tethering!

Here’s what you need;

• An Android-powered phone, like the HTC Dream (aka T-Mobile G1, or “Google phone”); or an HTC Magic for example;
• A laptop / netbook / desktop computer;
• A USB cable to connect your phone to your laptop / netbook / desktop; and
• A data plan attached to your mobile telephone service.

Follow the steps at cp.blog, which are, in brief:

• Install the Tetherbot tethering application on your Google phone.  You need to tell your phone to allow installation of non-Android Market applications;
• Ensure the latest Android driver is installed on your laptop;
• Install the Android SDK or “adb” utility on your laptop;
• Open a command prompt and type “adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080″ to start the proxy server on your laptop (use  Task Manager to kill the process when you’re done – maybe setup a desktop shortcut to streamline this process);
• Use a web browser like Mozilla Firefox, and install a proxy manager like FoxyProxy.  Follow the configuration instructions in Mike’s post;
• Connect your Google phone, start Tetherbot and press “Start Socks”;

• Click on the web browser FoxyProxy button to force all traffic through the proxy server (“adb”) you have installed and started.  It would have looked something like this:

Bingo! All your web traffic is now routed through your Google phone.  You now have web access to the internet via your mobile telephone network.

I tested my new tethering by first checking my local IP address, through the WiFi connection:

…and then through the new tethered connection, via my mobile phone network:

Yep … definitely using a different network route now!

Warning! Watch your data usage.

Another Warning! Pay close attention to your data usage.

I would be interested to hear from people who have had similar success with this process, or modified the process slightly in order to use other handsets, proxy servers, browsers or browser plug-ins.

Many thanks to Mike Thompson and the Android Developer Community for assistance with this blog post.

android · android sdk · Google Android · Google Phone · HTC Dream · t-mobile g1 · tethering

Google Latitude

In March I blogged about my new HTC Google Phone and was disappointed, at the time, that Latitude wasn’t supported in Google Maps.

Low and behold, the Google Maps on my HTC Dream updated itself a few weeks ago.  Imagine my surprise when I saw a new “Latitude” button in Google Maps!  Hurrah!

I already had Latitude set up through a conventional web browser.  The HTC Dream detected my Google account details and settings, and I could see the location of all my “friends” straight away.  Awesome!  You can set Latitude to manually or automatically update your location, based on GPS latitude/longitude or wireless and telephone networks.  It seems to work well.

Skype Lite Beta

The other exciting development is the addition of Skype Lite Beta to the Australian Android Market.

Users of Android-powered devices can download and install applications from the online Android Market, but Skype is a new addition in Australia and has only just made itself available for download in the last week or so.

I was very excited when Skype Lite Beta finally appeared in my Android Market search results. I was pleased by the quick download and installation; a bit confused that it needed my mobile telephone number at the login screen; but impressed that all my contacts were instantly viewable with my pre-existing Skype account details, and that I could see all my contacts’ statuses (online, offline, busy and so on).

BUT when I made a call to a logged-on Skype contact (not using “Skype Out”), the HTC Dream set up a phone call to a Sydney number.  Huh?  Then I heard ‘ring ring’ and the call was answered at the other end (by my Skype contact, on a Skype client, on her PC in West Melbourne).

We chatted for some time, and the quality was good, but I was a bit confused that my HTC Dream had made a phone call to some type of gateway.  Must be a default setting, I thought, something I can easily change.

But this seems to be by design, and it’s not possible to change.  Read the not-so-fine-print on Skype’s webpage:

“With Skype on your mobile, you’ll always know when your friends are online and you can call them for the cost of a local call (or use your inclusive minutes from your mobile plan).”

And this:

“You can call friends and family from the bus or while you’re sipping a latte in your favorite coffee shop – wherever they are in the world. Best of all, your phone will work as normal – no WiFi or 3G connection needed – and you won’t need to change operator.”

Huh?!?!!  If I’m connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot, or an HSDPA telephone network, why can’t I use good old-fashioned “voice-over-IP” Skype to talk to my contacts, and chew-up some of that 3GB on my new data plan?

Then I realised … okay … that’s why Skype Lite Beta needs your mobile telephone number at the login screen.  When the Skype client sets-up a call to the Skype gateway (which BTW is a Sydney indial range, 02 8005 89xx), the Skype server marries your incoming call with your login, and connects your circuit-switched call on the phone network to an outbound Skype call from the Skype data centre.

It also explains how those mysterious “Skype minutes” work on your mobile phone plan.  It’s got nothing to do with bandwidth used for voice traffic, and everything to do with call minutes to and from your local Skype gateway.

Now I’ve looked through all the settings and configuration screens, and I can’t find anything that lets you choose packet-switched calls instead of circuit-switched calls.  Surely the software supports native Skype VoIP?  Well, actually we know that it does, because handsets like these are “WiFi only”.  They’re not mobile phones and can’t “dial-up” a gateway.

The interface is great, call quality is good and the client seems to work quite well.  I just can’t understand why I can’t choose to use packet-switched VoIP Skype, as opposed to dial-up Skype.

Maybe it’s just me. I do get pedantic about these things sometimes.  More testing to be done and more updates soon.

Australian Android Market · Google Android · Google Latitude · Google Phone · HTC Dream · Latitude · skype · Skype Lite Beta