I have a HTC Droid Incredible running the custom ROM CyanogenMod 7.1.x. For the most part it runs great, but there are moments when it feels like the Armageddon of 2012 is happening to my phone. No matter what application I open it will frustratingly crash in mere moments. What I’ve noticed is the catalyst to this crash-o-thon starts with some sort of “google framework” crash. Makes sense, break the framework and everything else should be coming down with it. Once that happens I will start to feel the instability of my rooted device.

The simple solution, yet temporary, is to clear the cache. I’m guessing there is some executed code or data that got corrupted, which in turn causes the apps to crash. The two types of cache that I clear are:

• cache partition
• Dalvik cache – a decent explanation of what this cache is can be found in the reference section below.

Assumptions

I’m constantly making assumptions about things — it’s become quite a skill. And I will continue my assumptions by stating that this process is for rooted users. I’m going to assume that since your device is rooted, it’s most likely that you have a custom ROM, which also means you have ROM Manager installed. The recovery section of this post is based on ClockworkMod (it’s a part of ROM Manager).

Cache-clearing Process

1. Hold down the power button of your device to get the “phone options” prompt.
2. Click “Reboot”, then choose “Recovery”. Click “OK”.
3. Your phone will reboot and you will soon be in the recovery screen.
4. Choose the option “wipe cache partition”. If that option isn’t there then head to “mounts and storage” and choose “format /cache.”
5. Next choose “advanced” (from the main screen) and then click “Wipe Dalvik Cache”.
6. Once that’s finished you can reboot the device.

I’ve noticed that once I reboot the device it seems to get stuck at the point where its trying to load the custom ROM. I would give it about 5 minutes. If nothing changes, remove the battery and boot the device again. Whatever the device tried to initialize the first time should be there and the device will boot just fine.

I mentioned earlier that this is a temporary solution. I don’t know the cause of the framework crash; it may be a combination of things, but at least you have a way out now.

Let me know if this process works for you OR if you have a better process. At this point I’m just a tinkerer of Android so I might be talking crap about the whole cache and corruption. I’d love to know.

References

1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3844295&postcount=5
2. http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/76110-what-dalvik-cache.html#post710236
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_(software)

Android enthusiasts know exactly what the title of this article is referencing. I’m hearing a lot about Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich. I remember when I first got my Android 2.1 phone (Motorola Droid), I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I knew 800MHz of processing power was too low, but I had to get my hands on one. And yes the phone was already out 6+ months — I had to get my hands on one! Cellular carriers were launching new Android phones left and right. At one point I was looking into getting the Samsung Galaxy Ace.

So many choices, but I’ve learned to be patient. I’ve gotten the Android-gitters out of my system so now I can wait for the right phone. I’m going to wait for Android 4.0 to be released before I even consider getting a new phone. It’s too close to choose anything else.

I learned something about myself today. I’m not sure what the full meaning of this revelation is, but on one hand it makes me look like a cool up-on-the-tech tech-guy. On the other hand it makes me look like a delusional technological nerf herder unable to interface with something the general public refers to as “common sense.” What is this discovery that I’ve made? I’ve learned how to communicate with my children through the process of toying with a voice-recognition software. :-/

Hardware

The voice-recognition software I’m referring to, purposefully miscategoriezed as “hardware” to fit my title, is an Android application called Speaktoit Assistant. I heard about it while driving home from work listening to TWiT’s All About Android podcast. The hosts fail whaled a demo of the Assistant application. Even though it bombed I was intrigued enough to install and try it for myself. At first I didn’t know  exactly what I was I supposed to be asking this piece of software. I pushed the voice input button and kind of gave my phone a blank stare. After gathering my thoughts I then tried some simple commands, after all, I didn’t expect this thing to really interface with me like I’ve seen in the movies. So; I said “Hi” and a mono-computerized female voice replied, “Hi there, friend!” I thought, “Oh really!? This is the first time we’re communicating and I’m already your friend.” I remembered in the demo that Assistant called the user by name so I asked, “What’s your name?” It replied, “My name is Sam.”

Wetware

I continued to speak commands at this program to see what the results would be. A nice thing about the interface is the visual feedback. In the lower-left corner you’ll see what the program thought you said after analysing the input. It wasn’t too accurate, but understandable; I was in my car so it’s probably picking up background noise. I played with it some more, each time adjusting my output to guarantee a more accurate input. I made a mental note that I couldn’t flat-out have a dialogue with Sam. I had to give her short commands. I recalled from the podcast that in their demo Sam updated the user’s Facebook status. So; I tried it. “Update Facebook status.” She then prompted with “What should I change your Facebook status to?” I paused, not knowing what to really have this program post for me. My mouth stumbled out some words, but it wasn’t recognizable enough for her to make any real sense of it. Sam confirmed if I wanted that poorly constructed message to be posted. I quickly said, “No, no.”

I tried it again; this time with more clarity and purpose. Success; Sam changed my Facebook status. In a small way — that  accomplished task — felt exhilarating. I was able to communicate outside of my car without typing anything. I know, this isn’t super rare, but my brain made a big deal about it. I then tried another popular service, Twitter. Again; successful post. I was really warming up to this concept of having a digital personal assistant.

Interface

I got into the house and laid down on the couch. My son finished his dinner and saw me playing with the phone. Not just touching the screen, but speaking directly to it. He kept starting his queries with “Hi…” or “Hey…” I told him that it would keep saying “Hi” back. I instructed him to make direct commands. He eventually adjusted, but it was very interesting for me to see my six-year-old son interface with Sam. It sparked something inside me. I’m not certain what’s going on, but I like the change in the wind.

I then had to convince my four-year old to finish eating her food and my two-year old to stop playing and eat her food. I noticed that I wasn’t my Oscar-the-grouchy self. I spoke in a calm fashion, being deliberate with my commands and not distorting my request by expressing my frustration. As I continued to communicate with my daughters I realized that they were actually doing what I wanted them to. It wasn’t a smooth process by any stretch of the imagination, but the progress was certainly more tangible than any of my previous attempts.

Before this experiment of testing the Speaktoit Assistant application I was very sceptical to voice-recognition software on a smart phone. I didn’t see the purpose. I occasionally use the voice-to-text function of my Android phone to post a status update or IM while in my car, but that was the peak of my interest. With this connection I’ve made, my interest in this type of technology is really taking root. I can imagine talking to my phone in order to hear what my schedule is, what tasks I have to accomplish and updating my social media platforms. Assistant certainly has a long way to go, but I like what I’ve experienced in its beta form. Check out Speaktoit‘s web site. They are doing a Kickstarter in order to gain more capital. I wish them success and you count on me evangelising their efforts.

Recently I tried to update my Android SDK from revision 7 to revision 10 on my Windows 7 (32 bit) machine. I ran into an issue where a simple temporary folder couldn’t be renamed or moved and the updater kept throwing me an error. I tried numerous ways to resolve the problem, but to no avail. I ended up on Google Code and found some helpful solutions.

1. Close Windows Explorer. Explorer tends to latch on to folders and files as you browse them. Hopefully if you close the program it will remove the vice grasp it has on them.
2. Temporarily disable the Anti-virus program (Norton, AVG, etc).
3. Copy the files inside of “temp/tools_rNN-windows.zip” into the “tools” directory. “NN” is the revision number (ex: 10).

The third solution was the one that worked for me. I simply copied and pasted the content from the compressed file into the “tools” directory and restarted “SDK Manager.exe” and I was good to go. If you want to scour the thread for other solutions the link is below.

References

1. http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4410

I wanted to root my NOOKcolor the other night, but was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the instructions requiring a MicroSD card reader. Well Mister Fancy-pants, some of us don’t have a MicroSD card reader, but we do have all the other necessary pieces to the puzzle. I scoured the Android Tablets forum for a solution and ended up posting the question. To my surprise the solution was pretty simple — use your cell phone.

I’m going to walk you through my experience of rooting my NOOKcolor using the instructions from nookDevs. I’m assuming that you’re using a Windows machine and that you’re a little familiar with the Android interface already.

Items Needed

1. Of course the first item is a Barnes & Nobles NOOKcolor (NC).
2. A MicroSD card with at least 128 MB of space on it.
3. A computer. I used a Windows machine in this instance.
4. A mobile phone with a MicroSD slot.
5. A Gmail/YouTube linked account.
6. The program Image Writer for Windows (win32diskimager).
7. Auto Nooter [for NC v1.0.0] [for NC v1.0.1]

The Rooting Process

Preparing the MicroSD Card

1. Turn off your cell phone and insert the new MicroSD card.
2. Turn on your cell phone and plug it into your computer.
3. Make sure it mounts and has a letter drive associated to it. (example: G:\)
4. Unzip the Auto Nooter file.
5. Open Image Writer for Windows program and locate the Auto Nooter file.
   1. Choose the correct drive letter (under Device) and click the “Write” button. A small warning: it will overwrite the entire MicroSD card.

Once it finishes writing to the MicroSD card, you can close the program and Eject your cell phone from the computer. That’s it, your card is ready to be used.

Run Auto Nooter on Your NOOKcolor

1. Turn your NOOKcolor completely off and make sure it’s NOT plugged into your computer.
2. Insert the newly written MicroSD card into your NOOKcolor.
3. Plug the NOOKcolor into your computer.
   1. The NOOKcolor will automatically boot even though the screen is off. Wait about a minute or so.
4. Once the process is complete the NOOKcolor will reboot itself and you’ll see a new boot animation.

At that point you can safely remove the MicroSD card or format it using NOOK’s settings. That’s it — your NOOKcolor is now rooted!

The Aftermath

Rooting was the easy part of this adventure, what happened afterward was a bit jarring at first. I worked my way through it and emerged with an understanding of just how flexible Android is. After your NC is rooted you’ll get a very familiar “Start” screen. The same type of screen when you first start playing with your Android phone. It’s a wizard that connects your Google account to your device. This one is called LogicPD Zoom2. For some odd reason I was unable to register my Gmail account — it was an endless loop of reentering my username and password.

At first my physical home button (NOOK button) wouldn’t send me to the home screen. I rebooted the device to see if there was something stuck in memory preventing me from moving on. That wasn’t it. Eventually I found my way back to the home screen. At this point, due to my lack of understanding, I was expecting the same experience as I do on my Motorola Droid. A combination of the physical home button and the SoftKeys button is essential for you getting around the apps, menus, etc. Take some time and get used to dealing with it.

Overall; it’s still the same NOOK layer, but you have the ability to use Android Market apps. I ended up installing a launcher that I was familiar with, ADW.Launcher. I have the typical set of apps running — Amazon Kindle, Angry Birds, Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, TweetDeck, etc. I did experience some quirks:

• Gmail gave me an error that sync needs to be enable in order to access email. I fiddled around with it, but I wasn’t able to get into the typical Settings > Accounts & sync to enable it. Once I got into the inbox I did a refresh and that got things going.
• Calendar didn’t pull up any of my events or calendars.
• YouTube worked for a short while, but now it crashes when I open it. @pbnjoely advised me to simply uninstall/re-install the signed YouTube.apk file.
• Downloading files from the Internet is an odd occurrence. The download process goes through just fine, but I have NO IDEA where those files went. For instance I wanted a new wallpaper so i downloaded one Nook Color Wallpapers. The Maker only knows where that file is stored? I used ASTRO to look for it, but was unsuccessful.

What’s Next

The next thing that I’m going to work on is getting it tethered to my Droid. I’ll probably also look for a custom ROM to install on my NC. Who knows!? At this point the world is my oyster and I’m craving for a bit of digital adventure! If you’ve rooted your NOOKcolor let me know how the process went for you?

So; I finally got my hands on a NOOKcolor. The wife and I bought nooks and they were delivered to our home last week. She got the original NOOK primarily because of the e-ink technology and I got the NOOKcolor because word-on-the-street labeled it as a great introduction into tablets. I certainly don’t have $600 to put down on a Samsung GALAXY Tab and Motorola’s Xoom is NOT living up to the snowball hype it generated during Superbowl XLV. So; here’s what I think of it.

While at work I was super excited to know it was at home waiting for me. My wife didn’t confirm the arrival because the previous day we missed the delivery. She ranted on about what we could have done differently to receive the devices and I said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I purposely don’t get excited about things until it’s in my hands. That way I won’t be disappointed if I miss the delivery.” She probably took that as a hint not to tell me about it until I got home. It was too late though, I knew the devices would be home that day and was sweating it out at work.

Hardware

The hardware is nice and it has a very modern look and feel to it. The screen is 7 inches, just like the GALAXY Tab and all the pros advertised with having a tablet that fits into your hand is confirmed. The device feels sturdy. I don’t plan on using the ear jack so I don’t have anything to say about it. The power button is oddly placed to the upper left side of the device. I guess I’m used to that button being on the very top-right, but it’s not so bad. The volume buttons don’t seem to sit well with me. I rarely turn the volume up or down, but when I do, it just doesn’t feel right.

It’s got a 800MHz processor and I’m OK with that. My current Motorola Droid only has 550MHz which makes the NC the faster Android device.

I’m going to refer to the NOOKcolor as “NC” from here on out. You’ll notice the same verbiage being used on any of the Android-related forums.

The screen is very nicely lit. I haven’t tried reading in the outdoors yet, but based on how bright the screen gets I’m assuming I won’t have a problem.

I did order a Color Field Cover in Storm Gray for my NC. I was initially disappointed with it when I saw it. I expected it to be darker in color and I wasn’t too happy with the material. After using it that Friday during my regular commute to and from work I began to like it more. I feel that it really protects my NC, I’m beginning to like the material, but that gray needs to be darker.

Software

My NC came with version 1.0.1 software and it is VERY basic. As an eReader you really shouldn’t expect much more from it, but because I know Android lives at the very core of this thing, I WANT it to do more! I’m treating it like a tablet when it’s clearly packaged as an eBook reader. So; I’m giving myself about a week to play with the vanilla software and then I’m rooting the hell out of it!

Reading it’s bad, I’m becoming more familiar with the differences between EPUB and PDF formats. I would certainly prefer my PDFs in an EPUB format, but when I convert them using Calibre E-book management, I can see how it strips down the document to its bare essentials, thus removing the original formatting the author/publisher did. It’s like having a Rich Text document vs and HTML page. You can do a lot more with the HTML page, but then you lose some of the convenient software interaction, such as: bookmarking certain pages, being able to jump around using the table of contents, and highlighting and writing notes.

Rooting

There are tons of resources out there to help you figure out how to root the device. I’m looking at the various forums trying to completely understand where this device, it’s software, and the rooting-stage fits. Since it’s the Wi-Fi Only model I can’t take advantage of surfing the web or checking my email and social media platforms while on the go. I’d have to tether it to my Droid. I tried, but it didn’t work. I later found out that the NC can only hook-up via Ad-hoc Wi-Fi, which means that I’ll need to root the device in order to get it working with my phone. Even more incentive!

Overall; I’m really happy with it. I’ll be even more happy once I root it. Here are some resources that I’m familiarizing myself with:

1. http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/nook/
2. http://nookdevs.com/Portal:NookColor
3. http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=860

If you have a NOOKcolor, I’d love hear about your adventures either making the best of the standard software or rooted.

What Makes This Appealing?

So; what makes SCVNGR so appealing? We’re all pretty bombarded with applications for our smart phone(s) — especially with the hottest trend being the geolocation market. The biggest difference that I see between SCVNGR and the two current trend setters (Foursquare and Gowalla) is (1) the user interface and (2) how long it keeps me looking at the app. The interface is very clean and I find it much faster than Foursquare. Granted one can argue that the current speed is due to its lack of users, thus not a heavily burdened network.

As is the default – It integrates with Facebook and Twitter and makes it easy to see what you’re Facebook friends have checked into under the “Friends Feed” section. I’ve been using it for a number of weeks and I’m very happy with it. It’s using Google Places to pull the venues. That’s a plus for me, I’m still not comfortable with Facebook hosting that kind of data.

What’s Wrong with It?

I did notice, while cruising the Places screen for more friends, that I was able to view the activities of total strangers. It looks like sharing is totally open out-of-the-box. If you go into the Settings menu, you can change it to only share with your friends. Besides THAT the only thing wrong with SCVNGR is that my friends don’t know about it. It’s hard enough for me to get my immediate circle of friends into geolocation, but to have them switch to another app after finally getting them into Foursquare is going to be challenging.

Features

Once you load the application there are a couple of features accessible from the home screen: Friend’s Feed, Profile, Friends, Badges, Places, Rewards, Treks, and Social Map. There’s also a notification bar at the very bottom of the home screen.

Friend’s Feed

SCVNGR interface displaying the Friend Feed's screen.

The Friend’s Feed is pretty self explanatory, it displays a list of your friend’s check-ins. It has two tabs: Recent and Popular. To be honest I’m not sure what the criteria is for a check-in to be “popular.” The neat thing about the Recent tab is it mixes both your SCVNGR and Facebook friends. You can’t interact with the FB feed, but it’s at least nice to see where your closest buddies are.

Profile

This section really doesn’t have anything special compared to other geolocation application. It’s more or less a dashboard of how many points you have, challenges you’ve done, places you’ve visited, how many badges you’ve acquired, and how many friends you have. Your avatar is pretty big so if you really like looking at yourself, they built a function to satisfy that craving.

Friends

The Friends screen has three tabs: Find, All friends, and Leaderboard. The Friends feature is where you can expand your friend’s list by finding people in your Facebook circle that have linked their accounts to SCVNGR. You can also do a simple search for a user or invite friends by allowing the app to post a message through other social media applications you may have installed on your phone. The Leaderboard screen is where the competitive nature of a person comes out to play. Once you have a couple of friends to play with you can then compare how many points/challenges you’ve acquired. It doesn’t reset every week like Foursquare, it’s simply an overall score. So; you can be at a slight disadvantage if you friend someone that has been heavily using SCVNGR.

Badges

If you’re familiar with social media apps, badges is an aspect that these companies/apps use to exploit our loyal and competitive nature. These badges are acquired after reaching a certain status or completing a number of challenges. These badges are drawn nice so they are easy-on-the-eyes. This screen will list all the badges you’ve acquired in a four-column fashion. You can click on individual badges to get a little more detail as to what the badge is about and when you received it. My only issue with this feature is the irony that the app supports a good amount of text in order to explain what the badge is about, but the actual explanation of the badge is vague and confusing. There are many badges that I’m still unclear WHY I’ve acquired them.

Places

This is the meat and potatoes of the application. This screen will initially load all venues within your intimidate area. If a venue doesn’t show up you can do a search to add it.

Make sure you use propercase before submitting a search. If the system doesn’t find that venue it will use your submission as the entry name.

When you choose a venue to check-in to that screen has three tabs: Challenges, Activity, and Info. The default challenges with every venue is: check-in, social check-in, say something, and snap a picture. Each challenge has a certain amount of points associated with it. The social check-in is a pretty cool challenge. You and another SCVNGR user can bump phones to get twice as many points for that check-in. The more challenges you do, the more points you acquire. Once you’ve gained a certain amount of points you can then add your own challenges. I’m not sure why, but I have yet to create a challenge for the available venues. My creativity on creating challenges has proven to be limited. :-/

Rewards

The Rewards screen has two tabs: My Rewards and Nearby. This feature incorporates the growing Groupon-inspired trend of offering discounts from vendors. I haven’t tried this feature, so I can only theorize how it actually works.

Treks

This feature I believe was inspired from Gowalla’s Trips. For example the “Best of Atlanta” trek lists 8 challenges for you to complete. Once you visit one of the venues in the list, such as Georgia Aquarium, the trek challenge is to click on “Fish Face”. This particular challenge is to impersonate a fish and take a picture of your ugly mug doing it. Stuff like that is pretty cool and will certainly keep you motivated to explore.

Social Map

I was very excited when I saw this feature. It reminded me of a third-party web site a friend took me to in order to see a visual history of his Foursquare check-ins. The Social Map screen displays a map, most likely powered by Google Maps with pins of avatars showing recent activities, maximum of up to 24 hours. I can see that it shows both mine and friends’ activities. It’s got a bug or two once you start sliding that time line around and zooming in and out of the map, but it’s got a lot of potential.

Other Reviews

Initially I didn’t plan to write a detailed review of this app. I had a real hard time finding a significant Android post so I filled the gap. Below are other blog posts I found that might give you another aspect of this very intriguing app. You can find my SCVNGR profile at the following link — www.scvngr.com/fergatron — let’s stalk each other, it’ll be fun.

• SCVNGR Review – Could This Be the Foursquare of Real Estate [Tech Savvy Agent] – Video, focuses on iPhone
• SCVNGR: A check-in app with a fun twist [Android and Me]
• SCVNGR Launches Sophisticated Rewards Program [Mashable]

I’m somewhat taken back by the lack of understanding towards Google’s Chrome Web Store from various hosts on technology podcasts that I listen to, such as: Buzz Out Loud and Tech News Today. The general consensus is, “Why do we need yet another marketplace?” And “How many times will a developer have to create an application?” It’s almost as if they can’t see the future coming. In my tiny/little world I’m not afraid of marketplaces because they remind me of the software repositories available to us in Linux. Also with the semantic web meaning something to web developers, we’re finally clearing the jungle of web applications not working on multiple browsers.

Where is Google Taking Us?

Before I continue I’m going to make some assumptions, and of course we know that assuming things will make you look like an ASSumption. We should all be aware that Google more or less acts as a catalyst to what’s coming in the world of technology. The company is stacked to the brim with very smart engineers and forward thinkers; the “pathfinding” is an inevitable result. We all know that Google is horrible (simply horrible) at marketing. So; whenever they launch a product or service it may not make sense to us now, but when it all comes together you’ll be glad that Google did it and not some other mega corporation; looking at their bottom line.

Segmentation

The big debate for the podcasters is them trying to understand why Google has both the Android OS and Chrome OS. To me, it’s pretty simple. Android isn’t ready to be on devices such as a Tablet, Notebook, Netbook, or a Desktop. Instead of forking Chrome OS to work on small devices such as a smart phone, Google focused on a “small device OS” and happily named it “Android.” As for the other devices, with the operating system becoming a thing of the 90′s, Google is focusing on a platform that can interface with the increasing number of applications hosted on the Internet.

So; What About the Web Store

This web store is kind of greasing the pipes for us that already live on the Web. For those of us that have an understanding that Chrome OS is still alive and the Internet will continue to expand our abilities to be productive… the web store is giving us a glimpse into life using Chrome OS.

For one; it only works if you have a Chrome browser. While using the browser on your desktop, try using ONLY web applications. Figure out what applications you currently use and then pick the equivalent app in the Chrome Web Store. Below is a comparison table for desktop applications and their web-based counterparts.

Chrome Notebook

I signed up to the pilot program for a Cr-48 Chrome notebook. Normally; I didn’t think it was possible for a lone web developer, such as myself to get one of these, but while listening to these short-sighted podcasters — I’m optimistic. I’m a perfect candidate, I practically live on the web anyway. My biggest challenge would be web development. My most intense developing situation would be a PHP application connecting to a MySQL database, but for the most part I develop simple, yet web standards compliant web sites [INSERT SHAMELESS PLUG FOR DIGITAL ALIAS HERE]. If Google provides me an enhanced version of Notepad+ or Bluefish, I think I’d live.

I’d love to know what you think of the Chrome Web Store and where our Internet gods are taking us!

I’m still surprised at the lackluster search results I get when I try to remember how to enable widgets into a WordPress theme. In this tutorial I’m only going to go through the basics, nothing fancy at all… just dry conditional statements. In general this requires you to edit or create two files:

1. /wp-content/themes/{theme of the day}/functions.php file.
2. /wp-content/themes/{theme of the day}/sidebar.php file.

Theme Functions

This file (functions.php) can be a pretty powerful addition to your WordPress theme. Basically; you can put all your PHP functions into this file and call them at-will on other pages. In this case all you need to do is add a function to “register” the sidebar feature.

<?php
if (function_exists(‘register_sidebar’))
register_sidebar();
?>

You can simply use “register_sidebar()”, but the conditional statement is simply a best practice for coding just in case for some odd reason that function isn’t available. That way your site won’t throw an error and disrupt the rendering of your beautiful WP theme.

Applying the Sidebar

Now that you’ve told your WP theme to use the sidebar feature, you’ll need to actually apply it. Usually this next function is applied to the sidebar.php file. Edit it to run the following code:

<?php
if(function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’))
dynamic_sidebar();
?>

…and you’re done! Next time you log into /wp-admin and click on Appearance | Widgets you’ll see options of attaching widgets to your sidebar! You’re welcome!

References

1. http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference
2. http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2007/11/how-to-widget-enable-wordpress-themes-in-3-easy-steps/

This morning, while getting ready for work, I received a notification on my phone that there was a system update! I almost blew my wad! Yes; that’s a bit graphic, but for some odd reason I’m a BIG fan of system updates. Having the latest and greatest that’s been tested and tweaked to work on my device does something to me (internally). Maybe that’s another reason why I’m such a fan of Linux.

I was presented with three buttons (install, not install, and more info…). One would think that I’d read the “more info…” just to see what’s actually being installed. I blew right by that idea and clicked “install”. After clicking the button I did think, “Darn it, I really should have read what the update was… oh well.”

Initial Reaction

This is not a screenshot of my own phone. I just want to show you the new buttons and dots!

You can probably guess what my initial reaction was to the update. “Woot, oh yah, Froyo 2.2 here we go!” Once my Motorola Droid rebooted, I noticed that on the bottom of the screen were new shortcut buttons. Three to be exact with two small dots on both sides. The three buttons were: Phone, Menu, and Browser. That took care of some of the icons on my home screen. I learned that the dots on either side of those shortcut buttons represented desktops. Yup, I went from, stock, three desktops to five! Booyah!

Now; I’ve played with other desktop apps before, such as Home++ beta. There was one more, but I forget the name. I actually like it better than Home++. The problem I experienced with these desktop replacement apps was performance. At first it was great, but later on it took longer to get back to the home screen. As I flipped through Google Listen, Seesmic, LastFM and other data-intensive apps I soon realized that these cool home apps aren’t worth the lag. So; I went back to using the vanilla home screen. One of the benefits from my early experimentation with home screen apps was the ability to increase my desktop count. Because of the CPU/Memory limitation I could only go up to 4 desktops without significantly slowing down the OS.

I wish I had more desktops, but not at the sacrifice of performance. Well with Android 2.2, I’m up to five desktops and I’ve loaded it with widgets just to test the long-term effects. So far so good!

Application Management

Again; this is not a screenshot of my own phone. I just want to show you the four new tabs.

Since I’m a big tinkerer-of-things, I try out lots of apps at any given time. So; I was happy to see that the application management is a little easier. The biggest plus to me is I can update multiple apps at the same time through Android Market. No more clicking 15 x 3 times in order to update apps. Also; “Settings > Applications > Manage Applications” window has four tabs.

I noticed that “Task Manager” and “Twitter” apps came with the update. I had “Advanced Task Killer“, but I removed it just to give this “recommended” app a try. If I didn’t install the TweetDeck beta app yesterday I’d probably use the Twitter app. I did notice that I couldn’t remove the Twitter app. Looks like Verizon baked it right in! :-/

Wrap It Up Already

In the end; I’m very excited about this update and my phone seems to run smoother than before. I know there’s a lot more things this version of Android is supposed to do, but I haven’t explored them yet. This is just a first-hand experience with a Verizon customer finally getting a “system update” on his Android phone.

If you are looking for a more robust review, I think Smarterware has a good article.